Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/55

 whole garrison turned out. A few words from the Book of Common Prayer—"Man that is born of woman," etc.; a few clods of earth rattling down; then a layer of heavy rocks and spiny cactus, to keep the coyotes from digging up the bones; more earth; and all was over, excepting the getting ready for the pursuit.

This was to be prosecuted by Lieutenant Howard B. Cushing, an officer of wonderful experience in Indian warfare, who with his troop, "F" of the Third Cavalry, had killed more savages of the Apache tribe than any other officer or troop of the United States Army has done before or since. During the latter days of the preceding fall, 1869, he had struck a crushing blow at the courage of the Apaches infesting the country close to the Guadalupe Range in southwestern Texas, and had killed and wounded many of the adults, and captured a number of children and a herd of ponies.

But Lieutenant Franklin Yeaton, a brave and exceedingly able officer, just out of West Point, was fatally wounded on our side, and the more Cushing brooded over the matter, the hotter flamed his anger, until he could stand it no longer, but resolved to slip back across country and try his luck over again. He had hauled Yeaton and the rest of the wounded for four marches on rudely improvised "travois" across the snow, which lay unusually deep that winter, until he found a sheltered camping-place near the Peñasco, a branch of the Pecos, where he left his impedimenta under a strong guard, and with the freshest horses and men turned back, rightly surmising that the hostiles would have given up following him, and would be gathered in their ruined camp, bewailing the loss of kindred.

He had guessed rightly, and at the earliest sign of morning in the east was once again leading his men to the attack upon the Apaches, who, not knowing what to make of such an utterly unexpected onslaught, fled in abject terror, leaving many dead on the ground behind them.

All this did not exactly compensate for the loss of Yeaton, but it served to let out some of Cushing's superfluous wrath, and keep him from exploding.

Cushing belonged to a family which won deserved renown during the War of the Rebellion. One brother blew up the ram Albemarle; another died most heroically at his post of duty on the