Frederic Remington

“ The men have scouted hard for a month, and have lost two nights’ sleep, so at the halts for the wagons they lop down in the dust of the road, and sleep, while the little ponies stand over them, ears down, heads hanging, eyes shut, and one hind foot drawn up on its toe. Nothing can look so dejected as a pony, and doubtless few things have more reason to feel so. A short march of twenty-five miles passes us through the Seventeenth Infantry camp under Colonel Offley, and down to the Cheyenne River, where we camp for the night. ”

“ Larry is justly famous on the road for his bonhomie and Celtic wit.
At an early hour we arose and departed—the pale moon shining through the mist of the valley, while around us rose the ghostly pines. We cowered under our great-coats, chilled through, and saddened at remembrances of the warm blankets which we had been compelled to roll out of at this unseemly hour. At 7.30 we broke into one of those beautiful natural parks, the Lower Geyser Basin, with the sun shining on the river and the grass, and spotting the row of tents belonging to D Troop, Sixth United States Cavalry. ”

“ With fingers and hunting-knives we carved and tore at the mountain of beef. The punchers consume enormous quantities of meat, and when satiated they bring forth their corn-husks and tobacco-pouches, and roll their long, thin cigarettes, which burn until they draw their serapes about their heads and sink back in dreamless sleep. It is all beautifully primitive, and as I rise on my elbow to look across the blanketed forms packed like mackerel in a cask, to hear their heavy breathing, and see the fire glow, and hear the wind howl outside, I think how little it takes to make men happy. ”

“ To sit on a camp chest, and to try and forget that the soldier’s quart cup is not filled with best in the market, and then to enter into the full appreciation of the picturesque occasion, is to forget that long marches, “bull meat,” and sleepless, freezing nights are in the background. Pleasant hours sit so nicely in their complemental surrounding of hard ones, since everything in the world is relative. ”

“ The jokes and pleasantries of the American puncher are so close to nature often, and so generously veneered with heart-rending profanity, as to exclude their becoming classic. The cow-men are good friends and virulent haters, and, if justified in their own minds, would shoot a man instantly, and regret the necessity, but not the shooting, afterwards.
Among the dry, saturnine faces of the cow punchers of the Sierra Madre was one which beamed with human instincts, which seemed to say, “Welcome, stranger!” ”

“ The squaws of another race will sing the death-song of their benefactor, and woe to the Sioux if the Northern Cheyennes get a chance to coup!
“Try to avoid bloodshed,” comes over the wires from Washington. “Poor savages!” comes the plaintive wail of the sentimentalist from his place of security; but who is to weep for the men who hold up a row of brass buttons for any hater of the United States to fire a gun at? Are the squaws of another race to do the mourning for American soldiers? Are the men of another race to hope for vengeance? ”

“ The creek ends, and we take to the steep hill-sides, while the loose stones rattle from under the flying hoofs. The rains have cut deep furrows on their way to the bed of the cañon, and your horse scratches and scrambles for a foothold. A low, gnarled branch bangs you across the face, and then your breath fairly stops as you see a horse go into the air and disappear over a big log, fallen down a hill of seventy degrees’ slope. The “take-off and landing” is yielding dust, but the blood in your head puts the spur in your horse, and over you go. ”

“ It seems we do not live this life on a cold, calculating plane of existence, but on different lines, the variation of which is the chief delight of the discriminating, and I must record a distinct pleasure in elbowing fellows around a camp-fire when it is dark and cold and wet, and when you know that they are oftener in bed than out of it at such hours. You drink your quart of coffee, eat your slice of venison, and then regard your horse with some trepidation, since he is all of a tremble, has a hump on his back, and is evidently of a mind to “pitch.” ”

“ This part of their lives is passed in a long siesta, and a man of the North who has a local reputation as a lazy man should see a Mexican puncher loaf, in order to comprehend that he could never achieve distinction in the land where poco tiempo means forever. Such is the life of the vaquero, a brave fellow, a fatalist, with less wants than the pony he rides, a rather thoughtless man, who lacks many virtues, but when he mounts his horse or casts his riata all men must bow and call him master. ”

“ A chilling wind now adds to the misery of the situation, and the heat of the fire goes off in a cloud of sparks to the No Man’s Land across the river. After smoking a pipe for two hours your mouth is raw and your nervous system shattered, so nothing is left but to sit calmly down and just suffer. You can hate the Chinese on the other side of the world, who are now enjoying the rays of the sun.
And morning finds you in the saddle. It always does. ”

“ After a few miles of these vicissitudes I gained the head of the column, and when the pace slackened I turned the whole thing over in my mind, and a great light seemed to shine through the whole subject. For a smooth road and a trotting horse, that European riding-master was right; but when you put a man in the dust or smoke, over the rocks and cut banks, on the “bucking” horse, or where he must handle his weapons or his vieta, he must have a seat on his mount as tight as a stamp on an envelope, and not go washing around like a shot in a bottle. ”

“ Tom Bailey and Johnnie Bell, the ranch foremen, had faces which would have been in character under a steel head-piece at Cressy, while the wildest blood of Spain, Morocco, and the American Indian ran in the veins of the punchers; and all these men were untainted by the enfeebling influences of luxury and modern life. A chunk of beef, a cigarette, an enveloping serape, with the Sierras for a bedroom, were the utmost of their needs. ”

“ You may ride into a hole, over a precipice, to perdition, if it’s your luck on this night, but is not the general in front? You follow the general—that’s the grand idea—that is the military idea. If the United States army was strung out in line with its general ahead, and if he should ride out into the broad Atlantic and swim to sea, the whole United States army would follow along, for that’s the idea, you know. ”

“ The people sit on a mat on the floor, and make cigarettes out of native tobacco and corn-husks, or rolled tortillas; they laugh and chat in low tones, and altogether occupy the tiniest mental world, hardly larger than the patio, and not venturing beyond the little mud town of Temozachic, forty miles over the hills. Physically the men vacillate between the most intense excitement and a comatose state of idleness, where all is quiet and slothful, in contrast to the mad whirl of the roaring rodeo. ”

“ A favorable place for a bicycle is along a railroad track—going in the centre or at one side. When suddenly attacked, my men can get out of the road like a covey of quail, and a bicycle can be trundled across the worst possible country as fast as a man can travel, for you see all the weight of the man’s gun and pack are on the wheel, which runs without any appreciable resistance, and all bike men know how to throw a bicycle over a [237] fence with ease, and my average march is eighty miles a day. Ladigo, remember—eighty miles a day. ”

“ A cigarette at two o’clock in the morning, with one’s back to the fire, while the moon looks down on you, your comrades breathing about you, a wolf howling mournfully from a neighboring hill, the mountains towering on every side, and the tall pines painting inky shadows across the ghostly grass, is a mild sensation and rather pleasant. Some of the men are on foot, from soring their horses’ backs, and their buckskin boots are wearing out, so they sit about the fire and stitch. ”

“ Cooper here showed us a very large bear track, and also a smaller one, with those of two cubs by its side. With a wild burst the dogs went away up a cañon, the blood went into our heads, and our heels into the horses, and a desperate scramble began. It is the sensation we have travelled so long to feel. Dan and Cooper sailed off through the brush and over the stones like two old crows, with their coat-tails flapping like wings. We follow at a gallop in single file up the narrow, dry watercourse. ”

“ MY COMRADE
Leaving the “burro men” to haul and pull at their patient beasts as they bound on their loads, our outfit “pulled out” on what promised to be plenty of travelling. We were to do the rounds of the ranch, explore the mountains, penetrate to the old Apache strongholds, shoot game, find cliff-dwellers’ villages, and I expect the dark minds of the punchers hoped for a sight at the ever-burning fire which should discover the lost mine of Tiopa. We were also promised a fight with the “Kid” if we “cut his trail”; and if he “cut ours,” we may never live to regret it. ”

“ There is the serious side of the life. The Apache is an evil which Mexicans have come to regard as they do the meteoric hail, the lightning, the drought, and any other horror not to be averted. They quarrel between themselves over land and stock, and there are a great many men out in the mountains who are proscribed by the government. Indeed, while we journeyed on the road and were stopping one night in a little mud town, we were startled by a fusillade of shots, and in the morning were informed that two men had been killed the night before, and various others wounded. ”

“ Here is where the perfect grip with the thighs is wanted, and here is where the man who is bundled up like a ball on his horse’s back is in imminent danger of breaking his neck. I felt like a pack on a government mule, and only wished I had some one to “throw the diamond hitch over me.” The inequalities of the road make your horse plunge and go staggering sidewise, or down on his knees, and it is not at all an unusual thing for a cavalryman to upset entirely, though nothing short of a total turn-over will separate a veteran soldier from his horse. ”

“ Their knees work outward, and they have a decided “hitch” in their gait; but once let them get a foot in a stirrup and a grasp on the horn of the saddle, and a dynamite cartridge alone could expel them from their seat. When loping over the plain the puncher is the epitome of equine grace, and if he desires to look behind him he simply shifts his whole body to one side and lets the horse go as he pleases. In the pursuit of cattle at a rodeo he leans forward in his saddle, and with his arms elevated to his shoulders he “plugs” in his spurs and makes his pony fairly sail. ”

“ While going at this tremendous speed he turns his pony almost in his stride, and no matter how a bull may twist and swerve about, he is at his tail as true as a magnet to the pole. The Mexican punchers all use the “ring bit,” and it is a fearful contrivance. Their saddle-trees are very short, and as straight and quite as shapeless as a “saw-buck pack-saddle.” The horn is as big as a dinner plate, and taken altogether it is inferior to the California tree. It is very hard on horses’ backs, and not at all comfortable for a rider who is not accustomed to it. ”

“ The daring of Casey in this case is simply an instance of a hundred such, and the last one cost him his life. By his prompt measures with his own men, and by his courage in going among the Sioux to powwow, he averted a bloody battle, and obeyed his orders. There was one man between two banks of savage warriors who were fairly frothing at the mouth—a soldier; the sun will never shine upon a better. ”

“ A strayed cavalry orderly had, much to his disturbance of mind, beheld a big silver-tip bearing down on him, jaws skinned, ears back, and red-eyed, and he had promptly removed himself to a proper distance, where he dismounted. The bear and dogs were much exhausted, but the dogs swarmed around the bear, thus preventing a shot. But Bruin stopped at intervals to fight the dogs, and the soldier fired, but without effect. If men do not come up with the dogs in order to encourage them, many will draw off, since the work of chasing and fighting a bear without water for hours is very trying. ”

“ Now you should understand why it is better to have one shirt and wash it often. My “canoe kit” is the best arranged and the most perfect in the world, as no other canoeist will possibly admit, but which is nevertheless a fact. One blanket, a light shelter-tent, a cooking outfit, which folds up in a sort of Japanese way, a light axe, two canvas packs, and tea, bacon, and flour. This does not make long reading, but it makes a load for a man when it’s all packed up, and a canoeist’s baggage must be cut to the strength of his back. ”

“ But there are cavalry officers and there are cavalry officers, and it is not every day one is born. For thirty-five years has the old general sat in a McClellan saddle, and the tremendous enthusiasm [204] of newly joined “sub” still remains. The very thought of a wagon arouses his indignation, and every day the mules are brought into the riding-hall, and the men initiated into the intricacies of the “diamond hitch.” It takes a past-master to pack a mule in twenty-two seconds, however, and I saw that feat accomplished in General Henry’s command. ”

“ Patter, patter, patter—clank, clank, clank; up comes the company of Cheyenne scouts who are to escort the general—fine-looking, tall young men, with long hair, and mounted on small Indian ponies. They were dressed and accoutred as United States soldiers, and they fill the eye of a military man until nothing is lacking. Now the general steps out of the car and hands the commission into a six-mule ambulance. I am given a horse, and, mounting, we move off over the plain and into the hills. ”