Harry Castlemon

“ You fellows with your books and your speakers have somehow got hold of the idea that an Indian has no gratitude, but I have proved the contrary by coming out here to warn you."
"You are a queer sort of an Indian anyhow," said Guy, taking his hand from his hip pocket. "You ought to be a white man."
"I am white in some respects; but with all the lessons I learned at Carlisle, they did not make me forget that I was to the manner born. This country is mine, and those who think as I do will, when we lose it, see the last of Winged Arrow." ”

“ How many do you suppose there are watching you night and day?" asked Winged Arrow; and his eyes flashed and he clenched his hands nervously together.
"Well, I suppose you have a great many; but it will take more men than you can raise to whip us out. I presume you have a thousand."
[Pg 54]
"Say three thousand and you will hit it. And there are more coming in every day. Now I will tell you what is a fact: You have never seen an Indian war yet."
"I know that. I have never seen any."
"After you have seen one you will never want to see another. A battlefield is something awful to look at." ”

“ I don't want to talk about it."
"But did they never make an attack on our folks on a dark night like this, sir?" asked Guy.
"Oh, yes; the darker the better. But you need not fear an Indian's coming near us on a night like this. It is so dark that I can not even see a star; and if you were in their camp now you would find them all in their tepees fast asleep. When the moon rises or the day is just breaking, you will want to keep a bright lookout for them. That is the time they make the assault."
"Why is that, sir? When it is dark you can't see how many of them there are." ”

“ Billings, the officer who Guy Preston had relieved in command of the tower, came up to the commander and saluted him.
"What is it, Billings?" said he. "I can't ask you to sit down, for there is no place."
"I don't want to stop, sir," he replied. "There are our boys alone in that tower—"
"And you want to go out and inform them that they are not forgotten by the garrison, do you? Well, go on. Take a cavalryman with you to hold your horse. Tell Guy that I would have answered his signal for re-enforcements, but Major Powell told me that I ought not to. Guy did his duty up to the handle." ”

“ It was just as Winged Arrow had told Guy: If he saw one battlefield, he never would want to see another. The dead were all stripped, and the positions of most of them led to the belief that they were killed while trying to escape. The horses' heads pointed toward the Fort. The soldiers lying near the base of the ridge appeared to have met their death as they were fleeing from the field, having seen that their re-enforcements would amount to just nothing at all. There were some few, but not very many, mutilations among the bodies, and so the soldiers recognized every one of the slain. ”

“ When Cyrus had finished with them he started toward his quarters and the boys followed him; but all they learned in addition to what he had already told was in regard to what he thought of Winged Arrow.
"It is just as Guy said yesterday," said he, kicking off his moccasins and throwing himself down upon his bunk, "Winged Arrow has no business to be a Sioux. He knows too much to be associated with that race of people; but the more he learns about the way those folks of his are being swindled by the government, the more he determines to stick to them." ”

“ Guy's fear and anxiety increased now, for he longed to see Winged Arrow, to tell him what had been done with his medicine and to ask him if there were the least grounds for hope for any prisoner besides himself. Somehow he could not get it out of his mind that his men had seen the prairie for the last time, but that was too dreadful to think of. The Indians along the stream took but little notice of the party as they rode through the village, with the exception of one who gazed at them as if there were something on his mind. ”

“ CHAPTER XI. In the Signal Tower
"Yes, I heard all about it while you were asleep, as Captain Kendall told you. The men have not yet been informed of the part they have to perform, but I know that they are all ready."
Thus spoke Cyrus the scout when Guy Preston came rushing into his quarters to tell him what Colonel Carrington was going to do with the troops under his command. As he uttered the words, he leaned his cracker box against the jamb of a window and looked at Guy as if to ask him what he thought about it. ”

“ An Indian does not like to be killed any better than a white man. Ever since you left that fort I have been watching you—you see I could always tell you by the horse you rode—and I decided that if I could catch you out alone I [Pg 53] would tell you of the massacre that is surely coming."
"When is it coming off?"
"It will be when we get some of you where you cannot defend yourselves. We will kill fifty or a hundred of you soldiers, and then we will do what we please with the Fort." ”

“ Do you have to go out?" said Guy, in dismay.
"There is a train about to go out for fuel and our Company is ordered to be in readiness to aid them if they get into trouble," said Perkins. "Forty men are to go with the train, and if they get more than they can attend to, we have to go out."
"I may want that letter myself," answered Guy, drawing a long breath when he thought of the number of Sioux that could be brought against them. "Cyrus has it, and I did not think to ask him for it yesterday." ”

“ He will be full of strength and vigor, and that is the kind of life he can live forever. He never grows old. Go out that way and see what is the matter with those horses. They act as though they were alarmed about something."
"The Indian carries his religion with him even to death," said Guy to himself, as he went out to the horses with his heart in his mouth to find out what had disturbed them. "And I suppose that every man he scalps is there to be his slave. I would look pretty being the slave of a sneaking Sioux warrior, would I not?" ”

“ So it is with soldiers the world over. A disastrous battle, during which so many of their old friends, perhaps their own tentmates, have gone to their long home, will depress their spirits for a time, and they welcome anything, no matter how trivial it is, that will draw their thoughts away to other matters and make them soldiers as they were before.
In due time they reached the site whereon the Sioux village had stood while they were engaged in the massacre, and where everything denoted that they had abandoned it with the utmost haste. ”

“ On the summit of the nearest swell one of them sat down, drew his blanket over his head and the other two kept on out of sight.
"Those poor fellows do not know that every move they make is known here in camp," said Winged Arrow, slowly rising to an upright position. "As long as they stay there inside their stockade, they are all right; but the moment they organize a train to come out and get wood, that will be the last of some of them."
Winged Arrow, as we shall continue to call him, did not forget one practice he had learned among the whites, and that was to wash his hands and face. ”

“ There were thirty of the Indian ponies, and twenty-eight savages sitting in that circle on that ground; and by counting the two who had been sent out as look-outs, it proved to his satisfaction that the Sioux made that attack upon the cavalry and came off without losing a man. No wonder that they felt jolly over it.
Guy spoke such words to the other captive as he thought would serve to encourage him in the ordeal which he knew was coming, and by that time the lookouts came in from the hills and the Indians all got up in readiness to resume their march to the village. ”

“ The Colonel was in his shirt sleeves and pacing back and forth, and now and then he took one of his hands out of his pockets to run it impatiently through his hair. He seemed to have forgotten that he was a soldier and commander of the Fort besides, for he was so impatient at being shut up without remedy that he could scarcely control himself. He stopped and turned toward Mr. Preston with something like a frown upon his face.
"Well, what is it now?" he inquired. "Do you know where the Indians are?" ”

“ Every wagon train that he sent out for fuel was protected by a large force, and if the Sioux were smart enough to cut off one of those forces, or get between them and the Fort, thus dividing his men, the annihilation of all of them would be a matter of hours and not of days. ”

“ All men who live among the Indians soon fall into their ways, and every one of them believed that Cyrus had discovered some "medicine" that brought him safely out of any danger he might get into.
At the end of half an hour, another faint step was heard outside the tepee, the flap was thrown further open and this time Winged Arrow appeared. Cyrus recognized him on the instant from the description that Guy Preston had given him, and the first thought that passed through his mind was that he had never seen a finer-looking Indian. ”

“ I tell you, boys, we are going to see some fun right here, and the Colonel says it will begin to-morrow."
"The massacre?" asked all the boys at once.
"Yes, sir. We must have some wood, and about the time that the train and its escort get ready to march out, you will hear the war whoop."
"Well, let it come," said Perkins. "They will find that American soldiers are not the men to run just because they hear a whoop. We enlisted to fight, and now we are going to see what sort of a beginning we can make at it." ”

“ We have often heard that hostile Indians find refuge there when badly pressed by the troops, but how do they appear and in what shape are they? You have often seen a clay field after a long and hot drought in summer, how it is seamed over with innumerable cracks, perfectly perpendicular, leaving miniature chasms between. ”

“ I learned the white man's ways, but I could not forget that I was an Indian. What do you fellows want out here anyway? The prairie is broad, and why could you not build a road somewhere else?"
Having got over his astonishment, Guy turned to make a note of the savage and his accoutrements. This was the first Indian he had ever seen close at hand, but as far as he had read or seen at a distance his trappings were all of the savage order. His moccasins, leggings, and hunting shirt, as well as the gaudily ornamented bonnet which he wore upon his head, were all of some squaw's handiwork. ”

“ If that letter comes into our camp on another man, it will save his life too; but that is all."
"Don't you think you are in big business to help the Indians to clean out the whites?" [Pg 129] said Cyrus, who did not know what else to say.
"You must have seen Guy Preston down there at the Fort, and he told you all I had to say on that point," replied Winged Arrow with a scowl. "Of course I shall help the Indians clean out the whites. This is our country; no one else has any claim upon it, and we are bound to wipe them out or die with weapons in our hands. ”

“ The people obeyed the chief, hunted the buffalo, and were happy."
"Yes"; said Guy. "You were happy when you were on the warpath. You Indians were always fighting."
[Pg 44]
"Of course. That was fate. The weaker had to give way to the stronger, and that is just what we are doing now. The Indian believes that there are two spirits that rule mortal man, the Good spirit and the Bad. The Good spirit is all the time working for us. He brings us everything that makes man happy. He brings us good weather, plenty of game, and success over our enemies. The Bad spirit is just the reverse. ”

“ There was that battlefield, a mile long and half a mile wide, of which they had a plain view as they passed along the ridge, covered by the bodies of men whom they would never shake by the hand again, and the memory of it would disturb their sleep for many a night afterward. ”

“ I mean gratitude."
"Oh, I know the way your speakers and writers of books have ventilated their opinions on that subject, but I will tell you that gratitude is a thing that Indians have as well as white men," said Cyrus, getting upon his feet and pacing the floor. "You call an Indian a savage, and say that everybody who falls into his hands is booked for Davy's locker sure enough; but some of them have hearts. If the Colonel would let me, I would not be afraid to take Guy's letter and go into the Sioux camp this very minute." ”

“ You do not intend to be a prisoner in the hands of those fellows, do you?"
"No, sir," said Guy hastily. "They kill everybody who falls a captive to them. And [Pg 244] what is the reason Cyrus would not take it with him, sir? I am afraid he——"
"Well, go on," said the Colonel, after waiting a moment or two for Guy to say what he was afraid of, "Do you think he has been captured?"
"I think he would have been safer, if he had taken this letter with him, sir," replied the young officer.
"Yes; but you know it has saved one civilian and the next must be a soldier." ”

“ He wants to raise cattle, or he wants to dig for gold, or he wants some place to put his family, and the first thing we know he has the whole country. If Red Cloud should fail in his movement, and it looks to me now as though he were going to, it will be all up with us. You and I belong to a doomed race. The Indian will not survive [Pg 209] the buffalo, and when he goes it is good-by to us."
"I am afraid that is so," said Reuben, getting upon his feet, "and I cannot find it in my heart to fight those white people either. All we have we owe to them. ”

“ A grunt by way of greeting was all that passed between them. The Medicine Man kept on his way, and Winged Arrow went into the tepee to get his breakfast.
The Indians are very different from white men in regard to their meals, each one breaking his fast whenever he feels the craving of his appetite. A pot, generally filled with meat and water, is placed on one side of the tepee, accompanied, if the man of the house be tolerably well off in the world, by a package of parfleche, which contains the Indian bread. If the bread is not there, the meat will do as well. ”

“ When Indians are settled in their winter camp, and so far away from enemies of every [Pg 202] description that there is no danger of being assaulted by them, it is the noisiest place that can be found on earth. Their days are passed in loitering around the fire, but the evenings are given over to pleasure. It is then that the dancers and story-tellers are in their element, and the noise of the tom-tom drowns all other sounds, except the whooping and yelling. It had been so in this camp until the day that the renegade chiefs, as Red Cloud called them, had signed a lease for that road ”

“ The whites did not kill what they wanted for use, but wantonly slaughtered thousands simply to make a "record." All the scum of civilization fled to the frontier, and Bills and Dicks whose reputations were not of the best swaggered about the streets of canvas cities during the winter and roamed the plains during the summer to shoot buffalo. These people did not know or did not care what the buffalo meant to the Indian. ”

“ He knew this much of the signs that Cyrus had taught him. One of the Sioux immediately said something in his own tongue and pointed down the gully, and then went on with his smoking.
"There is not any water here," said Guy, returning to the soldier. "We must wait until we reach the village. Now brace up, and don't let these people see that you are afraid of them. If you do they will torment you in every way that they can think of." ”