which it projected. We had to go past this to get to Morrow's ranch. This point was called the 'Sioux Lookout.' Going up, we detected with a field-glass an Indian's head peering over the top of the ridge at us, but he afterwards scudded away and disappeared. We were told at Morrow's that the Indians were keeping constant lookout from that point, although the weather was exceedingly cold. There was a canyon came in near there called 'Moran Canyon,' also filled with large cedars. Jack Morrow was said to have cut out five thousand cedar logs from the canyon for his own use, and for sale to other persons; and to have got out two thousand fine cedar telegraph poles. It was also said that he would not allow anybody else to cut any timber in that canyon. Morrow had as large an outfit, nearly, as the Gilmans. He claimed to have cattle and goods and improvements worth $100,000, but he overstated it. He was a tall, raw-boned, dangerous-looking man, wearing a mustache, and a goatee on his under lip. He was said to be a killer, to have shot a man or two, and to have passed his life on the plains. He was said to have daily altercations with pilgrims, and to have gone on drunks that were so stupendous in their waste of money and strange eccentricities that he was known from Denver to Fort Kearney and very largely in Omaha. He was said to have had an Indian wife, although I never knew whether that was true or not. He had a very large stock of goods, and a row of 'pilgrim quarters.' His ranch-house was built of cedar logs, and was two and a half stories high and sixty feet long. The third story was divided into rooms, and the cross-logs were not sawed out to admit doors, so that in going from one room to another it was necessary to crawl over six feet of cedar-log wall to get into these rooms. Yet he had people sleeping in those rooms a great deal of the time. He stored away great quantities of furs, robes, dried buffalo-meat and beef, and other stuffs, for shipment, in a sort of annual caravan, which he made down to Omaha. He had a very capable and accomplished First Lieutenant who acted as foreman, salesman, and cashier. His name was Hewey Morgan. When Morrow went on a spree Hewey Morgan's authority began, and he must have exercised it very capably, because Morrow trusted him implicitly.
About five o'clock in the afternoon – it was after sundown, when we arrived there – Morrow was either two- thirds full or pretended to be. My opinion of it was that it was merely pretense. In a little while he brought out a basket of champagne, and after we had paid our attention to it our dinner began. It was broiled antelope heart, baked buffalo hump, fried beaver tails; a regular pioneer banquet, and Hewey Morgan poured out the champagne in tin cups all around. There were two or three residents at the table, neighboring ranchmen from down near the post. Among others a young man named Sam Fitchie, who could recite poetry, and was a regular declaimer, and impersonator, and withal a fine-looking and well-educated young gentleman. He was out there trying to work into the stock business, and had not been there very long. Many years afterwards I met him as a prominent minister in Ohio. His Indian name was Wa-pah-see-cha (bad matches).
When the banquet was over, Morrow got out his paraphernalia, and offered to deal faro bark. We agreed to battle away at his bank for thirty minutes while the horses were being saddled and brought around, which we did without any material loss to anybody. Captain O'Brien whispered to me that he thought the whole business looked as if Jack Morrow was after a Government contract with our post. I sort of received the same impression. Just before the leave-taking began, Hewey Morgan wanted to ask me a question privately, and I went out with him. And the question was, whether he couldn't get a contract to furnish the Government with one hundred thousand pounds of shelled corn at five cents a pound, and if I would not use my efforts with the post commander. I told him that I certainly would not; that the corn could be put down much cheaper than that and that I couldn't recommend it. He took it good-naturedly, and on the way back to the post, when we got to comparing notes on the point, Hewey Morgan or Jack Morrow had each spoken to every member of the party. This whole proceeding was so raw that none of us ever made any visit again to Jack Morrow. Captain O'Brien was an honest man, and was very indignant.
A few days after that a little short, stubby Irishman named Burke came into camp, and said that he and the people with him wanted a job of work. I sent him to the post commander, Major O'Brien, and Major O'Brien sent for me. This man Burke had left Denver with some empty wagons, and had agreed to haul about fifty men through to Omaha at a rapidity not less than twenty-five miles a day, and was to furnish transportation for men, trunks and baggage, and feed them en route; he made a through rate. It was a train pulled by horses and mules. He said that he had to halt his train; that his animals needed shoeing; that their feet were badly worn; and while he was there he wanted to get something for the men to do. Major O'Brien suggested that he put in a bid for cedar cordwood; that he should go up in the canyon, take the tops, limbs and refuse of our cutting, make it up, and cord and stack it near the post. He went up, and came back and said he would do it for $4 a cord. Major O'Brien sent for me, and asked me what I thought about it; we concluded to offer a voucher for $3 a cord piled up near the barracks, at a point which I should designate. Burke and his men debated the thing the whole day, and finally came back, took the contract and piled up the four hundred cords of wood. Burke said afterwards that there was about $20 profit in the contract; that he 'would liked to have made ten cents a cord on it,' but hadn't done it – had made only five.
During the months of January and February at least twenty coaches of Mormon officers and missionaries went past our post, going and coming. They traveled all by themselves; asked no protection nor odds of anybody. They always said that they did not fear the Indians, and that the Indians never harmed a Mormon. So, they passed by us, went up the North Platte and through the South Pass without an escort of any kind. Along in January a large mule train came up, loaded with shell corn and flour from Denver. As they neared our post a most terrific blizzard set in. It was, indeed, a fearful one. It caught this train three or four miles east of our post, down by the river. The train parted, its wagons got scattered, some of its horses and mules were literally blown away. They got started before the wind, and they could not be overtaken nor caught. The result was that the train was wrecked. They came to the post and asked us to take their corn and flour. Having no authority to buy, I told them that I would take it, receipt for it, and store it, and that they could return to the river, and if I received word from the Quartermaster-General there, I would take the stuff up on my accounts. This was satisfactory. The train immediately fastened the empty wagons together with what animals they saved and had recaptured, and pulled back to Leavenworth, from which place I got an order to take the property up on my returns, it having been bought by the Government.
Along about the latter part of February the weather became very severe. Storms came down from the northwest, one chasing after the other in close succession, that kept us very closely hived up in the barracks. Considerable snow fell upon the level ground, which blew over into the canyon, and in places there it was quite deep, so that our cordwood was a very great benefit to us. We took the horses out whenever we could, and rode them around and exercised them, but they were getting soft and unfitted for hard campaigning. We had always taken good care of our horses; in fact, when we left Omaha we adopted a frontier custom of placing a gunny-sack under the horse-blanket. I never saw that practiced anywhere else, except on the plains: Every soldier smoothed out a gunny-sack when he saddled his horse; it prevented the woolen horse-blanket from scalding the horse's back. The wind and alkali and sand had made it necessary to take care of the backs of our horses, and we arrived at Cottonwood Springs with our horses in good condition, but the keeping of them penned up was reducing their effective capacity very much. We did not dare to turn them out loose, to play, for fear some unexpected Indian might turn up and stampede them.
When the bad weather set in, it was our principal duty and object to keep our horses up, and we rode them around as best we could, occasionally trying to go through the forms of a drill. Owing to the fact that we were among the Indians, we adopted the bugle-drill almost entirely, and all movements were executed not by word of mouth, but from the note of the bugle. And in order to keep the men and subordinate officers efficient in that we practiced considerably at nights in the barracks, to keep the men's ears alert to distinguish the calls. Most of the men were inclined to forget.
While this rough and inclement weather was in progress a man named Gardner came to our post, and went to headquarters. He represented that he was the Government agent among the Cheyennes, at a considerable distance southwest of us. Gilman had said that there were twenty thousand Indian warriors within three days' ride (one hundred fifty miles) north of us, and an equal number south of us, but nobody knew exactly where they were. This man Gardner was not particularly specific, nor do I remember where he said the headquarters of the tribe were which he represented. The first thing that I heard of the matter was the end of a heated conversation with Major O'Brien, in which he demanded of Major O'Brien that the Major send out a company of cavalry with a brass howitzer, and arrest the head chief of the Cheyenne band; this the Major refused to do, but said he would consider. Gardner went out in a very lofty way, went across to Mr. Boyer's, where liquor was to be had, and I didn't see him until the next day. Major O'Brien said that this man Gardner had reported that he had been to the tribe to see about certain annuities and the carrying out of certain treaty obligations, and that the head chief had insulted him and slapped his face and told him that he was a coward and that the Government of the United States couldn't do anything with the Cheyenne tribes, and that they didn't care whether there was peace or war, and so on, and so on.
