Finally it became dawn, with us all on the watch. There were no Indians in sight. It was impossible for so great a number of Indians to be hidden, and Captain O'Brien and I determined that we would get on our good horses and make a survey of the condition of things; and we sent some men on down to the telegraph station, which had been burned, to repair the wire. We had a telegraph operator in the post by the name of Holcomb, who was one of the most capable young men I ever saw. After we had got the line up running east we had no instruments, nor any means of telegraphing. Yet this man Holcomb succeeded in sending off a message and in receiving one. First he chopped an ax into the ground, and taking hold of the wires with gloves, he alternately played the ends of the wires upon the iron poll of the ax in such a way as to telegraph, and then he put the wires in his mouth and read the dispatches. At least he said he did, and the message was: 'Get ready to follow. Am coming. Livingston.' But we could not send or receive any telegrams to or from Denver or Laramie.
The Captain and I got on our horses and rode over the river to the late Indian camp. There were places where the grass had been trodden down so that it was not burned near the camp-fire. We saw there the business cards of the manufacturers of various kinds of liquor, together with pamphlets, and advertisements, great quantities of broken bottles, and heads of one hundred and fifty-six cattle, that had been slaughtered. The fire had died down, and was only going up in a narrow streak on the west side of Lodgepole. The Indians had driven off a great quantity of beef cattle. It looked as if there were at least five thousand head. Along with the beef cattle that had been driven were the irregular and waving lines of the wagons drawn by oxen that went along with an undulating track because the draft oxen hitched to the wagons had been herded along with the balance of the cattle. The wheel-tracks were sunken, indicating that they had got the wagons loaded with something. They had gone up Lodgepole, and there were a great number of them. Elston believed that it was the whole Southern Cheyenne nation that was on the move, together with the Arapahoes and some Sioux.
As a matter of fact, we did not know it but Colonel Livingston, with a large detachment, was within thirty miles of us that morning. The Indians knew it, and that was why they started off as they did. Their signals had told them a story which we did not know, or comprehend.
After having viewed the late Indian camp, and got the telegraph line restored to the east, Captain O'Brien thought we ought to scout the hills and see if there were any Indians in hiding that might become dangerous to the post. So he took a squad with a bugler to go south and east, and sent me with a squad to go west. A signal to come in if necessary, was a shot from the twelve-pound howitzer at the post. Everything was to be done as fast as possible, and we all started off on the gallop. I was told not, on any account, to go west farther than Gillette's Ranch, which was nine miles. The Captain started for the hills on a rush, and I started with eight men for the west. At a point one-half mile west of the post we found the telegraph wires all cut and the poles gone; they had been used for cooking at the Indian barbecue which I have described, across the river. The valley was wide before us on our trip west; we saw no Indians in the hills south of us, and we kept up the south bank of the river and were soon at Gillette's Ranch. Most of the telegraph poles all the way from Julesburg were gone. The posts were up one-half mile west of Gillette's Ranch, but the wire was down, how much farther we could not see. The grass around Gillette's Ranch clear down to the river had been burned off, evidently a month or two before. The whole country looked black and desolate. Out on the plain were 24 large freight wagons, not parked, but scattered out separately as if they had been run in hastily and abandoned. They were loaded principally with mining machinery, bar-iron and cast-iron piping. Apparently no effort had been made by the Indians to burn these wagons; in fact, there was nothing for them to burn the wagons with; there was nothing inflammable to use within a half-mile. On one of the wagons was a large cast-iron wheel, with a wide, smooth rim which projected over the sides. On it was written in a large bold hand, 'Go to Hell.' The words were freshly written in charcoal, and had been done by someone among the Indians. I have briefly stated that the vanguard of the Cheyenne incursion first struck Gillette's Ranch, and that the people there made a fight until dark, and in the cover of the night retreated to the river and came on down to Julesburg. These fugitives told of an Indian, with the attacking party, who wore a hat, blanket cape and high-top cavalry bouts, and who shouted loud swear-words in English, and had a rifled musket of the new United States pattern. He was probably the man who wrote on the flywheel. He was probably an ambassador from the Southern Confederacy sent to keep the Indians fired up, and was an Indian from one of the 'civilized' tribes of the Indian Territory. We heard of him several times and in several different ways. Off to one side a little east of Gillette's Ranch were several large wagons with a lot of whisky and liquor advertisements in. They had been in little burlap- covered bales, and had been ripped open and scattered.
Standing out on the prairie not far from the house was a barrel of whisky, all by itself, untouched. One of my men said that it was poisoned; that he had heard one of the men who came down from Gillette's Ranch say that they put a lot of
strychnine in a barrel of whisky and stuck it up where the Indians could get it; that the Indians never touched it but helped themselves to other goods of the same kind, in the wagons. I shot out the bung and emptied the barrel. All over the prairie were large white spots leading down toward the river. These spots were in pairs, and quite many. Upon investigation I found that they were of flour, and it happened in this way: There was at the ranch quite a lot of flour, and it was 50-pound sacks in heavy paper and 100-pound sacks in muslin. The Indians threw these sacks across their ponies and started off; if the ponies got to trotting, or bucking, the sacks would break in two and fall on opposite sides of the pony, and maybe the Indian gathered up the flour and maybe not. There was a great waste of flour. We led our horses around and got them a good feed each of this flour, and then on a gallop started home, – where we arrived at just about the time that Captain O'Brien did. We both reported no Indians seen, no smoke signals, or anything to indicate the presence of any Indians south of the Platte River. A party had been sent up Lodgepole composed of soldiers and citizens, to see what they could see. They came back reporting that the Indians were making the fastest time possible up Lodgepole; that the cattle were making lots of trouble for the Indians, who were hurrying them forward on the run; that the scouting party could hear the Indians yelling and shouting furiously in the distance; that the dust rose up in clouds; that the Indian line from front to rear was about five miles long; and that the tracks of the wagons were zigzagging all over the prairie. This party brought back more than 500 head of cattle which they had picked up from those that had escaped or bolted the herd. The Indians had no time to stop and round them up. We afterwards got a lot more. Our post was packed as full as it would hold of people and horses; when all of the scouting parties had got in and reported, and when it was found that there were no more Indians and no more danger, there was general rejoicing among the civilians, and some of them, by means of concealed supplies, got gloriously drunk, and had to be put into the guard-house.
Chapter XXXVII.
Arrival of Colonel Livingston – Poles Ordered from Cottonwood – 'Chief of Artillery' – Nothing Impossible – Rebuilding the Telegraph Line – Buffalo Springs – Valley Station – The Shelled-corn Bastion – Germans and Oysters – Forty Hours' Work – Line Reлstablished – Return to Julesburg
ON THE evening of February 3rd, 1865, after dark, in came Colonel Livingston from the east, with fully four hundred cavalry, four pieces of light artillery, telegraph instruments taken from some station along the road; and also forty-six mule-wagons loaded with supplies of various kinds. The Colonel had organized on his own account a little dwarf Indian expedition to keep the Cheyennes in motion. The forces were composed of Seventh Iowa Cavalry and First Nebraska Veteran Volunteer Cavalry – about half-and-half each. The Iowa troops were in command of Captain Murphy, of Company 'A,' and the Nebraska troops were in command of a captain of that regiment, named Wetherwax, a very fine officer. The horses were in good condition and well shod; the men were tired, but full of zeal. The weather late in the afternoon turned quite cold; the tents were pitched on the windward of the post. The men crowded by invitation into the post and barracks. The Lieutenants and officers, several in number, together with Colonel Livingston, crowded into our headquarters room, where at night we all slept on the dirt floor. Our visitors were tired because they had been making forced marches to reach us for fear the Indians would capture our fort. The Indians knew of their coming. I reported promptly to Colonel Livingston on his arrival, and told him of the destruction of the telegraph to the west as I had seen it. I estimated for two hundred and fifty poles and a mile of wire. The Colonel, by telegraph to Cottonwood Springs, ordered wagons to be taken or impressed, to be quickly loaded with the lightest poles, started as soon as possible and pushed through night and day to Julesburg, as fast as the animals could stand it. There were a lot of cedar poles cut and stacked at Cottonwood and Jack Morrow's,
