“Jack, old boy, have you heard of the death of Custer?”
Custer’s Death
Did I hear the news from Custer?
Well, I reckon I did, old pard;
It came like a streak of lightnin’,
And, you bet, it hit me hard.
I ain’t no hand to blubber,
And the briny ain’t run for years;
But chalk me down for a lubber,
If I didn’t shed regular tears.What for? Now look you here, Bill,
You’re a bully boy, that’s true;
As good as e’er wore buckskin,
Or fought with the boys in blue;
But I’ll bet my bottom dollar
Ye had no trouble to muster
A tear, or perhaps a hundred,
At the news of the death of Custer.He always thought well of you, pard,
And had it been heaven’s will,
In a few more days you’d met him,
And he’d welcome his old scout Bill.
For if ye remember at Hat Creek,
I met ye with General Carr;
We talked of the brave young Custer,
And recounted his deeds of war.But little we knew even then, pard,
(And that’s just two weeks ago),
How little we dreamed of disaster,
Or that he had met the foe—
That the fearless, reckless hero,
So loved by the whole frontier,
Had died on the field of battle
In this, our centennial year.I served with him in the army,
In the darkest days of the war:
And I reckon ye know his record,
For he was our guiding star;
And the boys who gathered round him
To charge in the early morn,
War just like the brave who perished
With him on the Little Horn.And where is the satisfaction,
And how will the boys get square?
By giving the reds more rifles?
Invite them to take more hair?
We want no scouts, no trappers,
Nor men who know the frontier;
Phil, old boy, you’re mistaken,
We must have the volunteer.Never mind that two hundred thousand
But give us a hundred instead;
Send five thousand men towards Reno,
And soon we won’t leave a red.
It will save Uncle Sam lots of money,
In fortress we need not invest,
Jest wollup the devils this summer,
And the miners will do all the rest.The Black Hills are filled with miners,
The Big Horn will soon be as full,
And which will show the most danger
To Crazy Horse and old Sitting Bull
A band of ten thousand frontier men,
Or a couple of forts with a few
Of the boys in the East now enlisting—
Friend Cody, I leave it with you.They talk of peace with these demons
By feeding and clothing them well:
I’d as soon think an angel from Heaven
Would reign with contentment in H—l
And one day the Quakers will answer
Before the great Judge of us all,
For the death of daring young Custer
And the boys who round him did fall.Perhaps I am judging them harshly,
But I mean what I’m telling ye, pard;
I’m letting them down mighty easy,
Perhaps they may think it is hard.
But I tell you the day is approaching—
The boys are beginning to muster—
That day of the great retribution,
The day of revenge for our Custer.And I will be with you, friend Cody,
My weight will go in with the boys;
I shared all their hardships last winter,
I shared all their sorrows and joys;
Tell them I’m coming, friend William,
I trust I will meet you ere long;
Regards to the boys in the mountains;
Yours, ever; in friendship still strong.
Jack was a new man in the country, but evidently had plenty of nerve and pluck, as he had brought dispatches from Fort Fetterman, a distance of 300 miles through a dangerous Indian country. The dispatches were for General Crook, and notified him that General Terry was to operate with a large command south of the Yellowstone, and that the two commands would probably consolidate somewhere on the Rosebud.
Jack at once hunted me up and gave me a letter from General Sheridan, informing me that he had appointed him (Jack) as one of the scouts.
While we were conversing, Jack informed me that he had brought me a present from Colonel Jones of Cheyenne, and that he had it in his saddle-pockets. Asking the nature of the gift, he replied that it was only a bottle of good whiskey.
I placed my hand over his mouth and told him to keep still, and not to whisper it even to the winds, for there were too many dry men around us; and only when alone with him did I dare to have him take the treasure from his saddle-pockets.
In this connection I may remark that Jack Crawford is the only man I have ever known that could have brought that bottle of whiskey through without accident befalling it, for he is one of the very few teetotal scouts I ever met.
Not wishing to have a game of “whiskey solitaire,” I invited General Carr to sample the bottle with me. We soon found a secluded spot, and dismounting, we thought we were going to have a nice little drink all by ourselves, when who should ride up but Mr. Lathrop, the Reporter of the Associated Press of the Pacific slope—to whom we had given the name of the “Death Rattler,”—and who was also known in San Francisco as “the man with the iron jaw,” he having, with the true nose of a Reporter, smelt the whiskey from afar off, and had come to “interview” it. He was a good fellow withal, and we were glad to have him join us.
Now to resume: For two or three days we pushed on, but we did not seem to gain much on the Indians, as they were evidently making about the same marches that we were. On the fourth or fifth morning of our pursuit, I rode ahead of the command about ten miles, and mounting a hill I scanned the country far and wide with my field glass, and discovered an immense column of dust rising
