The Powder River gathering of Sioux?
And lo, at one far end the day was young;
Noon saw the other! Up along the Tongue
Big villages were dancing! Everywhere
The buzzing wasp of war was in the air.
October smouldered goldenly, and gray
November sulked and threatened. Day by day,
While yet the greater evils held aloof,
The soldiers wrought on wall, stockade and roof
Against the coming wrath of God and Man.
And often where the lonely home-trail ran
They gazed with longing eyes; nor did they see
The dust cloud of the prayed-for cavalry
And ammunition train long overdue.
By now they saw their forces cut in two,
First Reno Post upon the Powder, then
Fort Smith upon the Big Horn needing men;
And here the center of the brewing storm
Would rage.
Official suavities kept warm
The wire to Laramie—assurance bland
Of peace now reigning in the prairie land;
Attest the treaty signed! So said the mail;
But those who brought it up the Bozeman Trail
Two hundred miles, could tell of running fights,
Of playing tag with Terror in the nights
To hide by day. If peace was anywhere,
It favored most the growing graveyard there
Across the Piney under Pilot Hill.
December opened ominously still,
And scarce the noon could dull the eager fang
That now the long night whetted. Shod hoofs rang
On frozen sod. The tenuated whine
And sudden shriek of buzz-saws biting pine
Were heard far off unnaturally loud.
The six-mule log-teams labored in a cloud;
The drivers beat their breasts with aching hands.
As yet the snow held off; but prowling bands
Grew bolder. Weary night-guards on the walls
Were startled broad awake by wolf-like calls
From spots of gloom uncomfortably near;
And out across the crystal hemisphere
Weird yammerings arose and died away
To dreadful silence. Every sunny day
The looking-glasses glimmered all about.
So, clinging to the darker side of doubt,
Men took their boots to bed, nor slumbered soon.
It happened on the sixth December noon
That from a hill commanding many a mile
The lookout, gazing off to Piney Isle,
Beheld the log-train crawling up a draw
Still half way out. With naked eye he saw
A lazy serpent reeking in the glare
Of wintry sunlight. Nothing else was there
But empty country under empty skies.
Then suddenly it seemed a blur of flies
Arose from each adjacent gulch and break
And, swarming inward, swirled about the snake
That strove to coil amid the stinging mass.
One moment through the ill-adjusted glass
Vague shadows flitted; then the whirling specks
Were ponies with their riders at their necks,
Swung low. The lurching wagons spurted smoke;
The teams were plunging.
Frantic signals woke
The bugles at the fort, the brawl of men
Obeying “boots and saddles.”
Once again
The sentry lifts his glass. ’Tis like a dream.
So very near the silent figures seem
A hand might almost touch them. Here they come
Hell-bent for blood—distorted mouths made dumb
With distance! One can see the muffled shout,
The twang of bow-thongs! Leaping fog blots out
The agitated picture—flattens, spreads.
Dull rumblings wake and perish. Tossing heads
Emerge, and ramrods prickle in the rack.
A wheel-mule, sprouting feathers at his back,
Rears like a clumsy bird essaying flight
And falls to vicious kicking. Left and right
Deflected hundreds wheel about and swing
To charge anew—tempestuous galloping
On cotton! Empty ponies bolt away
To turn and stare high-headed on the fray
With muted snorting at the deeds men do.
But listen how at last a sound breaks through
The deathly silence of the scene! Hurrah
For forty troopers roaring down the draw
With Fetterman! A cloud of beaten dust
Sent skurrying before a thunder-gust,
They round the hogback yonder. With a rush
They pierce the limpid curtain of the hush,
Quiescing in the picture. Hurry, men!
The rabid dogs are rushing in again!
Look! Hurry! No, they break midway! They see
The squadron dashing up. They turn, they flee
Before that pack of terriers—like rats!
Yell, yell, you lucky loggers—wave your hats
And thank the Captain that you’ve kept your hair!
Look how they scatter to the northward there,
Dissolving into nothing! Ply the spurs,
You fire-eaters! Catch that pack of curs
This side the Peno, or they’ll disappear!
Look out! They’re swooping in upon your rear!
Wherever did they come from? Look! Good God!
The breaks ahead belch ponies, and the sod
On every side sprouts warriors!
Holy Spoons!
The raw recruits have funked it! Turn, you loons,
You cowards! Can’t you see the Captain’s game
To face them with a handful? Shame! O shame!
They’ll rub him out—turn back—that’s not the way
We did it to the Johnnies many a day
In Dixie! Every mother’s baby rides
As though it mattered if they saved their hides!
Their empty faces gulp the miles ahead.
Ride on and live to wish that you were dead
Back yonder where the huddled muskets spit
Against a sea!
Now—now you’re in for it!
Here comes the Colonel galloping like sin
Around the hill! Hurrah—they’re falling in—
Good boys! It’s little wonder that you ran.
I’m not ashamed to say to any man
I might have run.
Ah, what a pretty sight!
Go on, go on and show ’em that you’re white!
They’re breaking now—you’ve got ’em on the run—
They’re scattering! Hurrah!
The fight was done;
No victory to boast about, indeed—
Just labor. Sweat today, tomorrow, bleed—
An incidental difference. And when
The jaded troopers trotted home again
There wasn’t any cheering. Six of those
Clung dizzily to bloody saddle-bows;
And Bingham was the seventh and was dead;
And Bowers, with less hair upon his head
Than arrows in his vitals, prayed to die.
He did that night.
Now thirteen days went by
With neither snow nor foe; and all the while
The log-trains kept the road to Piney Isle.
Soon all the needed timber would be hauled,
The work be done. Then, snugly roofed and walled,
What need for men to fear? Some came to deem
The former mood of dread a foolish dream,
Grew mellow, thinking of the holidays
With time for laughter and a merry blaze
On every hearth and nothing much to do.
As for the bruited power of the Sioux,
Who doubted it was overdrawn a mite?
At any rate, they wouldn’t stand and fight
Unless the odds were heavy on their side.
It seemed the Colonel hadn’t any pride—
Too cautious. Look at Fetterman and Brown,
Who said they’d ride the whole Sioux nation down
With eighty men; and maybe could, by jing!
Both scrappers—not afraid of anything—
A pair of eagles hungering for wrens!
And what about a flock of butchered hens
In Peno valley not so long ago
But for the Colonel? Bowers ought to know;
Go ask him! Thus the less heroic jeered.
These Redskins didn’t run because they
