John Ermine of the Yellowstone (14 page)

Keeping his sharp eyes circling, Ermine mused along. Yes, he remembered what Crooked-Bear had said: “The white men never go back; they do not have to hunt buffalo in order to live; they
are paid by the year, and one, two, even a lifetime of years make no difference to them. They would build log towns and scare away the buffalo. The Indians could not make a cartridge or gun,”
and other things which he had heard came into his mind. It was the awful stolidity of never ending time which appalled Ermine as he calculated his strategy—no single desperate endeavor would
avail; to kill all those men behind him would do the Sioux no good whatever. In single battles the white men were accustomed to leave more men than that, dead, on the field. Still, think as he
would, the matter was not clear to him. A mile away on his right he saw a friendly scout rise over a bluff; the horse and man made a dot on the dry yellow grass; that was the difference between the
solid masses of dust-blown white men behind him and the Indian people; that sight gave him a proportion. If all these white men were dead, it would make no difference; if that Indian on the far-off
hill was dead, he could never be replaced.

John Ermine felt one thing above all this abstraction: it was a deep-seated respect for the Sioux personally. Except when a fellow-scout occasionally showed himself on a distant rise, or he
looked behind at the dust-pall over the soldiers, there was nothing to be seen of the Sioux; that was another difference, and one which was in no wise reassuring to Ermine. The dry, deserted
landscape was, however, an old comrade, and acted as a sedative after the flutter of the camps. The camp held dozy, full-bellied security, but these silences made his ears nervous for a rattle of
shots and a pat-a, pat-a, pat-a, of rushing ponies. That is how the desert speaks.

CHAPTER TEN

A B
RUSH WITH THE
S
IOUX

T
HE DAYS SAW THE BIG SERPENTS OF MEN CRAWL ON AND ON
—hither and yon over the rolling land, saw them splash through the rivers, wind round the
hills, and lie comfortably down at night. About them fluttered the Indian scouts like flies around a lamp—hostiles and allies—marking down each other’s sign, dashing in and out,
exchanging shots, but always keeping away from the coils of the serpents.

Many men besides Captain Lewis held out their hands to Ermine, attracted as they were, first by his picturesque appearance, fine pony, and seat, and Lewis’ enthusiasm; but later by his
low-voiced simplicity and acute knowledge concerning the matters about them. They in turn unravelled many tangled skeins for Ermine; regiments began to unwind into companies, details, squads; the
wagons assorted themselves, and it was not long before the young scout could tell a colonel from a cook’s police at a glance. Numbers of these men had seen the ten thousand men die, had been
with them when they died, had even, some of them, lain down with them sapped by their own wounds, though of course they had not died. One big man slapped Ermine on the back hard enough to make him
cough, and said, “I’d rather take my chance at Cold Harbor than go poking round the hills alone as you do, my boy.” And Ermine had to move away quickly to avoid another
exclamation point, but such little appreciation warmed him. Also the solidarity of these fellowships took the more definite form of a Colt’s revolver, a copy of Upton’s tactics, a
pocket Bible, a comb from a bald-headed man who respected the unities, together with trifles enough to litter up his saddle-bags.

Old Major Ben Searles in particular used to centre his benevolent eyes on Ermine. He had a boy back in the States, and if he had gone to some other school than West Point might have been a
superintendent of an orphan asylum as easily as the soldier which he was. Ermine’s quaint questions gave him delicious little mental jolts.

“Why is it, Uncle Ben,” asked Ermine, “that all these men come out here to march, get killed, freeze, and starve? They don’t have any wives, and I can’t see what
they have to protect except their eatables.”

“You see, Kid, they enlist to do what the government wants them to do, and the government wants them to make the Sioux stop killing white folks just now.”

“Yes, but they won’t do it. Why don’t the government mount them on buffalo ponies, make them eat dried meat, and run after the Sioux instead of taking the villages to
war?”

“Well, Ermine, I don’t know why. I suppose that is what the Indians would like them to do, and I reckon that is the reason the soldiers don’t do it. Soldiers calculate

not to do what the enemy wants them to do. Don’t you get discouraged; wait a year or two or three, my boy. Oh, we’ll get there; we don’t know how, but we always stand
pat!”

“Pat? Pat? What do you mean by ‘standing pat?’ Never heard that word. What does it mean?” questioned the young man.

Old Searles laughed. “‘Pat’ is a word we use in a game of cards, and it means that when you think you are licked you guess you are not. It’s a great word,
Ermine.”

The huge column having crawled over the country as far as it was ordered, broke into divisions, some going down the river in steamboats and other parts through the hills to their far-off posts
and cantonments.

The Sioux scouts regarded this as a convenient solution of the awkward situation. Neither they nor the white men could do anything with that unwieldy gathering. Two infantry regiments stayed
behind as a reminder to the Sioux that the game was not played out. To one of these Captain Lewis was attached, which good fortune gave Ermine continued employment.

The soldiers began to build winter cantonments at the mouth of the Buffalo Tongue River, or, as the white men called it, “The Tongue,” and to gather great quantities of stores which
were hauled from Fort Benton. Here was something that the Sioux could attack; they jumped the trains savagely, burned the grass, cut in on the animals to stampede, and peppered up the men as they
slept. Stores the troops must have; and though they met repulse at times, they “pounded” the trains through to the Tongue.

It was the custom for wagon trains to go into camp early in the afternoon, which gave the stock a chance to graze while it was yet daylight; it also made it possible to guard them from sudden
forays by Indians. On one of these occasions Ermine was with a train which made one of the halts as usual. The Indians had not interfered, and to kill time a few officers, among whom was Searles,
started a game of poker. Ermine looked on over their shoulders, trying to comprehend. He had often played the Indian game of “hand,” so that poker was merely a new slide between wealth
and poverty. Seeing him, Captain Lewis sent him on some trivial errand. While he was gone, an agreement was made to have him come in, and then they were to “Skin him alive” just to see
how he would stand it. It worked out beautifully. First they separated what little money he had from his clothes, the officers meanwhile sitting like owls and keeping their faces sober by dint of
lip-biting; then the sombrero, which was stacked up as five dollars, found its way to Captain Lewis’ head in place of a very bad campaign hat. Next came off the buckskin coat, which was
followed by the revolver, and slowly, so that his suspicions might not be aroused, all his personal property, including the saddle and gun, which properly did not belong to him, was laid on the
grass beside the victors.

“This is going to be a cold winter, John,” laughed one, “or else we’d let you in on that shirt.”

“Want to put that pony up for a hundred, Ermine?” asked another.

“No; I’ll keep the pony; he’s medicine. I’ve often lost all I had with the plum stones. I guess I don’t understand poker.” And the young scout arose smiling.
The officers laughed themselves into tears, jumped up, and brought comrades to see how they had trimmed John Ermine. Every one greatly enjoyed what they called Ermine’s preparations for the
winter. He had his government shirt, his blanket breeches, and moccasins left; he had not been so poor since he was a herd-boy, but he had known forms of poverty all his life, so it was not new.
What he did not enjoy was his belittlement. The hardworking men in those dangerous, monotonous days were keen for any weakness; and when he heard their laughter he wanted a horse-bucket full of
human blood to drown his thoughts. He was greatly disturbed, not so much on account of his losses, although they were everything, as he viewed them, as the ridicule in store for him at Tongue
River. There is no greater stimulant to a hardy mind than poverty, and John Ermine’s worked like a government-six in a mud-hole, far into the night.

The trio of gamblers, who wore their spoils on their own persons, to the huge edification of the camp, arranged to prolong the torture until they should see the young hatless, coatless, unarmed
scout on his barebacked pony during the next march. At the following camp they were to play again, lose to him, and end the joke. Confidences were exchanged, and every one was as tickled as a cur
with a new collar.

One of the officers of the poker engagement rode a well-bred American horse of which he was very proud. He had raced it successfully and never declined an opportunity, of which fact Ermine was
aware.

It had slowly come to his mind that he had been foully dealt with, so about midnight he jumped up—he had a plan. By dint of daring, fortunate machination, and the coöperation of a
quartermaster sergeant whom he took into his confidence, he watered the American horse, fed him with a heavy feed of very salt corn, and later watered him again. The horse had been on short rations
and was a glutton. It was with the greatest difficulty that the noble animal managed his breakfast at all; but he was always willing at each opportunity to weaken the saline solution in his
stomach.

When the train pulled out, there was Ermine, barebacked and ridiculous. He rode through the volley of jeers and approached the horse-racing officer, saying, “If you are a good gambler,
come on; I will run my horse against yours, three arrow-flights and a pitch, horse against horse.”

The laughing stopped; here was a new idea—the quarter-bred blood horse, with his sleek bay quarters, against the scout’s pony—a good enough animal, but thin and overworked.