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Red Cloud and his braves then were drawn away in search of other game, and, light of heart and foot, the troopers trotted back to the waiting stockade, to meet there late that evening, as the weird tattoo of the drums and fifes was echoing back from the rocky heights, the first messenger through in nearly fifteen days-a half-breed Sioux from the distant posts along the Platte, bearing a written message from the commanding officer at Frayne, which the veteran commandant at Warrior Gap read with infinite comfort: "Seven companies of infantry and three more troops of cavalry are on the way and should reach you by Saturday week.
On my return from Fort Connor, when I reached the North Platte I sent this dispatch: HORSESHOE, September 15, 1865. Major-General John Pope, St. Louis: Arrived here today on my return from Powder River. That post is well located, right in heart of Indian country, and is an important post.
The next stream of any importance was the Little Blue, along which the trail ran for sixty miles; then crossed a range of sand-hills and struck the Platte river ten miles below Old Fort Kearney; thence the course lay up the South Platte to the old Ash Hollow Crossing, thence eighteen miles across to the North Platte near the mouth of the Blue Water, where General Harney had his great battle in 1855 with the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians.
His food is bark, young grass and such foods, They cut timber down and know where it will fall. I ascertained this because I have known them to leave trees alone which leaned the wrong direction for them to use. I saw on the North Platte trees cut down by beaver which were four feet in diameter. They make chips resembling a chopper with a dull ax.
This fort stands on the west bank of North Platte River, and a few miles west of the river I ride through the first prairie dog town encountered in crossing the continent from the west, though I shall see plenty of these interesting little fellows during the next three hundred miles. These animals sit near their holes and excitedly bark at whatever goes past.
Forty people were killed, many ranches and trains burned, much stock and other property stolen and destroyed in that eventful raid. At last the raids of the savages along the North Platte had become so frequent, and the duty so hazardous, that it was almost impossible for the Overland Stage Company to find drivers, although the highest wages were offered.
He and his men were good woodsmen, and well skilled in the use of the rifle, but found themselves wholly out of their element on the prairie. None of them had ever seen a buffalo and they had very vague conceptions of his nature and appearance. On the day after they reached the Platte, looking toward a distant swell, they beheld a multitude of little black specks in motion upon its surface.
Bob Gray, with "I" Troop, was away up at Fort McKinney then, but an important court met at the old station down on the Platte, and, as luck would have it, Lieutenant Davies was sent in as judge-advocate. Just why Mrs. Cranston should have made no mention to Miss Loomis of his coming is a matter only a woman can explain, but she kept the matter to herself until the evening of his arrival.
The smoke of passing trains hung for hours in signal clouds in our front, during the afternoon of the second day's dry drive, but we finally scaled the last divide, and there, below us in the valley of the South Platte, nestled Ogalalla, the Gomorrah of the cattle trail.
Fremont, in his narrative, gives the following account of a perilous adventure of himself and party, in attempting to run a canon, on the river Platte. They had previously passed three cataracts: We reëmbarked at nine o'clock, and, in about twenty minutes, reached the next canon. Landing on a rocky shore at its commencement, we ascended the ridge to reconnoiter. Portage was out of the question.
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