My work on the Plains brought me many friends, among them being some of the truest and staunchest that any man ever had. You who live your lives in cities or among peaceful ways cannot always tell whether your friends are the kind who would go through fire for you. But on the Plains one’s friends have an opportunity to prove their mettle. And I found out that most of mine would as cheerfully risk their lives for me as they would give me a light for my pipe when I asked it.
Such a friend was old “Buffalo Chips,” who certainly deserves a place in these memoirs of mine.
One morning while I was sitting on my porch at North Platte, playing with my children, I saw a man limping on crutches from the direction of the Post hospital. He was a middle-aged man, but had long, flowing white hair, and the most deeply-pitted face I have ever beheld.
Noticing that he seemed confused and in trouble, I sent the children out to bring him to me. He came up haltingly, and in response to my questioning told me that he had been rejected by the hospital because he had been a Confederate soldier and it was against their rules to accept any but Union veterans.
I turned the stranger over to my sister, who prepared a meal for him while I went over to the adjutant’s office to see what could be done. I met General Emory in the adjutant’s office, and on my promise to pay the ex-Confederate’s bills, he gave me an order admitting him to the hospital. Soon my new protégé, who said his name was Jim White, was duly installed, and receiving the treatment of which he stood in sore need.
In a few weeks he had nearly recovered from the wound in his leg which had necessitated the use of his crutches. Every day he came to my house to play with the children and to care for my horses, a service for which he gruffly refused to accept any pay.
Now and then he would borrow one of my rifles for a little practice. I soon discovered that he was a splendid shot, as well as an unusually fine horseman. My surprise at these accomplishments was somewhat lessened when he told me that he had spent his four years’ war service as one of General J.E.B. Stuart’s scouts. Stuart had no other kind of men in his command.
For years, wherever I went, no matter how dangerous the errand, my new friend went along. The first time he followed me I still remember vividly. I had left the Post on a five days’ scout, and was particularly anxious that no one should know the direction I was to take.
When I was four or five miles from the Post I looked back and saw a solitary horseman riding in my direction about a mile in my rear. When I stopped he stopped. I rode on for a little way and looked around again. He was exactly the same distance behind me, and pulled his horse up when I halted. This maneuver I repeated several times, always with the same result. Considerably disquieted by this mysterious pursuit, I decided to discover the reason for it. I whipped up my horse and when I had put a sandhill between myself and the man behind I made a quick detour through a ravine, and came up in his rear. Then I boldly rode up till I came abreast of him.
He swung around when he heard me coming, and blushed like a girl when he saw how I had tricked him.
“Look here, White,” I demanded, “what the devil are you following me in this way for?”
“Mrs. Cody said I could follow you if I wanted to,” he said, “and, well, I just followed you, that’s all.”
That was all he would say. But I knew that he had come along to keep me from getting hurt if I was attacked, and would rather die than admit his real reason. So I told him to come along, and come along he did.
There was no need for his services on that occasion, but a little later he put me in debt to him for my life. He and I rode together into a border town, where there were a few gentlemen in the horse-stealing business who had reason to wish me moved along to some other sphere. I left White to look after the horses as we reached the town, and went into a hotel to get a nip, for which I felt a very great need. White noticed a couple of rough-looking chaps behind the barn as he put the horses away and quietly slipped to a window where he could overhear their conversation.
“We’ll go in while he is taking a drink,” one of them was saying, “and shoot him from behind. He’ll never have a chance.”
Without a word to me, White hurried into the hotel and got behind the door. Presently the two men entered, both with drawn revolvers. But before they could raise them White covered them with his own weapon and commanded them sternly to throw up their hands, an order with which they instantly complied after one look at his face.
I wheeled at the order, and recognized his two captives as the men I was looking for, a pair of horse-thieves and murderers whom I had been sent to apprehend. My revolvers were put into instant requisition, and I kept them covered while White removed the guns with which they had expected to put me out of their way.
With White’s help I conducted these gentlemen forty miles back to the sheriff’s office, and they walked every step of the way. Each of them got ten years in the penitentiary as soon as they could be tried. They either forgave me or forgot me when they got out, for I never heard of either of them again.
In the campaign of 1876 I secured employment for White as a scout. He was with me when Terry and Crook’s commands separated on the Yellowstone. By this time he had come to copy my gait, my dress, my speech, and even my fashion of wearing my hair down on my shoulders, though mine at that time was brown, and his was white as the driven snow.
We were making a raid on an Indian village, which was peopled with very lively and very belligerent savages. I had given White an old red-lined coat, one which I had worn conspicuously in a number of battles, and which the Indians had marked as a special target on that account.
A party of Indians had been driven from among the lodges into a narrow gorge, and some of the soldiers, among them Captain Charles King, had gone after them. As they were proceeding cautiously, keeping tinder cover as much as possible, King observed White creeping along the opposite bluff, rifle in hand, looking for a chance at the savages huddled below, and hoping to distract their fire so they would do as little damage as possible to the soldiers who were closing in on them.
White crawled along on all-fours till he reached a stunted tree on the brim of the ravine. There he halted, brought his rifle to his shoulder in readiness to aim and raised himself slowly to his feet. He was about to fire, when one of the Indians in the hole below spotted the red-lined coat. There was a crack, a puff of smoke, and White toppled over, with a bullet through his heart. The coat had caught the attention of the savages, and thus I had been the innocent means of my friend’s death; for, with the soldiers pressing them so hard, it is not likely that any of the warriors would have wasted a shot had they not thought they were getting Pa-ho-has-ka. For a long time the Indians believed that I would be a menace to them no more. But they discovered their mistake later, and I sent a good many of them to the Happy Hunting-Grounds as a sort of tribute to my friend.
Poor old White! A more faithful man never took a trail, nor a braver. He was a credit to me, and to the name which General Sheridan had first given him in derision, but which afterward became an honor, the name of “Buffalo Chips.”
When Terry and Crook’s commands joined on the Yellowstone both commands went into camp together and guards were placed to prevent surprise. The scene was typical of the Old West, but it would astonish anyone whose whole idea of warfare has been gained by a visit to a modern military post or training camp, or the vast camps where the reserve forces are drilled and equipped for the great European war.
Generals Crook, Merritt, and Carr were in rough hunting rigs, utterly without any mark of their rank. Deerskin, buckskin, corduroy, canvas, and rags indiscriminately covered the rest of the command, so that unless you knew the men it was totally impossible to distinguish between officers and enlisted men. However, every one in the commands knew every one else, and there was no confusion.
A great part of that night was spent in swapping stories of recent experiences. All of them were thrilling, even to veteran campaigners fresh from the trail. There was no need of drawing the long bow in those days. The truth was plenty exciting enough to suit the most exacting, and we sat about like schoolboys, drinking in each other’s tales, and telling our own in exchange.
A story of a personal adventure and a hairbreadth escape in which Lieutenant De Rudio figured was so typical of the fighting days of the West that I want my readers to know it. I shall tell it, as nearly as I can, just as it came to me around the flickering fire in that picturesque border camp.
De Rudio had just returned from his adventure, and he told it to us between puffs of his pipe so realistically that I caught several of my old friends of the Plains peering about into the darkness as if to make sure that no lurking redskins were creeping up on them.
In the fight of a few days before De Rudio was guarding a pony crossing with eight men when one of them sang out:
“Lieutenant, get your horse, quick. Reno (the commander of the outfit) is retreating!” No trumpet had sounded, however, and no orders had been given, so the lieutenant hesitated to retire. His men left in a hurry, but he remained, quietly waiting for the call.
Presently, looking behind him, he saw thirty or forty Indians coming full gallop. He wheeled and started to get into safer quarters. As lie did so they cut loose with a volley. He leaned low on his horse as they shot, and the bullets sang harmlessly over his head.
Before him was a fringe of thick underbrush along the river, and into this he forced his unwilling horse. The bullets followed and clipped the twigs about him like scissors. At last he gained the creek, forded, and mounted the bank on the other side. Here, instead of safety, he found hundreds of Indians, all busily shooting at the soldiers, who were retreating discreetly in the face of a greatly superior force. He was entirely cut off from retreat, unless he chose to make a bold dash for his life right through the middle of the Indians. This he was about to do, when a young Indian, who had observed him, sent a shot after him, and his horse fell dead under him, rolling over and over, while he managed to scramble to his feet.
The shot had attracted the attention of all the Indians in that immediate neighborhood, and there were plenty of them there for all offensive purposes. De Rudio jumped down the creek bank and hid in an excavation while a hail of bullets spattered the water ahead of him and raised a dozen little clouds of dust at his feet.
So heavy had this volley been that the Indians decided that the bullets had done their work, and a wild yell broke from them.
Suddenly the yell changed to another sort of outcry, and the firing abruptly ceased. Peering out, De Rudio saw Captain Benteen’s column coming up over the hill. He began to hope that his rescue was at hand. But in a few minutes the soldiers disappeared and the Indians all started off after them.
Just beyond the hill was the noise of a lively battle, and he made up his mind that Reno’s command had rallied, and that if he could join them he might be saved.
Working his way softly through the brush he was nearing the summit of the slope when he heard his name whispered and saw three of his own company in the brush. Two of them were mounted. The horse of the third had been killed.
The three men remained in the bushes, lying as low as they could and making no sound. Looking out now and then, they could see an old Indian woman going about, taking scalps and mutilating the bodies of the soldiers who had been slain. Most of the warriors were occupied with the battle, but now and then a warrior, suspicious that soldiers were still lurking in the brush, would ride over in their direction and fire a few shots that whistled uncomfortably close to their heads.
Presently the firing on the hill ceased, and hundreds of Indians came slowly back. But they were hard pressed by the soldiers, and the battle was soon resumed, to break out intermittently through the entire night.
In a quiet interval the two soldiers got their horses, and with their companion and De Rudio holding to the animals’ tails forded the river and made a détour round the Indians. Several times they passed close to Indians. Once or twice they were fired on and answered the fire, but their luck was with them and they escaped bringing a general attack down upon them.
As they were making their way toward the edge of the clearing they saw directly before them a party of men dressed in the ragged uniforms of American cavalrymen, and all drew deep breaths of relief. Help seemed now at hand. But just as they sprang forward to join their supposed comrades a fiendish yell broke from the horsemen. In another instant the four unfortunates were rushing to cover, with a dozen Indians, all dressed in the clothing taken from dead soldiers, in hot pursuit.
The Indians had been planning a characteristic piece of Sioux strategy. As fast as it could be accomplished they had been stripping the clothing from dead and wounded soldiers and garbing themselves in it with the purpose of deceiving the outposts of Reno’s command and surprising the Americans as soon as day broke. Had it not been for the accidental discovery of the ruse by De Rudio’s party it might have succeeded only too well.
The lieutenant and his companions managed to get away safely and to find shelter in the woods. But the Indians immediately fired the underbrush and drove them further and further on. Then, just as they had begun to despair of their lives, their pursuers, who had been circling around the tangle of scrub growth, began singing a slow chant and withdrew to the summit of the hill.
There they remained in council a little time and then cantered away single file.
Fearing another trap, the white men remained for weary hours in their hiding-place, but at last were compelled by thirst and hunger to come out.
No Indians were visible, nor did any appear as, worn out and dispirited, they dragged themselves to the camp of the soldiers. In the forty-eight hours since he had been cut off from his command De Rudio had undergone all the horrors of Indian warfare and a hundred times had given himself up for dead.
Bullets had passed many times within a few inches of him. Half a dozen times only a lucky chance had intervened between him and the horrible death that Indians know so well how to inflict. Yet, save for the bruises from his fall off his horse, and the abrasions of the brush through which he had traveled, he had never received a scratch.
