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[Illustration: They Crossed the Gila at Flood Tide (page 188).]




  _Thirty Years on
  The Frontier_

 ....BY....
  ROBERT McREYNOLDS,

  AUTHOR OF

  "_Rodney Wilkes_," "_The Luxury of Poverty_," "_A
  Modern Jean Valjean_," "_Facts and Fancies_."

  [Illustration]

  EL PASO PUBLISHING CO.
  COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO.
  1906


  _Copyright by_
  ROBERT MCREYNOLDS.
  1906.




  TO
  LOUIS TALIAFERRO,
  _Colorado Springs,
  Colorado_.




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER.                             PAGE.

  I. In Days of Innocence                  1

  II. Out for a Fortune                    9

  III. Black Hills Days                   16

  IV. The Custer Massacre                 21

  V. The Shadow Scout                     31

  VI. Indian Fight in Colorado            39

  VII. A Cow Boy Duel                     47

  VIII. Pleasant Halfacre's Revenge       53

  IX. Capturing Wild Horses               63

  X. An Expedition That Failed            72

  XI. Across the Palm Desert              79

  XII. The Last Stand of a Dying Race     87

  XIII. The Tragedy of the Lost Mine      98

  XIV. The Land of the Fair God          107

  XV. Outlawry in Oklahoma               115

  XVI. A New Land of Canaan              125

  XVII. Told Around the Camp Fire        134

  XVIII. The Lone Grave on the Mesa      141

  XIX. Under the Black Flag              148

  XX. In Cuban Jungles                   156

  XXI. Emulous of Washington             164

  XXII. On the Round Up                  169

  XXIII. The Egypt of America            179

  XXIV. In the Dome of the Sky           190

  XXV. Where Nature is at her Best       197

  XXVI. When the West was New            207




Thirty Years on the Frontier




I.

IN DAYS OF INNOCENCE.


In the following pages I shall tell of much personal experience as well
as important incidents which have come under my observation during
thirty years on the frontier. As a cowboy, miner and pioneer, I have
participated in many exciting events, none of which, however, caused me
the prolonged grief that a certain bombshell affair did when I was a
boy, resulting in a newspaper experience and habit of telling things,
and eventually led to my coming West.

My grandfather's plantation in Kentucky and nearly opposite the town of
Newburgh, on the Indiana side, was as much my home as was my mother's.
She being a widow and having my brother and sister to care for, as well
as myself, felt a relief from the responsibility of looking after me
when I was at my grandfather's home.

The plantation faced the Ohio River, the wooded part of which had been a
camping ground for rebel soldiers, until they were driven out by the
shells of a Yankee gunboat. While hunting pecans in these woods one day,
I stumbled on to an unexploded bombshell, and, boylike, I wanted to see
the thing go off. However, I was afraid to touch it until I had
counseled with the Woods boys, whose father was a renter of a small
tract of ground below the plantation. That night the three of us met and
decided to explode the shell the following Sunday morning, after the
folks had gone to church. I feigned a headache when grandmother wanted
to take me in the carriage with them to church, but when I was satisfied
they were well down the road, I hurried to the strip of forest a mile
away, where the Woods boys were waiting. They had come in a rickety old
buggy drawn by a white mule. It was in autumn and as the leaves were dry
on the ground, we were afraid to kindle a fire, and decided to take the
shell near the tobacco barn, around which we could hide and watch it go
off. Neither of the boys would handle it, so I lifted it into the buggy;
then they were afraid to ride with it, and it was left to me to lead the
mule to the tobacco barn. I hitched the animal to a sapling near the
barn, while the other boys gathered up some kindling, and we made a pile
of old fence posts, and when I had laid the shell upon the log heap, we
lit the kindling with a match and all ran behind the barn, forgetting
all about the mule. The wood was dry and was soon all aflame. Every
little while one of us would peek around the corner to see if the thing
was not about ready to explode. We were getting impatient, when the mule
gave a great "hee haw" that called our attention to his peril. It was
his last "hee haw," for in a second more the bomb exploded with a
deafening noise, and fragments of the shell screamed like a panther in
the air. We ran around to see the result of the explosion, and behold!
it had spread that mule all over the side of the barn.

The things my grandfather said and did to me when he returned from
church does not concern the public. But when he had finished, I was
fully convinced that I was all to blame, and that I owed Mr. Woods $150
for his demolished mule.

Then followed long lectures from my mother and grandmother, and to add
to my discomfiture was Mr. Woods' lamentations and his expressed regrets
that it was not me, instead of his mule, that was blown up.

I was the owner of an old musket with which I spent most of my time
hunting rabbits, using small slugs of lead for shot, which I chopped up
with a hatchet. Two weeks before the bombshell episode, I had found a
musket-ball, and I concluded to try a man's load in the gun on my next
rabbit; I poured in a full charge of powder, but when I came to ram the
ball home, it would go only half way down the barrel. I was afraid to
shoot then, lest the gun might burst, and as I could neither get the
ball out or farther down, I laid the barrel between two logs, tied a
string to the trigger, and got behind a stump and pulled it off.

A few minutes later while I was examining my gun, grandfather came
running out of the potato patch to find who was shooting at him.
However, he was so thankful that matters were not worse, that I got off
with a slight reprimand.

But this Sunday capped the climax. A council of my kinfolks was held
that night, and decided that neither man nor beast was safe on that
plantation if I remained. Their final verdict was that I should be sent
to my mother's home in Newburgh, and there to learn the printer's trade,
attend Frederick Dickerman's night school, be made to pay for the mule,
and my musket confiscated. I was paid $3 a week as printer's devil to
start with, one dollar of which I might spend for my clothes, fifty
cents for tuition in the night school, one dollar and twenty-five cents
for the mule debt, and the other twenty-five cents I might spend.

Grandfather was very careful to see that I saved the mule money, and I
used to think he took a special delight in collecting it from mother, to
whom I paid it every week.

It took me nearly three years in that printing office to get out of
debt. I was now eighteen years of age.

Life in the printing office was too monotonous; I wanted a more exciting
scene of action. I used to watch the great river steamers come and go,
and wondered if I could hold any kind of a position on one of them,
except carrying freight, when by accident one day there came an
opportunity. The steamer "Dick Johnson" was lying at the wharf loading
hogsheads of tobacco, when the freight clerk was injured by a fall of
the stage plank. The captain wanted someone to take his place, and my
schoolmaster recommended me. Here was a chance to put in practice the
bookkeeping I had studied under him. It was what I wanted--I could now
get a glimpse of the outside world.

The position on the "Dick Johnson" was a stepping-stone, for in another
year I was the mate of the steamer "Rapidan," plying between Florence,
Alabama, and Evansville, Indiana, and had thirty <DW64>s under my
control.

It was historic country through which we passed. The trees on the
islands near Pittsburgh Landing yet showed signs of shot and shell fired
by federal gunboats. Ofttimes some passenger who had been a participant
on one side or the other at Shiloh, would entertain his listeners for
hours with stories of the fight, until some of us younger officers
became imbued with the war spirit.

The autumn of 1875 had come when yellow fever broke out aboard our boat,
and we lay in quarantine two miles below Savannah, Tennessee, for a
month. I stayed with the boat until we were released, and then went to
my home in Newburgh, ill with malarial fever.

Stories of rich gold finds in the Northwest had been circulated through
the newspapers, and one day I resolved to try my luck. The things we
believe we are doing for the last time, always cause a pang of sorrow,
and as I packed my valise on Sunday afternoon to leave forever the home
of childhood, my feelings can be better imagined than described. My
grandparents came over from their Kentucky home to bid me good-bye. When
I was ready to start, grandfather took from his pocket a roll of bills,
and placing them in my hands, said: "Here, Mackey, is your mule money,
and I have added interest enough to make the sum total $500. I paid Mr.
Woods for his mule, but I wanted to teach you a lesson. Profit by it,
and make good use of the money, and say, Mackey, whatever you do in
life, never insult a blind man, never strike a <DW36> and never marry a
fool."

It was the last time I ever saw the noble old guardian of my youth. The
first two of his parting injunctions I have religiously obeyed.




II.

OUT FOR A FORTUNE.


My first view of the Nebraska plains was the next morning after leaving
Omaha, and I thought I never saw anything half so grand. The February
sun threw its beams aslant the mighty sea of plain over which so many
white covered wagons had toiled on their way to the then wild regions of
the West.

Small herds of buffalo and antelope were frequently seen from the car
windows; the passengers fired at them and often wounded an antelope,
which limped away in a vain attempt to join its mates. That night we
witnessed the mighty spectacle of the plains on fire. The huge, billowy
waves of flame leaped high against a darkened sky, and swept with hiss
and roar along the banks of the shallow Platte. The emigrant train upon
which I was aboard was crowded with people of all sorts. Many of them
were homeseekers on their way to Oregon and California, while not a few
adventurers like myself were bound for the Black Hills. A young man who
went under the name of Soapy Wyatte, was working the train on a
three-card monte game, and was very successful until he cheated a couple
of ranchmen out of quite a sum of money. Then they organized the other
losers, and were in the act of hanging him with the bell rope when he
disgorged his ill-gotten gains and paid back the money. Men of his class
were plentiful, but as a rule they were careful not to cheat the
frontiersman, for when they did they usually got the worst of it.

Cheyenne at that time was a typical frontier town. Gambling houses,
saloons and dance halls were open continuously, night and day. Unlucky
indeed was the tenderfoot who fell into their snare. I soon secured
transportation with a mule-train for Deadwood. There were thirty-three
of us in the party. The wagons were heavily loaded with freight and the
trail was in frightful condition; we ofttimes were compelled to walk.

I had bought a heavy pair of boots for the trip, but the sticky alkali
mud made them so heavy that I soon cut off the tops. The next thing, I
put my Winchester rifle and revolver in the wagon and then trudged along
the best I could. The Sioux Indians were on the warpath and it was
dangerous to get far away from the wagon train. Almost every freighter
we met warned us against Red Canon. The stage drivers reported "hold
ups" and murders by organized bands of road agents. This kept us on the
alert. At night there was a detail of eight, to divide up the night in
standing guard. These men were selected from the most experienced
plainsmen, of whom there were quite a number with us.

We were eight days out from Cheyenne, and several inches of snow had
fallen during the night, but the sun rose clear on the biting cold of
the morning. Suddenly we heard shots ahead. "Indians! Indians!" shouted
one driver to another and then the wagons were quickly formed in a
circle, the mules being unhitched and brought to the center of the
circle.

Then for the first time I saw the hideous forms of a band of half-naked
savages mounted on their ponies in the distance. They were galloping in
a circle around us, yelling their war cry, "Hi-yi, Hip-yi, yi." They
fell from their horses before the deadly aim of our men; their bullets
came like the angry hum of hornets about our heads. Their numbers
increased from over the foothills, whence they first came. There was a
look of desperation upon the faces of our men, such as pen can not
describe. James Morgan, who was standing near me in the act of reloading
his Winchester, suddenly fell nerveless to the ground. Our captain's
voice rang out now and then, "Be careful there, boys; take good aim
before you fire." Two Indians circled nearer than the others. They were
lying on their horses' necks and firing at us while they were at full
gallop. I took aim at one and fired; others must have done so at the
same time, for both of them fell from their horses. The fight lasted
perhaps an hour, when the Indians withdrew to the hills. One of our men
lay dead and two were wounded. I went to where the two Indians had
fallen. There lay their forms, cold and stiff in death. The sunbeams
were slanting over those snow covered hills. I felt an unaccountable
terror as I looked upon them and the crimson snow which their life blood
had stained. The raw north wind seemed to pierce my very heart. Night
was coming on, and with it all the horrors of uncertainty. I lingered
about the spot for some time, with a dreadful fascination mingled with
terror. Human life had perished there; human souls had gone into the
uncertainty of an unknown beyond. With my brain reeling with excitement
of the day and sickened in heart, I returned to our wagons, where some
of us walked outside the circle throughout the long watches of that
wintry night.

When the morning sun rose clear above the snow-covered hills, we wrapped
the body of the dead teamster in his blankets, and again took up the
toilsome drive. The Indians had retired from the fight, probably for the
reason that they saw another outfit of wagons coming far down on the
plain. The wagons overtook us about 9 o'clock, and after that we had no
more trouble with Indians.

Deadwood, at that time, was like all the frontier mining towns. Saloons,
gambling houses and dance halls comprised the business of the place.
The gulch was dotted with miners' cabins and dug-outs. There were a few
stores, restaurants, and a bank, but as yet the town had not started a
"regular" graveyard. The news of our fight soon spread up and down the
gulch and many were the willing hands that offered their services in the
burial of James Morgan, our teamster. They dug his grave on the
hillside, where afterwards more than five thousand men were buried. They
either fell from the deadly pneumonia, or from the bullets of each other
in quarrels. When Morgan's grave was ready to be filled, some one
suggested that a chapter from the Bible should be read, but none of us
knew where to ask for one, in all Deadwood. Presently a boy said, "I
will find one," and he soon returned with a young lady, who proved to be
his sister. He handed the book to our bronzed captain of the mule train;
he shook his head. Then someone asked her to read it. When she began,
those grim frontiersmen bared their heads, and I fancied I saw the tears
gather on more than one bronzed cheek as she knelt upon the frozen clay
and offered up a prayer for the dead teamster's soul.

The adventurous spirits from far and wide were flocking to this new
Eldorado. Wild Bill, the famous scout, Captain Jack Crawford, Texas
Jack, and other equally noted scouts and Indian fighters, were there.
They sought gold and adventure alike, only for the pleasure it would
bring.




III.

BLACK HILLS DAYS.


I knew Doc Kinnie was not a civil engineer, but he had a plan which
looked good, and as I was almost broke, I consented to help him work it.
There was a horseshoe bend in the creek which might be drained for
placer mining by tunneling through in a narrow place. I talked up the
project with some of the boys, and they agreed to dig the tunnel while
Doc did the civil engineering. Day after day they dug and blasted rock,
while Doc stood around looking wise and encouraging the work. In about a
month they were practically through to the other side of the creek. Then
they began to call for Doc's measurements and calculations. "Never mind,
you are not through yet," he would say, "I will let you know when to
stop digging."

"But we can hear the water rushing," they would say.

[Illustration: General George A. Custer (page 21).]

"You fellows can't tell anything about it. Sounds of rushing water are
always carried a long distance by rocks."

"But we are not in the rocks now, we are in a clay bank."

"Clay does the same thing; keep on digging."

Two days later and there was a commotion at the lower end of the tunnel,
when a full head of water came rushing out, bearing with it men,
wheelbarrows and shovels. They were nearly drowned, and half frozen,
when they scrambled out of the creek. Mad as hornets, they sought their
civil engineer, but he was nowhere to be found. The work was done.
The prospects were good. When their clothes were dried and they had
eaten dinner, they laughed over the incident and pardoned Doc's
miscalculation. With pan and rocker, we now began to work the dry
horseshoe bend. Nuggets weighing an ounce, and from that on down to the
size of a pin head, were found. The fellows were honest, and made an
even divide all around at the cleanup each night. In two months we had
taken out over $6,000, and then sold the claim to a placer mining
company for $18,000 in cash--$3,000 apiece for the six of us. In two
months we were all broke; the money had gone into wildcat speculation in
mines. But who cared? Were the hills not full of gold, and all to be had
for the digging?

I joined a party who went thirty miles to the northwest in search of new
diggings, and the most that came of it was a laughable incident.

The great hills rose on every side, frowning darkly in the dense forest
of pine. Our voices echoed from rock to rock, as we sat one noon-day
about our campfire, talking of possible finds, when, bareheaded, with
hair disheveled, blood flowing from a wound in his face, and a wildcat
held to his chest in close embrace, Mark Witherspoon rushed into camp,
yelling at the top of his voice. He was prospecting in a ravine a mile
distant, when he saw something waving in the underbrush. Thinking it was
mountain grouse, he advanced in hope of getting a shot, when a huge
wildcat sprang at his throat.

As the forepaws of the animal struck his chest, he let fall his gun, and
hugged the beast with all his strength to his chest with both arms. The
head of the wildcat was drawn slightly backward by the tense pressure
of his arms upon its back, while the claws were rendered practically
powerless by the close embrace. So quick had been Witherspoon's action
at the start, that he received only a slight wound on the face. In this
predicament, he started on a run for the camp. He did not dare to let go
and the wildcat wouldn't, so both held fast. The cat glared up fiercely
at him with its yellow eyes, while its hot breath came into his face at
every leap. Whenever the vicious beast made the slightest struggle,
Witherspoon hugged the tighter, fearing at every step he might stumble
and the deadly teeth be fixed in his throat.

In this manner he reached camp, and it was some seconds before he could
make us understand that the cat was terribly alive, and that he was not
holding it because he wanted to, or racing for the sake of the exercise.
Finally one of the men despatched the animal with his revolver, and, to
Witherspoon's inexpressible relief, the dead beast dropped from his
arms. Before the boys got through telling the story afterwards, they
made it out that Witherspoon had run nine miles with the wildcat.

Soon after our return to Deadwood, a man in an almost fainting condition
came into town and announced that his companion had either been killed
or captured by the Indians. A party was organized and was led by Wild
Bill. It was not long before we came upon a scene that told what the
poor fellow's fate had been, much plainer than words are able to
portray. We found his blackened trunk fastened to a tree with rawhide
thongs, while all around were evidences of the great torture which had
been inflicted ere the fagots had been lighted.

When brought face to face with this, I stowed two cartridges safely away
in my vest pocket, resolved to suicide rather than to fall into the
hands of such miscreants. Then came the news of the Custer massacre. For
many days afterward we patrolled the mountain tops, and kept bivouac
fires lighted by night, as signals.




IV.

THE CUSTER MASSACRE.


The arrival at Fort Lincoln, on the Missouri River, of a party of
Indians in 1874, who offered gold dust for sale, was the beginning of
the cause that led to the great Sioux war in 1876, in which General
Custer and his devoted soldiers were massacred on the Little Big Horn
River on the 25th day of June of that year.

The gold which the Indians brought to Fort Lincoln, they said came from
the Black Hills, where the gulches abounded with the yellow dust. The
consequent rush of white men into that region was, in fact, a violation
of the treaty of 1867, when Congress sent out four civilians and three
army officers as peace commissioners, who gave to the old Dakota tribes,
as the Sioux were then called, the vast area of land bounded on the
south by Nebraska, on the east by the Missouri River, on the west by
the 104th Meridian, and on the north by the 46th Parallel. They had the
absolute pledge of the United States that they should be protected in
the peaceable possession of the country set aside for them. This
territory was as large as the state of Michigan, and of its interior
little or nothing was known except to a few hardy traders and trappers
prior to 1874.

With the advent of the gold seekers in 1875 the Indians saw that the
greedy encroachments of the white man were but faintly resisted by the
United States government, and that sooner or later it meant the total
occupation of their country, and their own annihilation, and so with the
traditional wrongs of their forefathers ever in mind, they determined to
make a stand for their rights.

The scene of General Terry's campaign against these Indians lay between
the Big Horn and Powder Rivers, and extended from the Big Horn Mountains
northerly to beyond the Yellowstone River. A region barren and desolate,
volcanic, broken and ofttimes almost impassable, jagged and precipitous
cliffs, narrow and deep arroyas filled with massive boulders, alkali
water for miles, vegetation of cactus and sagebrush--all these represent
feebly the country where Custer was to contend against the most
powerful, warlike and best armed body of savages on the American
continent.

An army in this trackless waste was at that time at the mercy of guides
and scouts. The sun rose in the east and shone all day upon a vast
expanse of sagebrush and grass and as it set in the west cast its dull
rays into a thousand ravines that