The Deserter | Page 2

been camping, scouting,
roughing it thereabouts, with not a cent of pay. Then came the wildly
exciting tidings that a boat was on the way up the Missouri with a
satrap of the pay department, vast store of shekels, and a strong guard,
and as a consequence there would be some two thousand men around
the cantonment with pockets full of money and no one to help them
spend it, and nothing suitable to spend it on. It was a duty all citizens
owed to the Territory to hasten to the scene and gather in for local
circulation all that was obtainable of that disbursement; otherwise the
curse of the army might get ahead of them and the boys would gamble
it away among themselves or spend it for vile whiskey manufactured
for their sole benefit. Gallatin Valley was emptied of its prominent
practitioners in the game of poker. The stream was black with
"Mackinaw" boats and other craft. There was a rush for the cantonment
that rivalled the multitudes of the mining days, but all too late. The
command was already packing up when the first contingent arrived,
and the commanding officer, recognizing the fraternity at a glance,
warned them outside the limits of camp that night, declined their
services as volunteers on the impending campaign, and treated them
with such calmly courteous recognition of their true character that the
Eastern press was speedily filled with sneering comment on the
hopelessness of ever subduing the savage tribes of the Northwest when
the government intrusts the duty to upstart officers of the regular
service whose sole conception of their functions is to treat with insult
and contempt the hardy frontiersman whose mere presence with the
command would be of incalculable benefit. "We have it from
indisputable authority," says The Miner's Light of Brandy Gap, "that
when our esteemed fellow-citizen Hank Mulligan and twenty gallant
shots and riders like himself went in a body to General---- at the
cantonment and offered their services as volunteers against the Sioux
now devastating the homesteads and settlements of the Upper Missouri
and Yellowstone valleys, they were treated with haughty and
contemptuous refusal by that bandbox caricature of a soldier and
threatened with arrest if they did not quit the camp. When will the
United States learn that its frontiers can never be purged of the Indian
scourges of our civilization until the conduct of affairs in the field is
intrusted to other hands than these martinets of the drill-ground? It is

needless to remark in this connection that the expedition led by
General---- has proved a complete failure, and that the Indians easily
escaped his clumsily-led forces."
The gamblers, though baffled for the time being, of course "get
square," and more too, with the unfortunate general in this sort of
warfare, but they are a disgusted lot as they hang about the wagon-train
as last of all it is being hitched-in to leave camp. Some victims, of
course, they have secured, and there are no devices of commanding
officers which can protect their men against those sharks of the prairies
when the men themselves are bound to tempt Providence and play.
There are two scowling faces in the cavalry escort that has been left
back with the train, and Captain Hull, the commanding officer, has
reprimanded Sergeants Clancy and Gower in stinging terms for their
absence from the command during the night. There is little question
where they spent it, and both have been "cleaned out." What makes it
worse, both have lost money that belonged to other men in the
command, and they are in bad odor accordingly.
The long day's march has tempered the joviality of the entire column. It
is near sundown, and still they keep plodding onward, making for a
grassy level on the river-bank a good mile farther.
"Old Hull seems bound to leave the sports as far behind as possible, if
he has to march us until midnight," growls the battalion adjutant to his
immediate commander. "By thunder! one would think he was afraid
they would get in a lick at his own pile."
"How much did you say he was carrying?" asks Captain Rayner,
checking his horse for a moment to look back over the valley at the
long, dust-enveloped column.
"Nearly three thousand dollars in one wad."
"How does he happen to have such a sum?"
"Why, Crane left his pay-accounts with him. He drew all that was due
his men who are off with Crane,--twenty of them,--for they had signed

the rolls before going, and were expected back to-day. Then he has
some six hundred dollars company fund; and the men of his troop
asked him to take care of a good deal besides. The old man has been
with them so many years they look upon