Wisconsin in Story and Song - Various

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Then another word came in ere long. An old sergeant had crawled out to the front, and could hear something of the shouting and talking of the Indians. He could understand a few words only, though he had lived among the Cheyennes nearly five years. They can barely understand one another in the dark, and use incessant gesticulation to interpret their own speech; but the sergeant gathered that they were upbraiding somebody for not guarding a coulee, and inferred that someone had slipped past their pickets or they wouldn't be making such a row.

      That the Cheyennes did not propose to let the besieged derive much comfort from their hopes was soon apparent. Out from the timber up the stream came sonorous voices shouting taunt and challenge, intermingled with the vilest expletives they had picked up from their cowboy neighbors, and all the frontier slang in the Cheyenne vocabulary.

      "Hullo! sogers; come out some more times. We no shoot. Stay there: we come plenty quick. Hullo! white chief, come fight fair; soger heap 'fraid! Come, have scalp-dance plenty quick. Catch white soldier; eat him heart bime by."

      "Ah, go to your grandmother, the ould witch in hell, ye musthard-sthriped convict!" sings out some irrepressible Paddy in reply, and Wayne, who is disposed to serious thoughts, would order silence, but it occurs to him that Mulligan's crude sallies have a tendency to keep the men lively.

      "I can't believe they've got him," he whispers to the doctor. "If they had they would soon recognize him as an officer and come bawling out their triumph at bagging a chief. His watch, his shoes, his spurs, his underclothing, would all betray that he was an officer, though he hasn't a vestige of uniform. Pray God he is safe!"

      Will you follow Ray and see? Curiosity is what lures the fleetest deer to death, and a more dangerous path than that which Ray has taken one rarely follows. Will you try it, reader—just you and I? Come on, then. We'll see what our Kentucky boy "got in the draw," as he would put it.

      Ray's footfall is soft as a kitten's as he creeps out upon the prairie; Dandy stepping gingerly after him, wondering but obedient. For over a hundred yards he goes, until both up- and down-stream he can almost see the faint fires of the Indians in the timber. Farther out he can hear hoof-beats and voices, so he edges along westward until he comes suddenly to a depression, a little winding "cooley" across the prairie, through which in the early spring the snows are carried off from some ravine among the bluffs. Into this he noiselessly feels his way and Dandy follows. He creeps along to his left and finds that its general course is from the southwest. He knows well that the best way to watch for objects in the darkness is to lie flat on low ground so that everything approaching may be thrown against the sky. His plain-craft tells him that by keeping in the water-course he will be less apt to be seen, but will surely come across some lurking Indians. That he expects. The thing is to get as far through them as possible before being seen or heard, then mount and away. After another two minutes' creeping he peers over the western bank. Now the fires up-stream can be seen in the timber, and dim, shadowy forms pass and repass. Then close at hand come voices and hoof-beats. Dandy pricks up his ears and wants to neigh, but Ray grips his nostrils like a vise, and Dandy desists. At rapid lope, within twenty yards, a party of half a dozen warriors go bounding past on their way down the valley, and no sooner have they crossed the gulley than he rises and rapidly pushes on up the dry sandy bed. Thank heaven! there are no stones. A minute more and right in front of him, not a stone's throw away, he hears the deep tones of Indian voices in conversation. Whoever they may be they are in the "cooley" and watching the prairie. They can see nothing of him, nor he of them. Pass them in the ten-foot-wide ravine he cannot. He must go back a short distance, make a sweep to the east so as not to go between those watchers and the guiding fires, then trust to luck. Turning stealthily he brings Dandy around, leads back down the ravine for some thirty yards, then turns to his horse, pats him gently one minute; "Do your prettiest for your colors, my boy," he whispers; springs lightly, noiselessly to his back, and at cautious walk comes up on the level prairie, with the timber behind him three hundred yards away. Southward he can see the dim outline of the bluffs. Westward—once that little arroyo is crossed—he knows the prairie to be level and unimpeded, fit for a race; but he needs to make a detour to pass the Indians guarding it, get away beyond them, cross it to the west far behind them, and then look out for stray parties. Dandy ambles lightly along, eager for fun and little appreciating the danger. Ray bends down on his neck, intent with eye and ear. He feels that he has got well out east of the Indian picket unchallenged, when suddenly voices and hoofs come bounding up the valley from below. He must cross their front, reach the ravine before them, and strike the prairie beyond. "Go, Dandy!" he mutters with gentle pressure of leg, and the sorrel bounds lightly away, circling southwestward under the guiding rein. Another minute and he is at the arroyo and cautiously descending, then scrambling up the west bank, and then from the darkness comes savage challenge, a sputter of pony hoofs. Ray bends low and gives Dandy one vigorous prod with the spur, and with muttered prayer and clinched teeth and fists he leaps into the wildest race for his life.

      Bang! bang! go two shots close behind him. Crack! goes his pistol at a dusky form closing in on his right. Then come yells, shots, the uproar of hoofs, the distant cheer and charge at camp, a breathless dash for and close along under the bluffs where his form is best concealed, a whirl to the left into the first ravine that shows itself, and despite shots and shouts and nimble ponies and vengeful foes, the Sanford colors are riding far to the front, and all the racers of the reservations cannot overhaul them.

       Table of Contents

      From "THE TRUE ULYSSES S. GRANT." Chapter XXXVIII. Copyright, 1914, by J. B. Lippincott Co.

      Long months before the melancholy failure of that ill-omened bank, the General had told Badeau of the fabulous profits the firm was realizing, and Badeau went to their old comrade of the war and White House days—to Horace Porter—and asked that reticent but experienced soldier-citizen his opinion, and Porter solemnly shook his head. Such profits, he said, were impossible in a business honestly conducted. But Grant saw on every side men by the dozen who had started with less than his modest capital and had gathered fortunes in Wall Street. He was so confident in the sagacity and judgment of Ulysses, Jr., that he invested his every dollar with the firm and reinvested every penny of the profits which he did not lavish on his loved ones or on his followers and friends. Like Thackeray's most lovable hero, Colonel Newcome, he thought to share his good fortune with many of his kith and kin and urged their sending their savings to be invested for them by brilliant young "Buck" and his sagacious partner—that wonderful wizard of finance, Mr. Ward. Aside from the chagrin of seeing some of his recommendations disregarded, and certain of his opponents regarded first by Mr. Garfield and later by Mr. Arthur, General Grant was living in those years a life of ease, luxury, and freedom from care as never before he had enjoyed. Julia Dent was as ever first and foremost in his world, but the children were the source of pride and joy unmistakable. Devoted, dutiful, and loyal they unquestionably were, but Grant believed of his first born that he was destined to become renowned as a general, and of "Buck" and Jesse that they were born financiers and business men. As for Princess Nellie, the father's love and yearning for that one daughter of his house and name was beyond all measure. No man ever loved home, wife, and children more tenderly, more absorbingly.

      Although widely scattered at the time, this heart-united household had been anticipating a blithe and merry Christmas at the close of the year 1883. When he was alighting from his carriage just before midnight, with the welcoming chimes pealing on the frosty air, the General's foot slipped on the icy pavement, he fell heavily, a muscle snapped in the thigh, possibly one of those injured twenty years earlier, the day of that fateful stumble at Carrollton, and he was carried into the house, never thereafter to leave it in health or strength.

      Crutches again, and later a cane, long were necessary. In March, they took him to Fortress Monroe so that he could hobble about in the soft air and sunshine. In April he was back again in Gotham, able to drive his favorite team, but not to walk. On Sunday, the 4th day of May, the wizard partner, Ward, came into their home and quite casually announced that the Marine Bank of New York, in which Grant & Ward had large deposits, needed perhaps one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to tide them over a

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