from the Bad Lands to announce the coming of the field column with all
its humbled captives, to be the first on returning to announce to the
Gray Fox that Red Dog had been released from durance at Fort Scott,
equipped anew by McPhail at Braska, and had ridden to the cantonment to
harangue such Indians as were already reassembling there, and to thunder
furious threats at the officers of the Fortieth. Three bitter weeks had
the Gray Fox and his faithful men been scoring the wild, wintry
fastnesses along the Wakpa-Schicha, and, just as the Indians obtained
through the bureau the vast supplies of ammunition with which to battle
the soldiers through the summer past, so now, while the War Department
was running down the renegades in the field, the Interior Department was
running down the soldiery at home. The troops came in with the
conviction that they had been seeing some hard and trying service, many
of them with frosted fingers, toes, or ears, and thinking they deserved
rather well of their country for having finally rounded up a thousand
warriors with all their families, ponies, and unsavory impedimenta, and
the general so informed them, and leaving a command of eight companies,
equally divided among the horse and foot, to occupy the cantonments on
the Chasing Water and thereafter keep the Indians in check, he hastened
away to attend to important business in another lively section of his
big department. The agency buildings were being rapidly restored, which
was much more than could be said of its influence for good among the red
men, and presently McPhail and his family reappeared on the scene, shook
hands all around with the warriors who burned him out several weeks
before, slapped Elk at Bay on the back and called him a bully boy, and
promptly requested of the commanding officer of the new cantonment,
which was a mile away up stream, a guard of a lieutenant and twenty-five
men to be stationed at the agency itself. The major demurred, and the
agent wired to Washington with the usual result. Whatsoever slur upon
his actions McPhail had seen fit to cast at the expense of Mr. Davies
during the investigation recently referred to, he had heard enough to
convince him that the Indians spoke of that officer with awe and
reverence and as "heap brave," so the man he urgently asked for to
command his guard was the very one whom he had maligned. The
adjutant-general of the department could only transmit the order that
came from sup