.

On reaching the spot designated, General Mills ordered two companies
ashore, while Richard and myself were ordered to take our horses off
the boat and push out as rapidly as possible to see if there were
Indians in the vicinity. While we were getting ashore, Captain Marsh
remarked that if there was only a good heavy dew on the grass he would
shoot the steamer ashore and take us on the scout without the trouble
of leaving the boat.

It was a false alarm, however, as the objects we had seen proved to be
Indian graves. Quite a large number of braves who had probably been
killed in some battle, had been buried on scaffolds, according to the
Indian custom, and some of their clothing had been torn loose from the
bodies by the wolves and was waving in the air.

On arriving at Glendive Creek we found that Colonel Rice and his company
of the Fifth Infantry, who had been sent there by General Mills, had
built quite a good little fort with their trowel-bayonets--a weapon
which Colonel Rice was the inventor of, and which is, by the way, a very
useful implement of war, as it can be used for a shovel in throwing up
intrenchments and can be profitably utilized in several other ways. On
the day previous to our arrival, Colonel Rice had a fight with a party of
Indians, and had killed two or three of them at long range with his
Rodman cannon.

The Far West was to remain at Glendive over night, and General Mills
wished to send dispatches back to General Terry at once. At his request I
took the dispatches and rode seventy-five miles that night through the
bad lands of the Yellowstone, and reached General Terry's camp next
morning, after having nearly broken my neck a dozen times or more.

There being but little prospect of any more fighting, I determined to go
East as soon as possible to organize a new "Dramatic Combination," and
have a new drama written for me, based upon the Sioux war. This I knew
would be a paying investment as the Sioux campaign had excited
considerable interest. So I started down the river on the steamer
Yellowstone _en route_ to Fort Beauford. On the same morning Generals
Terry and Crook pulled out for Powder river, to take up the old Indian
trail which we had recently left.

The steamer had proceeded down the stream about twenty miles when it was
met by another boat on its way up the river, having on board General
Whistler and some fresh troops for General Terry's command. Both boats
landed, and almost the