o was just coming in from
his summer's work. It was the first of October. There had been a heavy
snow-storm and the snow was still falling. Riding a stout pony each, and
leading another packed with our bedding, etc., we broke our way from
the upper to the middle geyser basin. Here we found a troop of the 1st
Cavalry camped, under the command of old friends of mine, Captain Frank
Edwards and Lieutenant (now Captain) John Pitcher. They gave us hay
for our horses and insisted upon our stopping to lunch, with the
ready hospitality always shown by army officers. After lunch we began
exchanging stories. My travelling companion, the surveyor, had that
spring performed a feat of note, going through one of the canyons of the
Big Horn for the first time. He went with an old mining inspector, the
two of them dragging a cottonwood sledge over the ice. The walls of the
canyon are so sheer and the water so rough that it can be descended only
when the stream is frozen. However, after six days' labor and hardship
the descent was accomplished; and the surveyor, in concluding, described
his experience in going through the Crow Reservation.

This turned the conversation upon Indians, and it appeared that both
of our hosts had been actors in Indian scrapes which had attracted my
attention at the time they occurred, as they took place among tribes
that I knew and in a country which I had sometime visited, either
when hunting or when purchasing horses for the ranch. The first, which
occurred to Captain Edwards, happened late in 1886, at the time when the
crow Medicine Chief, Sword-Bearer, announced himself as the Messiah of
the Indian race, during one of the usual epidemics of ghost dancing.
Sword-Bearer derived his name from always wearing a medicine sword--that
is, a sabre painted red. He claimed to possess magic power, and, thanks
to the performance of many dexterous feats of juggling, and the lucky
outcome of certain prophecies, he deeply stirred the Indians, arousing
the young warriors in particular to the highest pitch of excitement.
They became sullen, began to paint and armed themselves; and the agent
and the settlers nearby grew so apprehensive that the troops were
ordered to go to the reservation. A body of cavalry, including Captain
Edwards' troop, was accordingly marched thither, and found the Crow
warriors, mounted on their war ponies and dressed in their striking
battle-garb, waiting on a hill.

The position of troops at the b