ning at two;
for this was what he had decided upon.

He had received orders to drive on the reservation the various small
bands of Indians that were roving through the country of the Snake and
its tributaries, a danger to the miners in the Bannock Basin, and to
the various ranches in west Idaho and east Oregon. As usual, he had
been given an insufficient force to accomplish this, and, as always, he
had been instructed by the "statesmen" to do it without violence--that
is to say, he must never shoot the poor Indian until after the poor
Indian had shot him; he must make him do something he did not want to,
pleasantly, by the fascination of argument, in the way a "statesman"
would achieve it. The force at the General's disposal was the garrison
at Boise Barracks--one troop of cavalry and one company of infantry. The
latter was not adapted to the matter in hand--rapid marching and
surprises; all it could be used for was as a reinforcement, and,
moreover, somebody must be left at Boise Barracks. The cavalry had had
its full dose of scouting and skirmishing and long exposed marches, the
horses were poor, and nobody had any trousers to speak of. Also, the
troop was greatly depleted; it numbered forty men. Forty had deserted,
and three--a sergeant and three privates--had cooked and eaten a
vegetable they had been glad to dig up one day, and had spent the
ensuing forty-five minutes in attempting to make their ankles beat the
backs of their heads; after that the captain had read over them a
sentence beginning, "Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time
to live, and is full of misery"; and after that the camp was referred to
as Wild Carrot Camp, because the sergeant had said the vegetable was
wild carrot, whereas it had really been wild parsnip, which is quite
another thing.

General Crook shook his head over what he saw. The men were
ill-provided, the commissary and the quartermaster department were
ill-provided; but it would have to do; the "statesmen" said our army
was an extravagance. The Indians must be impressed and intimidated by
the unlimited resources which the General had--not. Having come to this
conclusion, he went up to the post commander's, and at supper astonished
that officer by casual remarks which revealed a knowledge of the
surrounding country, the small streams, the best camps for pasture,
spots to avoid on account of bad water, what mules had sore backs, and
many other things that the post commander