River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1885-02-19
A BABY MARTYR.

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the way. The constant rains. alternat-
ing with fierce suns, had rendered the
whole sod continuous, puffy, spongy
mass, and more than once they had pas
sed by the decaying, halfsunken car
cases of stock mlred within easy reach
of The drivers whip.
As the stage took on extra heavy rut
faint whimper from a bundle carried
by woman ON the back seat reminded
the passengers of the presence of a
baby.
THAT puts me in mind" said an
erect, gray whiskered man in the front
seat, "of a queer experience a lot of us
army fellows had with a baby way back
| in-in-"
"In 81, major" put in a handsome
young lady of about 20, who sat beside
the speaker and who had received the
undivided attention Of couple of drum
mers on the back seat, they evidently
taking her for the old gentleman's daugh-
ter.
Wont you tell us about it, sir ?" said
one of the pair, ingratiatingly, all the
| lady passengers, married and single, in
4 dorsing the request.
/ well, said the major, with a retro
! spectiye smile, you see / was stationed
/ at Fort Laramie at the time, and was
sent with detachment of twenty-five
men to escort Gen Whipple, who was
visiting the fort, and his staff to another
! post about 1, 600 miles farther north
J 81 t.
/ war path, but we didn't mind them so
much as the weather, which was simply
/ fearful Snow breast high and a steady
/ norther blowing that would cut the
eyes out of you. We struggled along
somehow for couple of days, but finally
| the snow began to fall again and we lost
| the trail The whole party was just
/ on the point of giving up for good when
/ one of the scouts came in the report
/ that he had found two miles farther ON
/ a certain log house and stockade that
we had been aiming for. OF course
/ that braced us up once more, and We
4 soon reached the house and started mp
a roaring fire, you may suppose. rs
the men were bringing in their lasC
| armfuls of wood they heard faint call
/ for help on the wind. A forlorn hope
volunteered to go out and see what was
/ the matter, and pretty soon they
/ brought IN an emigrant family whose
! teams had got showed in, and who had
! Just about laid down to die, some half
mile from the house There was the
father, three boys, and little girl car
I rving kitten, and the mother with the
small baby wrapped in dozen shawls."
Dear. dear mew exclaimed the lady
passengers IN chorus.
/ The log house had a small room in
one corner, and We gave that to the
poor family, and made them comforta-
/ BILE That night it blew a gale, and the
wind swept tho trail so clear, that the
emigrants decided to push On south.
/ Our party concluded to wait another
( day for the weather to settle, and well
enough it was as the snow began again.
| Sometime during the next evening, one
/ of the officers happened to go into the
room that had been occupied 10y the
emigrant family, when he heard sort
of low cry, and, going toward bunk,
saw something move inside bundle
/ lying there, wrapped up in an old red
/ shawl"
CA blue shawl, MAJOR" interrupted
1 the young lady merrily.
$50 it was" said the old officer CLAN
cling fondly at his companion. "He was
a brave fellow, that lieutenant; but he
ran out to us as pale as death. Gen
/ tlemen, said he, in the excitement of
| getting away, those people have left
their tiny baby"
"You never saw such a scared lot of
men ia your life. There we We're, snow
ed in, 300 miles from civilization, with
a baby! A grizzly bear would have
been more welcome"
ooh, you horrid thingl" shifted the
mother on the back seat
You don't seem to grapple with the
| proposition, ma'am," explained the
major. Con canvassing the matter we
found that there wasn't but one married
! man in the whole command, and he, as
! luck would have it, had never mad
baby We didn't have any more idea
how to take care of baby than the man
in the moon. Oh, it was DREADFUL"
| and the major wiped the perspiration
! from his face at the mere recollection.
! "Had the poor darling been all that
day without anything to eat?" indig-
nantly inquired young bride who sat
up with the driver.
ITO drink, you mean" said the ma
jor. "That was just it. There wasn't
/ even a can of condensed milk in the
/ outfit, so we went into a council
/ of war as to the proper thing to give it
/ to eat. One officer SAID -four
! and water was the correct
thing. Capt Brown insisted on milk.
| Boggs thought that meat chopped up
! fine would answer. Somebody else ar
| gued that the proper ration for a baby
1 was sugar tied up in a rag somehow. A
1 young ensign believed they sucked the
/ Juice of a piece of rubber, so to speak,
while old Whipple stuck it out that
! babies were fed exclusively on pare
| goric. You never heard such wran
| gle"
and the poor little creature suffer-
/ ing all the time, murmured the mother,
/ wiping tear off her nose.
The result was that we agreed to
! make an impartial mixture of all these
! things on the theory that if one missed
fire the other would sort of counteract
| it, as it were. So we made sort of
| of stew in the coffee-pot, which included
whole bottle Of paregoric from the
medicine chest, for most of us rather
leaned toward Whipple's ideas after all.
! Then we hunted up small tin funnel
| used for filling the whisky key"
What was that for?" gaspel the
lady pass ngers, who by this time had
worked themselves into a state OF sup
! pressed fury.
why. to run the compound into the
baby with. 81 as not to spill it, contin-
ued the RAZOR, calmly; so when the
committee on pap concluded the mix
ture was cool enough we started to
I feed the"
Il wonder it didn't kill you," inter
1 rupted the bride. looking knowingly at
the majors companion. "Of course. /
can see how it all turned out. You
were the baby and the major brought
/ YOU up and married YOU
Just wait till l finish, went on the
/ major.
/ Just as we started for the bunk there
/ was terrible crash of firing, followed
/ by yell that would have curdled your
| blood. We were attacked by the Pa
ches. They had surrounded us on
snowshoes. OF course we had to jump
to our guns, and it was just
| nip and tuck all that night
/ to keep them of. At daylight our re-
] - - Il g.