The Dalles daily chronicle. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1890-1948, 1891-10-06
a LEeEkn OF. CAME. HORROR.
A Terrible Incident of Bivouao in the
Country of the Sioux Indians.

Terrible Incident of q Bivotaa in the
Country of the Sioux Indians.
You will wonder, of course why a SOL
dier's camp should have received such a
name, but it is on the military records,
and no man will ever attempt TO explain it
to you without grieving over the recollec-
tions aroused thereby
It was out in the Indian country. on the
Kansas frontier, when the red men were
making such a fight against the troops
sent out after the close of the rebellion
They had swooped down on the Smoky
Hill stage route and scalped and slaugh-
tered right and left, and our command
had been hurried forward to protect such
settlers as might have escaped and to open
the route again. Day after day the red
men lowered ON our hanks, and night
after night they crept upon us like ser-
pents and sent their silent arrows into
camp to find living targets. -,
One night, when the day had been full of
excitement, and when it seemed as if the
Sioux, had determined to retreat no fur
ther, the sentinels were warned to extra
vigilance We knew that peril menaced
US, anc we who stood sentry after midnight
peered into the darkness with bated breath
and were ready to fire at the first suspicious
sound. At 1 o'clock thought heard a
light footstep on the grass. It was dark
night, with now and then a gust of wind
sweeping up with lonesome sound, and 1
could not be sure heard Alright.
L waited, with finger on the trigger.
ready to fire if heard the footstep again,
but it did not come to me- Scarcely ten
minutes had passed when the sentinel on
my right, who was only thirty feet away,
fired into the darkness. The report of his
carbine had not died away when a loud,
wild scream rang out upon the night, and
every man who heard it knew that it was
uttered by woman.
1t is a good many years back to that
night, but l remember every incident as
well as if only week had passed. Now
and then l have dreamed of it, and that
scream has aroused me and taken all my
nerve. As soon as we could investigate we
found an amazing thing-a woman lying
dead on the grass with a year-old baby in
her arms! The sentinel had shot her dead
in her tracks, but the baby was still asleep.
with one of it's mothers arms hupeino it
to her breast.
We looked and looked, and it was hard
to believe we saw Alright. 1t was settlers
wife, as was afterward known, who had
escaped massacre more than forty miles
away. She had wandered around for five
days, suffering with hunger and thirst. and
had no doubt become crazed with anxiety
and exhaustion.
There was none but old veterans in that
camp, but there were tears in all eyes when
that poor dead body was brought into
camp, and when the wakened baby cried
with fright and hunger and held out its
little hands to the very trooper who had
fired upon the mother. No one could
blame him in the least, but he blamed him
self. When he realized what he hed done
he turned away from us without word
and walked away as men walk in their
sleep.
We had washed the mothers life blood
off the baby's hands, and the colonel him
self was feedingit with the cruel hastily
prepared, when there came another shot
and another alarm. The trooper had gone
just without the lines of the camn and
fired bullet into his own heart Remorse
had driven him to it.
Somewhere in the west that boy baby.
now grown to manhood, still lives, but the
two graves we dug next morning were
years ago leveled and obliterated from all
sight but that of God. At the last great
day he will awaken the dust of their dead.
M Quad in New York World. -.