The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-07-03
SCOUTS WITHOUT A TRAIL.
Marry Veterans of the Trail in Poor
 Circumstances.

|
 They Played a Great Part, Threw
 Them Out of Employment.
 About the most pitifully cheerlees mel
 in the West nowadays are those whC
 have given the greater part of theil
 lives to scouting for the army, and DC,
 casionally for a cattle company or
 band of miners, who have endured z generation of savage hardships ane
 have braved all the dangers of the
 plains, and now, grizzled and gray real
 ize that their occupation is gone forever
 There are scores of the old fellows 1T
 the territories. Several hundred of the
 younger scouts have become vaqueros
 sheep herders, express messengers ane
 guards, cattlemen, railroad men, miners
 and prospectors Electricity and rail
 roads principally have made scouting
 obsolete, and since the Apaches in the
 Southwest and the Sioux in the North west have been beaten into peaceful re- lations with the white settlers there has
 been no demand for the services of
 of the old-time scout. In every town of | any size in this region one may see some of the veteran scouts-poor in I purse, tattered in person-loafing about
 the saloons telling visitors from the
 East of the glories of the frontier be-
 fore civilization and railroads spoiled
 it all and half heartedly building hopes
 of the day when something unexpected
 may transpire and scouting may be l called into demand again.
 1 The caller scouts, like Kit Carson and
 Jim" Bridger, were originally trappers | and hunters, born and reered in Mis- l souri, Tennesse and Kentucky, who had l 8 fondness for adventure. They had pushed their way across the border of civilization of those days and had gone
 upon the plains of Kansas, Nebraska
 and Texas for big game and excite
 ment. The Mexican war of 1857 and
 the movement of troops through Texas
 and along the Rio Grande brought | scouting into the army service. When | the era of OK teams and excited gold
 seekers headed toward California began ] in 1S49 there was a great demand for scouts at very profitable wages. Hun dreds of young men with srnattering | of plains life, an eXpertness In firearms and a little knowledge of Indian ways became professional scouts. No emi- SIdlloIl tldlll NOulu ltdNG Iol. JUStRll,
 Mo, or Leavenworth, Kan', on the journey of four or five months to the Pacific ocean without an accompanying
 scout or guide for at least part of the way. As the chain of army garrisons was extended out upon the plains the the War Department employed more and more scouts for the troops, and scouting became a sort of science of the plains in which there was competi- tion in experience, During the Apache and Sioux wars in 1877 1878 and 1879 the Government had about. twelve hundred scouts on the army pay-rolls. Then the Indians, who had adopted white mems ways, became scouts, and the pursuit of the white men waned fast.
 The requisite of a good scout was, first of all, an iron constitution. He ex- pected to remain in the saddle days and nights in succession, to sleep for weeks at time wherever night overlook him. His sole concern, so far as physical dis comfort was concerned, was for his horse or bronco, Privations that would quickly break down men used to con- fining employment and indoor life were nothing to scouts. They have gone for weeks without cooked food because they were secretly trailing in an Indian country and dared not make fire Hunger and thirst ware common priva- tions. They have slept on bleak and barren spots where bitter winds blew and dust and sand filled the air, with | their horses picketed near, without even a protecting blanket over them, | only to get ip at dawn and pursue the | ride sixty or seventy miles further It | is wonderful that these plainsmen could l endure this life longer than a few years. |
 Courage is another requisite for a | good scout. Some of this courage may | be border bravado but there have been | such constant opportunities to reveal the mettle of a scout that none could | conceal his true self very long There have been countless highly romantic stories of the bravery of scouts in prai- rie fires, In stampedes of buffalo in fac ing shower of bullets and storm of | feathered arrows, and the majority of these romances are founded on fact. One may hear about any garrison on the Western frontier to-day veracious stories of deeds of bravery by long haired, untutored scouts that rival the widest fiction
 The scoat must also have a quick and good memory for details of a country. Scouts Winchel and Flanigan, who led a troop of cav airy into an Apache ambush among the Dragoon mountains in South Ari- zona in 1879, and who instantly ordered the soldiers to whirl about and seek safety behind the lava powders, while they (the two scouts) dashed into the open and received the deadly charge in- tended for the troops, showed as much courage and quickness of comprehen- sion as legendary heroes ever did Out on the barren, sun baked and wind- swept plains the scout must know where water is to be had, even though he might not have been that way in several years. General Custer said that he four scouts who led his troops in the Indian campaigns of the later sixties could smell water forty miles away. ! even when the sun was witheringly hot | md the soldiers and horses were al- most overcome. The art of scouting is learned only , oy experience and years of observation. , There are no textbooks to be studied. , . vast number of minute facts in na- z