Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1899-07-08

Apache and Sioux wars in 1877, 1878 and
1879, the government had about twelve
hundred scouts on the army payrolls.
Their the Indians, who had adopted white
mems ways, became scouts, and the pur-
suit of the white men Waned fast.
The requite of a good scout was, first of
all, an iron constitution. He expected to
remain in the saddle days and nights in
succession, to sleep for weeks at a time
wherever night overlook him. His sole
concern. so far as physical dlscOmforts
was concerned, was for his horse or bron-
cho. Privations that would quickly break
down men used to combining employment
and indoor life We're nothing to scouts.
They have gone for weeks without cooked
food because they We're secretly trailing
in an Indian country and dared not make
a fire. Hunger and thirst were common
privations. 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 ever a pro-
tectlng blanket over them. only to get up
at dawn and pursue the ride sixty or sew
enty miles further. 1t is wonderful that
these plainsmen could endure the life lon
ger than a few years.
Courage Is another requisite for a good
scout. Some Of this courage may be Dor
der bravado. but there have been such
constant opportunities to reveal the met
tie of a scout that lone could conceal his
true self very long. There nave been pub
lished countless highly romantic stories
of the bravery of scouts in prairie fires,
in stampedes of buffalo, in facing a show
er of bullets and a storm of feathered ar
rows, 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 scout must also ave a quick COM
prehension and a good memory for de-
tails of a country. Scouts Winchel and
Flanagan, who led a troop of cavalry into
an Apache ambush among the Dragon
Mountains in Southern Arizona in 1879.
and who instantly ordered the soldiers to
whirl about and seek safety behind the
lava boulders, while they the two scouts
dashed into the open and received the
deadly charge intended for the troops
Of comprehension 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, ever
though he might not hav been that way
in several years. General Custer said that
the four scouts who led his troops in the
ndian campaigns of the later sixties
could smell water forty miles away, even
when the sun was witheringly hot and the
soldiers and horses were almost over
come.
The art of scouting is learned only by
experience and years of observation
There are no text books to be studied. A
vast number of minute facts in nature
things that experienced naturalists would
not observe-are like an open volume to
veteran scouts The twist of a turned
leaf along the trail will be noted as show
ing which way the last person in that To-
cality went, and the height and location
of the turned leaf show whether the per-
son was afoot or on horseback. The turn
ed pebbles emo by their color how long
they have been stirred from their beds