Evening journal., 1907-10-03
Bugler Dick.

the Michigan Cavalry brigade were
sent to the Indian country after the
grand review IN Washington. Just
where we picked up little Dick no one
seemed to know.
We had a lot of hangers-on when we
left for the march across the plains,
and strict orders were issued to weed
them out and leave them behind. Dick
was one Of them, but we had fixed
things. Three days later he Joined us
under cover Of night, mounted on a
government mule, and from thence on
he was one of us. In his idle hours at
the fort he had learned to blow a bugle
and give most of the calls, but there
was no place for him. 1t was In the
Indian heyday. Almost every tribe in
the west was hostile and out on the
warpath, and when once we had left
the frontier behind us all the talk was
OF the red man and his way of fighting
and his flendish cruelties. There would
be no such thing as fear with the old
veterans Of the Army Of the Potomac,
but we often wondered how our boy
would take it. He was no boaster. He
never said whether he would run or
fight but he fought
One day the Sixth was ordered out
to follow a broad trail and hang to It
until we had come up with the war
party and punished it. At a certain
point we divided into three columns.
Half an hour later the first column
walked into an ambush with its eyes
wide open. We were greenhorns at
Indian lighting Half a dozen men
had fallen when the colonel looked
around for his bugler. The lad had
been one Of the first TO fall. The other
columns must come to our relief or
we should be wiped out. We could
neither advance nor retreat, and the
hidden redskins offered us no target
It was then that little Dick dropped
the carbine he had taken from a dead
troopers hands. and. running forward,
he seized the bugle from the grip of
the dying lad and shouted:
"AIl right colonel; know what you
want"
Tie other columns had heard the
sound of the firing, but had made no
move. It was only when they heard
the notes Of the bugle telling that we
were in sore straits that they came
galloplng down and helped us wip
victory
1 don't know how they fixed it, but
from that day on little Dick was one
Of the regular buglers. 1t took him
away from us much of his time but
when he had half an hour to spare
he was back "home" with us. It was
in the early summer when we headed
out on the plains. For months we
fought the red man whenever and
wherever we could bring him to bay.
AS autumn came we pressed him far
ther and farther toward his winter re-
treat. and one clustering day the COM
mand was divided to deal him a stag
gering blow. The chiefs staked all on
big fight and lost We routed and
pursued them, and II was after the
pursuit ended that Bugler Dick was
found to be among the missing. His
bugle calls had been heard all through
the fight, and men had seen him smil-
Ing and laughing under hot fire, but
as we went into camp and the roll was
called there was no one to answer to
the name
Many good men had fallen that day.
Comrade had lost comrade. and In at
least three cases brother had lost
brother but as the night came down
It seemed that in losing little Dick we
had lost the one most beloved in the
whole command. In the bright moon
light half hundred Of us forgot our
weariness and hunger and hunted for
him. We searched the open plain. the
dark ravines. the thickets and the will
low fringed streams. We found our
dead and wounded, and we found the
stark forms of hundred savages, but
we did not find the one we sought.
By the time the sun rose it became
plain that Bugler Dick had somehow
been taken prisoner and spirited away.
There were those who told such tales
OF cruelties toward the whites that one
felt his hair crawling but when these
had set our teeth on edge and brought
curses TO our lips some one would re-
member that the prisoner was only a
lad and that the Indians often adopted
boys of his age and treated them kind
".
One of the sorrowful things about
1t was that the expedition was ordered
in for the winter. 1t was making
ready for its return wnen such
strong appeal was made to the COM
mander that be sent out 400 men OF
the Sixth to see if any trace Of the
boy could be found. He would have
done no more had our colonel been
missing. We followed the trail of the,
beaten warriors for fifty miles. 1t
was only when they discovered what
small command we were that they
rallied and laid in ambush for us In
great ravine. We believed them still
flying and were riding into the jaws OF
death, out of which no man would
have emerged alive, when we heard
bugle calls. There was an instant halt
while every ear was strained to catch
the sound again. Then 400 men seemed
TO call out in chorus:
That's Bugler Dick-that's our
boyri
He was half a mile away, on the
side Of the mountain and hidden from