 Preface of Tales of the Trail, Short Stories of Western Life. These Tales of the Trail are based upon actual facts which came under the personal observation of the author, whose reputation as a writer of the frontier is national. His other works have met with phenomenal success, and these sketches, which have appeared from time to time in the current literature of the United States, are now compiled and will form another interesting series of stories of that era of great adventures when the country west of the Missouri was unknown, except to the trappers, hunters, and army officers. Some of the characters around which are woven the thrilling incidents of these tales were men of worldwide reputation. They have long since joined the choir invisible, but their names as pioneers in the genesis of great states, which then formed the theater of their exploits, will live as long as the United States exists as a great nation. However improbable to the uninitiated, the thrilling experiences of the individuals who were actors in the scenes depicted may seem they are a proof that truth is stranger than fiction. It is fortunate that Colonel Inman, during his forty years on the extreme frontier, was such a close observer, and noted from time to time these stories of the frontier which form such an interesting part of our Americana. James L. King, State Librarian, Topeka, Kansas, March 1, 1898. End of Preface. Chapter 1 of Tales of the Trail, by Henry Inman. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 1. General Forsythe at the Eurycary. A thrilling story of Indian warfare. I was sitting in my office at Fort Harker on a warm evening in the latter part of September, 1868, musing over a pipe full of lone jack upon the possible extent of the impending Indian war which had already been planned by General Sheridan in the seclusion of my own quarters only the night before. It was rapidly growing dark, the somber line of the twilight curb, had almost met the western horizon, and only the faintest tinge of purple beneath marked the intermedium between the gloaming and the rayless sky. Nothing disturbed my reverie as I wandered in my imagination over the bleak expanse of the Arkansas, Cimarron, and Canadian rivers so soon to be the scene of active operations except the monotonous clicking of the relay in the window of the next room where the government night operator was on duty who was meditating in the darkness. The terrible massacres on Spillman Creek only a few weeks before still furnished food for vengeful thoughts that would not down as images of the murdered women and little ones rose in horrible visions upon the thick night before me. The dismal howl of a hungry wolf born upon the still air from the timbered recesses of the smoky added to the weird aspect that my surroundings were rapidly assuming and there seemed some portentous and indescribable thing bearing down upon the place. Suddenly the operator, while the clicking of the instruments became more nervous and buried from their monotone of the whole evening, exclaimed, My God, Major, what's this? What is what, said I, jumping from my chair and rushing to his side, quickly lighting his little lamp and seizing his pencil he wrote upon a blank as I looked over his shoulder and read, while the clicking grew more convulsive still, these words. General Forsythe, surrounded by Indians on the Republican, Lieutenant Beecher, the doctor and many of the scouts killed, nearly the entire command, including the general, wounded. Still well one of the scouts ran the gauntlet of the savages and brings report. Colonel Carpenter, Tenth Cavalry and his command leave immediately to relieve them. This was a fragment of the whole dispatch going over the wires from Fort Hayes to Fort Leavenworth and Washington. We had taken enough of it to know that a terrible disaster had befallen the gallant foresight of Sheridan staff and his plucky band of scouts, who were all civilians and kansans. The headquarters of General Sheridan, who was at the date of this narrative and command of the department of the Missouri, were temporarily at Fort Harker. He was consummating his arrangements for a winter campaign against the hostile tribes, and the idea suggested itself that a body of carefully selected men, composed of the best material to be found on the frontier under the leadership of an experienced officer, could effect excellent results. These scouts, as they were to be termed, were to go anywhere and act entirely independent of the regularly organized troops about to take the field. Generals Custer and Sully, the next in rank to Sheridan, both already famous as Indian fighters, coincided with this view of the commanding general, and it was determined to pick fifty equipped frontiersmen at once, commission Forsythe as their leader, who in the incipiency of the movement, modestly solicited the responsible position. The fifty four men were chosen from an aggregate of more than two thousand employed by the government at various positions at Fort Harker and A's. The reader may rest assured that only those were accepted who possessed the essential qualifications of indomitable courage, wonderful endurance, perfect marksmanship, and a thorough knowledge of the Indian character. General Forsythe chose for his lieutenant his particular friend F. H. Beecher Infantry, a nephew of the celebrated Brooklyn clergyman. Some days were occupied at Fort Harker in fitting out the little expedition, but no unnecessary equipage or superfluous camp paraphernalia formed any part of the supplies. There were no tents or wagons. Packmules carried the commissary stores, which were of the simplest character, and as the object of the party was war, its impedimenta were reduced to the armament. Each man was mounted on an excellent horse, his armament a breech-loading rifle, and two revolvers. This troop of brave men left Harker for haze in the latter part of August, from which point their arduous duties were commenced. On the twenty-ninth of that month, all the preliminaries for taking the field, having been completed, and their surgeon joined, they marched out of the fort on their perilous mission. After scouting over a large area for several days without meeting any sign of the Cheyennes, they concluded to go to Wallace to recuperate and refit. Sometime during the second week in September, the Indians made a raid on the government wagon-train near Sheridan Station on the Kansas Pacific Railroad, about twelve miles east of Wallace. As soon as the news reached the fort over the wires, Forsythe and his little band of scouts started to intercept the savages on their retreat. Next morning the little command struck the fresh trail of the Indians, and by forced marches came so close that they compelled them to separate into insignificant detachments, but night coming rapidly on, the general lost the trail. The conclusion was, after a consultation with the best plainsmen among the party, that the Indians would naturally go northward, so it was determined to take that direction in pursuit. The scouts continued their course for more than a week without the least trifling incident to relieve the wearisome monotony of the march. Suddenly on the afternoon of the eighth day, as they were approaching the bluffs of the Republican River, they discovered an immense trail still leading to the north. The signs indicated that a large body of warriors with pack animals, women and children, and lodges of a big camp had recently camped here. It was growing dark, and rather than take the chances of losing this trail in the night, it was determined to bivouac in the vicinity, rest the animals, and continue the pursuit at the first streak of dawn. It was well that this course was decided upon, or there would have been none left to tell the story of the fight as the result will show. The spot selected for the bivouac had some slight strategic value and was for that reason chosen by the general after it had been pointed out by two of his men, Tom Murphy and Jack Stilwell, though he had no idea at the time that any benefit would result from their judgment in this particular. It was an elongated low mound of sand, such as are seen at intervals in the Arkanses, which the Ericie Fork of the Republican at this time embraced, as the Cheyenne does the black hills forming an island. If this trail had not been struck it was the intention to have gone back to Wallace for provisions, as only sufficient for one day remained, but upon prospects of a fight it was unanimously agreed to go, and take the chances of finding something to eat. In the early gray of the next morning, while the stars were still twinkling and at the hour when sleep oppresses more than at any other time, the sentinels posted on the hills above the island yelled, Indians! In a moment the camp was awake. With rifle in hand each scout rushed for the lariat to which his horse was picketed, knowing of course that the first effort on the part of the Indians would be to stampede the animals. As it was a small party of them dashed in with a horrid whoop and shaking their buffalo rogues succeeded in running off a small portion of the pack mules besides one or two of the horses. A few shots fired by the most advanced of the scouts scattered the Indians and quiet reigned again for a few minutes. Almost immediately however, before the scouts had completed saddling their horses, which the general had ordered, one of the guide's nearest foresight happening to look up could not help giving vent to the expression great heavens general see the Indians. Well, might he be excited over the hills from the west and north along the river on the opposite bank, everywhere and in every direction they made their appearance. Finally mounted in full war paint their long scalp locks braided with eagle's feathers and with all the paraphernalia of a barbarous war party with wild and exultant shouts on they came. It was a desperate looking preponderance of brute force and savage subtlety against the cool and calm judgment of the disciplined plainsmen. But the general, without glancing at the hell in front and all around him, with only the lines of determination in his face a little more marked grasping the terrible picture before him, stoically ordered his men to take possession of the sandbound with their horses and then determined, almost against hope, to accept the wager of battle. It happened fortunately that on this island were growing some stunted shrubs to which the animals were fastened their bodies forming a cordon inside of which the luckless scouts prepared for the demoniocal charge which they knew must come with its terrible uncertainty in a few minutes. They quickly secured their animals when, like the shock of a whirlwind, on came the savages and the awfully unequal battle commenced. It was just the break of dawn. The Indians taking advantage of the uncertain light dismounted from their ponies and creeping within easy range poured in a murderous fire upon the scouts. The Indians were splendidly armed as usual through the munificence of the government by apathy in preventing renegade white men or traitors from supplying them. When the full morning came which had been anxiously awaited for by the scouts then they first realized their desperate situation. Apparently as numerous as the sand grains of their little fortification the Indians hemmed them in on all sides. More than a thousand hideously painted and screaming warriors surrounded them with all their strength of the race depicted on their fiendish countenances in anticipation of the victory which seemed so certain. Scattered among these out of rifle range were the squaws and children of the aggregated band, watching with gloating eyes the progress of the battle, while the hills re-echoed their diabolical death-jant and the howling of the medicine men inspiring the young warriors to deeds of daring. They formed the slightest conception of the horrid picture spread before the scouts on the clear gray of that morning unless he or she has realized it in the hostile encounters with the hostile tribes on the plains. Language is inadequate and all the attempts at word painting fall so short of the reality that it were better left wrapped in its terrible incomprehensibility. The general and his brave men set a glance. They saw a little hope in the prospect but they determined, however, never to be taken alive, a thousand deaths by the bullet were preferable to that. So made up their minds to fight to the bitter end which would only come when the ammunition was exhausted or themselves killed. To this end they commenced to entrench as best they could by scraping holes in the sand with the only implement at their command their hands. They succeeded in making a sort of rifle pit of their position but before the work was completed two of the scouts were killed outright and many wounded among the latter the general himself. Owing to the dreadful firing of the Indians who continually charged down upon the island the doctor was compelled to abandon the care of the wounded and become a combatant. He did excellent work with his rifle but a bullet soon pierced his brain and he too fell dead. In a few seconds after the doctor's death in the midst of a terrible onslaught by the Indians the general was again struck, this time near the ankle, the ball perforating the bone as perfectly as if done with an auger. The firing of the scouts had not all this time been without telling effect upon the Indians. Many a painted warrior had thrust before the sun was two hours high. At each successive charge of the Redskins the scouts, cool and careful and deliberate, took aim and when their rifles were discharged each put a savage or a combat there was no ammunition wasted. Nor had the besiege escaped from the fearful onset of their enemies. Besides the casualties related nearly all the horses had been killed in fact before noon all but one had fallen and it is told that when he too was killed one of the warriors exclaimed in English there goes the last horse anyway. At this juncture with all their horses killed or wounded the Indians determined upon one more grand charge which would settle the unequal contest so they rallied all their forces and hazarded their reputation upon the aggregated assault. This charging column was composed of about one hundred and fifty dog soldiers and nearly five hundred more of the Bruleges, Giants and Arapahols all under the command of the celebrated chief, Roman Nose. Superbly mounted almost naked although in full wardress and painted in the most hideous manner formed with a front of about sixty men they awaited in the greatest confidence the signal of their chief to charge. Their leader at first signal to the dismounted men beyond this line of horsemen to fire into the scout and thus make his contemplated charge more effective. At the moment of the fuselage seeing the little garrison was stunned by the fire of the dismounted Indians and rightly judging that now if ever was the proper time to charge Roman Nose and his band of mounted warriors bringing war-hoop echoed by the women and children on the hills started forward. On they came presenting even to the brave men awaiting their charge a most superb sight. Soon they were within the range of the rifles of their friends and of course the dismounted Indians had to slacken their fire for fear of hitting their own warriors and this was the opportunity for the scouts. Now shouted foresight and the scouts springing to their knees cast their eyes coolly along the barrels of their rifles and opened upon the advancing savages a deadly fire. Unchecked, undaunted, on dashed the warriors steadily rang the sharp report of the rifles of the frontiersmen. Roman Nose falls dead from his horse, medicine man is killed and for an instant the column now within ten feet of the scouts hesitates, falters. A cheer from the scouts who perceive the effect of their well-directed fire as the Indians begin to break and scatter in every direction unwilling to rush into a hand-to-hand struggle. A few more shots and the Indians are forced back beyond range. For scythe inquires anxiously can they do better than that Grover? I have been on the plains general since a boy and never saw such a charge as that before. All right then, we are good for them. It was in this grand charge, led in person by their greatest of all warriors Roman Nose, that Lieutenant Beecher was mortally wounded. He suffered intensely and lingered some hours before his manly spirit was extinguished. He and I were warmly attached to one another. I knew full well the generous impulses of his warm, young heart and his perfect unselfishness. He was brave, the very soul of honour, and a favourite in all garrisons. Before night closed in on the terrible tragedy of that day, the Indians charged on the weary and beleaguered scouts again and again, but were as often driven back by the dreadful accuracy of the rifles of the besieged, with an increasing loss each time. The darkness which had been earnestly looked for at last brought the welcome respite, and it was made possible for the unfortunate men to steal a moment's rest that was needed. Oh, how much! Hungry, exhausted with an empty commissariat, every animal dead, their comrades lying stark upon the dreary sand, and a great number writhing in all the agony of torturing wounds, a relentless enemy ever watching, no skilled hand to alleviate the sufferings of the dying, and the only hope of help that might never come more than a hundred miles away. Think of that, grasp it, if you can. Later, while the night yet thickened, preparations were made to meet the events that were sure to come with the morning's light, and the little fort, for it had certainly now reached the dignity of that title, was made still stronger. For gabions, the swollen carcasses of the dead horses were used, and huge slices were cut from their thighs for food. Thank God the torturings of thirst were not added to their other sufferings, for water was easily obtained by digging a short distance. Thus strengthened, a midnight council of war was held in Whisprings, and it was determined to send two of their number to Fort Wallace as desperate as the undertaking was. A mere boy, still well, and another, Trudell, expressed their willingness to make the attempt. The brave men crawled from the island to run the gauntlet of the watchful savages ever on the alert to take advantage of the least unfavorable demonstration on the part of their prey, as they fully believed them. We will leave them making their way cautiously, but hopefully in the darkness, for it is not the purpose of the rider at this time to tell of the noble efforts of these brave messengers in their hair-breadth escapes on their lonesome and perilous journey. But let us turn to the worn-out and wounded band of heroes again to learn how they fared during the long days before help could possibly reach them, even were still well in his companion able to reach Wallace. The sun rose in all the splendor of a Kansas autumn morning, but the landscape bore the same horrid features of the day before. All through the weary hours the Indians kept up an incessant firing, though no serious charge was attempted. They had had more than they had anticipated in their efforts in that direction yesterday. The scouts, now pretty effectually entrenched, suffered but little from the wild firing of their besiegers, but it was annoying and kept the brave men ever prepared for a possible charge, the result of which might not be so fortunate as former ones. Night again came to throw its mantle of rest upon the little band, and shortly after dark two more scouts were sent out to reach Fort Wallace if possible, but they failed to get beyond the line of watchful savages and were compelled to abandon the idea. This unsuccessful attempt to go for help cast a gloom over the little command, for it could not yet be known what had been the fate of the other two who had gone out the night previously. The next day the state of affairs assumed a more cheerful aspect if that could be possible. The squaws and children had disappeared, indicating a retreat upon the part of the Indians, although they still kept up their firing at intervals, perhaps they too were getting short of ammunition and provisions. In the afternoon the savages hoisted a white rag upon a pole and expressed a desire to talk, but our heroes were too wary to be caught with such chaff as that, for with Indians a flag of truce means a massacre half the time. That night two more men were sent out, and these carried that famous dispatch of force sites which should hold its place in history with that other memorable one of grants. I intend to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer. Force sites read, I am on a little island and have still plenty of ammunition left. We are living on mule and horsemeat and are entirely out of rations. If it were not for so many wounded I would come on and take the chance of whipping them if attacked. They are evidently sick of their bargain. I can hold out six days longer if absolutely necessary, but lose no time. The morning of the fourth day on the now historic island broke somewhat more cheerful still. The Indians could be seen moving rapidly away, only a few comparatively remaining in sight to wait till exhaustion and starvation should place the scouts in their power. They little knew the metal of the men lying behind those breastworks of rotten carcasses, or they too would have gone with the old men, women and children of the tribe. A few shots were fired by the scouts in response to the occasional random fusillade of the Indians. They contented themselves with saving their ammunition for a possible last grand act in the drama, only shooting when an Indian came within certain range when he was sure to be sent to the happy hunting grounds. Night came again with its relative rest and then another weary day of watching and waiting without any special demonstration on the part of the Indians. New horrors now made their appearance in the shape of gangrene wounds and suffering for food. The putrid flesh of the dead horses and mules was all that remained to support life, and however revolting it had to be swallowed. The nauseating effluvia of the rapidly decaying carcasses, too, made the place almost intolerable, and so insufferable did it become that the general told those who were disheartened to go. But all to a man, to their honor, be it recorded, refused, electing to remain with their companions in arms, to be rescued or die with them. Two more days of torture, and then on the ridge between them and the golden sunlight, gleamed the bright bayonets of Colonel Carpenter and his column of the boys in blue. Their havlock had reached this American look now, and cheer after cheer, feeble though they were, went up from the little island and our story closes with the rescue of these brave men. General Forsight, himself wounded in both legs, gives a very graphic description of the charge of the Indians and the appearance of their hero and chief, Roman Nose. He says, as Roman Nose dashed gallantly forward and swept into the open at the head of his superb command, he was the very bow-ideal of an Indian chief. Mounted on a large, clean-limbed chestnut horse, he sat well forward on his bare-back charger, his knees passing under a horsehair lariat that twice loosely encircled the animal's body. His horse's bridle grasped in his left hand, which was also closely wound in its flowing mane, and at the same time clutched his rifle at the guard, the butt of which lay partially across the animal's neck, while its barrel, crossing diagonally in front of his body, rested slightly against the hollow of his left arm, leaving his right free to direct the course of his men. He was a man over six feet three inches in height, beautifully formed and safe for a crimson silk sash knotted around his waist, and his moccasins on his feet perfectly naked. His face was hideously painted in alternate lines of red and black, and his head crowned with a magnificent warp on it, from which just above his temples, and curving slightly forward, stood up two short black buffalo horns, while its ample length of eagle's feathers and heron's plumes trailed wildly on the wind behind him, and as he came swiftly on at the head of his charging warriors, in all his barbaric strength and grandeur, he proudly rode that day the most perfect type of a savage warrior it has been my lot to see. Turning his face for an instant towards the women and children of the United Tribes, who literally by thousands were watching the fight from the crest of the low bluffs back from the river's bank, he raised his right arm and waved his right hand with a royal gesture in answer to their wild cries of rage and encouragement as he and his command swept down upon us, and again facing squarely towards where we lay, he drew his body to its full height and shook his clenched fist defiantly at us. Then, throwing back his head and glancing skyward, he suddenly struck the palm of his hand across his mouth and gave tongue to a war cry that I have never yet heard equaled in power and intensity. Scarcely had its echoes reached the river's banks when it was caught up by each and every one of the charging warriors with an energy that baffles description and answered back with blood-curdling yells of exultation and prospective vengeance by the women and children on the river's bluff and by the Indians who lay in ambush around us. On they came at a swinging gallop, rending the air with their wild war hoops, each individual warrior in all his bravery of war paint and long braided scalplock tipped with eagle's feathers and all stark naked but for their cartridge belts and moccasins, keeping their line almost perfectly with a front of about sixty men, all riding horseback with only a loose lariat about their horses' bodies and about a yard apart and with a depth of six or seven ranks, forming together a compact body of massive fighting strength and of almost resistless weight. Boldly they rode and well with their horses' bridles in their left hands, while with their right they grasped their rifles at the guard and held them squarely in front of themselves, resting lightly upon their horses' necks, writing about five paces in front of the center of the line and twirling his heavy spring-filled rifle about his head as if it were a wisp of straw, Roman nose recklessly led the charge with a bravery that could only be equaled but not excelled, while their medicine man and equally brave yet older chief rode slightly in advance of the left of the charging column. To say that I was surprised at this splendid exhibition of flock and discipline is to put it mildly and to say further that for an instant or two I was fairly lost in admiration of the glorious charge is simply to state the truth, for it was far and away beyond anything I had heard of, read about, or even imagined regarding Indian warfare. No stream from its source flow seaward, how lonely so air its course, but some land is gladdened. No star ever rose and set without influence somewhere. Who knows what Earth needs from Earth's lowliest creatures? No life can be pure in its purpose and strong in its strife, and all life not be pure and stronger thereby. Owen Meredith The tourist en route to the Pacific coast cannot fail observing on his right a huge relatively isolated peak cutting the incomparably clear mid-continent sky almost immediately after the train emerges from the picturesque canyon of El Morrow, and commences to descend the long gradual slope to the quaint old Mexican village of Las Vegas, New Mexico. Its scarred and vergerless front looms up grandly in the beautifully serrated landscape of which it is the most conspicuous object. More prominently defined than any other individual elevation of the Tau's range, visible from the point of observation, the shadow of its irregular contour reaches far out over the lesser mountains beneath, the moment the sun has crossed the meridian of its crest. At its foot, grassy little valleys stretch eastwardly, which are cultivated by the primitive Mexicans under a system of irrigation as primitive as themselves, simple earth ditches involving a very limited knowledge of engineering. Foaming little torrents splash and sparkle in the sunshine as they course through the fertile intervals. Their sources are cool mountain springs hidden in the dark recesses of the Tau'ring range, which were, until the restless gringo invaded the solitude of the charming region at the advent of the iron trail to erect sawmills, filled with that most Epicurean and gamey of all the finny tribe, the speckled brook trout. Now the disciple of the revered Walton vainly assays the streams with elegant modern appliances for lazy methods of angling, retiring disgusted as the listless native answering his interrogatory of where have they all gone with a characteristic shrug, and his ever-ready kinsabe quietly opens his little ditch to let the tenetless water overflow his limited patch of corn, beans, and onions. Maybe in the sad and weird mythology of those strange people, the Aztecs, this storm-beaten spur of the Rockies occupied an important place. Their Olympus, or Parnassus perhaps, for not many miles remote on the bank of the classic Pachos, where lie the ruins of the once fortified GQ, referred to so graphically in the itinerary of the historian of Coronado's wonderful march in search of the seven cities of Sibyla, is the reputed birthplace of their culture hero Montezuma, not to be confounded with the dynasty of sovereigns of that name, who was the Christ of their faith, for whose second advent the Pueblos, the lineal descendants of the Aztecs, look for so hopefully with the rising of every morning sun. Upon the summit of the Rincon de Tocolote, the Owl's corner, now known as el Cumbre del Saletario at the Hermit's peak, as this grand old sentinel of the range is called by the Mexicans, an area comprising several acres, there is a remarkable cave. Around this natural grotto at such a great elevation are clustered by the simple natives, the most cherished memories of the humble and beloved curious individual who once occupied the sequestered spot. It is sacred ground with them upon which no sacrilege would for a moment be brooked. Near its narrow entrance a spring of clear cold water gushes out of the indurated rock, which after flowing for a short distance over the rounded bevels in its deeply worn bed tumbles down the precipitous side of the mountain in a diminutive cascade, joining the streams in the valley on their restless way to the sea. A few scattered pinions cast a grateful shade over a portion of the generally bold blear level of the limited plain, and at regular distances apart, in the form of a circle, are twelve rude crosses typical of the number of the apostles. They were erected years ago by the humble Mexicans living in the low, in memory of the deeply religious man who made his home in this sequestered spot, and whose name is revered only a degree less than that of the tutelary saint of the country, Our Lady of Guadalupe. On certain feast days, particularly in mid-summer, large fires are kept burning at night, and the devotees to the memory of the caves once wholly occupant long since hastened by the hands of an assassin to the unknown beyond, assemble there under the stars, and in a most devout spirit perform certain ceremonies with a zeal possible only to the earnest believers in that ancient and widely disseminated faith, the Catholic religion. Of the history of this remarkable man who by his exemplary life made such an impression upon the untutored minds of a large number of the reputed primitive New Mexicans, but fragmentary leaves have been obtainable. To intelligently understand even these the reader must let his mind drift backward for more than a generation to the plains of central Kansas, and learn of his advent into the state as I recall it. It was late in the spring of 1861. Our civil war had been inaugurated by the firing upon Sumter, and the civil states were preparing for the great impending struggle upon the result of which depended the destiny of the Republic. Kansas at that time, so far as its agricultural possibilities were concerned, was not materially considered in that connection. It was a remote, relatively unknown territory. It is true its eastern portion, a narrow belt contiguous to Missouri, had a bloody political history beyond which fact it was merely the portal to the vast mountain region on the west to be reached only by crossing the desert supposed to be included within the new state's geographical limits through which ran the trail to far off Santa Fe and Chihuahua. There arrived one morning in the busy little Hamlet of Council Grove, Morris County, Kansas, during the month of May, a strange, mysterious person. He attracted much attention, for he was to the denizens of that remote frontier town as curious a personage as the man in the iron mask, or the awkward Casper Hauser, whose appearance at the gates of Nuremberg once startled the good people of that state and quiet town, Ori, with the conservatism of centuries. The stranger, who came so unexpectedly to Council Grove in the spring of 1861, evidently a priest, talked but little. It was an exceedingly difficult task to engage him in conversation, so profoundly did he seem impressed with the idea of some impending danger. He acted like a startled deer, ever on the alert for an expected enemy, and weeks rolled by before two or three of the town's most reputable citizens could gain his confidence sufficiently to learn from him something of his varied and romantic history. In a simple sketch, as this is intended to be only, nothing but a mere outline of his checkered life previous to his advent in America can be presented as it was gathered, very reluctantly on his part, in detached fragments at odd moments in his erratic moods of communicativeness. It certainly contains enough of pathos, suffering and tragedy, to form the web of a thrilling novel. Matteo Boccolini, at the date of his appearance in Council Grove, was about fifty-five years old. He possessed the eye of an artist, a head that was beautifully symmetrical, with a classically molded face, and notwithstanding his age, his hair, of which he had a profusion, was long, black, and lustrous as a raven's wing. Yet the heart sorrows he had experienced were indelibly impressed upon his benevolent countenance in deeply marked lines. He was a lineal descendant of Trujano Boccolini, the witty Italian satirist, author of the celebrated Ragurli di Pazzanno, who died in Venice in 1618. Matteo was born about the beginning of the present century in Capri, that charming and most romantic island of Italy, situated in the Mediterranean at the entrance to the bay of Naples, twenty miles south of the beautiful city whose name the bright waters bear. His youth was passed on the island in the city of Capri, the seat of a bishopric. There he received his early education, devoting himself to the church and commencing those theological studies which were soon to be the cause of his sufferings, his wanderings, and eventually death. The island of his birth, which has so often been sung by the muse, is historic as well as picturesquely beautiful. It was there that the Roman emperor Tiberius passed the closing decade of his life, and the ruins of the twelve gorgeous palaces he erected during that period are still visible. Capri too, as tourists well remember, is famous for a cavern called the Grotto of the Nymphs, the Blue Grotto. Matteo declared it was there that during his youth in the calm recesses and sequestered nooks of that delightful underground retreat, he first learned to love the companionship of his own thoughts, a desire for solitude, and that to him indescribable peace, which a life apart from the madding crowd, assures. It was this strange characteristic, absence of that love gregariousness common to man, which earned for him in Council Grove half a century later the sobriquet of the hermit priest of the Santa Fe Trail. And a year after his departure from that place, among his devoted adherents in the mountains of New Mexico, the more applicable one, El Solitario, the solitary man, in a contradistinction to El Amito, the hermit, which he was in the strict interpretation of the term. When but eighteen the youthful Matteo left his native island under the patronage of the good bishop who loved him to perfect his education in Rome beneath the very shadow of St. Peter's where he took holy orders at the early age of twenty-one. Then, according to his sad story, began that life of stormy passions and sorrowful pilgrimages culminating in his assassination forty years afterwards in the far-off Occident. He was called by the Church, Father Francesco, and although so young, was noted for his eloquence, subtle philosophy, and the boldness of his political utterances. But notwithstanding his pronounced views, the Pope named him as one of his secretaries. The College of the Propagandists, however, refused to confirm him and placed him under interrogation and discipline. He eloquently defended himself, and the charges were not sustained. The severe discipline ended to which he had been subjected, and he was assigned to duty in the purgure of the eternal city. In a short time Matteo Boccilini's sunny nature and warm passions caused his disgrace. He became enamored of a third devotee, one of his charge, a dark-haired lustrous-eyed, bewitching creature of the land of the vine. Alas, the two susceptible young priests succumbed to the wiles of the radiant maiden, and he fell in a most earthly and fleshly way. Poor Boccilini was immediately and openly charged with the enormity of his crime, prosecuted and denounced. He was dispoiled of his sacerdotal functions and compelled to flee. Became a man on the face of the earth, supping with sorrow and in despair for companions throughout the remainder of his mundane pilgrimage. For a short time, after his unwarranted and sinful escapade, he campaigned with the heroic Geribaldi. Then he turned with appealing looks toward America, the haven for all who are oppressed, crossed the ocean, and in a few weeks began his eventful journey on this continent. Never again was he to behold the place of his birth, the chalky outlines of fair, beautiful Capri, which so gloriously be gems the Mediterranean. The phosphorus sent to bay of Naples, the sky, the sunshine, and vine-clad hills of dear old Italy, were never more to stir his once impulsive nature, or quicken into life his now deadened heart. Years rolled on, youth passed by, and middle-age was upon the homeless priest, when, after having roamed wearily from place to place, visiting one Indian tribe here and another there, in the vain hope of discovering some clan or people near unto nature's heart whose souls were attuned to his own, who would receive him in the simplicity of his severe and pious penance, he arrived among the cause, or Kansas, whose reservation was in the lovely valley of the Neosho, a few miles below Council Grove. But that tribe, a dirty, despicable race, very suspicious, and with all not remarkable for their reverence of any religion, did not take kindly to the weary old man, who had entered their midst with the purest intentions. His pious zeal, his abstinence and self-denial, made them fear to approach him. They did not understand that when holy and devout religious men are at their beads, it is hard to draw them thence, so sweet as zealous contemplation. The miserable savages looked upon him, the meek and humble pilgrim, as an intruder, said he was bad medicine. So Father Francesco was no more at ease with them in their rude skin lodges than he would have been in the gilded halls of the Vatican. He then came to Council Grove, as stated, came as the tramp has since come, unheralded and uninvited, but not to beg bread at the doors of his residence, as the latter now does. Nor did he come to tell off his beads in the presence of the vulgar curious, but went upon the hillside beyond the town to seek the solitude and retirement of a natural cave in the limestone rock of the region, troubling no one, an enigma to the world and a subject for the idle gossip. There for five months he lived accessible to a few with whom, when he felt and recognized in them the quickened glow of a soul that believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, he would talk in tender strains of everything that was good, true and beautiful. The hermit priest, as he was now called, had of earthly possession so little that he could have vied with the lowly Nazarene in the splendor of his poverty. Of crucifixes, devotional mementos and other religious trinkets, sweetly suggestive of better and happier days, he had preserved a few. His greatest solace was in half a dozen well-thumbed small volumes between whose covers none peered but himself. He was ever regular at his devotions, for notwithstanding he had grievously sinned, as he declared, he was constantly striving to outlive its horrid memory and to repair the injury he had done his master's cause. He possessed one article of property that tinges his sojourn at Council Grove, with a delightfully romantic remembrance among the very limited number now living there, who knew of the vagaries of the remarkably strange man. These were sometimes his confidants and friends, within a limited degree. It was a rudely constructed mandolin, which during all the years of his erratic pilgrimage he had tenaciously clung to, until its exterior presented a confused mass of scratches and dents, indicative of hard usage. Despite all that, curious as it may seem, by some mysterious means, its rich tones had been preserved in their original purity and depth. On the evenings of Kansas incomparable Indian summer, during the early part of which season he was living in his cave near Council Grove, the Hermit Priest, seated on a projecting ledge at the mouth of his rocky and isolated retreat, would sweep the strings of his treasured instrument with a touch as light, deft, and sorrowfully tender, as a maiden whose pure young heart had just been thrilled by his first breath of love. To those who were so fortunate, and they were very few, as to be invited to spend an hour with him, his vesper hymns, rendered in his exquisite, thinner voice, were as soul-inspiring as the gentle earnestness of a young girl's prayer. His some-time Neapolitan songs and soft airs of his native isle were as sweet as the chant of the angels he invoked, when in a deeply religious mood, and his heart-feeling tones mingled sadly with the sowing of the evening breeze in the dense foliage on the margin of the placid neosho that flowed nearby. Thus, in the calm enjoyment of his self-imposed solitude, he lived with the moss his bed, the cave his humble cell, his food, the fruits, his drink, the crystal well. Among the various languages necessary for the communication of ideas between the motley crowd comprising the civilization of the then remote region, there was none that Matteo Boccallini did not understand and speak fluently, so liberal had been his education in that particular. Once, when a stabbed and dying Mexican, the victim of some gambling quarrel among the drivers of the bull-train to which he was attached, asked a service for the repose of his soul, Father Francesco hastened to the anxious man's side. There he administered the last sacrament of the church to the expiring creature in his own language, who died with a resigned look upon his face as he listened to the absolving words he could perfectly understand, which was a thing of joy to the holy man who had performed the sacred office. One day, late in the month of October, now nearly 36 years ago, the hermit priest saw walking through the streets of the little village a dark-visaged person, clad in clerical garb, and whom Boccallini believed to be the lover of the woman he had wronged in his youth, and that the stranger, if it were he whom he suspected, could never be persuaded to think that Matteo was not holy to be blamed for the life he had blasted. He told his friends he could no longer tarry with them, he would go away to the mountains of New Mexico, seek another cave, rear again the blessed cross, emblem of his master's suffering, and once more live in solitude from which he had here somewhat strayed. He frequently, when in a communicative mood, had talked much to them of the delights of absolute solitude. It was, he argued, the nurse of enthusiasm. That enthusiasm was the parent of genius. That solitude had always been eagerly sought for in every age. It was the inspiration of the dominant religion of every nation, that their founders were men who, seeking the quiet and seclusion of caverns or the desert, and subordinating the flesh to the spirit, had visions of the beyond. The veil hiding the better world had been lifted for them, and their teachings had come down to us through the eons elevating man above the brook. The next morning, after the sudden appearance of the stranger, whose presence had so discomposed the usually calm priest, a delicious morning in the month of autumn's holocaust, when the breeze was billowing the russet-colored grass upon the virgin prairies, Father Francesco gathered up his few precious relics, and, accepting the escort of a caravan just ready to start for New Mexico, left Council Grove, his cave, and the warm friends he had made there, forever. The caravan, under the protection of which the frightened prelate went westward, was owned by a Mexican don, a brother-in-law to Kit Carson. He still resides near the spot where the ill-fated Italian, a year or two after his wearisome journey across the Great Plains, was hurried to eternity. This venerable Mexican and old-time voyageur of the almost obliterated Santa Fe Trail, when I last visited him at his hospitable home in the mountains fourteen years ago, entertained me by relating some of the more prominent characteristics of his strange compagnon du voyage during that memorable trip with the Hermit Priest from Council Grove, twenty years previously. He said that this strange man would never ride either on horseback or in one of the wagons despite the earnest invitation extended to him each recurring morning by the master of the caravan, preferring to trudge along uncomplainingly day after day during the sunny hours beside the plodding oxen through the alkali dust of the desert, and faltered neither would he at night partake of the shelter of a tent constantly offered, but as constantly and persistently refused, preferring to roll himself up in a single course wrap, seeking some quiet spot removed from the corral of wagons, where for an hour or two under the scintillating stars he would tell off his beads or accompanied by his mandolin, chant some sad refrain to the occasion until long after the camp had gone to sleep. For his subsistence he himself caught and cooked the prairie dog ground squirrel and gopher. Only occasionally when hard pressed would he accept a meal which was constantly proffered by the Mexican teamsters begging the Hermit Priest to share with them. For in their love for the Catholic Church, to which they were so devoted, he seemed to untutored minds, a most zealous but humble exponent of their religious tenets and visible form of their sacred faith. Thus reticent, thoughtful and devout, he marched with the caravan for many weeks, until at last the city of Holy Faith, the quaint old Spanish town of Santa Fe, was reached. There he parted company with his escort, and for nearly a year afterward wandered all over that portion territory of New Mexico and into Arizona, still seeking the al-Nashir of his dreams, a suitable abiding place in the recesses of the hills, and a people whose souls might be made to attune with his. But he miserably failed in all that he desired during his sad pilgrimage throughout the southwest. Then turning northward again he slowly and almost despairingly retraced his steps until he arrived at the sequestered valley of the Cepillo, where he at last found a humbled class and his coveted cave on the summit of the mighty mountain, described at the opening of this chapter. There, content after so many years of unsatisfied wandering, he commenced that life of religious administrations, and exercised those unselfish acts of kindness and love, whose remembrance is imprinted so indelibly on the hearts of his devoted followers, for through suffering he soothed and through sickness he nursed. There again under the constellations, which nowhere else shine more brilliantly, were the strains of his mandolin and the rich notes of that magnificent voice heard by the enchanted people who listened each evening at the doors of their rude adobe huts in the valley below, the huge hill that cast its great shadow over them. Notwithstanding the hermit priest had found a class congenial to his soul's demands, his eccentricity still clung to him. His persistency in living apart from his chosen people enforced them to always speak of him as El Solitario, the solitary man. He would visit among them to solace and nurse the sick and give absolution to the dying, which his and their religion so beautifully promises, but he would never break bread within their hospitable doors, preferring and insisting always upon a crust and a cup of cold water outside. Nor would he sleep upon the soft woollen cotons, which even the poorest of New Mexican owns afford, but absorbed by devout thoughts, wrapped himself in his single coarse blanket and laid himself on the bare ground, or if it was stormy in some outhouse with the sheep and goats. This, of course, was part of his self-imposed penance from which he never deviated, rigorous as it was. One day, after his familiar and beloved face had been missed for more than a week by his devotees, a sorrowful party went out to seek him. They found him dead on the rugged trail to his lonely home. His beads enfolded in his delicately shaped fingers, and his countenance wearing a saint-like expression. A poisoned dagger in his heart by the hand of an assassin had accomplished the foul deed which for a whole lifetime during every moment of the unhappy man's active and dreaming hours was a continually disturbing fear. Thus passed away, as he had predicted in his youth, the eccentric but holy Mateo Boccolini, hermit-priest of the old Santa Fe trail, and the El Solitario of the New Mexican mountains, a man of sorrow and grief, yet with as much repentance and as many penances as sins. One of those ethereal beings who might become physically unclean, but never spiritually impure. For years after his departure from Council Grove, the hermit-priest's cave was an object of much interest, until within a very short period when the quarryman tore down its last vestige upon its time-worn walls could be traced rudely carved, his name Mateo Boccolini, across Jesu Maria and Capri, all so dear to the lonely and sad man's heart. Unknown perhaps to the reader, in the very heart of the Wichita range in the Indian territory, there is an immense hill, which by triangulation, effected during the winter campaign of 1868-69 by the engineer officer attached to General Sheridan's headquarters, is three hundred and ten feet high. At its base there is a clear running river, or properly a creek, for it is only about seventy feet wide. The shape, which the stream assumes at the immediate foot of the mountain, is that of a crescent, forming quite a large pool or basin. Under the shadow, which the great mass of disrupted rock throws over the water at certain hours, the pool looks as black as ink. The moment the water emerges into the sunlight again, it sparkles and scintillates until it is painful for the eyes to rest upon its rapidly flowing ripple, that the great elevation of this detached portion of the range was caused by some extraordinary convulsion, which moved it from its normal position, is apparent and curiosity is excited to assign a reason for the limited area of the upheaval. The stream, which flows so picturesquely at the base of the isolated mountain, is called by the Indians Medicine Bluff Creek, the hill above it Medicine Bluff. From the time when the memory of the various tribes runeth not to the contrary, Medicine Bluff has been a prominent and sacred spot in the traditions and legitimate history of the many nations of savages, but especially in that of the Comanches and Wichitaus. It was a sort of Our Lady of Lourdes place where the sick were cured in the most miraculous manner after they had been given up by the celebrated doctors of the tribe. If the party afflicted had never seriously grieved the great spirit, the cure was a sudden as marvelous. If the sick, who were carried to the top of the bluff by their friends, had at any time offended the great spirit, they died at once, the wolves devoured their flesh, and their bones were transported to the land of terrors. Sometimes when the individual taken up to invoke the aid of the Indian god had lived an exemplary life instead of being cured of his fleshly ills, he or she was translated, like Elisha of old, to the happy hunting grounds. The Comanches declared that at night the great spirit frequently rested on the top of the mountain, and when that occurred the whole region to the verge of the horizon was lighted up with a strange glow, resembling that emanating from an immense prairie fire reflected upon the clouds. The Indians also claimed that no dew or rain ever fell upon the extreme summit of the bluff, where the sick were to lie and wait for the manifestation of the manatee. Nor did the wind blow there, so that it was a calm spot comprising all the essentials to a speedy recovery. One among the many traditions connected with the charming but weird place was told by an aged warrior of the Comanches one evening around the campfire in 1868, after white winged peas had spread her wings once more over the prairies, and we were pulling vigorously at our briar woods filled with fragrant lone jack. The old fellow wrinkled and black with the smoke of the tepee in which he had lived for nearly eighty years, and now wrapped in that of his stone pipe, which he sucked as industriously as an infant, told this story. There was, once, ages before the white man had invaded the country of the Indian, a very old warrior who, sick and despondent, went to the top of medicine bluff to be cured. He, for many years, had ceased to hunt the buffalo, lived with the women of the tribe, and settled himself down to a peaceful calm, awaiting the time when he should be called to join his fathers. One day he struggled to the top of the bluff in the hope that he might die and be carried to bodily to the happy hunting grounds as he knew from the traditions of his tribe others had been before him. He had been absent from his lodge and the village for three nights. During all that time the frightened people down below, who had been diligently watching, observed a great blaze on the top of the mountain as if it were a signifier to warn them of some impending danger to the tribe. On the third morning a young warrior was seen descending the trail from the heights of the bluff, drawing near to the village. When he entered its streets he looked about him in evident surprise. He approached the chief's lodge and sat down by the fire. The warriors of the tribe gazed at him with awe and that curiosity which a stranger ever evokes. No one seemed to recognize him. All remained silent waiting for him to speak. Lighting his pipe with a coal he took a pull at it himself, Indian fashion, then passed it around the circle. The warriors noticed that his pipe stem was decorated with the feathers of the gray eagle denoting him to be a great warrior, one who had captured a large number of scalps, so they regarded him with still greater wonder. After everyone in the circle around the chief's fire had taken a whiff the stranger commenced his story. After I arrived at the top of the medicine bluff I looked off at the vast expanse which surrounded me. I saw the village of my people. I could hear the dog's bark and the children laugh. I could hear my own family mourning as if someone had been taken from them. I saw the buffalo covering the prairie and the cunning wolf lying in wait to pounce upon his prey. When I again looked all around to me and beheld the young warriors in their pride and strength I asked myself, why do I live any longer? My fires have gone out. I must follow my fathers. The world is beautiful to the young, but to the old it has no pleasure. I will go there. With this upon my mind I continued far away toward the setting sun are the hunting grounds of my people. Then I gathered all my strength and leaped from the giddy height before me. I knew no more of the woes of this life. I was caught up in the mid-air and suddenly transported to a country where game was countless, where there was no wind, no rain, no sickness, where all the great chiefs of the Comanches who had ever died were assembled, where they were all young again and chased the buffalo and feasted as when on earth. There was no darkness. The people were continually happy. Beautiful birds sang on the trees. The war hoop was never more heard. The old chief had been rejuvenated and now came back to his people with all his youthful vigor to live again with his own tribe. The story of the strange warrior captivated the Indians. He at once became an oracle and great medicine man in his tribe. His power to cure the sick was wonderful and his council was implicitly obeyed ever afterward. Medicine Bluff has, of course, lost much of its prestige among the Indians for the reason that since the extinction of the buffalo and other large game, the tribes have been scattered, being generally pretty closely confined to the reservations, while the children taught in schools and the superstitions, or at least many of them, having passed gradually out of the remembrance of the new generation, known only to the few old warriors left. The savage, like the white man, in his disappointments and miseries sometimes resorts to suicide as a cure-all for and end-all of life's burdens. Among the powerful Comanches, Medicine Bluff was, for an unknown period, one of their famous places, like the Grand Nong Column in Paris, from which to terminate an unsatisfactory and miserable existence. The Bluff was also among the Vaux for the young warriors who were to go for the first time in battle with the tried soldiers of the tribe to propitiate the great spirit. The sun in that nation, as in the old tribe of Natchez, symbolized their god. For three consecutive mornings, the youthful aspirant for military honors was obliged to go to the highest point of the Great Hill, where, armed with his buffalo hide and alone, he was, with the utmost reverence, to present the front of his shield to the early morning sun, as its rays gilded the rocky crags of the mountain, assuming the attitude of a warrior in the heat of battle on guard against his enemy's spear and shower of arrows. This ceremony on the part of the young novitiate, if reverently performed, gave his shield invulnerable power. A story told to many of us during the campaign referred to by one of the oldest of the Comanches, the oldest Indian I have ever seen, Little Beaver of the Osages, is very interesting, showing to what an art the despised savage of thirty years ago reduced storytelling. The dried up old warrior prefaced his tale by stating that he was so aged that he was brother of the highest peak of the Wichita Mountains, at the foot of which we were camped on a cold December night in 1868. Here is the story. So many years ago that it seemed like a dream, even to the narrator, the Comanches were the greatest tribe on earth. Their warriors were as numerous as a herd of buffalo on the Arkansis in the fall. They were more cunning than the Coyote. Their herd of ponies contained so many animals, all fine and fat, that no man could count them in a year. All the other Indians of the plains and mountains feared and trembled at the name of Comanche. In the tribe, as is ever the case, there were two warriors who excelled all the others in their prowess. One was young and the other middle aged. They were very jealous of each other, each constantly attempting the deed of daring at which it was hoped the rival would bulk. One fall, when the Indian summer made the air redolent with a sweet perfume of thousands of flowers, and the mountains were bathed in the amber mist of that delicious season, all the great warriors were returning from one of their most famous victories. They camped near the shadow of Medicine Bluff late one afternoon, where the young brave, who was quietly in his pipe as he hovered over the little campfire on which he was broiling a piece of antelope steak, happened to fix his gaze on the highest point of the bluff, and in that position continued for several minutes, wrapped in a most profound study while all the rest of the band stopped whatever they were doing and gazed at him as intently. Suddenly he rose to his full height and cast a defiant look upon the warriors scattered around on the grass, who, excited at his strange manner, sprang up to learn what he meant. Presently he turned his face toward the sun, which was about two hours high, and broke out with this boast. No warrior equals me. I am the greatest of all the Comencies. I resemble that mountain, pointing with his spear to the highest peak of Medicine Bluff. My actions are as far above yours as that mountain is above the stream at its foot. Is there a warrior here who dare follow me? Then he shook his spear and brandished his shield and defiance of any and all. His rival was all the time swelling with rage and pride. He knew the boast was intended for him alone, although he was the elder of the two. He approached the braggart with all the dignity of the savage that he was, and striking himself on the bosom several times exclaimed, So, you are the greatest warrior of the Comencies? You are the buffalo that leads the herd? I am the old wool to be driven away by the cowardly coyote and die, leaving my bones to whiten? You ask me to follow you? Never. I never follow. I will go with you. The remainder of the band gathered around the two celebrated warriors. They wondered what new deeds of daring they were going to attempt as the rivals arrayed themselves in their best buckskin dress and mounted their favorite ponies. With shields held in a defying position, their faces painted and their bonnets of war eagle feathers flowing in the breeze, they rode away without another word. They forwarded the stream. The younger now started up the difficult trail which led to the sacred summit of the St. Bluff, where, stopping his uprighted steed, he pointed to the fearful precipice a few rods off and exclaimed, You have followed me here? Follow me farther. Then shouting the war-hoop, which made the echoes of the mountains awaken, and thumping the flanks of his animal vigorously, he darted toward the awful brink. His rival instantly raised his pony on his hind legs, and with a hoop more piercing followed the young man, who, when he had reached the edge of the precipice, failed in courage and pulled his pony violently back on his haunches. The elder saw his chance. With an awful yell of defiance and triumph, he forced his horse to make the terrible leap in mid-air. All the warriors on the grassy bottom below watched with eager interest what was going on above them. They heard the hoop of the aged warrior as he jumped into the awful abyss. They saw him sit as calmly as if in his lodge, as he descended, seated as upright on his pony as if his animal were walking the prairie, and above all they heard his clear voice as it rung out in the clouds, greatest of all the Comanches. Sadly they winded their way to the foot of the Bluff, where both horse and brave rider lay a mangled mass on the rocks, the old warrior with a smile on his wrinkled face of unmistakable triumph. The boasting rival became a wanderer among the tribes. His name was a curse of all Indians. The very dogs of the camp snapped at him as he passed. At last, overcome with remorse at his cowardice and treachery, he killed himself. One day he was found dead on the grave of his rival at the foot of the Bluff. His body was eaten by the coyotes. His shield and spear, by which he had been identified, were lying on the ground at his feet.