Danger Signals Part 38

One morning shortly after Wounded Knee with its direful results had been fought, I thought it would be a great joke to post a startling bulletin, just to start the men's tongues a-wagging.

So I wrote the following:

"Bulletin

"San Antonio, Texas, 12 26, 1890.

"Reported that the 6th and 9th Cavalry were ambuscaded yesterday by Sioux Indians under Crazy Horse, and completely wiped out of existence. Custer's Little Big Horn ma.s.sacre outdone. Not a man escaped."

I chuckled with fiendish glee as I posted this on the bulletin board and then started for breakfast. I thought some soldier would read it, tell it to the men of his company, and in that way the fun would commence. My scheme worked to perfection, because some of the men of G Company, (mine was D) had seen me stick it up and had come post haste to read. I started the ball rolling in my own company and in about a minute there were fifty men around me all jabbering like magpies as to the result of this awful ma.s.sacre. Of course, the regiment would be hurried north forthwith--no other regiment could do the work of annihilation so well as the 18th. Oh! no. Of course not!

Said my erstwhile friend and bunkie "Hickey" Flynn: "Av coorse, Moiles will be after sendin' a message to Lazelle to bring the Ateenth fut up at once, and thin the smas.h.i.+n' we will be after givin' them rid divils will make a wake look sick."

"Aw c.u.m off, Hickey," said Sullivan, "phat the divil does yez know av foightin' injuns? Phat were ye over in the auld sod? Nathin' but a turf digger. Phat were ye here before ye 'listed? Dom ye, I think ye belong to the Clan na Gael and helped to murther poor Doc Cronin, bad cess to ye."

A display of authority on the part of the top sergeant prevented a clash and the jaw-breaking contest proceeded. By this time the news had spread and the entire garrison were talking. Just as I was about to tell them that it was a fake pure and simple, I happened to glance towards my office, and Holy Smoke! there was my captain standing on his tiptoes (he was only five feet four) reading that confounded bulletin. I hadn't counted on any of the officers reading it. Generally they didn't get up until eight o'clock and by that time I would have destroyed the fake report.

The officers' club was in the same building as my office and the captain had come down early, evidently to get a--to read the morning paper (_which came at 4 P. M._) and his eye lighted on my bulletin. I saw him read it carefully, and then reaching up he tore it from the board and as quick as his little legs would carry him, he made a bee line for the commanding officer's quarters. I knew full well how the colonel would regard that bulletin when he found out it was a fake. I was able to discern a summary court-martial in my mind's eye, and that would knock my chances for a commission sky-highwards--because a man's military record must be absolutely spotless when he appears for examination. What was I to do? Just then I saw the captain go up the colonel's steps, ring the bell, and in a moment he was admitted. I felt that my corpse was laid out right then and there and the wake was about to begin.

A few moments later the commanding officer's orderly came in, and looking around for a minute, caught sight of me and said:

"Corporal, the commanding officer wants to see you at his quarters at once," and out he went. "Start the band to playing the 'Dead March in Saul,'" thought I, "because this is the beginning of a funeral procession in which I am to play the leading part." I walked as slowly as I could and not appear lagging, but I arrived at my crematory all too soon. I rapped on the door and in tones that made me s.h.i.+ver was bidden by the old man to come in. The colonel was standing in the middle of his parlor, wrapped in a gaudy dressing gown, and in his hand he held my mangled bulletin. Right at that minute I wished I had never heard a telegraph instrument click.

"Corporal," said the colonel, "what time did you receive this bulletin?"

"About six-fifteen, sir, immediately after reveille," I replied with a face as expressionless as a mummy's.

"Why did you not bring it to me direct as you have heretofore done?"

"Well, sir, I didn't think you were awake yet, and I did not want to disturb you."

"Have you any later news, corporal?"

"No sir, none, but I haven't been back to the office since, sir." Gee!

but that room was becoming warm!

"Are you certain as to the truth of this awful report?"

"It is probably as authentic as a great many stories that are started during times like these--that is all I know of it, sir." (Lord forgive me.)

"It seems almost too horrible to be true, and yet, one cannot tell about those Sioux. They're a bad lot--a devilish bad lot"--this to my captain--and then to me: "You go back to your office, corporal, and remain very close until you have a denial or a confirmation of this story and bring any news you may receive to me instanter. That's all corporal."

The "corporal" needed no second dismissal, and saluting I quickly got out of an atmosphere that was far from chilly to me.

Now, by my cussed propensity for joking, I had involved myself in this mess, and there was but one way out of it, and that was to brazen it out for a while longer and then post a denial of the supposed awful rumor.

_But the denial must come over the wire_, so when I reached my office I called up Spofford and told old man Livingston what I had done and what I wanted him to do for me, and in about half an hour he sent me a "bulletin" saying that the previous report had happily proved unfounded and the 6th and 9th Cavalry were all right. This message I took at once to the colonel and as he read it he heaved a big sigh of relief, but he dismissed me with a very peculiar look in his eye.

The next evening as I was pa.s.sing the colonel's quarters on my way to deliver a message to the hospital, I heard him remark to another officer, "Major, don't you think it is strange that the papers received to-day make no mention of that frightful report received-here yesterday morning relative to the supposed ma.s.sacre of the 6th and 9th Cavalry?"

No, the major didn't think it a bit strange. Maybe he knew that newspaper stories should be taken _c.u.m grano salis_, and then maybe he knew me.

There were no more "fake reports" from that office.

CHAPTER XXII

PRIVATE DENNIS HOGAN, HERO

It was while I was sitting around a barrack-room fire that I picked up the following story. There were a number of old soldiers in my company--men who had served twenty-five years in the army--and their fund of anecdote and excitement was of the largest size.

On Thanksgiving Day, 187--, Private Dennis Hogan, Company B, 29th United States Infantry, the telegraph operator at Fort Flint, Montana, sat in his dingy little "two by four" office in the headquarter building, communing with himself and cussing any force of circ.u.mstances that made him a soldier. The instruments were quiet, a good Thanksgiving dinner had been enjoyed and now the smoke from his old "T. D." pipe curled in graceful rings around his red head.

Denny was a smas.h.i.+ng good operator and some eighteen months before he had landed in St. Louis dead broke. All the offices and railroads were full and nary a place did he get. While walking up Pine street one morning his eye fell foul of a sign:--

"Wanted, able-bodied, unmarried men, between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-five, for service in the United States Army."

In his mind's eye he sized himself up and came to the conclusion that he would fill all the requirements. Now, he hadn't any great hankering for soldiering, but he didn't have a copper to his name and as empty stomachs stand not on ceremony, in he went and after being catechized by the recruiting sergeant, he was pounded for thirty minutes by the examining surgeon, p.r.o.nounced as sound as a dollar, and then sworn in "to serve Uncle Sam honestly and faithfully for five years. So help me G.o.d." The s.p.a.ce of time necessary to transform a man from a civilian to a soldier is of a very short duration, and almost before he knew it he was dressed in the plain blue of the soldier of the Republic. He was a.s.signed to B company of the 28th United States Infantry stationed at Fort Flint, Montana. The experience was new and novel to him, and the three months recruit training well nigh wore him out, but he stuck to it, and some two months after he had been returned to duty, he was detailed as telegraph operator vice Adams of G Company, discharged.

There he had remained since.

At four o'clock on the afternoon in question Denny was aroused from his reverie by the sounder opening up and calling "FN" like blue blazes. He answered and this is what he took:

"DEPARTMENT HEADQUARTERS ST. PAUL, MINN.

"November 26th, 187-

"COMMANDING OFFICER, "Fort Flint, Montana.

"Sioux Indians out. Prepare your command for instant field service. Thirty days' rations; two hundred rounds ammunition per man. Wire when ready.

"By command of Major General Wherry.

(Signed) SMITH, "a.s.sistant Adjutant-General."

Denny was the messenger boy as well as operator and without waiting to make an impression copy, he grabbed his hat and flew down the line to the colonel's quarters. That worthy was entertaining a party at dinner, and was about to give Hogan fits for bringing the message to him instead of to the post adjutant; but a glance at the contents changed things and in a moment all was bustle and confusion.

For weeks the premonitory signs of this outbreak had been plainly visible, but true to the red-tape conditions, the army could not move until some overt act had been committed. The generous interior department had supplied the Indians with arms and ammunition and then Mr. Red Devil under that prince of fiends incarnate, Sitting Bull, started on his campaign of plunder and pillage.

At eight o'clock that night Colonel Clarke wired his chief that his command was ready, and at midnight he received orders to proceed the next morning at daylight, by forced marches up to the junction of the forks of the Red Bud, and take position there to intercept the Indians should they attempt to cross. Two regiments from the more northern posts were due to reach there at the same time, and the combined strength of the three commands was supposed to be sufficient to drive back any body of Indians. There was little sleep in Fort Flint that night.

Now, Hogan wasn't much of a success as a garrison soldier, but when a chance for a genuine fight presented itself, all the Irish blood in his nature came to the surface, and after much pleading and begging, the adjutant allowed him to join his company, detailing Jones of D Company as operator in his stead. Jones wasn't as good an operator by far as Denny, but in a pinch he could do the work, and besides, he had just come out of the hospital and was unable to stand the rigors attendant upon a winter campaign in Montana.

Denny went to the company quarters in high glee and soon had his kit all packed. Some weeks before he had been out repairing the line and when he returned to the post he had left a small pocket instrument and a few feet of office wire in his haversack. He saw these things and was about to remove them, when something impelled him to take them along. What this was no one ever knew. Perhaps premonition.

The next morning just as the first dim shadows of early dawn stole over the snow-clad earth, the gallant old 29th, five hundred strong, swung out of Fort Flint, on its long tramp. From out of half-closed blinds on the officer's line gazed many a tear-stained face, and up on "Soapsuds Row" many an honest-hearted laundress was bemoaning the fates that parted her from her "ould mon."

The weather turned bitter cold and after seven days of the hardest kind of marching they reached and crossed the Red Bud just below the junction of the two forks. A strong position was taken and every disposition made to prevent surprise. The expected re-enforcement would surely come soon and then all would be safe.