"The _Chippewa Falls_!" exclaimed every one in a breath, as she steamed majestically into full view.

Close behind her came the Alone and then the spectators watched the bend for the third steamer, the old _Island City_, so pleasantly remembered by the staff officers. But she did not appear; and shortly the _Chippewa Falls_ glided up to the bank and a landing plank was thrown out. General Sully stepped aboard and heartily grasped the hand of Captain Hutchison, saying,

"I am delighted to see you, Captain. We are badly in need of you. How long have you been waiting for us?"

"Ten days," replied Captain Hutchison, broadly smiling his pleasure at seeing the army after his tedious days of expectation.

"So long? I congratulate you on your quick trip up this unknown river,"

said the General.

"Rea, back here with the _Alone_, and I, have been the first to navigate it," replied the Captain, with a little pardonable pride.

"Rea and you?" exclaimed the General, anxiously. "Where is Lamont with the _Island City_?"

"I'm sorry to tell you, General Sully," returned Captain Hutchison, "that the _Island City_ struck a snag a couple of miles below the mouth of the Yellowstone on the evening we were entering. She sank very quickly and boat and cargo are a total loss, though Lamont is trying to get the engines out of her and hopes that one of the boats coming down from Fort Benton will take them on board and carry them to St. Louis for him."

General Sully and his officers stood aghast at this disastrous piece of news. Finally the a.s.sistant Adjutant General, Captain Pell, spoke up.

"That puts us in fine shape," he lamented. "She had nearly all the corn, didn't she?"

"Fifty thousand pounds," replied General Sully, looking very much chagrined. "And most of the barrelled pork, and the building materials for the post on the Yellowstone. We shall have to give up building that this year. How much corn have you aboard, Captain?" he asked, addressing Captain Hutchison.

"Very little; three or four thousand pounds," the other replied. "The _Alone_ has about the same."

"Enough for about one feed for all the stock in the command," said the General. "We shall have to pull out for Fort Union as quickly as possible."

"Yes, sir," Captain Hutchison interrupted; "and not only on account of your troops and animals, but on account of the boats. The river is falling very fast and I doubt if we can get over the shoals below here now without lightening the boats and double-tripping, or else using the army wagons to haul cargo around the shallow places."

"Well, we shall have to cross the river in the morning and march down at once," said the General, with a sigh as he thought of the plans he would have to forego on account of this unexpected misfortune. "Meanwhile my commissary and his a.s.sistant--" he indicated Lieutenant Bacon and Al,--"will issue rations to the troops for to-morrow's use from your boat."

The General went ash.o.r.e to greet Captain Rea, whose boat had now tied up to the bank, and the Lieutenant and Al went to work checking out provisions. It was Al's last experience as commissary's a.s.sistant, for when he returned to camp the General said to him:

"I think now will be your best opportunity for getting to Fort La Framboise promptly. You can go down with Captain Lamont if he takes a Fort Benton boat; and you had better start early in the morning so as not to miss him. The distance is about fifty miles and you can probably reach Fort Union to-morrow night. The fort is directly opposite the mouth of the Yellowstone, you know. I will give you a letter to the commanding officer advising him that the army will arrive there in the course of the next three or four days, and I will send an escort with you in case you should encounter Indians."

Al spent the evening in going about the camp and bidding good-bye to his many friends in the various commands, especially in the Dakota Cavalry, the Eighth Minnesota, and the Sixth Iowa. The Coyotes crowded around him as if he were one of their own number, and Captain Miner said to him,

"When you reach eighteen, come back to Dakota and enlist with us. I want such recruits as you."

And Corporal Wright added,

"Don't go after any more redskins the way you did at Tahkahokuty; for if the Coyotes aren't around, you'll lose your hair."

"I'll try to keep it on, Charlie," replied Al, laughing. "And, meantime, you fellows want to remember when you go into action that you're not the whole line of battle, or some of you may suddenly get bald, too."

His last visit was to Wallace Smith and it had a result both surprising and pleasant.

"I wish I could go with you, Al," said Wallace, feeling of his stiff, bandaged arm disgustedly. "It's awfully tiresome dragging around in an ambulance, away from the boys and not able to do anything. And Doctor Freeman tells me I shall not be fit for duty for at least three months; so, though I can use my right arm perfectly and feel as well as I ever did in my life, I suppose I'll have to be on the sick list all the time until the Second Brigade gets back to Minnesota."

Al looked at his friend steadily for a moment while an idea rapidly evolved itself in his mind.

"Well, why not go with me?" he asked at length. "If you're to be laid up for three months, anyway, you're ent.i.tled to sick furlough for that long. Yet you can ride, and shoot a revolver, and get around all right, and you can reach Minnesota in ninety days more comfortably for yourself and with less trouble to the army and the hospital corps by going on a boat to St. Louis and then up the Mississippi to St. Paul, than you can by marching overland with the column."

Wallace's eyes and mouth opened wide with sheer astonishment at the brilliance of this plan.

"You're a genius, Al," he exclaimed. "I believe it can be done, too.

It's against my principles to play off and I wouldn't think of trying to get away if it wasn't plain that I'm perfectly useless here for the rest of the season. But it will be bully if I can go down with you. Let's hunt up Doctor Freeman."

They found the Doctor, who was Medical Director of the army, at headquarters. He at once gave his approval to the plan and wrote a recommendation to Colonel Thomas that Private Wallace Smith, of the Eighth Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, be given a ninety-day furlough.

Colonel Thomas was quickly found, and in five minutes the furlough was issued, authorizing Wallace to be absent from his regiment until November 12, and to report for duty on or before that date at Fort Ridgely, Minnesota.

Next morning just after daybreak Al and Wallace, accompanied by twelve cavalrymen under a sergeant, boarded one of the steamers, which were already busy ferrying troops and wagons across the river. Here Al bade farewell to Lieutenant Dale and the other staff officers who had been his closest companions for so long. General Sully, as always devoting his personal attention to the care of his troops, was on the bank, directing the pa.s.sage of the river. He handed Al the letter to the Captain of Company I, Thirtieth Wisconsin Infantry, commanding at Fort Union, and shook hands with him heartily.

"I am sorry to be leaving the expedition so abruptly, General," said Al. "I wish I could stay with you until the campaign is finished."

"You won't miss much," returned the General. "The campaign is virtually over now and we shall be getting down to Fort Rice as rapidly as possible. We will march for Fort Union from here as soon as we are rid of these emigrants, who will go on alone to the gold fields after we have taken them across the river on the boats." Then he continued, kindly, "I wish you the best of success in finding your brother, my boy.

I hope we shall meet again, and if you decide to try for West Point and I can help you in any way, let me know. Take care of yourself, now, and don't indulge too much in your weakness for getting into ticklish places. Good-bye!"

CHAPTER XVI

ADRIFT IN A BARGE

Once across the Yellowstone, the little party set out at a good pace, for they had a long, hard day's journey before them. They found the country as dest.i.tute of gra.s.s as it had been west of the Little Missouri, and the ground seemed to have been fairly burned to powdery dust by the sun. As they travelled over the desolate country, they often thought pityingly of the troops behind them, who would have to traverse it much more slowly than they were doing and would, therefore, feel its discomforts more keenly. But, at least, the army would be near the river, so there would be no more such suffering from thirst as had been experienced in the terrible march out of the Bad Lands. Not an Indian was seen during the day; and the party, dusty and weary, rode up to the bank of the Missouri after nightfall. It was too wide and dangerous a stream to cross in the darkness; so bivouac was made until morning, and then, in response to signals, several skiffs put off from Fort Union and came over. Some of the soldiers stripped and, putting their clothing and equipments in the boats, swam across the river on their horses, but Al and Wallace, as well as most of the men, rode over in the boats, holding the bridles of their horses and letting them swim behind.

On entering Fort Union, Al delivered his letter and then inquired for Captain Lamont.

"He is still down at the wreck of his steamer, about two miles below here," the commanding officer informed him. "But if you are going down with him, you have arrived just in the nick of time. The steamer _Belle Peoria_ came down yesterday from Benton, and she is taking on the engines of the _Island City_ now. You had better get right down there or they may leave without you."

Al and Wallace galloped off down river at once, accompanied by two cavalrymen of their late escort to bring back their horses. Leaving so hastily gave them time for only a glance at Fort Union, though they sincerely wished for an opportunity to examine it more closely, for it was an interesting, and in that wilderness land, even an imposing structure. Built in 1829 as the then most advanced trading post of the American Fur Company, it had become in later years the centre of the fur trade of a vast territory, extending from the Rocky Mountains to the British line. It was larger and more substantially built than any other trading fort in the American West, and those who had seen them declared that no post of the Hudson's Bay Company in the British Possessions compared with it. Its stockade was two hundred and forty by two hundred and twenty feet in size, built of ma.s.sive timbers and flanked by two large stone bastions, well armed with cannon, while several of its numerous interior buildings were also of stone. George Catlin, the distinguished artist who travelled all over the New World in making up his great collection of paintings of the American Indians, had visited the fort in 1832; Maximilian, Prince of Neuwied, the distinguished Austrian naturalist, had been there in 1833; and in 1843 the equally famous American naturalist, John James Audubon, had made the post his headquarters for some time. But when Al and Wallace pa.s.sed through it, the days of the old establishment were numbered; two years later it was to be dismantled, the new army post of Fort Buford, two miles below and nearly opposite the spot where the _Island City_ had sunk, taking its place as a military establishment.

The boys had not ridden far across the bottom, which was partly timbered and partly open gra.s.s land, when they saw the wreck of the steamer, lying out beyond a sh.o.r.e bar, her smoke stacks and upper works protruding above the water. The _Belle Peoria_ was moored beside her and men could be seen working on both vessels. Al breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that they were not too late. Riding on across the bar, the boys were soon at the water's edge and about one hundred feet from the steamers. In answer to their shouts a small boat immediately put off from the _Belle Peoria_ and came over for them. It was with the regret of parting from an old friend that Al for the last time caressed the rough neck and soft nose of Cottontail, who had borne him so faithfully through many perils and privations. The little horse nuzzled Al's cheek affectionately, as if he realized that they were bidding each other good-bye; then, with a strong hand-clasp from each of the soldiers, the boys stepped into the yawl and were rowed to the _Belle Peoria_.

It did not take long to explain to Captain Lamont their object in coming, and he seemed heartily glad of their company.

"You didn't get here any too soon," said he. "We shall be off in an hour. When we get to Fort La Framboise I have no doubt the captain of the _Belle_ will stop long enough for you to find out if your brother is there, Al, and if he is, we can all go on together to St. Louis."

The _Belle Peoria_ was under way at the expected time. Though the water was quite low, her pilots were skilful and knew the river so thoroughly that for some time she met with no unusual delays. After their months of strenuous campaigning it was pleasant for the boys to lounge about on the steamer's decks with nothing to do except watch the interweaving ripples of the river's surface, the occasional bitterns and cranes which flopped up from the lonely sandbars and sailed slowly away as the boat approached, and the rise and fall of the endless succession of bluffs along the sh.o.r.es. In a few weeks the Northwestern Indian Expedition would be following the crests of the northward bluffs on its way to Fort Rice, where it would break up; the Second Brigade, with the exceptions of garrisons left at Fort Rice and Fort Berthold, returning to Minnesota; while the First Brigade would go on down to Fort Sully, Fort Randall, and Sioux City.

After the crushing defeats which had been administered to the Indians at Tahkahokuty and the Little Missouri, it did not seem that steamboats on the Missouri ought to be in much danger from them; but the people on the _Belle Peoria_--both the members of her own crew and those of the _Island City_--knew that undoubtedly many hostiles had scattered from the broken Sioux camps who might be encountered anywhere along the river, eager for a chance to waylay a steamboat and slaughter a few of her crew in revenge for their own recent losses in battle. So, in laying the steamer up for the night, the men always "sparred her off"

from the bank by setting long poles between the gunwale and the sh.o.r.e, so that she could not be boarded; or, if a mid-channel sandbar was convenient, with water on both sides of it, she would be moored there.

Such precautions served well enough for night, but in the daytime the boat had to take her chances in following the channel close in against one sh.o.r.e or the other.

On the third day out from the Yellowstone the boat pa.s.sed Fort Berthold, a fur trading post and the agency of the Arickaree and Mandan Indians, about midway between Fort Union and Fort Rice. For some hours afterward she continued running at a good speed, and at length pa.s.sed a little below a beautiful forest on the left sh.o.r.e, called the Painted Woods. At this point there was a large sandbar in the middle of the river, while on the bank opposite to the woods the bluffs came sheer up to the river, and the pilot naturally chose the branch of the stream along their base, as the main channel will usually follow along a bluff bank. But in this case he soon found he had made a mistake, for he ran the boat into a pocket and could go no farther. There remained nothing to do but send out the yawl to sound through the other branch and find out if there was enough water there to carry the boat.

It occurred to Al that it would be a pleasant diversion to accompany the yawl, so he volunteered to pull one of the oars, and was accepted. The mate of the _Belle Peoria_, who was in charge of the yawl, ran into the other chute and soon found the channel; whereupon he signalled across the bar to the steamer, and while she was backing out and coming around, the crew of the yawl rowed over to the lower end of the Painted Woods and landed. The men pulled the boat's bow a little way out on the bank and then strolled away a few yards into the woods, where it was cool and shady. One man only remained in the yawl, and he, like Al, was a volunteer. He was Jim, the _Island City's_ deck hand who had quarrelled with Al on the up trip. In spite of several attempts to escape while near Fort Union, Jim had been unable to jump his round-trip contract with Captain Lamont, and was now reluctantly returning toward St. Louis and that Southern Confederacy which he supported so loudly in words and so feebly in deeds.