Reminiscences of Indian Scouting [pp. 151-169]

Reminiscences of Indian Scouting.
blanche. The world -that much of it
at least, as was contained in Arizona
and New Mexico- was my oyster, which
I could swallow at leisure and pleasure,
provided old Ju or his likes did not gobble me in the mean time, as his own
bivalve.
If my supplies of any kind gave out
before I was ready to come back, I was
authorized to drop into any military post
near my line of march and refit with
such astonishing latitude, -for those
days of narrow-minded public retrenchment, when Uncle Sam had such a fit
of economy on him that he forgot to
pay his army for six months for the
want of an appropriation by Congress,
an unfortunate lapsus memoriy which
compelled more than two-thirds of its officers to pawn everything they had to
keep themselves and families from starving, -that I could not rid myself of an
unpleasant suspicion that somebody
wanted to get rid of me by affording me
all opportunities and temptations to run
off altogether with my whole outfit, and
either colonize or capture Mexico, with
a view to future annexation.
All things being ready I crossed the
Rubicon, like a modern North American
Caesar, by fording the Gila, and started
on my winding, scouting way, with a
weak possibility of winning prickly laurels as an Indian fighter - provided I
found any to fight in the weary flea-hunt
of aboriginal warfare-and with a strong
probability of catching acute rheumatism or the breakbone fever; for it was
January, with snow on the ground and
more in the air, and I had nothing more
substantial for shelter than a pocket
handkerchief of a "dog tent."
The order of march of an Indian scouting company is as composite as its organization. On roads (I soon left them
behind me to wander without chart or
compass, figuratively speaking, in the
wilderness) the officer in command, with
his chief of scouts riding alongside, leads
the column, followed by the Indians on
foot in a sort of happy-go-lucky route
step. The packtrain comes next, strung
along at unequal intervals like beads on
a rosary, with every John Daisy in it
grunting and groaning, singly or in concert, at man's inhumanity in overloading
them,- with occasional long-drawn-out
hee-haws of fiendish exultation as the
camp kettles and the tin pans are shaken
off the packs, and rattle here and there
on the ground, or roll with clattering
echoes irrecoverably down precipices in
their repeated and almost always successful endeavors to get rid of their
loads; lashing, cross-lashing, and interlacing, and roundknots, square knots and
all other kinds of knots, to the contrary
notwithstanding.
The din is increased by the ingeniousry constructed, vociferously shouted,
loud-mouthed Anglo-Hispano blasphemies of the packers and vaqueros. who,
when your hair stands on end and you
order them peremptorily to shut up, answer exculpatingly that a scouting packmule will not budge an inch, but fall
down sound asleep, unless he is sworn at
continually in such a horrifying way that
our army in Flanders would have stuck
its fingers in its ears in consternation.
From actual experience, after months
of observation, I know that there is
truth in the assertion, that the best
packers are those who make the least
use of the whip and the most use of their
tongues; and in justice to a class of
much abused and abusive citizens I record the fact in the columns of the OVERLAND, and it is to be hoped that the other recording angel will take note of it in
summing up the poor devils' sins in that
respect.
The cavalry detachment acts as rear
guard, and it is the only part of the outfit that retains a civilized military appearance, with neat dark blue flannel
shirts and campaign hat's; for the commanding officer himself gradually becomes so demoralized outwardly by his
efforts to assimilate with his mixed sub
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