Here is the relevant text: Often there are serious results growing out of a stam-
pede, either by mules or a herd of buffalo. A portion of
the Fifth United States Infantry had a narrow escape
from a buffalo stampede on the Old Trail, in the early
summer of 1866. General George A. Sykes, who com-
manded the Division of Regulars in the Army of the
Potomac during the Civil War, was ordered to join his
regiment, stationed in New Mexico, and was conducting
a body of recruits, with their complement of officers, to
fill up the decimated ranks of the army stationed at the
various military posts, in far-off Greaser Land.
The command numbered nearly eight hundred, includ-
ing the subaltern officers. These recruits, or the majority
of them at least, were recruits in name only; they had
seen service in many a hard campaign of the Rebellion.
Some, of course, were beardless youths just out of their
THE BUFFALO 221
teens, full of tliat martial ardour which, induced so many
young men of the nation to follow the drum on the re-
mote plains and in the fastnesses of the Rocky Moun-
tains, where the wily savages still held almost undisputed
sway, and were a constant menace to the pioneer settlers.
One morning, when the command had just settled itself
in careless repose on the short grass of the apparently
interminable prairie at the first halt of the day's march,
a short distance beyond Fort Earned, a strange noise, like
the low muttering of thunder below the horizon, greeted
the ears of the little army.
All were startled by the ominous sound, unlike any-
thing they had heard before on their dreary tour. The
general ordered his scouts out to learn the cause ; could
it be Indians? Every eye was strained for something out
of the ordinary. Even the horses of the officers and the
mules of the supply-train were infected by something
that seemed impending ; they grew restless, stamped the
earth, and vainly essayed to stampede, but were pre-
vented by their hobbles and picket-pins.
Presently one of the scouts returned from over the
divide, and reported to the general that an immense herd
of buffalo was tearing clown toward the Trail, and from
the great clouds of dust they raised, which obscured the
horizon, there must have been ten thousand of them.
The roar wafted to the command, and which seemed so
mysterious, was made by their hoofs as they rattled over
the dry prairie.
The sound increased in volume rapidly, and soon a black,
surging mass was discovered bearing right down on the
Trail. Behind it could be seen a cavalcade of about five
hundred Cheyennes, Comanehes, and Kiowas, who had
maddened the shaggy brutes, hoping to capture the train
without an attack by forcing the frightened animals to
overrun the command.
222 THE OLD SANTA F& TRAIL
Luckily, something caused the herd to open before it
reached the foot of the divide, and it passed in two
masses, leaving the command between, not two hundred
feet from either division of the infuriated beasts.
The rage of the savages was evident when they saw that
their attempt to annihilate the troops had failed, and they
rode off sullenly into the sand hills, as the number of
soldiers was too great for them to think of charging.
