Show ° CAMP HPRtWR The Story of One Wild Nierlit Among the Indians You will wonder of course why a sol diers camp should have received such a name but it is on the military records and no man will ever attempt to explain it to you without grieving over the recolleo tions aroused thereby It was in the Indian country on the Kansas Kan-sas frontier when the red men were mak ing such a fight against the troops sent out after the close of the rebellion They had swooped down on the Smoky Hill stage route and scalped and Slaughtered right and left and our command had been hurried hur-ried forward to protect such settlors as might have escaped and to open the route again Day after day the red men hovered on our flanks and night after night they crept upon us like serpents and sent their silent arrows into the camp to find living targets One night when the day had been full of excitement and when it seemed as if the I Sioux had determined to retreat no further I tho sentinels wore warned to extra vigi lance We know that peril menaced us and we who stood sentry after midnight peered Into the darkness with bated breath L j i and were ready to fire at the first suspicious I suspi-cious sound At 1 oclock I thought I heard a light footstep on the grass It was a dark night with now and then a gust of wind sweeping up with lonesome sound and I could not be sure I heard aright I waited with finger ou the trigger ready to fire ill heard the footstep again but it did not come to me Scarcely ten minutes had when nn passed tho sentinel on my right who was only thirty feet away fired into the darkness The report of his carbine had not died away when a loud I wild scream rang out upon the night and every man who heard I it knew that it was uttered by a woman It is a 1Z00d many vear nnllr tn sh 4 I night but I remember every incident as well as if only a week had passed Now and then I have dreamed of it and that scream has aroused me and taken all my nerve As soon as we could investigate we found an amazing thinga woman lying dead on the grass with a yearold baby in her arms I The sentinel had shot her dead in her tracks but the baby was still asleep with ono of her arms hugging it to her breast Wo looked and looked and it was hard to believe we saw aright It was a settlers wife as was afterwards known who had escaped a massacre more than forty miles away She had wandered around for five days suffering with hunger hun-ger and thirst and had no doubt become crazed with anxiety and exhaustion There was none but old veterans in that camp but there were tears in all eyes when that poor deaQ body was brought into camp and when the wakened baby cried with fright and hunger and held out its lit tle hands to the very trooper who had fired upon the mother No one could blame him in the least but he blamed himself When I Ho realized what Ho Hart Artnr Virt M A 1 away from us without a word and walked away as men walk in their sleep We had washea tho mothers lifeblood off the babys hands and the colonel himsell was feeding it with tho gruel hastily prepared when there came another shot and another alarm The trooper had gone just without the lines of the camp and fired a bullet into his own heart Remorse had driven him to it Somewhere in the west that boy baby now grown to manhood still lives but the two graves wo dug next morning were years ago levelled and obliterated from all sight but that God At tho last great day he will awaken the dust of their dead M QUAID |