filled with sneering comment on the hopelessness of ever subduing the
savage tribes of the Northwest when the government intrusts the duty to
upstart officers of the regular service whose sole conception of their
functions is to treat with insult and contempt the hardy frontiersman
whose mere presence with the command would be of incalculable benefit.
"We have it from indisputable authority," says _The Miner's Light_ of
Brandy Gap, "that when our esteemed fellow-citizen Hank Mulligan and
twenty gallant shots and riders like himself went in a body to
General---- at the cantonment and offered their services as volunteers
against the Sioux now devastating the homesteads and settlements of the
Upper Missouri and Yellowstone valleys, they were treated with haughty
and contemptuous refusal by that bandbox caricature of a soldier and
threatened with arrest if they did not quit the camp. When _will_ the
United States learn that its frontiers can never be purged of the Indian
scourges of our civilization until the conduct of affairs in the field
is intrusted to other hands than these martinets of the drill-ground? It
is needless to remark in this connection that the expedition led by
General---- has proved a complete failure, and that the Indians easily
escaped his clumsily-led forces."

The gamblers, though baffled for the time being, of course "get square,"
and more too, with the unfortunate general in this sort of warfare, but
they are a disgusted lot as they hang about the wagon-train as last of
all it is being hitched-in to leave camp. Some victims, of course, they
have secured, and there are no devices of commanding officers which can
protect their men against those sharks of the prairies when the men
themselves are bound to tempt Providence and play. There are two
scowling faces in the cavalry escort that has been left back with the
train, and Captain Hull, the commanding officer, has reprimanded
Sergeants Clancy and Gower in stinging terms for their absence from the