His regular associates were the miscreants and low flung gamblers of the town, and his most frequent haunts the dens and dives where their evil games flourished unmolested.
Of the gang of thieves who were detected with stolen grain in their possession, but very few were brought to trial, and fewer still were punished. One or two of minor influence were selected as victims, and their conviction was procured in the courts. The other and more prominent leaders of the gang were permitted to go unpunished, and the officer afterwards openly and boldly boasted of the favoritism shown certain guilty but influential parties, who, through his connivance, were permitted to escape the punishment that was their due.
This profligate officer, who thus proved faithless to the trust imposed on him, to gratify his own personal designs and illegitimate purposes, when leaving the country left behind him another sprig of his paternity, in the shape of a curbstone-shyster, whether to take charge of the bastard responsibility aforesaid, or to render aid and encouragement to the gang of outcasts, thugs and petty imported government thieves who still hold sway on the frontier (and who are his constant associates) does not appear.
The reader, doubtless, already knows too well that our social circles, both in the army and civil life, are drifted over with this class of profligates, and the writer has simply called up this matter to show how military circles have been imposed upon by the appointment of such unprincipled men, who, in all probability, could not make a respectable living outside the army, but who have obtained commissions through.transitory political influence, and are thrown in to fill vacancies caused by the death or resignation of worthier men.
It is, however, proper to state that this evil has of late been counteracted greatly by the action of the better class of officers, many of whom have gone to work earnestly to weed out from the service, wherever practicable, these unprincipled vagabonds, who disgrace the uniform they wear, and who have sought a commission in the army, only to find there an asylum for life.
The entire blame, as already said, for this unwarranted state of affairs in the United States army, lies at the doors of unscrupulous members of Congress, who recommend for appointments in the army the worthless and degraded loafers of their respective districts, as a reward for political service.
If the better class of officers continue to apply the remedy at their hands, and administer the medicine freely, the result will add greatly to their personal credit, and be highly conducive to a more wholesome discipline, and increased respectability, and better morale of the army. The only suggestion the writer has to make is, " Let the good work go on- keep tveeding out"
In returning to the grain thieves we will briefly state: Of the citizens arrested in this way and confined in the post guard-house at Fort Lincoln, were two men who, not pleased with the military attentions paid them, resolved no longer to trespass on the willing hospitality of the 7th Cavalry, and one night, with the connivance of the soldiers implicated with them, a hole was cut in the outside wall of the guardhouse ; thus they obtained their liberty, and afterward, outside the limits of the reservation, defied arrest.
The escape of these parties was of small moment in itself -but, at the same time and through the same aperture, there escaped an inmate of the guard-house-an Indian held
prisoner by Custer-who, afterward, in the valley of the Little Big Horn* killed his distinguished jailer, and who, now going directly from the Lincoln guard-house to the hostile camp, devoted his time thereafter to persuading peaceful bands of Agency Indians to join them, and to perfecting htg plans of future vengeance. This was Bain-in-the-Face, the most treacherous and bloody-minded of the Unc-papa hostiles, yet who so far had disguised his hatred to the white men, as to be duly enrolled upon the books of the Agent (at Standing Bock) as a good Indian, and as such was entitled to a share in the regular issues of provisions, blankets and ammunition. But, like the majority of these peaceful warriors, Bain-in-the-Face was a good Indian only during the winter season, and pending the spring issuance of rations and clothing. Thereafter he was wont to depart on the warpath with parties of the able-bodied warriors of the tribe, leaving their women and children under the protecting care of the Agency until the waning of the summer, when cold weather and the approach of another ration period would draw them back to the Agency. Here, at the rejoicings consequent upon the issuance of rations, it was their wont to boast of their bloody deeds, and exhibit the scalps and trophies torn from the helpless victims they had slaughtered with the repeating rifles obligingly furnished them by the United States Government.
This is literal truth. Bain-in-the-Face, an Indian of the Uncpapa tribe, and an attache of Standing Bock Agency- hence, presumably at peace with the white men-had assisted at the killing of Dr. Houtzinger and Mr. Baliran, the civilians murdered on the march with the expedition of 1873, already referred to in these pages.
In the winter of 1875 the Standing Bock Agency Indians were holding their usual dance on an occasion of drawing their stated rations. Among them, as usual, was Bain-in-the-Face, with his fellow-murderers, all pensioners upon the bounty of a weakly, magnanimous Government.
In the course of their pantomimic dance there was told, in the plainest of Indian sign language, the bloody tale of the murder of two unarmed white men in the valley of the Yel-
lowstone. Exultingly in the gyrations of his war-dance the Indian boasted of his prowess, and, in proof thereof, exhibited articles that he had taken from the lifeless body of Dr. Houtzinger. In the little crowd of white spectators near at hand-agency employes, hangers-on of the military post, etc.-stood Charles Reynolds, a scout attached to the 7th Cavalry, well and favorably known on the frontier as " Lonesome Charley," a brave-hearted, dauntless, quiet man, and who afterward was killed in Reno's rout at the Little Big Horn battle. Returning to his post at Fort Lincoln, Reynolds reported to Custer what he had seen and heard. A detachment of one hundred men and four officers were at once dispatched from Lincoln to Standing Rock Agency, seventy miles distant, to arrest the murderer. Arrived at the Agency, they found the Indians engaged in their usual occupation of drawing rations-it being the day for the issuance of beef. Hundreds of fully-armed warriors, mingled with the non-combatants of the tribe, were greedily awaiting their share of the bountiful supply of food which a mistaken Government deems essential to prolong the precious lives of its privileged assassins and incendiaries, yet whom, as we have already seen, it does not itself disdain to rob of their unceded lands, when measures of public policy dictate the violation of its treaty stipulations.
Notwithstanding great excitement on the part of the assembled braves, the arrest was effected in safety, and Rain-in-the-Face was conveyed, under escort of Captain T. W. Custer – brother of Lieutenant-Colonel Custer – to Fort Lincoln. Here he fully confessed his crime, and remained a prisoner in the guard-house at Lincoln until the incarceration of the suspected grain thieves and their escape gave him his liberty.
Rain-in-the-Face went directly to the hostile camp, and attaching himself to the band of Sitting Bull, was joined by his followers, and sent frequent messages by the Agency Indians-who paid them frequent visits of friendship and business-that he was ardently awaiting an opportunity to be revenged on Lieutenant-Colonel Custer and Captain Custer, for his imprisonment.
In the spring of 1876 it was determined by the Government to attempt the subjugation of Sitting Bull and the lawless tribes under him, who had refused to accede to the provisions of the treaty of 1868, and had since led a wandering life. Their numbers augmented each spring by frequent accessions*of warriors, and supplies of war irom the Missouri River Agencies. From their stronghold at the headwaters of the Yellowstone, war parties were continually sent out to annoy the white settlements.