BETWEEN THE BLUFFS.

Press, Volume L, Issue 8542, 24 July 1893, Page 3

BETWEEN THE BLUFFS.

[By M. Quad.] At four o'clock in the afternoon this was the situation of affairs on the sterile plain south of Fort Chadbourne, Tex. There were sixteen array waggons loaded with supplies for the fort. The cavalry escort numbered only thirty-eight men. Counting the teamsters, we were fifty-four. The Indians had closed ia on both sides and in the rear, and no one estimated their number ot less than 350,a1l mounted. There was this in our favour—only a few had rifles. At least 200 were armed with lances, and so long as we could hold them off with our carbines we need not fear the _a. Our route was a narrow valley bluffed oa each side, and these bluffs were impassable for horses. Here and there the valley spread out until it was half a mile wide, and again it contracted until only two waggons could move abreast. Our safety was to keep moving and count on the rear guard to fight them back. That valley was three miles long. When we had debauched on the plain beyend. the Indians would charge us. We figured our chance as one iv five. The teamsters might or might not fight. They were all Mexicans, and they might even be suspected of being the allies of the redskins Thirty eight men, a dozen of whom were just out of hospital and in poor shape for a fight, seemed a mere nothing compared to the masses of horsemen closing In. The last half mile of this route was not over twenty feet wide from bluff to bluff. When we struck that spot, the waggons were sent on ahead. From the rearmost one we took ten large percussion shells destined for the cannon at tbe fort. These shells were rapidly filled with powder bullets, and shot, the primers inserted, and while a dozen men held the Indians at bay we dug holes In the ground and set each shell on end with its cap just level with the roadbed. We planted two smol. kegs of powder as well, and over the grovel we scattered the contests c_ a third. When oil was ready the rearguara was called in and we retreated for about thirty rods. We only made a pretence of fighting now, as if our object was to let the waggons get a long start up the main volley. At the end of a quarter of an hour the Indian lancers formed for a charge up the narrow way, and we retreated in seeming confusion to draw them on. The lancers formed in ranks of six or seven front and running back further than we could see. At a given signal this great mass set np a yell and charged. The first twelve or fourteen safely passed the shells. Then came a series of explosions which made the earth heave and shot a great black cloud half a mile high into the sky. It rolled down upon us and enveloped us for a time in midnight darkness, and with it was an odour to nauseate every man. We heard shrieks of pain and yells of terror, and now and then that strange sound uttered by a wounded horse. A dozen of us kept firing into the cloud, but after five or six minutes it thinned out, and we stood and leaned on our oar* bines, and were almost affrighted at the spectacle. The narrow way was literally choked with the dead and dying. Fragments of men and horses had fallen all about us. No man cared to go nearer. It would have been safe, for the Indians who escaped disaster were galloping away in a state of abject terror, but the spectacle would have been in one's dreams forever after. We hurried on out of the narrow valley, overtook the fast-moving waggons and the pale-faced teamsters, and thence to the fort the sharpest eye could not detect the presence of an Indian anywhere on the wide sweep of plain. So-called humanitarians called it a cruel, coldblooded slaughter; army records referred to it as a merciful salvation of a troop aad train.