Excerpt from Captain Blake October in the Black Hills of Dakota. Cloudless skies. Golden sunshine. Keen, crisp, invigorating air. Lovely vistas of romantic valley, hemmed in by rugged heights, rock-buttressed, pine-crested. Clear, sparkling waters rushing over rocky bed, browsing herds of troop horses scattered here and there over the billowy slopes. Bivouac fires twinkling everywhere through the timber, sending their curling smoke high aloft towards the zenith. Rich, resinous, balsamic odors floating on the faint breeze that whispers through the tree-tops. Here, there, and everywhere groups of gaunt, hardy, bearded men, whose rough garb of can vas, flannel or dressed deer-skin gives no evidence of their calling. Only the parallel rows of white tents gleaming in the sunshine in the middle distance and the stirring peal of the bugle tell of the probable presence of a military force. There, down the valley where it widens slightly, the strong battalions of infantry have stacked their long Springnelds and pitched their canvas abodes after a tramp through mud and mire, over ridge and mountain, under weeping skies or blazing suns for two thousand weary miles; and now, blissfully drinking in this perfect air, they rest from their labors. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.