Ned was a very ill boy; but from the hospital at Fort Riley he was able
to accompany his regiment to Fort Leavenworth. Here they comfortably
spent the winter. Of many finely constructed buildings, in the midst
of a one-thousand-acre military reservation overlooking the Missouri
River, near to the bustling city of Leavenworth, with its cavalry and
infantry and artillery, Fort Leavenworth, headquarters post of the
Department of the Missouri, was a decided change from Wallace and Hays
and Harker and even Fort Riley.
The fall and winter were quiet, while out on the southwest plains a
Government Peace Commission made a new treaty with the tribes. The
Cheyennes were still angry because General Hancock had destroyed their
village; but all agreed to go upon a reservation in Indian Territory,
and to let the railroads, the trails and the settlers alone.
In the spring another treaty was made at Fort Laramie, in the north,
with the Sioux. The Government promised to withdraw its soldiers from
the Sioux’ hunting grounds of the Powder River Valley east of the Big
Horn Mountains in northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana. To
protect these their last hunting grounds, of the famous Black Hills
country, Red Cloud the Sioux chief had been fighting long and hard.
Speedily they sent word to their cousins the Cheyennes, Kiowas and all,
of Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado, encouraging them also to drive out
the white men. Already the Cheyennes and Kiowas and Comanches objected
to going upon their reservation; they said they had not understood that
they were to give up good land for poor land.
The Kansas Pacific Railroad had reached Hays City, and had halted there
as if to rest. The doughty General Hancock had been changed to New
Orleans, and as commander of the Department of the Missouri had been
succeeded by Major-General Philip H. Sheridan.
Everybody knew Phil Sheridan the fighting Irishman. He visited
briefly at Fort Leavenworth in September of 1867, to assume command;
and here Ned had a glimpse of him. He was unlike either General
Sherman or General Hancock. A little man was Sheridan, of Irish
face, close-cropped grizzled hair, keen gray eyes, reddish moustache
and small tuft of hair beneath his lower lip. With his slight body,
full chest, short neck, large bullet head, and aggressive manner, he
resembled a lion. He was the man who had made that famous “Sheridan’s
Ride” from Winchester to Cedar Creek, in the Civil War, and saved the
day for the Union Army. He had been General Custer’s commander.
In April the Seventh was ordered back to Fort Harker, to be on hand in
case of Indian trouble. But it was not the same regiment; for it lacked
General Custer.
The general had been suspended from rank and pay for one year! The
claim was made that he had marched his men too hard from Wallace to
Hays, and that he had absented himself from Fort Wallace without leave,
to go to Mrs. Custer at Fort Riley. His friends believed that he was
innocent of any misdoing; but his jealous enemies triumphed, and the
War Department had disciplined him.
Nevertheless he had spent the winter at Leavenworth, occupying the
quarters of General Sheridan himself. One good thing had happened.
In the fall Mr. Kidder, father of the slain Lieutenant Kidder of the
Second Cavalry, had appeared at Leavenworth, looking for his son’s
body. General Custer spoke of the black-and-white checked collar-band,
upon one of the bodies; and the father had instantly said that his son
had worn just such a shirt, made for him by his mother, for use on the
plains. With an escort, the father had hastened on to the Beaver Creek
battle-ground, for the remains of his dear boy.
Now General Custer was at his old home of Monroe, Michigan, to spend
the rest of his term. The Seventh Cavalry must take the field without
him. And much it missed its leader—the dashing Custer of the long
yellow hair and the crimson tie and the buckskin coat; it missed his
horses and his dogs and his enthusiasm; it missed Mrs. Custer.
Ned had been relieved from trumpeter duties, and was taking it more
easy as clerk in the quartermaster department. His post was made Fort
Hays, and here he was when his regiment arrived to camp just outside.
Fort Hays had improved. The log quarters were giving place to story
and a half frame houses, painted. The town also had expanded. The
coming of the railroad had made it grow greatly, although it was not
any handsomer. It was a town without law except the law of rope and of
pistol. Wild Bill Hickok with his two ivory-handled revolvers and his
steely eyes and his quiet manner was the peace-maker; but in making
peace men frequently were killed.
This was a scout headquarters. Constantly in and out, riding the
trails, was Wild Bill; so was Will Comstock; so was California Joe
and so was Pony Bill Cody. But they called him Pony Bill no longer.
He was now Buffalo Bill. During the past fall he had been employed in
supplying buffaloes to feed the laborers on the Kansas Pacific survey.
By the amount of buffalo that he had shot he astonished everybody.
In a friendly contest with Will Comstock he had killed sixty-nine to
Comstock’s forty-six—and Comstock was one of the crack hunters of the
plains.
There were several new scouts, too: Sharpe Grover and Jack Corbin and
Dick Parr and Jack Stillwell and Bill Trudell; all good.
During the spring and summer the railroad pushed on westward. To the
north the Sioux were quiet and satisfied, but in the south the Kiowas
and Comanches and Arapahos and all demanded better terms, and guns
and ammunition, ere they went upon their reservation. Scouts Comstock
and Grover and Parr were employed especially to visit about among the
tribes and explain matters and urge peace. Lieutenant Fred H. Beecher,
a nephew of the great preacher Henry Ward Beecher of New York City,
directed their movements.