The Seventh went into camp about half a mile up Beaver Creek from
the log stockade of Fort Supply. On the third day after, the body of
Captain Louis McLane Hamilton was laid to rest under some cottonwoods
on the bank of the creek. It was a solemn and tender military funeral;
with muffled drums and slow march by the band, and in the ambulance
a rude board casket covered with the American flag, and behind the
ambulance the captain’s horse, draped with a black cloth, and bearing
the empty saddle and the cavalry boots upside down. Over the grave were
fired three volleys; Odell sounded “Taps.”
The Nineteenth Kansas Volunteers had at last struggled in, after losing
by cold and starvation almost all their horses. General Sheridan had
been waiting only for the Kansas soldiers, before he should start out
himself, with General Custer and all, upon another winter march against
the Indians. And he hoped to get some news of Major Elliot and fifteen
men.
However, it was decided to send the prisoners and the wounded up to
Fort Hays; and as Ned was not yet fit for duty (the arrow had made two
large holes, one over his left eye, where it had gone in, and the other
over his left ear, where it had come out), up to Fort Hays must he go.
Little Mary of course went, too.
On the seventh of December, scarce a week after the Seventh had marched
in, out marched again the famous “pony-soldiers,” together with the
infantry or “walk-a-heaps.” General Sheridan, whom the Indians styled
“Little-Big-Short-Man-Ride-Fast,” accompanied the column, but “Old
Curly” (“Creeping Panther,” “Strong Arm,” “Long Yellow Hair”) was in
command. They headed into the southward. For the northward trailed the
invalids and the Cheyenne prisoners, under escort.
From the field reports came regularly through to Fort Hays. On the
march southward the battle-field of the Washita had been revisited. Two
miles below the Black Kettle village were discovered, in one little
space of frozen ground, the disfigured bodies of the lost Major Elliot
and Sergeant-Major Kennedy, and the fourteen others. Piles of cartridge
shells showed that they had fought staunchly until one by one they had
fallen. The Indians hastening to the rescue of Black Kettle must have
surrounded them.
The Comanches and Apaches gathered upon the reservation. Satanta and
Lone Wolf the Kiowa war-chief, were captured, and all the Kiowas came
in. So did the Arapahos. And after to the Strong Arm, as they now
called the general, they had surrendered two young white women, Mrs.
Wilson and Miss White, so did the most of the Cheyennes.
The campaign had been a success; the battle of the Washita had
shattered the tribes of the Southwest Plains.
Upon a bright day in March, 1869, to the tune of “Garryowen” the
travel-worn Seventh Cavalry rode blithely home into Fort Hays. They
brought more Cheyenne prisoners, and more tales.
A new officer was in command at Fort Hays. He was General Nelson A.
Miles, just appointed colonel of the crack Fifth Infantry, but in the
Civil War he had been a cavalry officer. He sent out his Fifth Infantry
band (a good one) to greet the Seventh, and with “Garryowen” to escort
it into camp.
Clad all in buckskin, and still wearing his wide-collared blue shirt
with the stars on the points, and his crimson necktie, General Custer
led, on Dandy. He had grown a beard, during the winter; of bright red,
and not very handsome. Clad in buckskin were many of the officers. The
wagons were laden with trophies of robe and shield and embroidered
shirt and savage weapon. California Joe smoked his black pipe.
Now back beside Big Creek, near to Fort Hays, where they had camped in
the early summer of 1867, the Seventh Cavalry might enjoy a long rest;
for the plains were quiet.
Mrs. Custer had hastened out from Fort Leavenworth, where she had
been waiting; came with her, to join the “gin’nel,” Eliza the cook
and Henry, negro coachman. Came wives of other officers. Mrs. Miles,
married only a year, already was at the post.
It looked as if the Indian troubles were over. Only in the north
the powerful Sioux were independent of the white man. But they had
their own great region wherein to roam, and wherein white people were
forbidden.
Ned’s wound had rapidly healed. Little Mary was placed with a kind
family at Leavenworth. The Seventh were quartered at Fort Leavenworth
for the winter of 1869–1870; they spent the following summer on the
plains, in scouting and other routine work, varied by buffalo hunting,
and in March, of 1871, they were transferred to Kentucky and South
Carolina. Here, at small posts, they were to help break up unauthorized
whiskey manufactories, and a secret society called the Ku Klux Klan,
which interfered with the rights of Northern citizens and negroes. This
was not soldierly work such as serving on the plains, and the Seventh
did not feel particularly pleased.
The scouts, too, were well scattered. California Joe had disappeared.
Reports said that he had gone into the mountains. Wild Bill Hickok had
been attacked by some unruly soldiers, and as a result of his terrible
defence with his deadly weapons he had been obliged to leave Hays. He
had become marshal at Abilene—another rough and ready town, further
east on the railroad. Romeo had married into the Cheyennes, with whom
he was living. Buffalo Bill Cody was attached to the Fifth Cavalry.
As for Ned, it seemed to him that he ought to stay near Mary. So
he was granted his discharge (with honor) from the army, and found
a Government position in the quartermaster department at Fort
Leavenworth. Here he might mingle with the soldier life that he loved,
and also watch after Mary. She was doing finely, and growing into a
large girl.
Once Ned caught a glimpse of the general, when in the spring of 1872,
the general was returning from a big buffalo hunt on the plains with
the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia. Custer had been assigned as his
escort, by General Sheridan. Buffalo Bill had been the guide. The hunt
was a great success, and the Grand Duke was much pleased.
Another year passed—and suddenly spread the news that the Seventh
Cavalry were once more to take the field. They were ordered to assemble
and as a regiment together to proceed to Fort Rice, among the Sioux of
Dakota Territory.
That news was enough for Ned. It set his blood to tingling, it set his
thoughts to dancing, it filled his eyes with pictures of camp and of
march and of an alert, lithe, soldierly figure whose keen blue eyes and
long yellow hair and clarion voice no boy ever could forget, any more
than he could forget the cavalry guidons waving in the charge.
Ned re-enlisted, with request that he be assigned again to the Seventh.
And as he was a “veteran,” and as the Seventh needed more men, for
field service, he was ordered to report to his regiment at Omaha.
There, the middle of March, with a few genuine recruits he was waiting
at the station when in pulled the first section of the long train
which bore the famous Seventh Cavalry, en route from the States to the
best-beloved frontier.
Out from the cars boiled the blue blouses and the yellow stripes!
There was the general—first, as usual. He was wearing the regulation
fatigue uniform, instead of buckskin; he had cut his hair; he seemed
whiter than when on the plains: but he was the same quick, bold, active
spirit. And there was Mrs. Custer, with other ladies. And there was
“Queen’s Own” Cook—and Lieutenant Tom—and Captain Benteen—and all the
old officers, and several new ones. And there, poking out of the car
windows and thrust from the steps, were familiar faces and forms of
comrades.
Ned must report to the adjutant, who proved to be Lieutenant Calhoun.
Then might he be greeted by friends. He even had the pleasure of
saluting the general, and having his hand shaken while the general, and
Mrs. Custer, asked about himself and about Mary, and said that they
were glad to have him back again. Finally he found Odell, who was in
the band; and from Odell might he receive all the news.
“No more chasin’ moonshiners and playin’ policeman for the Sivinth,
b’gorry,” declared Odell. “You were well out of it, me boy; an’ now
you’ve joined us jist in time. As soon as we get to Yankton of Dakota,
which be the end o’ the railroad, then ’tis ‘Boots and Saddles’ once
more in earnest, with a six hundred mile march ahead of us. Faith,
won’t it seem good! An’ ’tis what we’re all nadin’. We’re soft.”
“Wonder what we’ll do up in Dakota,” invited Ned, bluffly. “Scout
around and watch the Sioux?”
“Well, they’ll warrant watchin’, or I’m mistaken,” retorted Odell.
“People may think this little war we had with the Cheyennes was good
fightin’. But I tell ye, up there in the Dakota country there be
waitin’ some fights to make the battle of the Washita seem like a
skirmish. Forty thousand Sioux, in a big country they know and we don’t
know, won’t be ousted in a hurry. I tell ye, these Sioux people are the
biggest Injun con-fidderation on the continent. There’s no nonsense
about ’em.”
“But what’s the trouble, anyhow?” ventured to ask one of the recruits.
“Whose country it is?”
“The Sioux’,” answered Odell. “Sure; it belongs to the Sioux. In
Sixty-eight didn’t the Government agree by treaty to close the wagon
road through it and quit the forts in the Powder River country, and
give it to the Sioux forever? And already aren’t the white men sneakin’
in whenever they get the chance, and miners bound to explore the Black
Hills; and with the Northern Pacific Railroad reachin’ Bismarck,
Dakota, ’tis not a wagon road but an iron road that be threatenin’ to
cross the sacred soil. With that, and the rotten rations served out at
the agencies, I don’t blame the Injuns for complainin’. Faith, I may
fight ’em, but they have my sympathies.”
“What kind of a country is that, up north?” asked the recruit.
“Well, ’tis a bad-lands and butte country, broken to washes, with the
Black Hills mountains in the southwest corner and the Powder River and
Yellowstone regions beyant. The Sivinth may think the Kansas plains
blew hot and cold, bedad; but up yonder is a stretch where it’s nine
months winter and three months late in the fall, and the wind blows the
grass up by the roots.”
Again a cavalry trumpeter, Ned was assigned to B Troop, Lieutenant
Tom’s. Of course, Ned could not expect to be the general’s favorite
orderly, again; at least, not right away. He was a man, and must
serve his turn, like the other men. But being one of the dashing,
light-hearted Tom Custer’s trumpeters was next thing to being the
general’s.
Lieutenant Calhoun had married Miss Margaret Custer, the general’s
sister. She and Mrs. Custer rode with the general and his staff, at
the head of the column. Down in Kentucky the general had collected
many more dogs; and had bought a thoroughbred horse named Vic to be
companion to faithful Dandy. Eliza the black cook had not come, this
time; but there was another negress cook, named Mary, and a negro
coachman, named Ham, for the traveling carriage to which Mrs. Custer
and Mrs. Calhoun sometimes changed.
In long, long column of twos followed by the white-topped army wagons
the Seventh Cavalry threaded its way northward across the sagey Dakota
plains, the willows and cottonwoods of the muddy Missouri ever in
sight.