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[161] 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[162] 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.[163] 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.
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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.
This seemed like a very good scheme. For——
“In my opinion, gentlemen,” said in Ned’s hearing Wild Bill, “it’s worth a lot o’ trouble, and the Government can afford to give in on a few points, to keep those settlers from being murdered, who are out here with their families, trying hard to build up the country. If we can only hold those Injuns off till fall, after the buffalo season, and get ’em on their reservation for the winter, we can then watch ’em.”
From Fort Hays the Seventh Cavalry marched south, in early summer, to join with some of the Tenth Cavalry and the Third Infantry, along the Arkansas River near Fort Larned and Fort Dodge. The Indian villages were still in this vicinity, and the young men were restless and full of threats. General[165] Alfred Sully, who had fought the Sioux in Dakota in 1863, was in command down here, over the District of the Arkansas.
Ned was retained on his quartermaster department detail; but he was growing eager to take the field with his comrades.
Affairs seemed to be shaping all right, until in July arrived at Fort Hays, by courier from Fort Larned, word that the warriors were leaving the villages, and trailing northward. Quickly following came the news that a party of Cheyennes had raided the friendly Kaws, or Kansas Indians, near Council Grove south of Riley, and had robbed settlers.
This must not be permitted, for the United States was bound to protect its Indian friends.
The Cheyennes and Arapahos and all had not been given the guns and ammunition promised them by the treaty. Now it was time for the annual distribution of gifts. When the Comanches and the Kiowas gathered at Fort Larned to receive them, the agent announced that they could have no rifles or pistols or powder and lead until the Kaws and the settlers had been paid for the damage done to them.
This made the Indians angry. They refused all gifts, and returned to their camp, the young men began to war-dance.
General Sully appeared at Fort Larned, and prepared for action. But Little Rock, Cheyenne chief, claimed that only some bad young men, on an expedition[166] against the Pawnees, had robbed the Kaws and the settlers. All the chiefs promised that if guns and ammunition were issued, so that their people might hunt the buffalo, everything would be quiet.
“No more trips will be made by my people into the settlements,” assured Little Raven, the fat old Arapaho chief, who had always been friendly toward the whites. “Their hearts are good, and they wish to be at peace forever.”
So even General Sully was convinced, and ordered the guns and ammunition to be issued.
“The gen’ral ought to’ve known better, gentle-men,” declared Scout Will Comstock, speaking of the matter at Fort Hays, where he had arrived on an errand. “Those Injuns talked ’round him. One hundred pistols, eighty rifles, twelve kegs powder, half a keg o’ lead, fifteen thousand caps, to the ’Rapahos: forty pistols, twenty rifles, three kegs powder, half a keg o’ lead, five thousand ............