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[228] 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,[229] 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,[230] 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[231] 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 wa............