reed
ought ever to try anything above a horse's hoofs, in cavalry matters.
The Lord made some men to shoe horses, and some to ride them. The
Conlows weren't riders, and Jim's line was turned again to his father's
smithy.

Tillhurst took his failure the more grievously that Rachel, who had been
most gracious to him at first, transferred her attentions to me. And I,
being only a man and built of common clay, with my lifetime hope
destroyed, gave him good reason to believe in my superior influence with
the beautiful Massachusetts girl. I had a game to play with Rachel, for
Topeka was full of pretty girls, and I made the most of my time. I knew
somewhat of the gayety the Winter on the Plains was about to offer. As
long as I could I held to the pleasures of the civilized homes and
sheltered lives. And with all and all, one sweet girl-face, enshrined in
my heart's holy of holies, held me back from idle deception and turned
me from temptation.

CHAPTER XXII

THE NINETEENTH KANSAS CAVALRY

"The regiments of Kansas have glorified our State on a hundred
battle fields, but none served her more faithfully, or endured more
in her cause than the Nineteenth Kansas Cavalry."

--HORACE L. MOORE.

When Camp Crawford was opened, northeast of town, between the Kaw River
and the Shunganunga Creek, I went into training for regular cavalry
service, thinking less of pretty girls and more of good horses with the
passing days. I had plenty of material for both themes. Not only were
there handsome young ladies in the capital city, but this call for
military supplies had brought in superb cavalry mounts. Every day the
camp increased its borders. The first to find places were the men of the
Eighteenth Kansas Regiment, veterans of the exalted order of the wardens
of civilization. Endurance was their mark of distinction, and Loyalty
their watchword. It was the grief of this regiment, and especially of
the men directly under his leadership, that Captain Henry Lindsey was
not made a Major for the Nineteenth. No more capable or more popular
officer than Lindsey ever followed an Indian trail across the Plains.

It was from the veterans of this Eighteenth Cavalry, men whom Lindsey
had led, that we younger soldiers learned our best lessons in the months
that followed. Those were my years of hero-worship. I had gone into
this service with an ideal, and the influence of such men as Morton and
Forsyth, the skill of Grover, an