uster's Seventh and the Kansas Nineteenth,
were together to fall upon the lawless wild tribes and force them into
submission.

Such was the prearranged plan of campaign, but disaster lay between us
and this military force on the Canadian River. Neither the Nineteenth
Cavalry commanders, the scouts, nor the soldiers knew a foot of that
pathless mystery-shrouded, desolate land stretching away to the
southward beyond the Arkansas River. We had only a meagre measure of
rations, less of grain in proportion, and there was no military depot to
which we could resort. The maps were all wrong, and in the trackless
wastes and silent sand-dunes of the Cimarron country gaunt Starvation
was waiting to clutch our vitals with its gnarled claws; while with all
our nakedness and famine and peril, the winter blizzard, swirling its
myriad whips of stinging cold came raging across the land and caught us
in its icy grip.

I had learned on the Arickaree how men can face danger and defy death; I
had only begun to learn how they can endure hardship.

It was mid-November when our regiment, led by Colonel Crawford, crossed
the Arkansas River and struck out resolutely toward the southwest. Our
orders were to join Custer's command at Sheridan's camp in the Indian
Territory, possibly one hundred and fifty miles away. We must obey
orders. It is the military man's creed. That we lacked rations, forage,
clothing, and camp equipment must not deter us, albeit we had not
guides, correct maps, or any knowledge of the land we were invading.

My first lesson in this campaign was the lesson of comradeship. My
father had put me on a horse and I had felt at home when I was so short
and fat my legs spread out on its back as if I were sitting on a floor.
I was accounted a fair rider in Springvale. I had loved at first sight
that beautiful sorrel creature whose bones were bleaching on the little
island in Colorado, whose flesh a gnawing hunger had forced me to eat.
But my real lessons in horsemanship began in Camp Crawford, with four
jolly fellows whom I came to know and love in a way I shall never know
or love other men--my comrades. Somebody struck home to the soldier
heart ever more when he wrote:

There's many a bond in this world of ours,
Ties of friendship, and wreaths of flowers,
And true-lover's knots, I ween;
The boy and girl are sealed with a kiss;
But there's never a bond, old friend, like this,--
We have drunk from the same canteen.