and yet I account it the one heroic
thing of my life that I was a Nineteenth Kansas Cavalry man through that
November of 1868 on the Plains.

CHAPTER XXIII

IN JEAN'S LAND

All these regiments made history and left records of unfading
glory.

While the Kansas volunteers had been floundering in the snow-heaped
sand-dunes of the Cimarron country, General Sheridan's anxiety for our
safety grew to gravest fears. General Custer's feeling was that of
impatience mingled with anxiety. He knew the tribes were getting farther
away with every twenty-four hours' delay, and he shaped his forces for a
speedy movement southward. The young general's military genius was as
strong in minute detail as in general scope. His command was well
directed. Enlisted under him were a daring company of Osage scouts, led
by Hard Rope and Little Beaver, two of the best of this ever loyal
tribe. Forty sharpshooters under Colonel Cook, and a company of citizen
scouts recruited by their commanding officer, Pepoon, were added to the
regular soldiery of the Seventh Cavalry.

These citizen scouts had been gathered from the Kansas river valleys.
They knew why they had come hither. Each man had his own tragic picture
of the Plains. They were a silent determined force which any enemy might
dread, for they had a purpose to accomplish--even the redemption of the
prairie from its awful peril.

The November days had slipped by without our regiment's appearance. The
finding of an Indian trail toward the southwest caused Sheridan to loose
Custer from further delay. Eagerly then he led forth his willing command
out of Camp Supply and down the trail toward the Washita Valley,
determined to begin at once on the winter's work.

The blizzard that had swept across the land had caught the Indian tribes
on their way to the coverts of the Wichita Mountains, and forced them
into winter quarters. The villages of the Cheyenne, the Kiowa, and the
Arapahoe extended up and down the sheltering valley of the Washita for
many miles. Here were Black Kettle and his band of Cheyenne braves--they
of the loving heart at Fort Hays, they who had filled all the fair
northern prairie lands with terror, whose hands reeked with the hot
blood of the white brothers they professed to love. In their snug tepees
were their squaws, fat and warm, well clothed and well fed. Dangling
from the lodge poles were scalps with the soft golden curls of babyhood.
No comfort of savag