l has George Eliot declared "there have been no great
nations without processions." The unwritten influence of that thrilling
act of dramatic display somehow put a stir in the blood and loyalty and
patriotism took stronger hold on us.

We had come out to break the red man's power by a winter invasion. Camp
Supply was abandoned, and the whole body made its way southward to Fort
Cobb. To me ours seemed a tremendous force. We were two thousand
soldiers, with commanders, camp officials, and servants. Our wagon train
had four hundred big Government wagons, each drawn by six mules. We
trailed across the Plains leaving a wide and well marked path where
twenty-five hundred cavalry horses, with as many mules, tramped the
snow.

The December of the year 1868 was a terror on the Plains. No fiercer
blizzard ever blew out of the home of blizzards than the storms that
fell upon us on the southward march.

Down in the Washita Valley we came to the scene of Custer's late
encounter. Beyond it was a string of recently abandoned villages
clustering down the river in the sheltering groves where had dwelt
Kiowa, Arapahoe, and Comanche, from whose return fire Custer saved
himself by his speedy retreat northward after his battle with Black
Kettle's band.

A little company of us were detailed to investigate these deserted
quarters. The battle field had a few frozen bodies of Indians who had
been left by the tribe in their flight before the attack of the Seventh
Cavalry. There were also naked forms of white soldiers who had met death
here. In the villages farther on were heaps of belongings of every
description, showing how hasty the exodus had been. In one of these
villages I dragged the covering from a fallen snow-covered tepee.
Crouched down in its lowest place was the body of a man, dead, with a
knife wound in the back.

"Poor coward! he tried hard to get away," Bud exclaimed.

"Some bigger coward tried to make a shield out of him, I'll guess," I
replied, lifting the stiff form with more carefulness than sentiment. As
I turned the body about, I caught sight of the face, which even in death
was marked with craven terror. It was the face of the Rev. Mr. Dodd,
pastor of the Springvale Methodist Church South. In his clenched dead
hands he still held a torn and twisted blanket. It was red, with a
circle of white in the centre.

On the desolate wind-swept edge of a Kiowa village Bud and I came upon
the frozen body of a young white woman.