r tables. He also had
a French horn, which he blew vigorously when meals were ready.

His friendship was only dissembling. During all the time that General
Sheridan was making his preparations for his intended winter campaign
against the allied plains tribes, Satanta made frequent visits to the
military posts, ostensibly to show the officers that he was heartily for
peace, but really to inform himself of what was going on.

At that time I was stationed at Fort Harker, on the Smoky Hill. One
evening, General Sheridan, who was my guest, was sitting on the verandah
of my quarters, smoking and chatting with me and some other officers
who had come to pay him their respects, when one of my men rode up and
quietly informed me that Satanta had just driven his ambulance into the
fort, and was getting ready to camp near the mule corral. On receiving
this information, I turned to the general and suggested the propriety of
either killing or capturing the inveterate demon. Personally I believed
it would be right to get rid of such a character, and I had men under
my command who would have been delighted to execute an order to that
effect.

Sheridan smiled when I told him of Satanta's presence and the excellent
chance to get rid of him. But he said: "That would never do; the
sentimentalists in the Eastern States would raise such a howl that the
whole country would be horrified!"

Of course, in these "piping times of peace" the reader, in the quiet of
his own room, will think that my suggestion was brutal, and without any
palliation; my excuse, however, may be found in General Washington's own
motto: Exitus acta probat. If the suggestion had been acted upon, many
an innocent man and woman would have escaped torture, and many a maiden
a captivity worse than death.

As a specimen of Satanta's oratory, I offer the following, to show the
hypocrisy of the subtle old villain, and his power over the minds of
too sensitive auditors. Once Congress sent out to the central plains a
commission from Washington to inquire into the causes of the continual
warfare raging with the savages on the Kansas border; to learn what
the grievances of the Indians were; and to find some remedy for the
wholesale slaughter of men, women, and children along the line of the
Old Trail.

Satanta was sent for by the commission as the leading spirit of the
formidable Kiowa nation. When he entered the building at Fort Dodge in
which daily sessions were held, he wa