couting trip through New Mexico and into the Arkansas River
country, to look after the Indians. With this party I took part in a
number of Indian fights and helped to save a number of immigrant trains
from destruction. On our return to Fort Leavenworth we found General
Sanborn and a number of others of the former Union leaders who had come
to the border to make peace with the Indians.

The various tribes that roamed the Plains had heard of the great war,
and, believing that it had so exhausted the white man that he would
fall an easy prey to Indian aggression, had begun to arm themselves and
make ready for great conquests. They had obtained great stores of arms
and ammunition. During the last two years of the war they had been
making repeated raids and inflicting vast damage on the settlers.

At the close of the war, when the volunteers were discharged, I was
left free to return to my old calling. The regular army was in course
of consolidation. Men who had been generals were compelled to serve as
colonels and majors. The consolidated army's chief business was in the
West, where the Indians formed a real menace, and to the West came the
famous fighting men under whose command I was destined to spend many of
the eventful years to come.

CHAPTER III

At the close of the war, General William Tecumseh Sherman was placed at
the head of the Peace Commission which had been sent to the border to
take counsel with the Indians. It had become necessary to put an end to
the hostility of the red man immediately either by treaty or by force.
His raids on the settlers could be endured no longer.

The purpose of the party which Sherman headed was to confer with the
greatest of the hostile chiefs. Treaties were to be agreed upon if
possible. If negotiations for peace failed, the council would at least
act as a stay of hostilities. The army was rapidly reorganizing, and it
would soon be possible to mobilize enough troops to put down the
Indians in case they refused to come to terms peaceably.

The camp of the Kiowas and Comanches--the first Indians with whom
Sherman meant to deal--was about three hundred miles southwest of
Leavenworth, in the great buffalo range, and in the midst of the
trackless Plains.

By ambulance and on horseback, with wagons to carry the supplies, the
party set out for its first objective--Council Springs on the Arkansas
River, about sixty miles beyond old Fort Zarrah.

I was chosen as one of the s