aid:

"If you want to send a dispatch to the officer in command at Fort
Larned, I will be pleased to take it down for you. You can follow this
ridge till you come to the creek and then follow the valley right down
to the fort."

Custer swung around to the captain, who had just ridden up, and
repeated to him my instructions as to how to reach the fort. "I shall
ride ahead with Cody," he added. "Now, Cody, I am ready for you and
that mouse-colored mule."

The pace I set for General Custer from that time forward was "some
going." When we rode up to the quarters of Captain Daingerfield Parker,
commandant of the post, General Custer dismounted, and his horse was
led off to the stables by an orderly, while I went to the scouts'
quarters. I was personally sure that my mule was well cared for, and he
was fresh as a daisy the next morning.

After an early breakfast I groomed and saddled my mule, and, riding
down to the general's quarters, waited for him to appear. I saluted as
he came out, and said that if he had any further orders I was ready to
carry them out.

"I am not feeling very pleasant this morning, Cody," he said. "My horse
died during the night."

I said I was very sorry his animal got into too fast a class the day
before.

"Well," he replied, "hereafter I will have nothing to say against a
mule. We will meet again on the Plains. I shall try to have you
detailed as my guide, and then we will have time to talk over that
race."

A few days after my return to Fort Hays the Indians made a raid on the
Kansas Pacific Railroad, killing five or six men and running off a
hundred or more horses and mules. The news was brought to the
commanding officer, who immediately ordered Major Arms, of the Tenth
Cavalry, to go in pursuit of the raiders. The Tenth Cavalry was a negro
regiment. Arms took a company, with one mountain howitzer, and I was
sent along as scout.

On the second day out we discovered a large party of Indians on the
opposite side of the Saline River, and about a mile distant. The party
was charging down on us and there was no time to lose. Arms placed his
howitzer on a little knoll, limbered it up, and left twenty men to
guard it. Then, with the rest of the command, he crossed the river to
meet the redskins.

Just as he had got his men across the stream we heard a terrific
shouting. Looking back toward the knoll where the gun had been left, we
saw our negro gun-guard flying toward us, pursued by more t