elped him back to camp.
So it happened that a boy won a reputation in the "Black Hawk War" which
was not lavish in its bestowal of honors.

When the dissatisfied volunteers were mustered out late in May, Kelso and
McNeil, being sick with a stubborn fever, were declared unfit for service
and sent back to New Salem as soon as they were able to ride. Abe and
Harry joined Captain Iles' Company of Independent Rangers and a month or
so later Abe re-enlisted to serve with Captain Early, Harry being under
a surgeon's care. The latter's wound was not serious and on July third he
too joined Early's command.

This company was chiefly occupied in the moving of supplies and the
burying of a few men who had been killed in small engagements with the
enemy. It was a band of rough-looking fellows in the costume of the
frontier farm and workshop--ragged, dirty and unshorn. The company was
disbanded July tenth at Whitewater, Wisconsin, where, that night, the
horses of Harry and Abe were stolen. From that point they started on
their long homeward tramp with a wounded sense of decency and justice.
They felt that the Indians had been wronged: that the greed of land
grabbers had brutally violated their rights. This feeling had been
deepened by the massacre of the red women and children at Bad Ax.

A number of mounted men went with them and gave them a ride now and then.
Some of the travelers had little to eat on the journey. Both Abe and
Harry suffered from hunger and sore feet before they reached Peoria where
they bought a canoe and in the morning of a bright day started down the
Illinois River.

They had a long day of comfort in its current with a good store of bread
and butter and cold meat and pie. The prospect of being fifty miles
nearer home before nightfall lightened their hearts and they laughed
freely while Abe told of his adventures in the campaign. To him it was
all a wild comedy with tragic scenes dragged into it and woefully out of
place. Indeed he thought it no more like war than a pig sticking and that
was the kind of thing he hated. At noon they put ashore and sat on a
grassy bank in the shade of a great oak, to escape the withering sunlight
of that day late in July, while they ate their luncheon.

"I reckon that the Black Hawk peril was largely manufactured," said Abe
as they sat in the cool shade. "If they had been let alone I don't
believe the Indians would have done any harm. It reminds me a little of
the story of a r