ed over to the barracks to see how far
preparations were advanced, each had an approving word for his faithful
aide.

But Omaha was wider awake than Devers supposed. The Gray Fox was in
possession of the news almost as soon as the post commanders, and he and
his adjutant-general were at the telegraph-office within half an hour.
"I will go by first train," said he. "Meantime we must start a big
force."

And so before the reveille bugles were singing through the wintry
morning along the slopes of the Rockies, the telegraph had roused the
officers at all the posts along the railway for five hundred miles.
Russell, Sanders, and Sidney were up and astir with preparation. Special
trains were ordered to meet and convey their detachments of horse, foot,
and pack-trains, so that a big command might concentrate at once at
Sidney and march thence, 'cross country, to the Ogallalla Agency,
Colonel Winthrop at their head. The commanding officer of Fort Scott was
directed to start three troops of cavalry and two companies of infantry
at once, with instructions to join Colonel Winthrop's column at the
Niobrara crossing, and, his own troop being now the smallest at the
post, owing to these details at the agency, Devers very properly decided
on sending everybody else's. Truman, Hay, and Cranston of the Eleventh
and Pollock and Muncey of the Fortieth were the captains ordered to
march forthwith. Before eight o'clock on Sunday morning the little
column had swung sturdily away over the prairies, and Captain Devers,
with his own attenuated troop and two companies of "doughboys," remained
to guard the post and its supplies, and take care of the invalid colonel
and the wives and children of the soldiers so summarily ordered into the
field.

And now Almira could not lack sympathizers, for both Mrs. Flight and
Mrs. Darling had been called upon to say adieu to their respective
lords, who marched with their sturdy comrades in the wake of the
cavalry, guarding the few wagons which had to be taken; but these
gentlemen belonged to a famous regiment that had known no other history
since the day of its organization than that of constant active service.
The Fortieth was forever in the field,--its wives "perennially
grass-widowed," said the garrison wits,--its children so seldom blessed
with the sight of the paternal face as to be preternaturally wise in
picking out their own fathers. The Fortieth went as a matter of course.
The two companies remaini