field. Barely mid-June now, yet
how all plans and projects for the summer had been changed. Guarded by
Chrome's "infantry," as his unhorsed troopers were jocularly described,
most of the wounded were being carried by short stages into Pawnee
Station, where a field hospital had been established. Truman and Sanders
were with these, but Winthrop, assuming command of all the cavalry that
was available at the forks, had gone on in pursuit of Red Dog's renegade
band. With him were Cranston and Davies; with him, too, were Hay and
Hastings. Only one officer of the Eleventh remained at Scott, the
captain of "A" Troop, in arrest awaiting trial. It was a time of sore
anxiety to wives and children, to some two or three sweethearts who had
happened there, and they showed it plainly. It was a time of strange
suspense and trouble to Captain Devers, but he hid it well. Few men
could better have portrayed the chafing, indignant soldier, robbed of
the right to lead his men to battle, than did Devers when his comrades
took the field. Hastings as first lieutenant went in command of "A"
Troop, but Devers had importuned head-quarters with letters and
telegrams imploring to be permitted to accompany the column. He asked
for only temporary release from arrest. He courted--he _demanded_ the
fullest investigation of his every act. He longed to meet his
accusers--his defamers, rather, and overthrow them before a jury of his
peers, but, as the court could not proceed now until the campaign was
over, why hold him chafing here? It was all capital, it was even
touching, but it "did not work." The general himself was far away in the
distant Big Horn; his adjutant-general could not act, and the
lieutenant-general in Chicago would not. Then, as Devers had been in
close arrest much over seven days, he demanded "extended limits," which
were readily accorded him. When "A" Troop marched away its captain's
only solace had been a long, closeted conference with Sergeant Haney,
who, as a consequence, had to gallop many a mile to overtake the troop.

The news of Red Dog's escape and the bolt of the Ogallallas from
McPhail's bailiwick created consternation at Scott. With the cavalry and
all but one company of White's battalion gone from the agency there was
ample opportunity, but it had not been foreseen. Then, three days later,
by way of Pawnee, came the details of the fierce fighting on the Ska,
of Truman's wound and Sanders's, of Chrome's catastrophe, the only