ss that filled my soul was matched in
intensity only by the horror that fills it even now when I think of a
white woman in Indian slave-bonds. And while I was thinking of this I
was listening to Morton's more minute account of what had been taking
place about him, and why he and his neighbors were to start on the next
day for Fort Harker down on the Smoky Hill River.

Early in that memorable August of 1868 a band of forty Cheyenne braves,
under their chief Black Kettle, came riding up from their far-away
villages in the southwest, bent on a merciless murdering raid upon the
unguarded frontier settlements. They were a dirty, ragged, sullen crew
as ever rode out of the wilderness. Down on the Washita River their own
squaws and papooses were safe in their tepees too far from civilization
for any retaliatory measure to reach them.

When Black Kettle's band came to Fort Hays, after the Indian custom they
made the claim of being "good Indians."

"Black Kettle loves his white soldier brothers, and his heart feels glad
when he meets them," the Chief declared. "We would be like white
soldiers, but we cannot, for we are Indians; but we can all be brothers.
It is a long way that we have come to see you. Six moons have come and
gone, and there has been no rain; the wind blows hot from the south all
day and all night; the ground is hot and cracked; the grass is burned
up; the buffalo wallows are dry; the streams are dry; the game is
scarce; Black Kettle is poor, and his band is hungry. He asks the white
soldiers for food for his braves and their squaws and papooses. All
other Indians may take the war-trail, but Black Kettle will forever keep
friendship with his white brothers."

Such were his honeyed words. The commander of the fort issued to each
brave a bountiful supply of flour and bacon and beans and coffee. Beyond
the shadow of the fort they feasted that night. The next morning they
had disappeared, these loving-hearted, loyal Indians, over whom the home
missionary used to weep copious tears of pity. They had gone--but
whither? Black Kettle and his noble braves were not hurrying southward
toward their squaws and papooses with the liberal supplies issued to
them by the Government. Crossing to the Saline Valley, not good Indians,
but a band of human fiends, they swept down on the unsuspecting
settlements. A homestead unprotected by the husband and father was
their supreme joy. Then before the eyes of the mother, little childre