t
scattered community, and together we rode across the Plains toward Fort
Harker. I had expected to find a fortified stronghold at the end of our
ride. Something in imposing stone on a commanding height. Something of
frowning, impenetrable strength. Out on the open plain by the lazy,
slow-crawling Smoky Hill River were low buildings forming a quadrangle
about a parade ground. Officers' quarters, soldiers' barracks, and
stables for the cavalry horses and Government mules, there were, but no
fortifications were there anywhere. Yet the fort was ample for the needs
of the Plains. The Indian puts up only a defensive fight in the region
of Federal power. It is out in the wide blank lands where distance mocks
at retreat that he leads out in open hostility against the white man.
Here General Sheridan had given Colonel Forsyth commission to organize a
Company of Plainsmen. And this Company was to drive out or annihilate
the roving bands of redskins who menaced every home along the
westward-creeping Kansas frontier in the years that followed the Civil
War. It was to offer themselves to this cause that the men from Morton's
community, whom I had joined, rode across the divide from the Saline
Valley on that August day, and came in the early twilight to the
solitary unpretentious Federal post on the Smoky Hill.

It is only to a military man in the present time that this picture of
Fort Harker would be interesting, and there is nothing now in all that
peaceful land to suggest the frontier military station which I saw on
that summer day, now nearly four decades ago. But everything was
interesting to me then, and my greatest study was the men gathered there
for a grim and urgent purpose. My impression of frontiersmen had been
shaped by the loud threats, the swagger, and much profanity of the
border people of the Territorial and Civil War days. Here were quiet men
who made no boasts. Strong, wiry men they were, tanned by the sun of the
Plains, their hands hardened, their eyes keen. They were military men
who rode like centaurs, scouts who shot with marvellous accuracy, and
the sturdy settlers, builders of empire in this stubborn West. Had I
been older I would have felt my own lack of training among them. My
hands, beside theirs, were soft and white, and while I was accounted a
good marksman in Springvale I was a novice here. But since the night
long ago when Jean Pahusca frightened Marjie by peering through our
schoolroom window I had f