e life was lacking to the papooses here. And yet, in
the same blizzards wherein we had struggled and starved, half a score of
little white children torn from their mothers' clinging arms, these
Indians had allowed to freeze to death out on the Plains, while the
tribes were hurrying through the storm to the valley. The fathers of
some of these lost children were in that silent company under Pepoon,
marching now with the Seventh Cavalry down upon the snow-draped tepees
of Black Kettle and his tribe.

Oh, the cost of it all! The price paid out for a beautiful land and
sheltered homes, and school privileges and Sabbath blessings! It was for
these that men fought and starved and dared, and at last died, leaving
only a long-faded ripple in the prairie sod where an unmarked grave
holds human dust returned to the dust of the earth.

In the shelter of the Washita Valley on that twenty-seventh day of
November, God's vengeance came to these Indians at the hands of General
Custer. He had approached their village undiscovered. As the Indians had
swooped down on Forsyth's sleeping force; as the yells of Black Kettle's
braves had startled the sleeping settlers at dawn on Spillman Creek, the
daybreak now marked the beginning of retribution. While the Seventh
Cavalry band played "Garry Owen" as a signal for closing in, Custer's
soldiery, having surrounded the village, fell upon it and utterly
destroyed it. Black Kettle and many of his braves were slain, the tepees
were burned, the Indians' ponies were slaughtered, and the squaws and
children made captives.

News of this engagement reached Sheridan's garrison on the day after our
arrival, with the word also that Custer, unable to cope with the tribes
swarming down the Washita River, was returning to Camp Supply with his
spoils of battle.

"Did you know, Phil," Bud Anderson said, "that Cuthter'th to have a
grand review before the General and hith thtaff when he geth here
to-morrow, and that'th all we'll thee of the thircuth. My! but I wish we
could have been in that fight; don't you?"

"I don't know, Bud, I'd hate to come down here for nothing, after all
we've gone through; but don't you worry about that; there'll be plenty
to be done before the whole Cheyenne gang is finished."

"It'll be a sight worth seein' anyhow, this parade," O'mie declared. "Do
you remember the day Judge Baronet took his squad out av Springvale,
Phil? What a careless set av young idiots we were then?"

Did