I remember? Could I be the same boy that watched that line of
blue-coats file out of Springvale and across the rocky ford of the
Neosho that summer day? It seemed so long ago; and this snow-clad valley
seemed the earth's end from that warm sunny village. But Custer's review
was to come, and I should see it.

It was years ago that this review was made, and I who write of it have
had many things crowded into the memory of each year. And yet, I recall
as if it were but yesterday that parade of a Plains military review. It
was a magnificent sunlit day. The Canadian Valley, smooth and white with
snow, rose gently toward the hills of the southwest. Across this slope
of gleaming whiteness came Custer's command, and we who watched it saw
one of those bits of dramatic display rare even among the stirring
incidents of war.

Down across the swell, led by Hard Rope and Little Beaver, came the
Osage scouts tricked out in all the fantastic gear of Indian war
coloring, riding hard, as Indians ride, cutting circles in the snow,
firing shots into the air, and chanting their battle songs of victory.
Behind them came Pepoon's citizen scouts. Men with whom I had marched
and fought on the Arickaree were in that stern, silent company, and my
heart thumped hard as I watched them swinging down the line.

And then that splendid cavalry band swept down the slope riding abreast,
their instruments glistening in the sunlight, and their horses stepping
proudly to the music as the strains of "Garry Owen to Glory" filled the
valley.

Behind the band were the prisoners of war, the Cheyenne widows and
orphans of Black Kettle's village riding on their own ponies in an
irregular huddle, their bright blankets and Indian trinkets of dress
making a division in that parade, the mark of the untrained and
uncivilized. After these were the sharpshooters led by their commander,
Cook, and then--we had been holding our breath for this--then rode by
column after column in perfect order, dressed to the last point of
military discipline, that magnificent Seventh Cavalry, the flower of the
nation's soldiery, sent out to subdue the Plains. At their head was
their commander, a slender young man of twenty-nine summers, lacking
much the fine physique one pictures in a leader of soldiers. But his
face, from which a tangle of long yellow curls fell back, had in it the
mark of a master.

This parade was not without its effect on us, to whom the ways of war
were new. Wel