helmed by
the capture of their chief men, on our march to Fort Cobb, induced
partly by threatened danger to these captive chiefs, but mostly by
bewilderment at the presence of such a large force in their country in
midwinter, after much stratagem and time-gaining delays they came at
last to the white commander's terms, and pitched their tepees just
beyond our camp. Only one tribe remained unsubdued: the Cheyennes, who
with trick and lie, had managed to elude all the forces and escape to
the southwest.

We did not stay long at Fort Cobb. The first week of the new year found
us in a pleasanter place, on the present site of Fort Sill. It was not
until after the garrison was settled here that I saw much of these
Indian tribes, whom Custer's victory on the Washita, and diplomatic
handling of affairs afterwards, had brought into villages under the guns
of our cantonment.

I knew that Satanta and Lone Wolf, chief men of the Kiowas, were held as
hostages, but I had not been near them. Satanta was the brute for whom
the dead woman with her little one had been captured. Her form was
mouldering back to earth in her grave at Fort Arbuckle, while he, well
clothed and well fed, was a gentleman prisoner of war in a comfortable
lodge in our midst.

The East knew little of the Plains before the railroads crossed them.
Eastern religious papers and church mission secretaries lauded Satanta
as a hero, and Black Kettle, whom Custer had slain, as a martyr; while
they urged that the extreme penalty of the civil law be meted out to
Custer and Sheridan in particular, and to the rest of us at wholesale.

One evening I was sent by an officer on some small errand to Satanta's
tent. The chief had just risen from his skin couch, and a long band of
black fur lay across his head. In the dim light it gave his receding
forehead a sort of square-cut effect. He threw it off as I entered, but
the impression it made I could not at once throw off. The face of the
chief was for the moment as suggestive of Jean Pahusca's face as ever
Father Le Claire's had been.

"If Jean is a Kiowa," I said to myself, "then this scoundrel here must
be his mother's brother." I had only a few words with the man, but a
certain play of light on his cunning countenance kept Jean in my mind
continually.

When I turned to go, the tent flap was pulled back for me from the
outside and I stepped forth and stood face to face with Jean Pahusca
himself, standing stolidly before me