the land at this season of the year. The
withered grasses; the lack of fuel; the absence of game; the salty
creeks, which mock at thirst; the dreary waves of wilderness sand; the
barren earth under a wide bleak sky; the never-ending stretch of
unbroken plain swept by the fierce winter blizzard, whose furious blast
was followed by a bitter perishing weight of cold,--these were the foes
we had had to fight in that winter campaign. Our cavalry horses had
fallen before them, dying on the way. Only a few of those that reached
Fort Sill had had the strength to survive even with food and care. John
Mac prophesied truly when he declared to us that our homesick horses
would never cross the Arkansas River again. Not one of them ever came
back, and we who had gone out mounted now found ourselves a helpless
intantry.

Slowly the tribes had come to Custer's terms. When delay and cunning
device were no longer of any avail they submitted--all except the
Cheyennes, who had escaped to the Southwest.

Spring was coming, and the Indians and their ponies could live in
comfort then. It was only in the winter that United States rations and
tents were vital. With the summer they could scorn the white man's help,
and more: they could raid again the white man's land, seize his
property, burn his home, and brain him with their cruel tomahawks; while
as to his wife and children, oh, the very fiends of hell could not
devise an equal to their scheme of life for them. The escape of the
Cheyennes from Custer's grasp was but an earnest of what Kiowa, Arapahoe
and Comanche could do later. These Cheyennes were setting an example
worthy of their emulation. Not quite, to the Cheyenne's lordly spirit,
not quite had the cavalry conquered the Plains. And now the Cheyenne
could well gloat over the failure of the army after all it had endured;
for spring was not very far away, the barren Staked Plains, in which the
soldier could but perish, were between them and the arm of the
Government, and our cavalrymen were now mere undisciplined
foot-soldiers. It was to subdue this very spirit, to strike the one most
effectual blow, the conquest of the Cheyennes, that the last act of that
winter campaign was undertaken. This, and one other purpose. I had been
taught in childhood under Christian culture that it is for the welfare
of the home the Government exists. Bred in me through many generations
of ancestry was the high ideal of a man's divine right to protect his