He was surrounding a good lunch I had in my saddle-bag, while I was ransacking the saddle-bag of a comrade for a bottle of whisky which I knew to be there.
When we turned our prisoners over to the main command I was put in charge of General Marmaduke and accompanied him as his custodian to Fort Leavenworth. The general and I became fast friends, and our friendship lasted long after the war. Years after he had finished his term as Governor of Missouri he visited me in London, where I was giving my Wild West Show. He was talking with me in my tent one day when the Earl of Lonsdale and Lord Harrington rode up, dismounted, and came over to where we were sitting.
I presented Marmaduke to them as the governor of one of America's greatest States and a famous Confederate general. Lonsdale, approaching and extending his hand, smiled and said:
"Ah, Colonel Cody, another one of your Yankee friends, eh?"
Marmaduke, who had risen, scowled. But he held out his hand. "Look here," he said, "I am much pleased to meet you, sir, but I want you first to understand distinctly that I am no Yank."
When I left General Marmaduke at Leavenworth and returned to my command, Price was already in retreat. After driving him across the Arkansas River I returned with my troop to Springfield, Missouri. From there I went, under General McNeil, to Fort Smith and other places on the Arkansas border, where he had several lively skirmishes, and one big and serious engagement before the war was ended.
The spring of 1865 found us again in Springfield, where we remained about two months, recuperating and replenishing our stock. I now got a furlough of thirty days and went to St. Louis, where I invested part of a thousand dollars I had saved in fashionable clothes and in rooms at one of the best hotels. It was while there that I met a young lady of a Southern family, to whom I paid a great deal of attention, and from whom I finally extracted a promise that if I would come back to St. Louis at the end of the war she would marry me.
On my return to Springfield I found an expedition in process of fitting out for a scouting trip through New Mexico and into the Arkansas River country, to look after the Indians. With this party I took part in a number of Indian fights and helped to save a number of immigrant trains from destruction. On our return to Fort Leavenworth we found General Sanborn and a number of others of the former Union leaders who had come to the border to make peace with the Indians.
The various tribes that roamed the Plains had heard of the great war, and, believing that it had so exhausted the white man that he would fall an easy prey to Indian aggression, had begun to arm themselves and make ready for great conquests. They had obtained great stores of arms and ammunition. During the last two years of the war they had been making repeated raids and inflicting vast damage on the settlers.
At the close of the war, when the volunteers were discharged, I was left free to return to my old calling. The regular army was in course of consolidation. Men who had been generals were compelled to serve as colonels and majors. The consolidated army's chief business was in the West, where the Indians formed a real menace, and to the West came the famous fighting men under whose command I was destined to spend many of the eventful years to come.