California Joe was here, in all his glory.
“Is Shuridan comin’, young feller?” he asked. “Wall, he can’t do wuss’n those other high-up gen’rals have done. But I sorter bet on Shuridan.”
“Do you know him, Joe?” queried Ned, politely.
“Do I know him, young feller? Know Shuridan? Why, bless my soul, I knowed Shuridan ’way up in Oregon more’n fifteen years ago, an’ he was only a second lootenint of infantry. Quartermaster of the foot, or somethin’ of that sort. I had a sneakin’ notion if ever they turned him loose he’d hurt somebody. Say, warn’t he old lightnin’, in the war! I tell ye!” And Joe wiped his hairy face with a piece of gunnysack that he used as a handkerchief. “I jest been app’inted by Gen’ral Custer chief o’ scouts down here; but I told him I wouldn’t serve if this was to be ary ambulance campaignin’. He said no; him an’ Shuridan was goin’ to chase the Injuns horseback, so as to ketch ’em. That hit the nail squar on the head. A column on wheels, with the wagons piled full o’ soldiers like as if they was goin’ to a town fun’ral in the States, stands ’bout as many chances of ketchin’ Injuns as a six-mule team would of ketchin’ a pack of coyotes. Why, that sort o’ thing is only fun for the Injuns.”
While waiting for instructions from General Sheridan, the Seventh Cavalry worked hard to arrive at what Odell called their “fighting weight.” Five hundred fresh horses arrived by trail from Leavenworth. The general chose for himself a lively bay which he named Dandy. The others were apportioned out, and then the troops or companies were “colored.” That is, the horses were divided by colors; so that one troop was composed of the grays, another of the blacks, another of the bays, and so forth. The junior company commander must be content with the brindles—the mixed colors left over.
Target practice was made an order of the day, for some of the recruits never had fired a gun. Forty of the best shots at all distances were formed into a company of sharpshooters, under Lieutenant “Queen’s Own” William Cook, he with the long English side-whiskers.
There were scouting expeditions, and plenty of hunting. The camp fairly lived on wild turkey and deer and elk and buffalo and rabbit and grouse. The general’s dogs chased wolves and antelope.
October wore away. Soon the Indians of the plains would be retiring into their villages, for the winter. They would eat dried buffalo meat and their horses would eat cottonwood bark and willows; and they would not expect to be interfered with. Then in the spring they would issue forth again, to ride hither-thither, three miles to the cavalry’s one.
By the reports which Scout Buffalo Bill had brought up to Fort Hays from Fort Larned, the families of the Indians had been moving southward. Therefore General Sheridan believed that the main winter villages would be found down in the Indian Territory, toward Texas. This was a wild rugged country, where white men rarely penetrated. But the Cheyennes and the Kiowas and the Comanches knew it well.
General Sully and Uncle John Smith, an old trader who had married into the Cheyennes, had located a good rendezvous place for the expedition, where, forming the North Canadian River, Wolf Creek and Beaver Creek joined, about one hundred miles south of Fort Dodge. With a huge supply train of four hundred wagons and with five companies of the Third Regular Infantry under Major John H. Page, the eleven companies of the Seventh arrived there, to wait for the Nineteenth Kansas Volunteer Cavalry. Governor Crawford of Kansas had resigned to be its colonel in the field; and General Sherman’s last dispatch had said that the regiment was on its way.