“Good!” praised the general. “How many did they leave on the field, corporal?”
“Well, dey didn’t leab no one on the field, gin’ral,” answered the corporal. “But I reckon we mus’ have killed ’bout half, an’ other half was nigh scyared to deff.”
The general was in a great hurry to reach Fort Hays, where (as all supposed) was Mrs. Custer; and to reach Fort Harker, where could be obtained the medicines and the food for suffering Fort Wallace.
At Fort Hays was found no Mrs. Custer, or Miss Diana, or black Eliza. But all heard about a sudden flood from Big Creek which had drowned several soldiers and had almost swept away the tent and the women together; after that, the general’s household had been sent back to Fort Harker, because Hays was not considered safe for them. Here at Hays were waiting letters from Mrs. Custer, and the word that at Harker the cholera was raging deadly.
Now the general was much alarmed; and leaving Captain Hamilton and the company to rest a day at Hays, with Lieutenant Cook and Captain Tom Custer and Ned and two soldiers he pushed on for Harker. The march from Wallace to Hays, 150 miles, had been made in fifty-five hours; the ride from Hays to Harker, sixty miles, was made in eleven and a half hours—which was pretty good, considering the long ride that had preceded.
Mrs. Custer was not at Harker. She and Miss Diana and Eliza had been forwarded on to Riley, for Harker was no place in which to stay. So from Harker the general also hastened to Riley—but Ned did not go. Suddenly he felt ill; and the surgeon said that he had the cholera.
[XII]
PHIL SHERIDAN ARRIVES
Ned was a very ill boy; but from the hospital at Fort Riley he was able to accompany his regiment to Fort Leavenworth. Here they comfortably spent the winter. Of many finely constructed buildings, in the midst of a one-thousand-acre military reservation overlooking the Missouri River, near to the bustling city of Leavenworth, with its cavalry and infantry and artillery, Fort Leavenworth, headquarters post of the Department of the Missouri, was a decided change from Wallace and Hays and Harker and even Fort Riley.