The next morning Bancroft was early afoot. Shortly after sunrise he went down to the famous cornfield and found a couple of youths on watch. They had been there for more than an hour, they said, and Seth Stevens and Richards had gone scouting towards Wichita. “Conklin's corner's all right,” was the phrase which sent the schoolmaster to breakfast with a light heart. When the meal was over he returned to the centre of excitement. The Elder had gone about his work; Mrs. Conklin seemed as helplessly indifferent as usual; Loo was complacently careless; but Bancroft, having had time for reflection, felt sure that all this was Western-presumption; General Custer could not accept defeat so easily. At the “corner” he found a couple of hundred youths and men assembled. They were all armed, but the general opinion was that Custer would do nothing. One old farmer summed up the situation in the phrase, “Thar ain't nothin' for him to do, but set still.”
About eight o'clock, however, Richards raced up, with his horse in a lather, and announced that Custer, with three hundred men, had started from Wichita before six.
“He'll be hyar in half an hour,” he concluded.
Hurried counsel was taken; fifty men sought cover behind the stooks of corn, the rest lined the skirting woods. When all was in order, Bancroft was deputed to go and fetch the Elder, whom he eventually discovered at the wood pile, sawing and splitting logs for firewood.
“Make haste, Elder,” he cried, “Morris has sent me for you, and there's no time to be lost. Custer, with three hundred men, left Wichita at six o'clock this morning, and they'll be here very soon.”
The Elder paused unwillingly, and resting on his axe asked: “Is Morris alone?”
“No!” replied Bancroft, amazed to think the Elder could have forgotten the arrangements he had heard described the evening before. “There are two hundred men down there in the corner and in the woods,” and he rapidly sketched the position.
“It's all right then, I guess,” the Elder decided. “They'll get along without me. Tell Morris I'm at my chores.” Beginning his work again, he added, “I've something to do hyar.”
From the old man's manner Bancroft was convinced that solicitation would be a waste of time. He returned to the corner, where he found Morris standing inside the fence.
“I guessed so,” was Morris's comment upon the Elder's attitude; “we'll hev to do without him, I reckon. You and me'll stay hyar in the open; we don't want to shoot ef we kin avoid it; there ain't no reason to as I kin see.”