"What is what?" said I, jumping from my chair and rushing to his side. Quickly lighting his little lamp and seizing his pencil, he wrote upon a blank as I looked over his shoulder and read—while the clicking grew more convulsive still—these words:
"Gen. Forsythe surrounded by Indians on the Republican. Lieut. Beecher, the doctor, and many of the scouts killed; nearly the entire command, including the general, wounded. Stillwell, one of the scouts, ran the gauntlet of the savages, and brings report. Col. Carpenter, Tenth Cavalry, and his command, leave immediately to relieve them."
This was a fragment of the whole dispatch going over the wires from Fort Hays to Fort Leavenworth and Washington. We had taken enough of it to know that a terrible disaster had befallen the gallant Forsythe, of Sheridan's staff, and his plucky band of scouts, who were all civilians and Kansans.
The headquarters of Gen. Sheridan, who was at the date of this narrative in command of the Department of the Missouri, were temporarily established at Fort Harker. He was consummating his arrangements for a winter campaign against the hostile tribes, and the idea suggested itself that a body of carefully selected men, composed of the best material to be found on the frontier, under the leadership of an experienced officer, could effect excellent results.
These scouts, as they were to be termed, were to go anywhere, and act entirely independent of the regularly organized troops about to take the field.
Generals Custer and Sully, the next in rank to Sheridan, both already famous as Indian fighters, coincided with this view of the commanding general; and it was determined to pick fifty equipped frontiersmen at once, commission Forsythe as their leader, who in the incipiency of the movement modestly solicited the responsible position.
The fifty-four men were chosen from an aggregate of more than 2,000 employed by the Government at various positions at Forts Harker and Hays. The reader may rest assured that only those were accepted who possessed the essential qualifications of indomitable courage, wonderful endurance, perfect markmanship, and a thorough knowledge of the Indian character.
Gen. Forsythe chose for his lieutenant his particular friend F. H. Beecher, of the Third Infantry, a nephew of the celebrated Brooklyn clergyman.
Some days were occupied at Fort Harker in fitting out the little expedition, but no unnecessary equipage or superfluous camp paraphernalia formed any part of the supplies.
There were no tents or wagons. Pack-mules carried the commissary stores, which were of the simplest character, and as the object of the party was war, its impedimenta were reduced to the minimum.