General Sully very soon made his presence known at the commissary office in St. Louis by the requisitions for supplies which began to pour in from him. A few days later a young army officer, an aide-de-camp on General Sully's staff, was sent down to the office by the General to check over the requisitions already made. Al was assigned to assist him. The aide, whose name was Lieutenant Dale, proved an agreeable youth, only a few years older than Al, and after their work was finished they fell into conversation. Al told him briefly of the disasters which had befallen his family in Minnesota, and then of the battle at Fort Ridgely.
"Why, you've seen enough fighting to be a veteran already," exclaimed Lieutenant Dale, when Al had concluded his narrative. "I'll tell you what you ought to do; you ought to go up into the Sioux country with us this summer. We're going to have some fun up there. And maybe you could get on the track of your brother."
"That is just what I want to do," answered Al, "but I'm not old enough to enlist."
"That makes no difference," answered Dale. "The General could arrange to take you in some capacity or other if he knows that you have a good reason for wanting to go and that you won't lose your nerve in a pinch."
"Do you think he would?" asked Al, doubtfully.
"I think it's very probable. Go and ask him. He is very kind-hearted, if he is a strict disciplinarian and a hard fighter."
"He's a hard fighter, is he?" asked Al, eagerly. "You see, I don't know much about him."
Lieutenant Dale looked at him pityingly. "A hard fighter?" he replied. "I should say he is! He fought against the Seminoles in Florida and the Rogue River Indians in Oregon and the Sioux in Minnesota and Nebraska and the Cheyennes in Kansas, all before the beginning of the Rebellion. He won honors at Fair Oaks and Chancellorsville; and then, when the Indian trouble in the Northwest came, they sent him up into Dakota to fight the Sioux again, last Summer. That was the first that I was with him, and we certainly had our share of marching, going up the Missouri Valley, and our share of fighting at White Stone Hill, where we swung away from the Missouri and struck the redskins out on the prairie nearly over to the James River. They had been following up General Sibley, never suspecting that we would come from the other direction and fall on their rear. But we'll punish them worse this year, for we shall have a much larger force; and the General intends to follow them until they are either forced to make peace or are broken up and scattered all over the country. And he can scatter them; what he doesn't know about Indian fighting isn't worth knowing."
"I'm sure it will be a campaign well worth taking part in," replied Al. "I ought to go, and I hope I can."