I did as directed. Tom and Jack drew the long straws, and I got left.
"Well, rack out now, you fellows, and I'll have a good time reading the papers while you're gone," said I, trying to console myself for the lonesome afternoon I expected to have.
But I was not left alone long, for presently a couple of strolling soldiers from the garrison dropped in, and we passed some time in exchanging information, I giving them the latest news from the settlements, and they telling the gossip of Fort Larned and vicinity.
We had not been out of sight of herds of buffalo since we had entered the range till we crossed Pawnee Fork, but here, near the fort, where they had probably been hunted more than elsewhere, they were scarce, though this was about the centre of their range east and west. The soldiers said that a few miles out in any direction we would find them numerous again.
To my comrades and me the country about Fort Larned was familiar ground. As already stated, our company—K of the old First Cavalry, afterward changed to Fourth Cavalry—had built and occupied the original military post, called "Camp Alert," in the adjoining bend of the creek, below Fort Larned, in the fall of '59, when the Kiowas were on the war-path. During that winter we had been stationed there, escorting the Santa Fé mails and giving what protection we could to travel on the roads to New Mexico and the Pike's Peak gold region. By the following spring (1860), the War Department had ordered a permanent post established at or near "Camp Alert," to be called Fort Larned. This post was built by the two companies of Second Infantry that were sent to relieve us, while we, joining Major Sedgwick's command from Fort Riley, went on the Kiowa expedition.
My two years of hard service along the Arkansas gave me an interest in everything that had happened in this part of the country, and I kept my soldier visitors plied with questions about persons and events until the approach of sunset warned them to return to the post to prepare for dress parade.
Tom and Jack remained at the garrison till after dress parade and then joined me in time for the supper which I had prepared.
In narrating the results of his inquiries at the post Tom said:
"As we had all been pretty well acquainted with Weisselbaum when he used to keep the little store in Ogden, near Fort Riley, before he got to be sutler of this post, I thought I would first call on him an' renew old acquaintance. When I tried to remind him who I was an' the many times I had been in his store at Ogden an' bought goods of him he couldn't remember me at all. An' then I asked him if he remembered Jack an' Peck, tellin' him that you was both here with me an' the object of our trip an' so forth, but he couldn't recall either of us an' looked at me kind of suspicious like, as though he was afraid I was goin' to ask him to credit me for a plug of tobacco or something of that kind.
"To set him straight on that point I called for a couple of cigars, an' in paying for 'em I managed to show several greenbacks, an', my, what a change come over his countenance when he saw that money! The sight of them greenbacks at once refreshed his recollection.