Page:The City of the Saints.djvu/61

Rh be called by Englishmen—in the West. The first tidings that saluted my ears on arrival at Fort Kearney acted as a quietus: an Indian action had been fought, which signified that there would be no more fighting for some time. Captain Sturgis, of the 1st Cavalry, U. S., had just attacked, near the Republican Fork of Kansas River, a little south of the fort, with six companies (about 350 men) and a few Delawares, a considerable body of the enemy, Comanches, Kiowas, and Cheyennes, who apparently had forgotten the severe lesson administered to them by Colonel—now Brigadier General—Edwin V. Sumner, 1st Cavalry, in 1857, and killed twenty-five with only two or three of his own men wounded. According to details gathered at Fort Kearney, the Indians had advanced under a black flag, lost courage, as wild men mostly will, when they heard the pas de charge, and, after making a running fight, being well mounted as well as armed, had carried off their "cripples" lashed to their horses. I had no time to call upon Captain Sully, who remained in command at Kearney with two troops (here called companies) of dragoons, or heavy cavalry, and one of infantry; the mail-wagon would halt there but a few minutes. I therefore hurriedly chose the alternative of advancing, with the hope of seeing "independent service" on the road. Intelligence of the fight had made even the conductor look grave; fifty or sixty miles is a flea-bite to a mounted war-party, and disappointed Indians upon the war-path are especially dangerous—even the most friendly can not be trusted when they have lost, or have not succeeded in taking, a few scalps. We subsequently heard that they had crossed our path, but whether the tale was true or not is an essentially doubtful matter. If this chance failed, remained the excitement of the buffalo and the Mormon; both were likely to show better sport than could be found in riding wildly about the country after runaway braves.

We all prepared for the "gravity of the situation" by discharging and reloading our weapons, and bade adieu, about 9 30 A.M., to Fort Kearney. Before dismissing the subject of forts, I am disposed to make some invidious remarks upon the army system of outposts in America.

The War Department of the United States has maintained the same system which the British, much to their loss—I need scarcely trouble the reader with a list of evils done to the soldier by outpost duty—adopted and pertinaciously kept up for so long a time in India; nay, even maintain to the present day, despite the imminent danger of mutiny. With the Anglo-Scandinavian race, the hate of centralization in civil policy extends to military