The Indian was still telling his story in breathless Spanish, when another of the couriers arrived--carried by two marines. He was Lieutenant Beale, unable to walk. Away trudged the relief party; the Indian and the lieutenant were placed in bed and the surgeon was summoned. The lieutenant had grown delirious--babbled and tossed and moaned. His boy lay twitching with pain and weariness, but uttered never a sound. Where was Kit Carson? He staggered in about three o'clock in the morning. Had been obliged to wander and hide before he struck a way through. He had chosen for himself the longest and the hardest route. That was like him, and that was proper for the oldest and the most experienced. Now he, too, needed a surgeon. The bandy-legged, long-bodied, toughly-sinewed little Kit Carson who had faced many a scrape and "scrimmage" on plains and mountains, was "all in." After this night we do not know what became of the Indian. His name never was recorded; he has been forgotten; all of which is a pity, because he risked his life to serve a new people and a new flag. In the morning Lieutenant Beale was transferred aboard the _Congress_, and placed in the sick-bay. He was invalided for more than a year--did not really recover until after he resigned from the navy in 1852; he rose to be brigadier general in the Civil War, was United States minister to Vienna in 1876, and while ranching on two hundred and seventy-six thousand acres of land in California died, aged seventy-one, in 1893. Through several days the surgeon thought that he would have to cut off Kit Carson's feet. But he saved them, and the plucky Kit marched north to Los Angeles with the rescued Kearny column. CHAPTER XVIII THE HOTTEST CHASE ON RECORD (1864) TWO IN AN ARMY WAGON When in the eastern part of the United States the Civil War flamed up, another war broke out in the western part. The Indians of the Plains saw their chance. While the white men, who had been busy forcing peace upon the red men, were foolishly killing each other, the red men saw themselves free to strike, and clean the buffalo country. So the Sioux, the Cheyennes, the Kiowas and many of the Arapahos arose, to close the wagon trails, plunder the stage stations, drive out the settlers, and save the buffalo. The result was the great Indian war of 1864. The Government hastily sent what troops it could--mainly Volunteer cavalry and infantry, assigned to fight the Western Indians instead of the Southern soldiers. Thus two wars were being waged at once.