The detail fell upon the Fifth Cavalry. One officer and thirty men to take the back track, dig up the boxes thirty miles away, and bring them in. With every prospect of meeting hundreds of the Sioux following our trail for abandoned horses, the duty promised to be trying and perilous, and when the colonel received the orders from headquarters, and, turning to me, said, "Detail a lieutenant," I looked at the roster with no little interest. Of ten companies of the Fifth Cavalry present, each was commanded by its captain, but subalterns were scarce, and with us such duties were assigned in turn, and the officer "longest in" from scout or detachment service was Lieutenant Keyes. So that young gentleman, being hunted up and notified of his selection, girded up his loins and was about ready to start alone on his perilous trip, when there came swinging up to me an officer of infantry--an old West Point comrade who had obtained permission to make the campaign with the Fifth Cavalry and had been assigned to Company "I" for duty, but who was not detailable, strictly speaking, for such service as Keyes's, from our roster. "Look here, King, you haven't given me half a chance this last month, and if I'm not to have this detail, I want to go with Keyes, as subordinate, or anything; I don't care, only I want to go." The result was that he did go, and when a few days since we read in the _Sentinel_ that Satterlee Plummer, a native of Wisconsin and a graduate of West Point, had been reinstated in the army on the special recommendation of General Crook, for gallantry in Indian campaign, I remembered this instance of the Sioux war of 1876, and, looking back to my note-book, there I found the record and result of their experience on the back track--they brought in fourteen horses and all the ammunition without losing a man. [Illustration: DEADWOOD CITY, BLACK HILLS OF DAKOTA.]