In September 1867 Company K left New Mexico for Fort Harker, Kansas, in the Department of the Missouri, as escort for Brig. Gen. R. B. Marcy, an old member of the 5th Infantry who was acting as inspector general for troop units west of the Mississippi. On that march of something more than 500 miles the column was sharply attacked near Fort Dodge on the Arkansas River by a large force of Cheyenne believed led by Black Kettle, and Stieffel had his second and last taste of combat. The action must have impressed him, for it furnished the subject of the first of his paintings (fig. 2). From Fort Harker, Company K escorted the Indian peace commissioners to Council Grove on Big Medicine Lodge Creek for their treaty meeting with the Kiowas, Apaches, Comanches, Cheyenne, and Arapahoes in October. This historic meeting Stieffel witnessed and depicted with considerable color and attention to detail (figs. 3, 4). [Illustration: Figure 4.--Camp of the peace commissioners at Medicine Lodge Creek, Kansas. (_USNM 384184; Smithsonian photo 38298-A._)] After another period of hospital duty at Fort Harker (figs. 6, 7), Stieffel went in the field, for what appears to have been the last time, as a member of a wagon-train escort to Medicine Bluff, Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma), where General Sheridan was establishing Fort Sill on the southern edge of the Wichita Mountains.[17] This picturesque overhang of Medicine Bluff Creek, a small tributary of the Red River, was the subject of one of Stieffel's landscapes and perhaps his finest single work (fig. 5). [Illustration: Figure 5.--The Wichita Mountains from Medicine Bluffs, Indian Territory. (_USNM 384188; Smithsonian photo 42880._)] After this brief interlude in the wilderness, Stieffel went back to his hospital work. Then in September 1873, following a change of station for Company K from Harker to Fort Leavenworth, he went in desertion until the following May, being restored to duty upon his return, rather strangely, without trial but with loss of pay for the period of his absence.[18] The only possible explanation for this leniency in a period when court-martial sentences tended to severity could be that since extra-duty men had to be furnished, Stieffel was worth more to the company out of the stockade than in. With Indian unrest increasing every man counted.[19] [Illustration: Figure 6.--Fort Harker, Kansas; east side. (_USNM 384187; Smithsonian photo 42895._)]