“Well, they’ll warrant watchin’, or I’m mistaken,” retorted Odell. “People may think this little war we had with the Cheyennes was good fightin’. But I tell ye, up there in the Dakota country there be waitin’ some fights to make the battle of the Washita seem like a skirmish. Forty thousand Sioux, in a big country they know and we don’t know, won’t be ousted in a hurry. I tell ye, these Sioux people are the biggest Injun con-fidderation on the continent. There’s no nonsense about ’em.” “But what’s the trouble, anyhow?” ventured to ask one of the recruits. “Whose country it is?” “The Sioux’,” answered Odell. “Sure; it belongs to the Sioux. In Sixty-eight didn’t the Government agree by treaty to close the wagon road through it and quit the forts in the Powder River country, and give it to the Sioux forever? And already aren’t the white men sneakin’ in whenever they get the chance, and miners bound to explore the Black Hills; and with the Northern Pacific Railroad reachin’ Bismarck, Dakota, ’tis not a wagon road but an iron road that be threatenin’ to cross the sacred soil. With that, and the rotten rations served out at the agencies, I don’t blame the Injuns for complainin’. Faith, I may fight ’em, but they have my sympathies.” “What kind of a country is that, up north?” asked the recruit. “Well, ’tis a bad-lands and butte country, broken to washes, with the Black Hills mountains in the southwest corner and the Powder River and Yellowstone regions beyant. The Sivinth may think the Kansas plains blew hot and cold, bedad; but up yonder is a stretch where it’s nine months winter and three months late in the fall, and the wind blows the grass up by the roots.” Again a cavalry trumpeter, Ned was assigned to B Troop, Lieutenant Tom’s. Of course, Ned could not expect to be the general’s favorite orderly, again; at least, not right away. He was a man, and must serve his turn, like the other men. But being one of the dashing, light-hearted Tom Custer’s trumpeters was next thing to being the general’s. Lieutenant Calhoun had married Miss Margaret Custer, the general’s sister. She and Mrs. Custer rode with the general and his staff, at the head of the column. Down in Kentucky the general had collected many more dogs; and had bought a thoroughbred horse named Vic to be companion to faithful Dandy. Eliza the black cook had not come, this time; but there was another negress cook, named Mary, and a negro coachman, named Ham, for the traveling carriage to which Mrs. Custer and Mrs. Calhoun sometimes changed. In long, long column of twos followed by the white-topped army wagons the Seventh Cavalry threaded its way northward across the sagey Dakota plains, the willows and cottonwoods of the muddy Missouri ever in sight. XIX SCOUTING AMONG THE SIOUX