“Well,” remarked Scout Cody, preparing to mount his horse, “her name is Silver Hair now. Cut Nose has her. At least, he did have her. But she was being well treated, they say. He’d made a sort o’ pet of her, the old rascal. The station men tried to buy her from him; but he said no. I’ll keep on the lookout for her. Maybe we can get her.” And dignified of face, jaunty of poise, off rode Pony Bill Cody, on errand bound. Thereafter Ned saw him frequently. He seemed to rank with Wild Bill Hickok as an important figure at Fort Hays and Hays City. “Then she’s gone again, is she?” faltered Ned, to the general. “Cut Nose still has her, has he, sir?” “Very likely. Yes, he took her, my lad,” answered General Custer, gently. “But here,” he added, in abrupt fashion. “She’s being well treated, didn’t Cody say? She was dressed like an Indian princess. What do you think of that? That’s something for which to be thankful. Think of other captive girls and women—how they’ve suffered. And we’ll get her, if it requires all the Seventh Cavalry and the United States treasury. Brace up, boy.” For Ned was crying. In due time dispatches arrived from General Hancock, who was still on the Arkansas, trying to bring the principal chiefs in to council. When, at dress parade, Lieutenant Moylan as adjutant read to the assembled troops the announcements or orders of the day, “by direction of the commanding general” he included among them this special field order, issued from camp near the Arkansas: II. As a punishment for the bad faith practised by the Cheyennes and Sioux who occupied the Indian village at this place, and as a chastisement for murders and depredations committed since the arrival of the command at this point, by the people of these tribes, the village recently occupied by them, which is now in our hands, will be utterly destroyed. At that, delivered in Adjutant Moylan’s loud voice, from the troops arose a cheer. “Well, ’tis war now, if ’twasn’t before,” declared Sergeant Henderson, that evening, within hearing of Ned. “Why so, Pete?” asked one of the other soldiers. “’Cordin’ to Wild Bill, that village had $150,000 worth of stuff in it; an’ d’ye suppose the Injuns’ll stand for the destruction of it all? Now they’ll claim we started the war, an’ we claim they started it, an’ what the end’ll be, nobody can say.” “In my opinion,” said Sergeant Kennedy, “General Hancock ought never to have let that village-full get away from him. They played with him, and held him off, and then they gave him the slip.” “You’re right,” agreed Henderson. “An’ now we’re up agin it, with the Injuns loose in three hundred miles square o’ territory, an’ we chasin’ ’em. An’ won’t there be a great howl, from the agents an’ the traders an’ the contractors, because the war is spoilin’ their business.”