The commerce of the Great Plains over that broad path through the wilderness, the Santa Fé Trail, was at its height, and immense trains rolled day after day toward the blue hills which guard the portals of New Mexico. Oxen, mules, and sometimes horses, tugged wearily week after week through the monotony of their long journey, their precious freight ever tempting the wily nomads to plunder, dissimulation, and murder. Pawnee Rock, Walnut, Coon, Ash and Cow creeks were mute witnesses of a score or more battles that reddened the blossoming prairie in springtime, and the slopes of the Pawnee, Heath's Branch and Buckner's were resonant with the yell of the Kiowa and Cheyenne, who under the pale moonlight held their hideous saturnalia of butchery. To protect the trains on their weary route through the "desert"--as the whole of this region was then termed, and confidently believed by the world to be--troops were stationed, a mere handful, relatively, at intervals on the "great trail," to escort the freighters and the United States mail over the most exposed and dangerous portions of the route. The incident which is the subject of this sketch is as thrilling, perhaps, in its details, and as marvelous in its results, as any that have come down to us in the history of those memorable times. It deals with plain facts, and men who are now living--one of whom, the principal actor in the scenes to be related, is known favorably all over the State. [Capt. Henry Booth, just passed away--1898.] Fort Riley, in the year referred to, was one of the extreme permanent military posts. Here, in November, 1864, Capt. Henry Booth was stationed. He was chief of cavalry and inspecting officer for the district of the Upper Arkansas, the western geographical limit of which extended to the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Early in the month, in company with Lieut. Hallowell, of the Ninth Wisconsin Battery, he received orders to make a tour of inspection of the several outposts, which extended as far as Fort Lyon, in Colorado. Salina was occupied by one company of the Seventh Iowa Cavalry, under command of Capt. Hammer. Where the old Leavenworth stage route crossed the Smoky Hill, in a beautifully timbered bend of that stream, was a little log stockade, commanded by Lieut. Ellsworth, also of the Seventh Cavalry. To this comparatively insignificant post--insignificant only in its appointments, not in importance--the commanding officer gave his own name, which the county of Ellsworth will perpetuate in history. At the crossing of the Walnut, on the broad trail to the mountains, were stationed three hundred unassigned recruits of the Third Wisconsin Cavalry, under the command of Capt. Conkey. This was one of the most important points of observation on the "Great Overland Route," for near it passed the favorite highway of the Indians on their yearly migrations north and south.