A little crowd of idlers had gathered around our team. A soldier volunteered to guide us to a good crossing and camp, and we soon had our animals turned out and tent pitched, and, while Tom and Jack were getting the dinner, at their request I overhauled first the letters and then the papers, reading to my comrades the most interesting items as I came to them. The papers and magazines were full of exciting and interesting news concerning the progress of the war, then just getting under good headway. Of letters we got but few, the most interesting of which to me was one from the girl I had left behind me and another from the old storekeeper and postmaster back at the camp where we had encountered the jayhawkers. The storekeeper informed us that no inquiry had been made for the black horse, and he did not think it likely that there would be as he had learned that Tucker and his gang had stolen many of their best horses from over the border in Missouri and the black horse was probably one of them. He also informed us that, following out the plan suggested by Tom, his neighbor had trailed the jayhawkers to their new camp down on the Neosho River, near Emporia; that a few days after we left a company of cavalry had arrived from Fort Leavenworth, in answer to the letter he had written to the commander of the department, looking for the gang of outlaws, and the man who had followed them and located their camp guided the soldiers to the jayhawkers' new layout, where the cavalrymen succeeded in surrounding and capturing the whole gang and taking them as prisoners to Fort Leavenworth. "Well, who's going to mind camp, an' who's going over to the fort?" said Jack when dinner was over. "We'll draw straws for it," said Tom decisively. "Peck, you prepare the straws, two long ones an' a short one, an' the man who gets the short one stays." I did as directed. Tom and Jack drew the long straws, and I got left. "Well, rack out now, you fellows, and I'll have a good time reading the papers while you're gone," said I, trying to console myself for the lonesome afternoon I expected to have. But I was not left alone long, for presently a couple of strolling soldiers from the garrison dropped in, and we passed some time in exchanging information, I giving them the latest news from the settlements, and they telling the gossip of Fort Larned and vicinity. We had not been out of sight of herds of buffalo since we had entered the range till we crossed Pawnee Fork, but here, near the fort, where they had probably been hunted more than elsewhere, they were scarce, though this was about the centre of their range east and west. The soldiers said that a few miles out in any direction we would find them numerous again.