To my comrades and me the country about Fort Larned was familiar ground. As already stated, our company--K of the old First Cavalry, afterward changed to Fourth Cavalry--had built and occupied the original military post, called "Camp Alert," in the adjoining bend of the creek, below Fort Larned, in the fall of '59, when the Kiowas were on the war-path. During that winter we had been stationed there, escorting the Santa Fé mails and giving what protection we could to travel on the roads to New Mexico and the Pike's Peak gold region. By the following spring (1860), the War Department had ordered a permanent post established at or near "Camp Alert," to be called Fort Larned. This post was built by the two companies of Second Infantry that were sent to relieve us, while we, joining Major Sedgwick's command from Fort Riley, went on the Kiowa expedition. My two years of hard service along the Arkansas gave me an interest in everything that had happened in this part of the country, and I kept my soldier visitors plied with questions about persons and events until the approach of sunset warned them to return to the post to prepare for dress parade. Tom and Jack remained at the garrison till after dress parade and then joined me in time for the supper which I had prepared. In narrating the results of his inquiries at the post Tom said: "As we had all been pretty well acquainted with Weisselbaum when he used to keep the little store in Ogden, near Fort Riley, before he got to be sutler of this post, I thought I would first call on him an' renew old acquaintance. When I tried to remind him who I was an' the many times I had been in his store at Ogden an' bought goods of him he couldn't remember me at all. An' then I asked him if he remembered Jack an' Peck, tellin' him that you was both here with me an' the object of our trip an' so forth, but he couldn't recall either of us an' looked at me kind of suspicious like, as though he was afraid I was goin' to ask him to credit me for a plug of tobacco or something of that kind. "To set him straight on that point I called for a couple of cigars, an' in paying for 'em I managed to show several greenbacks, an', my, what a change come over his countenance when he saw that money! The sight of them greenbacks at once refreshed his recollection. "He suggested that we should leave our surplus money in his safe, and I believe it's a good scheme, for we'll have no use for money over on the Walnut, where we're going, an' we might lose it. Peck might go over to the store now, takin' Jack along for a witness, an' deposit our money with the sutler an' take a receipt for it; an' if we have occasion to draw any of it out at any time it can be entered on the back of the receipt. Savvy?" We "savvied" and agreed to Tom's plan.