The next morning a sergeant and two privates from Fort Wise galloped up behind us and stopped to speak to us, asking if we had seen a couple of deserters. We gravely told them that we had seen no such men and suggested that they might have gone west from Fort Wise. The sergeant made a perfunctory search of the wagons and then went on, to camp a little farther along and kill time until it was necessary to return to the post. In those days such pursuing parties often overtook the deserters they were after, gave them part of their rations, and sent them along on their road. At the Big Timbers, on the Arkansas, we met with a large band of Cheyenne Indians on the way up to Fort Wise to receive their annuities; and when we reached the Santa Fé road, where it crossed the Arkansas, coming from the Cimarron River by the sixty-mile dry stretch called the _jornada_, we saw a government six-mule train, travelling east, just going into camp on the river bank. Here, we thought, was an opportunity to get along faster and travel more comfortably if we could arrange for a transfer to the mule train. Its days' drives were about twice as long as those of the bull train, which seldom exceeded twelve miles a day. We therefore sent Tom back to the mule train, and he found in the wagon-master of the train an old acquaintance, who cheerfully agreed to take us on to Fort Leavenworth without charge. Next morning, as the mule train passed us, we bade good-by to our kind but dirty friends the bull-whackers and tumbled ourselves and our baggage into one of the empty mule wagons and went on. At the Santa Fé crossing of the Arkansas, we had begun to see a few buffalo; and the herds grew larger as we went on until we reached Pawnee Fork, near Fort Larned, which seemed to be about the centre of their range. After we passed the fort their numbers decreased until we came to the Little Arkansas, where we saw the last of them. Our old company, K of the First Cavalry, had built the first quarters at Larned, in 1859. When we passed it, in the autumn of 1861, it was garrisoned by two companies of the Second Infantry and one of the Second Dragoons and was commanded by Major Julius Hayden, Second Infantry. After joining the mule train Tom, Jack, and I made it our business to keep the outfit supplied with fresh meat while passing through the buffalo range. We also killed numbers of ducks, geese, brant, and sand-hill cranes, borrowing the wagon-master's shotgun for bird hunting. This suggested to us that a good shotgun would be a useful part of our equipment for the winter's work. [Illustration: _Mule Train camped in park_] In due time we reached Fort Leavenworth, received our pay from our old paymaster, Major H. E. Hunt, and then went down to Leavenworth City, two and a half miles from the fort. We stopped at a boarding-house kept by an old dragoon who had a wide acquaintance among citizens and soldiers and who could and would be useful to us in getting together our outfit.