When on the third day into the outskirts of Fort Wallace rode with their melancholy news the returning column, they found the little post hard-put. Sacks of sand had been piled up for additional barricades; mounds of earth betokened dug-outs. Twice the Indians had attacked it. Yes, the Cheyennes under Chief Roman Nose had insultingly cantered up, and when boldly had out-charged the two small companies of the Seventh, led by Captain (Colonel) Alfred Barnitz, they were met by a counter-charge from the Indians. Only after a hand-to-hand fight were Roman Nose’s warriors at last driven off. Sergeant Anderson thought that he had wounded Roman Nose. Half a dozen negro soldiers, on outpost picket duty, had dashed forward, waiting no orders, in a wagon, to help the cavalry; and the fort officers were loud in their praise of the act.

So poor little Fort Wallace, alone amidst the burning or freezing plains, last post of the line to protect the road to Denver, was in sore straits.

The telegraph was two hundred miles east, at Fort Harker; even the stages had stopped running, save at long intervals, in pairs, when a guard of soldiers could be furnished; dispatches and supplies had been interrupted. Now the bad rations were rapidly growing worse, and scurvy and cholera were aiding the Indians. The scurvy was caused by lack of fresh meat and of vegetables; none of the doctors knew just why the cholera appeared; it seemed to come from the heat and the ground.

The condition of plucky Fort Wallace worried the general much. Succor must be brought in, of course. His own column had arrived pretty much exhausted by long marches; but he decided to take one hundred of the better mounted men and make a forced march to Fort Harker, for supplies. Captain Barnitz had not been able to spare any men for that purpose.

To Ned this was the most exciting march yet. It must be made mainly at night, for coolness and to evade the Indians. All the stage route from Wallace to Harker was said to be closely watched by the Cheyennes and Sioux. The stations were abandoned; or else the men had collected in their dug-outs, entered by underground passages from the station-house or the stable.

To approach these dug-outs, especially at night, was no pleasant matter. The first appeared as only a low mound of earth dimly outlined against the dusky horizon. In fact, the scouts must get off their horses and stoop against the ground, to see it. On slowly filed the column—and as the next thing that happened, out from the mound spurted a jet of fire—another—two more; and to “Crack! Bang-bang! Crack!” bullets hummed viciously past the general, and Captain Hamilton (who commanded the column), and Ned himself.

“What’s the matter there?” sung out loudly the general and the captain. “We’re friends! White men! Cavalry!”

“Bang! Bang-bang! Crack!” And more bullets.

“Get your men out of here quick, captain. Those fellows are crazy,” directed the general. “Send somebody forward to parley, and tell ’em who we are.”

Lieutenant Tom Custer volunteered.

“You’d better crawl,” advised the general.

Colonel Tom advanced, in the dusk, toward the low mound beside the station buildings. Presently he had disappeared; he was crawling. “Bang!” greeted him a shot.

“Hello!” he hailed. “Don’t shoot. We’re cavalry, I tell you.”

“Come in close then; stand up an’ show yourself, if you’re white,” retorted a voice.

“I’m coming,” answered Tom. “I’m Lieutenant Custer of the Seventh.”

The lieutenant arrived, and the column, listening, could hear him earnestly explaining. Now from the dug-out a light flickered, and the lieutenant shouted to the column to come on.

The dug-out held five station-men. They were waiting, on the outside, and even in the starlight they were sombre-eyed and haggard.

“What’s the meaning of this, sirs?” demanded the general, angrily.

“Well, cap’n, you see it’s this way,” explained the leader, a huge man with great full beard reaching to his waist. “We thought you was Injuns, an’ we ain’t takin’ any chances, these days.”

“But you heard us hail you in good English.”

“Certain we did; but that didn’t prove much. No, sir-ee. There are Injuns who speak as good English as you do, an’ that’s one o’ their latest tricks. They’re up to every sort o’ scheme, cap’n; an’ while we’re sorry to shoot at you, lettin’ strangers get near at night is too risky a matter. Speakin’ English don’t count with us fellows. We’re on to that Injun trick.”

Therefore every occupied stage station must be approached with great caution. Besides the station dug-outs, the negro infantry posted in squads along the route to protect it had their dug-outs, too. These were of a more military nature than the station dug-outs, and were styled “monitors,” after the Monitor which fought the Merrimac, during the Civil War.

The negro squads first dug out a square hole about breast deep, and large enough—say fifteen feet or more square—to hold them all. About the rim they piled up the dirt and sod; and from side to side they laid a roof of planks covered with more sod. Then they cut small loop-holes in the low walls, and ran a tunnel out a short distance, with a trap door. And they were well fixed. They could not be touched by fire or arrow or bullet.

These queer fortifications, like huge squat mushrooms upon the flat surface of the bare prairie, did indeed resemble a “cheese-box on a raft.” At one of them, when the column arrived, the five negro soldiers under a corporal were bubbling with glee.

“Yes, suh,” narrated the corporal, to the general and anybody else who could hear, “we done had a fight. But ’twarn’t a fight; it was jes’ a sort o’ massacree. After we got this heah monitor ’bout finished, a whole lot o’ Injuns come ridin’ along. Reckon dey must have been five hunderd or five thousand. Fust t’ing dey see, dey see dis ol’ hump a stickin’ up. Don’t know what it-all means. No, suh. Got mighty curyus. We-all lay low, an’ let ’em look an’ talk. Dey got so curyus dey couldn’t hold off any longer, so dey rode in, cranin’ an’ stretchin’ laike chickens. When dey come right close, ‘Gin it to ’em!’ say I. ‘Gin it to ’em!’ An’ we did gin it to ’em, out the loop-holes. We gin it to ’em, an’ when dey skadoodled we gin it to ’em some more, an’ kep’ ginnin’ it to ’em till dey’s out o’ range. Hi-yah-yah! Dey shore was scared.”

And—“Hi-yah-yah!” shouted in laughter his five privates.

“Good!” praised the general. “How many did they leave on the field, corporal?”

“Well, dey didn’t leab no one on the field, gin’ral,” answered the corporal. “But I reckon we mus’ have killed ’bout half, an’ other half was nigh scyared to deff.”

The general was in a great hurry to reach Fort Hays, where (as all supposed) was Mrs. Custer; and to reach Fort Harker, where could be obtained the medicines and the food for suffering Fort Wallace.

At Fort Hays was found no Mrs. Custer, or Miss Diana, or black Eliza. But all heard about a sudden flood from Big Creek which had drowned several soldiers and had almost swept away the tent and the women together; after that, the general’s household had been sent back to Fort Harker, because Hays was not considered safe for them. Here at Hays were waiting letters from Mrs. Custer, and the word that at Harker the cholera was raging deadly.

Now the general was much alarmed; and leaving Captain Hamilton and the company to rest a day at Hays, with Lieutenant Cook and Captain Tom Custer and Ned and two soldiers he pushed on for Harker. The march from Wallace to Hays, 150 miles, had been made in fifty-five hours; the ride from Hays to Harker, sixty miles, was made in eleven and a half hours—which was pretty good, considering the long ride that had preceded.

Mrs. Custer was not at Harker. She and Miss Diana and Eliza had been forwarded on to Riley, for Harker was no place in which to stay. So from Harker the general also hastened to Riley—but Ned did not go. Suddenly he felt ill; and the surgeon said that he had the cholera.