Part 8 (1/2)

”That was a brilliant suggestion of yours, youngis a new business to me I realize that if I had carried out my first order not a man of us would ever have reached the command alive”

I said: ”General, do you remember the battle of Tupedo?”

”I do,” he said, with his chest expanding a little ”I was in co of Forrest had been a particularly difficult and unusual feat, and General Smith never failed to show his pride in the achievement whenever the battle of Tupedo wasfellow you caught behind a tree, and sent for him afterward to ask him why he did so?”

”Is it possible you are the man who found Forrest's command!” he asked in amazement ”I had often wondered what became of you,” he said, when I told hi since the war!”

I told him I had come West as a scout for General Sherhly delighted to seeas he remained on the Plains, I resumed my old position as his chief scout

After the battle of Tupedo, Smith's command was ordered to Memphis, and from there sent by boat up the Mississippi We of the cavalry dise behind with the infantry, which ca Price, of the Confederate ar out of Arkansas into southern Missouri with a large army His purpose was to invade Kansas

Federal troops were not then plentiful in the West Smith's arulars there were in Missouri, and sostill a member of the Ninth Kansas Cavalry, I now found myself back in my old country--just ahead of Price's army, which had now reached the fertile northwestern Missouri

In carrying dispatches from General McNeil to General Blunt or General Pleasanton I passed around and through Price's aruise of a Confederate soldier, and always escaped detection Price fought hard and successfully, gaining ground steadily, till at Westport, Missouri, and other battlefields near the Kansas line, the Federal troops checked his advance

At the Little Blue, a streah what is now Kansas City, he was finally turned south, and took up a course through southern Kansas

Near Mound City a scouting party of which I was a member surprised a se was such that they surrendered, and while ere rounding theer prize than we suspected When he was asked what this prize consisted of, the soldier said:

”That big man over yonder is General Marmaduke of the Southern arreatly ad over to hi I could do to make him comfortable He said that I could He hadn't had a bite to eat, and he wanted soood lunch I had inof a comrade for a bottle of whisky which I knew to be there

When we turned our prisoners over to the e of General Marmaduke and accoeneral and I beca after the war Years after he had finished his term as Governor of Missouri he visitedwith me in ton rode up, dis

I presented Marreatest States and a fa his hand, smiled and said:

”Ah, Colonel Cody, another one of your Yankee friends, eh?”

Marmaduke, who had risen, scowled But he held out his hand ”Look here,” he said, ”I am much pleased to meet you, sir, but I want you first to understand distinctly that I am no Yank”

When I left General Marmaduke at Leavenworth and returned tohifield, Missouri From there I went, under General McNeil, to Fort Smith and other places on the Arkansas border, where he had several lively skire of 1865 found us again in Springfield, where we re our stock I now got a furlough of thirty days and went to St Louis, where I invested part of a thousand dollars I had saved in fashi+onable clothes and in rooms at one of the best hotels It hile there that I reat deal of attention, and from whom I finally extracted a promise that if I would come back to St

Louis at the end of the war she would field I found an expedition in process of fitting out for a scouting trip through New Mexico and into the Arkansas River country, to look after the Indians With this party I took part in a nurant trains from destruction On our return to Fort Leavenworth we found General Sanborn and a number of others of the former Union leaders who had come to the border to make peace with the Indians

The various tribes that roa that it had so exhausted the white ression, had begun to arreat conquests They had obtained great stores of ar the last two years of the war they had been e on the settlers

At the close of the hen the volunteers were discharged, I was left free to return to ular arenerals were compelled to serve as colonels and majors The consolidated army's chief business was in the West, where the Indians for men under whose command I was destined to spend many of the eventful years to come