“A ruined man,” mused the lieutenant, gazing after. “Think of him, as once a congressman, and governor of a state! I fear his violent habits have weighted him down beyond recall.”
“A great character struggling to free itself again,” corrected the Texan. “There is nothing half-way about Sam Houston. Just now he’s like a wounded b’ar, that bites its own flesh and crawls about seeking healing yarbs. But wait till he’s recovered. Why,” added the Texan, “in his Injun clothes, on a bob-tail hoss, he rides as if he were in broadcloth on a thoroughbred!”
And Ernest decided that the Texan was right.
The next thing on the program, for Ernest, was of course a change of clothes. In the lieutenant’s room he was fitted out, after a fashion; and although the clothes were rather large, they were clean. The steamboat with his trunk had not arrived yet. As like as not she was still stuck on the bar.
So Ernest, while awaiting word of his uncle the sergeant, who had been sent out with a scouting detail across country clear to Cantonment Leavenworth in what is to-day Kansas, stayed at Fort Gibson. It was likely, according to the lieutenant, that the sergeant would get his discharge at Leavenworth. Well, what then? Would he come back? Scarcely. Would he send for Ernest to meet him? Nobody seemed to know. Therefore Ernest wrote a letter――a long, long letter――to his mother, and settled down to do the best that he could. He was such a handy lad that he felt he could earn his way; and as he was willing to do anything, he kept very busy performing little jobs for Lieutenant Neal and the other officers.
Fort Gibson, or Cantonment Gibson (a cantonment being deemed not so permanent as a fort), located here on the east bank of the Grand River a few miles above the Arkansas, in the southwest corner of the United States possessions, was only a small post established among the Cherokee, Creek and Choctaw Indians of the Indian Country. Of these, the Cherokees were the most numerous around the post. They had their principal village, named Tah-lon-tees-kee, down the Arkansas about thirty miles; they lived in quite a civilized fashion, with their rulers and councils, and comfortable houses, and well-cultivated farms. White people had married into the tribe, and they even kept slaves.