Ned must report to the adjutant, who proved to be Lieutenant Calhoun. Then might he be greeted by friends. He even had the pleasure of saluting the general, and having his hand shaken while the general, and Mrs. Custer, asked about himself and about Mary, and said that they were glad to have him back again. Finally he found Odell, who was in the band; and from Odell might he receive all the news.
“No more chasin’ moonshiners and playin’ policeman for the Sivinth, b’gorry,” declared Odell. “You were well out of it, me boy; an’ now you’ve joined us jist in time. As soon as we get to Yankton of Dakota, which be the end o’ the railroad, then ’tis ‘Boots and Saddles’ once more in earnest, with a six hundred mile march ahead of us. Faith, won’t it seem good! An’ ’tis what we’re all nadin’. We’re soft.”
“Wonder what we’ll do up in Dakota,” invited Ned, bluffly. “Scout around and watch the Sioux?”
“Well, they’ll warrant watchin’, or I’m mistaken,” retorted Odell. “People may think this little war we had with the Cheyennes was good fightin’. But I tell ye, up there in the Dakota country there be waitin’ some fights to make the battle of the Washita seem like a skirmish. Forty thousand Sioux, in a big country they know and we don’t know, won’t be ousted in a hurry. I tell ye, these Sioux people are the biggest Injun con-fidderation on the continent. There’s no nonsense about ’em.”
“But what’s the trouble, anyhow?” ventured to ask one of the recruits. “Whose country it is?”
“The Sioux’,” answered Odell. “Sure; it belongs to the Sioux. In Sixty-eight didn’t the Government agree by treaty to close the wagon road through it and quit the forts in the Powder River country, and give it to the Sioux forever? And already aren’t the white men sneakin’ in whenever they get the chance, and miners bound to explore the Black Hills; and with the Northern Pacific Railroad reachin’ Bismarck, Dakota, ’tis not a wagon road but an iron road that be threatenin’ to cross the sacred soil. With that, and the rotten rations served out at the agencies, I don’t blame the Injuns for complainin’. Faith, I may fight ’em, but they have my sympathies.”
“What kind of a country is that, up north?” asked the recruit.