The general staff, and the cavalry officers of course, and the artillery officers and most of the infantry officers were horseback; save old Major Gibbs, who was fleshy, and who had been badly wounded years before in an Indian fight. He rode in the ambulance. Young Lieutenant Hannay, with his recruits, must walk.
Glancing back from his saddle Ned thrilled in his heart as he saw the long blue columns, with flags large and small floating over, and the wagon train, the white hoods drawn each by six mules, filing after.
The cavalry seemed the least showy, for all the troopers were so loaded down with blanket rolls, and frying pan and tin cup, and canteen, and haversack stuffed with hardtack, and seven-shot carbine, and saber, and studded cartridge belt with butcher-knife thrust through it, and revolver holsters, and lariat and picket pin slung to saddle, that really the riders looked like traveling peddlers!
As for the other column—Odell and Sergeant Kennedy and such veteran cavalrymen had laughed among themselves, when they heard that Indians were to be chased with artillery and a pontoon train.
Save for the Custer dogs, who were constantly chasing rabbits and wolves, with now and then an antelope, the march west was not exciting. After a time signs of the railroad ceased, and there were only the stage stations, with occasional ranches, and with one or two settlements.
Ninety miles along the Smoky Hill route was another Seventh Cavalry post, Fort Harker, formerly named Fort Ellsworth. This was not much of a fort, being composed of just a few bare, sod-roofed log cabins, bravely floating the Stars and Stripes. Still further west were Fort Hays and Fort Wallace or Pond Creek. However, increased at Fort Harker by two more troops of the Seventh, the expedition turned off south for Fort Larned, seventy miles across country, down by the Arkansas River and the old Santa Fé Trail into New Mexico. A wagon road branched off for it, from Harker.
At Fort Harker the expedition was met by a tall, bearded, soldierly man who, Ned speedily heard as the word traveled through the column, was Colonel Jesse H. Leavenworth, son of the older army man for whom Fort Leavenworth was named, and formerly an army officer himself.