At the close of December, 1868, a few weeks after the battle of the Washita, I was camping with my command on the bank of that historic stream in the Indian Territory, waiting with an immense wagon-train of supplies for the arrival of General Custer's command, the famous Seventh Cavalry, and also the Nineteenth Kansas, which were supposed to be lost, or wandering aimlessly somewhere in the region south of us.
I had been ordered to that point by General Sheridan, with instructions to keep fires constantly burning on three or four of the highest peaks in the vicinity of our camp, until the lost troops should be guided to the spot by our signals. These signals were veritable pillars of fire by night and pillars of cloud by day; for there was an abundance of wood and hundreds of men ready to feed the hungry flames.
It was more than two weeks before General Custer and his famished troopers began to straggle in. During that period of anxious waiting we lived almost exclusively on wild turkey, and longed for nature's meat--the buffalo; but there were none of the shaggy beasts at that time in the vicinity, so we had to content ourselves with the birds, of which we became heartily tired.
For several days after our arrival on the creek, the men had been urging Uncle John to tell them another story of his early adventures; but the old trapper was in one of his silent moods--he frequently had them--and could not be persuaded to emerge from his shell of reticence despite their most earnest entreaties. I knew it would be of no use for me to press him. I could, of course, order him to any duty, and he would promptly obey; but his tongue, like the hand of Douglas, was his own. I knew, also, that when he got ready, which would be when some incident of camp-life inspired him, he would be as garrulous as ever.
One evening just before supper, a party of enlisted men who had been up the creek to catch fish, but had failed to take anything owing to the frozen condition of the stream, returned with the skeleton of a Cheyenne Indian which they had picked up on the battle-ground of a month previously--one of Custer's victims in his engagement with Black Kettle. This was the incentive Uncle John required. As he gazed on the bleached bones of the warrior, he said: "Boys, I'm going to tell you a good long story to-night. Them Ingin's bones has put me in mind of it. After we've eat, if you fellows wants to hear it, come down to headquarters tent, and I'll give it to you."