February 16, 1865.
We slept four hours at Cottonwood. I met some of the officers of the post and they all said to me, 'You will never see Omaha.' I thought that was about true, as I was almost ready to drop from fatigue. After four hours of sleep, we started out before daylight, and rode all day and night until two o'clock a.m. of the 19th; making two hundred miles, in the dead of winter, through that country, which we had ridden from eight o'clock in the evening of the 15th to two o'clock in the morning of February 19th, 1865. Colonel Livingston was as nearly used up as we were and we got into Kearney without any of the soldiers that we started with. From time to time their horses had given out and we had left them at the various posts. I had my big black horse, 'Old Bill,' and my Indian pony, which I rode alternately, and we made the two-hundred-mile ride on a run about all the way. I had averaged sixty miles a day for four days after leaving Lillian Springs. My horses were tired but uninjured. As we arrived at 2 p.m., I wanted to smoke a cigar before I went to sleep. I saw a light in the sutler's store, went there to get the cigar, and found a party of officers, all of whom I knew, engaged in a poker game. I was most enthusiastically received, and was asked to sit in the game, or, to use the language of the period, to 'take some of the chicken pie.' I do not like to tell these stories, but it is necessary to do so in order to depict the men and the times. It is due to history. Of course I sat in; it would not have done for me to do otherwise; an officer must never get tired, must never admit he is tired. He is judged and rated, and his usefulness considered, according to his durability. It was the best possible thing I could do, to raise myself in the esteem of those officers, to sit in the game. They knew the kind of work I had been on for a week, and not to be tired was a matter of admiration to them; under the circumstances I could not help 'sitting in.' I was, in fact, very tired, but I told them I felt gay and frisky and was just looking for a game. I would have given forty dollars for a chance to sleep, but I sat in, and when we quit at breakfast-time I had won $55.
Then I slipped away and slept all day. War furnishes a great outlet for a superabundant energy.
Returning now to the North Platte, I will briefly describe what took place. When the Cheyennes appeared before Julesburg on February 1st, and before the telegraph was destroyed, Laramie and the North Platte posts were all notified. The sudden destruction of the line caused them all alarm. Scouts came down from Mud Springs, saw what the trouble was, and, being unable to cope with the situation, returned and gave the alarm to the other posts. Soon afterwards, seeing an advanced scouting party of the Cheyennes, all the posts east of Scott's Bluffs retired west to Camp Mitchell at that place, and some cavalry from Laramie came down to Fort Mitchell to prevent it from being taken. When the Indians were crossing 'Jules Stretch,' the whole command from Camp Mitchell came down to oppose them, but were soon driven back with several killed; but this turned the Indians to the northeast, towards the head of the Bluewater river. These troops had been driven west before Colonel Livingston had come up with the Indians. Owing to loss of telegraph line they did not know of each other's movements, and could not make a junction. Between both parties, however, the telegraph line was finally restored through to Laramie and Salt Lake.
Here at Fort Kearney, for the first time, I began to do duty as an aide-de-camp; and, here for the first time in my journal, appears the name of General Grenville M. Dodge as commander of the Department. As stated heretofore, on December 31st, 1864, the Department had been in command of General Samuel R. Curtis, with whom I had served down South in the Invasion of Arkansas. Sometime between January 1, 1865, and the fifteenth of February, his place had been assigned to General Dodge. As I afterwards served as aide-de-camp for General Dodge, I will briefly refer to him. The General was born in Massachusetts, and was a graduate of a Vermont military academy at Norwich. He was at first Colonel of the Fourth Iowa Infantry. I had seen him being hauled away from the battle-field of Pea Ridge, all shot up. He recovered, was made Brigadier-General, and soon after on merit made a Major-General, and served with Sherman. He was one of the best and bravest, and in the Atlanta campaign was shot up again. He was one of the great generals of the war – prompt, efficient and capable. He was not yet 34 years of age when General Grant assigned to him, sometime in January or February, 1865, the command of the very difficult task of looking after the West, and the Indians of the vast country then called 'Kansas and the Territories.' His home was Council Bluffs, Iowa. He was afterwards Chief Engineer of the Union Pacific Railroad, and his civil career was as illustrious as was his military career. He was a member of Congress shortly after the war, and was the one who read on the floor of the house the letter which our Major had written to Jeff. Davis, seeking employment in the Southern Army, of which I have spoken in a former chapter. General Dodge, in his 80th year, is still living at the time of the publication of this book.
While I was at Fort Kearney my orderly turned up, the one who had been taking care of my horses theretofore, and I sent them by him down to Omaha, intending to go by the stage. General Mitchell was wiring me from time to time to make haste. I went down to Columbus on the stage and found the orderly – he being the one who had lived with the Indians – in a sad state of mind; he had gone on a spree, lost all of his own money and the money that I had given him to take care of the horses with, and he was tied up at a livery stable, unable to move. When the stage came down to Columbus, the Loup Fork was frozen over; there was a ford, but it looked quite dangerous. There were a couple of officers going down with me, and they were constantly telling me that I would 'never see Omaha.' The ford looked quite dangerous, and we all got out of the stage and walked on the ice, I saying to them that while I might not see Omaha, I did not want to get drowned under such unfavorable circumstances. When I got into Columbus, which was on the east side of the river, I got my horses and equipment all ready and determined to ride from there into Omaha. At Columbus I met my old regimental friend Lieut. E. K. Valentine, who was in later years Congressman from Nebraska.
That night at Columbus, the post got up a big dance, they said in my favor; everybody was invited, and it was a great occasion. I hadn't been to many dances lately, and we kept up the waltz and the cotillion until it was daylight, and, getting my breakfast, I mounted my horse to start for Omaha. Just as I got ready to start I got a telegram to go back immediately to Fort Kearney. This puzzled me very much, but I turned around and rode my horses back 110 miles to Fort Kearney. Again a sort of irresistible feeling came over me that I would 'never see Omaha' and as the times increased in number in which I had started for Omaha and been called back, the more I began to doubt whether I was superstitious or not, – but back I went to Fort Kearney. I arrived in Fort Kearney on the 24th, and found General Mitchell there with Lieut.-Colonel Baumer, of the First Nebraska Veteran Volunteer Cavalry. The General was having a conversation as to what matters were necessary in view of an approaching change in the command. On the evening of the 25th, General Mitchell sent for me and told me that he was hurrying troops forward as fast as possible, and that the Sixteenth Kansas Cavalry, of which Mr. Plumb, afterwards United States Senator, was then in temporary command, had started for Kearney, but could not be found nor heard from. General Mitchell directed me to start out towards Leavenworth, and where the roads divided to cross over from one to the other and ascertain where the regiment was. There was no telegraph line on this road. It started to rain about the time that I got ready to go, and with a poncho I rode all over the country inquiring for the regiment, until I got down into southeastern Nebraska, where, at a place called Pawnee City, a place away off from the traveled road, I found the Sixteenth Regiment, stuck deeply in the mud and unable to move. It seems that in coming up they had encountered high waters and bad weather, and their horses were not well shod, and some of them had their hoofs so worn that they were disabled, and Colonel Plumb had been scouring the country for horse-shoes. He had finally gathered a lot in and made up his mind to stop at Pawnee City and shoe up his regiment. For that purpose he had got all the blacksmiths and horseshoers in the country and was busily engaged in this work. Having communicated to Colonel Plumb the orders of General Mitchell, urging him forward, I set out to return to Fort Kearney.
One incident I remember very plainly. I came to a place which was called Beatrice; there was one house there, and a blacksmith shop, and it was Sunday. I saw up on a post a board marked 'Postoffice.' Out of the house a family came and got into a large farm wagon, and, as I found out, were starting off somewhere to go to a church. I asked them if it was really a postoffice there, and they said it really was; so at my request they were courteous enough to wait until I could send a letter to my mother from that place, and I gave it to one of the people in the wagon, and it went through all right. It is the same town and place which now appears on the map as a very important city.
I had ridden twenty miles without seeing a house, to Beatrice, thence to Blue Springs, a distance of thirty miles. At Blue Springs I stopped with an old gentleman who had been ten years a soldier in the regular army; they called him 'Old Pap Tyler.' At Pawnee City I stopped with a Mrs. Fry, and was told by her that they had a young and growing institution there, called 'The Nemaha Valley Female Seminary.' From Pawnee City I rode twenty-two miles south to Seneca, so as to get onto the traveled road again. Seneca was a mere hamlet, and there, for the first time, I saw patches of prairie-grass. Prairie-grass as we generally know it and as the early settlers found it, is in fact a domestic grass, moving steadily westward, and as I came into Seneca I saw patches of prairie-grass growing around among the buffalo-grass; but the solid sheet of prairie-grass was considerably east of Seneca. Its invasion
