In the meantime we took care that little mischief was done by the gangs headed by the James Boys and the Youngers, who operated in Quantrell’s wake and in small bands.

In the spring of ’63 I left the Red-Legged Scouts to serve the Federal Government as guide and scout with the Ninth Kansas Cavalry.  The Kiowas and Comanches were giving trouble along the old Santa Fe trail and among the settlements of western Kansas.  The Ninth Kansas were sent to tame them and to protect immigrants and settlers.

This was work that I well understood.  We had a lively summer, for the Indians kept things stirring, but after a summer of hard fighting we made them understand that the Great White Chief was a power that the Indians had better not irritate.  November, ’63, I returned with the command to Leavenworth.  I had money in my pockets, for my pay had been $150 a month, and I was able to lay in an abundant supply of provisions for my family.

On the twenty-third day of December my mother passed away.  Her life had been an extremely hard one, but she had borne up bravely under poverty and privation, supplying with her own teaching the education that the frontier schools could not give her children, and by her Christian example setting them all on a straight road through life.

Border ruffians killed her husband, almost within sight of her home.  She passed months in terror and distress and, until I became old enough to provide for her, often suffered from direst poverty.  Yet she never complained for herself; her only thoughts being for her children and the sufferings that were visited upon them because of their necessary upbringing in a rough and wild country.

My sister Julia was now married to Al Goodman, a fine and capable young man, and I was free to follow the promptings of an adventurous nature and go where my companions were fighting.  In January, 1864, the Seventh Kansas Volunteers came to Leavenworth from the South, where they had been fighting since the early years of the war.  Among them I found many of my old friends and schoolmates.  I was no longer under promise not to take part in the war and I enlisted as a private.

In March of that year the regiment was embarked on steamboats and sent to Memphis, Tennessee, where we joined the command of General A.J.  Smith.  General Smith was organizing an army to fight the illiterate but brilliant Confederate General Forrest, who was then making a great deal of trouble in southern Tennessee.

While we were mobilizing near Memphis, Colonel Herrick of our regiment recommended me to General Smith for membership in a picked corps to be used for duty as scouts, messengers, and dispatch carriers.  Colonel Herrick recounted my history as a plainsman, which convinced the commander that I would be useful in this special line of duty.

When I reported to General Smith, he invited me into his tent and inquired minutely into my life as a scout.