The Free State men, myself among them, took it for granted that Missouri was a slave state.
The Indians kept increasing in numbers until it was estimated that we were fighting from 800 to 1,000 of them.
The Indians were well mounted and felt proud and elated because they had been made United States soldiers.
The McCarthy boys, at the proper moment, gave orders to fire upon the advancing enemy.
Washington newspaper men know everything.
We had avoided discovery by the Sioux scouts, and we were confident of giving them a complete surprise.
Wild Bill was a strange character. In person he was about six feet and one inch in height. He was a Plains-man in every sense of the word.
Having secured my Indian actors, I started for Baltimore, where I organized my combination, and which was the largest troupe I had yet had on the road.
On reaching the place where the Indians had surprised us, we found the bodies of the three men whom they had killed and scalped, and literally cut into pieces.
I thought I was benefiting the Indians as well as the government, by taking them all over the United States, and giving them a correct idea of the customs, life, etc., of the pale faces, so that when they returned to their people they could make known all they had seen.
I was persuaded now that I was destined to lead a life on the Plains.
It was my effort, in depicting the West, to depict it as it was.
So for twelve miles I rode with Sherman, and we became fast friends. He asked me all manner of questions on the way, and I found that he knew my father well, and remembered his tragic death in Salt Creek Valley.
