He laughed again and so did I, but I sidestepped the tobacco spray this time, then looked around as that insufferable adjutant headed toward my tent. “I’ll take care a this one,” Muskrat whispered. “Don’t you pay no mind to what them shoulder-strap know-it-alls are saying about you, missy. Sure is a cinch they don’t know their Indians. Now, if they hadda been Kiowa or Comanche that caught you, you wouldn’t be standing here.”

Muskrat Watkins made a dignified retreat with Fair One. Lewis and Clark’s Jefferson peace medal was safely hidden against my skin, and no one was the wiser. I think the adjutant knew something had been put over on him, but I could tell he had no idea what. He did inform me stiffly that Colonel Miles had made some sort of promise to that disgusting man leading away the Indian pony and he hoped I wasn’t too upset. “And by damn, if some thieving redskin didn’t pilfer my remount last night,” he exclaimed. I nearly laughed, but resisted. Still, it was the one bright spot in a bleak day.

The day was spent in preparing to leave and travel to the Tongue River Cantonment – later named Fort Keogh – where the Tongue River flows into the Yellowstone. Howard’s ragged detachment, so many miles from their own Department of the Columbia, would remain a little longer in place until the more severely wounded were ready to travel down the Missouri by steamboat.

I was not allowed near the Nez Perce, argue as I much as I chose, but I did witness the final heartbreak of the journey. Amid an undignified squabbling, Miles’s Cheyenne Scouts and Howard’s Bannocks divided up the spotted horses among themselves. Each scout must have gotten at least twenty ponies. I know that some were part of Hawk’s herd.

As soon as the beautiful creatures, worn down with travel, were in others’ hands, the scouts rode away with them. A great lamentation rose from the Nimiipuu as warriors, women and children cried for their lost horses. They were now afoot, and afoot they were nothing.

I had hoped to travel with the Nez Perce, but they were to travel downriver to Fort Buford, where the Yellowstone meets the Missouri, and then on to Bismarck. General Howard did assure me that he and Colonel Miles had arranged for them to return to Lapwai in western Idaho. That relieved my heart, and I had to be content with that welcome news.