64

that gleaming knife made a strange exciting
tableau.

Another ex-scout, known as Curly Walker,
was killed near Dodge by a resident of Salina,
Kas., in an encounter resulting from an effort
on the part of Walker to sell a lot of cattle
stolen and runoff by him from their lawful
owner. This man Walker has cowed once
when drunk and disorderly at Fort Dodge in
a way that Lieut.-Col. John R. Brooke is too
modest to tell about. Bob Wright was present
when he was killed. He was pierced by
several bullets from a Winchester rifle whilst
dismounting from his horse, and died with
one hand on his revolver vainly struggling to
release it from the holster in the stitching
of which the hammer was caught. In the
other hand "Curly" Walker had a revolver,
which, in his death throes, he used as a knife,
repeatedly thrusting it into the prairie sod,
discharging it and bursting the weapon by the
act.

Another of the scouts was a man of education
from Philadelphia and the nephew of an
ex-Union soldier, at one time the postmaster
of St. Louis. His fate is unknown.

Scout O. J. Whitman was found dead on
the plains, his head resting in his saddle, used
as a pillow, his horse and arms gone--scalped
--an arrow through his heart. He was killed
while asleep.

If these lines are read by any survivors of
the fight of Aug. 17, 18, 19, and 20, 1868, on the
Arrickeree Fork of the Republican River,
Kansas, the place where Lieut. Beecher was
killed, he or they will remember Malcolm
Graham as one of the men who ran the gantlet
of the Indians surrounding that island in
the river and made his way unwounded to
Gen. Bankhead at Fort Wallace, thus securing
relief for the Forsyth party. Graham was
one of the scouts under John Austin at Fort
Dodge and did good service in that capacity.

Capt. Harry Reade, who for eighteen years
was an officer of the Twenty-fifth United
States Infantry, was formerly a scout in government
service upon the Western plains.
He never wore a buckskin suit or affected
long hair, however, and in the quiet retirement
of his Massachusetts home knows not
the perils of the days when he, with only a
single companion scout, carried dispatches
through a region populous with Kiowa, Arapahoe,
and Cheyenne Indians, who ambushed
the watering places, fired the river bottoms,
and whose keen-eyed abilities sought by every
artifice and skillful device to intercept, chase
down, and kill the government scouts.

that gleaming knife made a strange exciting tableau.

Another ex-scout, known as Curly Walker, was killed near Dodge by a resident of Salina, Kas., in an encounter resulting from an effort on the part of Walker to sell a lot of cattle stolen and runoff by him from their lawful owner. This man Walker has cowed once when drunk and disorderly at Fort Dodge in a way that Lieut.-Col. John R. Brooke is too modest to tell about. Bob Wright was present when he was killed. He was pierced by several bullets from a Winchester rifle whilst dismounting from his horse, and died with one hand on his revolver vainly struggling to release it from the holster in the stitching of which the hammer was caught. On the other hand "Curly" Walker had a revolver, which, in his death throes, he used as a knife, repeatedly thrusting it into the prairie sod, discharging it and bursting the weapon by the act.

Another of the scouts was a man of education from Philadelphia and the nephew of an ex-Union soldier, at one time the postmaster of St. Louis. His fate is unknown.

Scout O. J. Whitman was found dead on the plains, his head resting in his saddle, used as a pillow, his horse and arms gone--scalped--an arrow through his heart. He was killed while asleep.

If these lines are read by any survivors of the fight of Aug. 17, 18, 19, and 20, 1868, on the Arrickeree Fork of the Republican River, Kansas, the place where Lieut. Beecher was killed, he or they will remember Malcolm Graham as one of the men who ran the gantlet of the Indians surrounding that island in the river and made his way unwounded to Gen. Bankhead at Fort Wallace, thus securing relief for the Forsyth party. Graham was one of the scouts under John Austin at Fort Dodge and did good service in that capacity.

Capt. Harry Reade, who for eighteen years was an officer of the Twenty-fifth United States Infantry, was formerly a scout in government service upon the Western plains. He never wore a buckskin suit or affected long hair, however, and in the quiet retirement of his Massachusetts home knows not the perils of the days when he, with only a single companion scout, carried dispatches through a region populous with Kiowa, Arapahoe, and Cheyenne Indians, who ambushed the watering places, fired the river bottoms, and whose keen-eyed abilities sought by every artifice and skillful device to intercept, chase down, and kill the government scouts.