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Show THE NOBLE RED MAN. 539 troubles multiplied. The soldiers had begun to desert. Forty men took " French leave" in one night! The next day thirteen men deserted in broad day, in full view of the command, seven mounted and six on foot. After a desperate run the latter were captured, two slightly and one mortally wounded. It is to be noted that they were then in a region where the deserters apprehended no danger from Indians. Two men were killed by the Indians after all danger was tli ought to be past. From Fort Wallace the command marched east-ward to Fort Hayes. The war was over, and Custer applied for and obtained leave to visit, by rail, Fort Riley, where his family was then located ; and for this, and other matters connected with that campaign, Custer was court- martialed! This proceeding appears to have been purely malicious, prompted by the dislike of some inferior officers over whom Custer had exercised pretty severe discipline. The charges were drawn by one whom he had severely reprimanded for drunken-ness. He had left Fort Wallace without orders, because, under the circumstances, he thought proper to report to his commander in person. To this they added the fact that^ Jie went on to Riley to visit his family, and thus constructed a charge that he had abandoned his post for his private convenience ! Mean as this attack was, it was successful. Custer was suspended from rank and pay for one year! Meanwhile another summer campaign was undertaken against the hostile Indians, with equally barren results. General Sully marched, in 1868, against the combined Cheyennes, Kioways, and Arapahoes, whom he struck near the present Camp Supply. If this was a " drawn battle," that is the best that can be said of it. Sully retired, badly crippled, and made no further attempts. At the same time General " Sandy " Forsythe, Avith a company of scouts and plainsmen enlisted for the purpose, was hunting for the hostile Sioux on the northern affluents of the Republican. He found them. They also found him. Of his total force of fifty- one men, six were killed and twenty wounded ; all their horses were captured, and the command was only saved from annihilation by the arrival of reinforcements. The Noble Red Man evidently understood his business better than the Generals opposed to him. The people of Colorado grew sarcastic. Western people often do when mail and supplies are cut off for weeks at a time. It appeared that the mountain territories were in a fair way to be isolated from the rest of the country. California Joe, a scout who had been with several of the commanders, thus gave in his experience : " I've been with ' em when they started out after the Injuns on wheels in an ambulance as if they war goin' to a town funeral |