eight o'clock
Special trains were ordered to meet and convey their detachments of horse , foot , and pack-trains , so that a big command might concentrate at once at Sidney and march thence , ` cross country , to the Ogallalla Agency , Colonel Winthrop at their head . The commanding officer of Fort Scott was directed to start three troops of cavalry and two companies of infantry at once , with instructions to join Colonel Winthrop 's column at the Niobrara crossing , and , his own troop being now the smallest at the post , owing to these details at the agency , Devers very properly decided on sending everybody else 's . Truman , Hay , and Cranston of the Eleventh and Pollock and Muncey of the Fortieth were the captains ordered to march forthwith . Before eight o'clock on Sunday morning the little column had swung sturdily away over the prairies , and Captain Devers , with his own attenuated troop and two companies of `` doughboys , '' remained to guard the post and its supplies , and take care of the invalid colonel and the wives and children of the soldiers so summarily ordered into the field . And now Almira could not lack sympathizers , for both Mrs. Flight and Mrs. Darling had been called upon to say adieu to their respective lords , who marched with their sturdy comrades in the wake of the cavalry , guarding the few wagons which had to be taken ; but these gentlemen belonged to a famous regiment that had known no other history since the day of its organization than that of constant active service . The Fortieth was forever in the field , -- its wives `` perennially grass-widowed , '' said the garrison wits , -- its children so seldom blessed with the sight of the paternal face as to be preternaturally wise in picking out their own fathers . The Fortieth went as a matter of course .