CHAPTER XXIX.
Return to St. Louis—Interview with General Gaines—The Muleteers' Company—Departure for Florida—Wreck of the Maid of New York—Arrival at Fort Brooke—Tampa Bay—Bearer of Despatches to General Jessup—Battle of O-ke-cho-be—Anecdotes and Incidents.
I had speedy passage to St. Louis, and arrived there after an absence of five months. I mentioned that I had left some business unsettled at the time of my sudden leave. This was none other than an affair matrimonial; but on my return I had some misunderstanding with my fair dulcinea, and the courtship dropped through.
At this time the Florida war was unfinished. General Gaines was in St. Louis for the purpose of raising a company of men familiar with Indian habits. Mr. Sublet had spoken to him about me, and had recommended me as being particularly well acquainted with Indian life. The general sent a request that I would call upon him at his quarters. I went accordingly, and was introduced by Sublet.
The general inquired of me how I would like to go to Florida to fight the Indians. I replied that I had seen so much of Indian warfare during the last sixteen years that I was about tired of it, and did not want to engage in it again, at least for the present. He remarked that there was a good opportunity there for renown. He wished, he said, to raise a company which would go down as muleteers; that their duties would be light, and so on through the stereotyped benefits peculiar to a soldier's life.
Sublet recommended me to engage. Florida, he said, was a delightful country, and I should find a wide difference between the cold region of the Rocky Mountains and the genial and salubrious South.
