At the Little Blue, a stream that runs through what is now Kansas City, he was finally turned south, and took up a course through southern Kansas.

Near Mound City a scouting party of which I was a member surprised a small detachment of Price’s army.  Our advantage was such that they surrendered, and while we were rounding them up I heard one of them say that we Yanks had captured a bigger prize than we suspected.  When he was asked what this prize consisted of, the soldier said: 

“That big man over yonder is General Marmaduke of the Southern army.”

I had heard much of Marmaduke and greatly admired his dash and ability as a fighting man.  Going over to him, I asked if there was anything I could do to make him comfortable.  He said that I could.  He hadn’t had a bite to eat, and he wanted some food and wanted it right away.

He was surrounding a good lunch I had in my saddle-bag, while I was ransacking the saddle-bag of a comrade for a bottle of whisky which I knew to be there.

When we turned our prisoners over to the main command I was put in charge of General Marmaduke and accompanied him as his custodian to Fort Leavenworth.  The general and I became fast friends, and our friendship lasted long after the war.  Years after he had finished his term as Governor of Missouri he visited me in London, where I was giving my Wild West Show.  He was talking with me in my tent one day when the Earl of Lonsdale and Lord Harrington rode up, dismounted, and came over to where we were sitting.

I presented Marmaduke to them as the governor of one of America’s greatest States and a famous Confederate general.  Lonsdale, approaching and extending his hand, smiled and said: 

“Ah, Colonel Cody, another one of your Yankee friends, eh?”

Marmaduke, who had risen, scowled.  But he held out his hand.  “Look here,” he said, “I am much pleased to meet you, sir, but I want you first to understand distinctly that I am no Yank.”

When I left General Marmaduke at Leavenworth and returned to my command, Price was already in retreat.  After driving him across the Arkansas River I returned with my troop to Springfield, Missouri.  From there I went, under General McNeil, to Fort Smith and other places on the Arkansas border, where he had several lively skirmishes, and one big and serious engagement before the war was ended.

The spring of 1865 found us again in Springfield, where we remained about two months, recuperating and replenishing our stock.  I now got a furlough of thirty days and went to St. Louis, where I invested part of a thousand dollars I had saved in fashionable clothes and in rooms at one of the best hotels.  It was while there that I met a young lady of a Southern family, to whom I paid a great deal of attention, and from whom I finally extracted a promise that if I would come back to St. Louis at the end of the war she would marry me.