When Wynkoop’s letter about his September excursions reached headquarters, Major Anthony was ordered to replace Wynkoop and send him to Fort Riley, in Kansas. Curtis condemned Wynkoop’s actions with ‘disapproval and censure,’ and was certain they could only have arisen from either a lack of knowledge ‘requisite to make a good and efficient officer, or an intentional disobedience of orders and almost criminal mismanagement of the affairs of his command.’

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Anthony’s orders stated, ‘Major E. W. Wynkoop has laid himself liable to arrest and dismissal for absence without leave, and the Officer [Soule] who went with him liable for being absent without proper authority.’ All orders from the District of Upper Arkansas should have been followed. Supplies were to be kept under strict control. There was too much laxity at Fort Lyon, but it would be dismissed as ‘more to ignorance than intentional insult,’ at least up to September. Since then it was intolerable when officers and men left their posts’seeking and assisting to make treaties between a hostile force, and parties that had no authority to make peace.’

Wynkoop waited in anticipation of the orders that he was certain would bring instructions for concluding a peace treaty. Instead, the westbound stage brought Major Anthony with orders for Wynkoop’s removal. Anthony set about clearing the Indians away from the fort, while Wynkoop boarded the eastbound stage. One wonders if the major really knew why he had been removed from command. In his March 1865 testimony to the Doolittle Commission and in his autobiography, Wynkoop said that he left Fort Lyon because he received orders to go to Fort Riley to take command of that post. Either he was mentally unbalanced or he was evolving into the biggest liar on the Plains.

After the November fight at Sand Creek, the dead and wounded soldiers had hardly been carted back to Fort Lyon before signs of trouble appeared. Lieutenant Joseph Cramer, a compadre of Ned Wynkoop’s and Silas Soule’s and another of the Sand Creek scoundrels, spoke to 3rd Colorado Captain Theodore Cree. Speaking about Chivington, Cramer said he thought he and his friends ‘could make a massacre out of the Sand Creek and crush him.’ Cree asked Cramer what Chivington had done to make him hate him so much. Cramer answered that he didn’t know of anything specific, but that ‘they had got their play in on Chivington and they were going to play it.’ Angered by Cramer’s irrational attitude, Cree broke off the conversation. Back at Fort Lyon on December 14, Cramer wrote to Wynkoop, ‘For God’s sake, Major, keep Chivington from being a Bri’g Genl.’

More trouble was brewing. Captain Presley Talbot, badly wounded at Sand Creek, was given a room at Fort Lyon next to agent Colley’s office. There, John Smith showed him papers he and Colley had drawn up against the government, claiming they were owed ‘for 105 buffalo robes, two white ponies, and a wagon-load of goods.’ The two of them told him they had other demands, and Smith said they ‘would realize $25,000 out of it, and damn Colonel Chivington.’ The government bill they had, Talbot said, was sworn to by David Louderback of the 1st Colorado, who would go to Washington, D.C., and ‘he had friends who would help him get it.’

Smith boasted to Talbot that the Eastern papers would be filled with letters from Fort Lyon that blamed Chivington for the death of Smith’s half-blood son Jack, who had been killed by a soldier after the battle, and ‘that he would be avenged by using every effort with the department possible.’ Smith complained that it was hard for a father to endure such a loss. Perhaps $25,000 would soften the sorrow.

Private Asbury Bird of Company D, 1st Colorado, became aware of part of the deal while talking to Sam Colley’s son. Dexter Colley told Bird that they had sent $2,000 worth of Indian goods to sell in Denver, and they expected the money to arrive any day. Bird heard John Smith admit that the goods had not cost them anything, for they were government annuities and he would just trade them to the Indians, ‘and if he lost them he would not be out anything.’

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