“We knew they made a mistake when they separated. Gall took most of the Indians up the river to come in between them and cut them off. When we saw the Ree scouts had stayed back with Long Yellow Hair, we were glad. We saw them trotting along, and let them come in over the bluffs. Some of our young men went up the gully which they had crossed and cut them off from behind.

“Then we showed our line in front, and the long swords charged. They reeled under our fire and started to fall back. Our young men behind them opened fire. Then we saw some officers talking and pointing. Don’t know who they were, for they all looked alike. I didn’t see Long Yellow Hair then or afterward. We heard the Rees singing their death song—they knew we had them. All dismounted, and every fourth man held the others’ ponies. Then we closed all around them. We rushed like a wave does at the sand out there (the ocean beach) and shot the pony holders and stampeded the ponies by waving our blankets in their faces. Our squaws caught them, for they were tired out.

“I had sung the war song, I had smelt the powder smoke. My heart was bad—I was like one that has no mind. I rushed in and took their flag; my pony fell dead as I took it. I cut the thong that bound me. I jumped up and brained the long sword flag-man with my war club, and ran back to our line with the flag.

“The long sword’s blood and brains splashed in my face. It felt hot, and blood ran in my mouth. I could taste it. I was mad. I got a fresh pony and rushed back, shooting, cutting, and slashing. This pony was shot, and I got another.

“This time I saw Little Hair. I remembered my vow. I was crazy; I feared nothing. I knew nothing would hurt me, for I had my white weasel-tail charm on.^[95] (He wears the charm to this day.) I don’t know how many I killed trying to get at him. He knew me. I laughed at him and yelled at him. I saw his mouth move, but there was so much noise I couldn’t hear his voice. He was afraid. When I got near enough I shot him with my revolver. My gun was gone, I don’t know where. I leaped from my pony and cut out his heart and bit a piece out of it and spit it in his face. I got back on my pony and rode off shaking it. I was satisfied and sick of fighting; I didn’t scalp him.

“I didn’t go back on the field after that. The squaws came up afterward and killed the wounded, cut their boot legs off for moccasin soles, and took their money, watches, and rings. They cut their fingers off to get them quicker. They hunted for Long Yellow Hair to scalp him, but could not find him. He didn’t wear his fort clothes (uniform), his hair had been cut off, and the Indians didn’t know him. (This corroborates what Mrs. Custer says about her husband’s having his long yellow curls cut at St. Paul some weeks before he was killed.)

“That night we had a big feast and the scalp dance. Then Sitting Bull came up and made another speech. He said: ‘I told you how it would be. I made great medicine. My medicine warmed your hearts and made you brave.’

“He talked a long time. All the Indians gave him the credit of winning the fight because his medicine won it. But he wasn’t in the fight. Gall got mad at Sitting Bull that night. Gall said: ‘We did the fighting, you only made medicine.’ It would have been the same anyway. Their hearts were bad toward each other after that, always.

“After that fight we could have killed all the others on the hill (Reno’s command) but for the quarrel between Gall and Sitting Bull. Both wanted to be head chief. Some of the Indians said Gall was right and went with him. Some said Sitting Bull was. I didn’t care, I was my own chief and had my bad young men; we would not obey either of them unless we wanted to, and they feared us.

“I was sick of fighting—I had had enough. I wanted to dance. We heard more long swords were coming with wheel guns (artillery, Gatlings). We moved camp north. They followed many days till we crossed the line. I stayed over there till Sitting Bull came back, and I came back with him. That’s all there is to tell. I never told it to white men before.”

When he had finished, I said to him: “Rain, if you didn’t kill Long Yellow Hair, who did?”

“I don’t know. No one knows. It was like running in the dark.”

“Well,” asked Mac, “why was it Long Yellow Hair wasn’t scalped, when every one else was? Did you consider him too brave to be scalped?”

“No, no one is too brave to be scalped; that wouldn’t make any difference. The squaws wondered afterward why they couldn’t find him. He must have laid under some other dead bodies. I didn’t know, till I heard it long afterward from the whites, that he wasn’t scalped.”

“How many Indians were killed in the fight?”

“I don’t remember, but about ten and four or ten and six.”

“How about Curley, the Crow scout, who claims to have escaped?” asked Mac.

“Ugh! I know Curley. He is a liar. He never was in the fight. His pony stumbled and broke something. He stayed behind to fix it. When he heard the firing, he ran off like a whipped dog. One long sword escaped, though; his pony ran off with him and went past our lodges. They told me about it at Chicago. I saw the man there, and I remembered hearing the squaws tell about it after the fight.”

Rain-in-the-Face (Itiomagaju) is about sixty years of age now, and is the only chief that survives to tell the tale of the Custer fight. Gall and Sitting Bull have both gone to hunt the white buffalo long since. Rain can write his name in English. I taught him to do it at the World’s Fair in order to sell Longfellow’s poem, entitled “The Revenge of Rain-in-the-Face.” He doesn’t know the significance of it after he writes it. His knowledge of English is confined to about thirty words, but he can’t say them so any one can understand him, though he can understand almost anything that is said in English. Like all other Indians, his gratitude is for favors to come and not for favors already shown. He is utterly heartless and unprincipled, physically brave but morally a coward. His redeeming feature lies in the fact that you can depend upon any promise he makes, but it takes a world of patience to get him to promise anything. Even at the age of sixty he is still a Hercules. In form and face he is the most pronounced type of the ideal Fenimore Cooper, dime novel Indian in America.

I. The Fight on the War Bonnet

Before entering upon a detailed description of the larger events of the campaign after the Battle of the Rosebud and Little Big Horn, two smaller affairs are worthy of mention. One, though nothing but a skirmish, was of great importance in determining the final result. The other well illustrates something of the adventurous life and perilous duty of a soldier in Indian warfare.

On Saturday, July 15, 1876, the Fifth Cavalry, under General Wesley Merritt, was marching toward Fort Laramie, under orders to join Crook. At noon word was received from the agency that a body of Cheyennes, numbering, perhaps, one thousand warriors, who had heretofore remained quiet on the reservation at the Red Cloud Agency, on the White River, South Dakota—the Pine Ridge Agency—was about to break away and join the Indians in the field. Their minds had been inflamed by the story of Crook’s defeat and the account of the disaster to the Seventh Cavalry. They thought they saw unlimited opportunities for plunder, scalp-taking, and successful fighting—therefore they decided to go on the war-path without delay. There were not troops enough near the agency to prevent this action, which was entirely unsuspected anyway.

The orders for Merritt to join Crook were imperative; but, in view of this news, the general decided to disregard them for the present. He realized that he could perform no better service than heading off this body of Cheyennes, and either defeating and scattering them or, better still, forcing them back to the agency.

The trail they would have to take would cross a creek in the extreme southeast corner of South Dakota, called the War Bonnet,^[96] some eighty-five miles, by the only practicable route, from where the Fifth Cavalry then was. The Indians were a much shorter distance from it. Merritt would have had to march around, practically, three sides of a square, owing to the configuration of the country, to reach that point, which was the best place for miles around, within the knowledge of W. F. Cody (Buffalo Bill), his chief scout, to intercept the flying Cheyennes.

Merritt did not hesitate an instant after learning the news. He put his command in motion immediately, and by a forced march of thirty-one hours, got to the crossing in good time. There was no evidence that the Cheyennes had passed. The troopers concealed themselves in ravines under the bluff’s, and waited for the Indians.

Early on the morning of July 17th, the pickets, commanded by Lieutenant Charles King,^[97] observed the approach of the Indians. At about the same time Merritt’s wagon train, under Lieutenant Hall, with two hundred infantrymen spoiling for a fight, concealed in the wagons as a guard, was observed toiling along, some four miles to the southwest, in an endeavor to reach the rendezvous on the War Bonnet. The regiment remained carefully concealed, and the Indians, in high glee, thought they had the train at their mercy.

So soon as he sighted the Cheyennes, Lieutenant Hall despatched two troopers of his small cavalry escort ahead to the crossing to apprise Merritt that the Indians were at hand. An advance party of Cheyennes, superbly mounted and led by a gorgeous young chief, determined to intercept these troopers, who were ignorant of their peril. The two soldiers came down one trail which led through a ravine, the Indians came up another which led through another ravine. The troopers and the Cheyennes were hidden from each other, but both were in plain view of the picket on the hill. The two trails joined at the foot of the hill. The plain back of the wagon-train was black—or red, rather—with Indians coming up rapidly, although they were not yet near enough to attack.

Merritt and one or two other officers, with Buffalo Bill and a few of his scouts and several troopers, joined King on the hill. The main body of the Indians was too far away to attack, so the little advance party determined to wait until the Cheyennes, who were endeavoring to cut off the two soldiers, were close at hand and then fall upon them. Everybody withdrew from the crest of the hill except Lieutenant King, who was to give the signal, when the party below should sally around it and fall on the Cheyennes.

King, who has described the situation with masterly skill in his “Campaigning with Crook,” flattened himself out on the brow of the hill, with nothing showing but the top of his hatless head and his field glass, and watched the soldiers rapidly galloping up one trail and the Indians more rapidly rushing down the other. He waited until the Indians had almost reached the junction. Then he gave the signal. Merritt’s escort and Cody’s scouts raced around the base of the hill, and dashed slap into the faces of the astonished Cheyennes. Two Indian saddles were emptied in the twinkling of an eye. Such was the impetus of their charge that the Indians scarcely had time to rein in their steeds before the white men were upon them.

Buffalo Bill shot the leader of the war party, a famous young chief named Yellow Hand, through the leg. The bullet also pierced the heart of the pony Yellow Hand was riding. Both crashed to the earth. In spite of his pain, Yellow Hand dragged himself to his feet and fired at the scout, killing his horse. The two, not twenty paces apart, exchanged shots the next instant. The Indian missed, but Buffalo Bill sent a bullet through Yellow Hand’s breast. The Indian reeled, but before he fell Cody leaped upon him and drove his knife into his gallant enemy’s heart. Yellow Hand was a dead Indian when he struck the ground. “Jerking the war bonnet off,” he says, “I scientifically scalped him in about five seconds.”^[98]

Yellow Hand had recognized Buffalo Bill, and had virtually challenged him to this duel. “The first scalp for Custer!” shouted Cody, waving his trophy in the air.

Some of the other Indians had now come within range. They opened fire upon the little party; the bullets zipped around them in every direction, one narrowly grazing General Merritt. They nicked a horse here and there, but, as usual, their marksmanship was execrable.

As the little party charged the Indians, Merritt had directed King to order the rest of the regiment to advance. In the midst of the firing, the splendid troops of the dandy Fifth came bursting through the ravines and over the hills, making for the Cheyennes on the gallop. At the same time Lieutenant Hall’s infantrymen scrambled out of their wagons and sent a few volleys at the Cheyennes at long range. A more astonished body of Indians the United States has probably never contained. They hadn’t the slightest idea that there was a soldier within five hundred miles, except those in the wagon train which they had expected to capture. They had anticipated no trouble whatever in joining Sitting Bull, and now they found themselves suddenly face to face with one of the finest cavalry regiments in the service. What were they to do? They hadn’t much time to decide, for the cavalry were after them at full gallop. They turned and fled incontinently. They stood not on the order of their going, but went at once.

If they could get back to the reservation, they would be free from attack. They fled at the highest possible speed of their horses, throwing aside everything they possessed, save their guns and ammunition, in their frantic desire to get away. For thirty miles Merritt and his men pursued them with the best will in the world to come up with them; but the horses of the soldiers were more or less tired from their long march of the day before, and the Indians, lightly equipped and on fresh horses, finally succeeded in escaping. By nightfall the whole party was back on the reservation. Thereafter care was taken that they found no further opportunity to go on the war-path.

The coöperation of this splendid body of Indians with that under the command of Crazy Horse might possibly have turned the scale in some of the hotly contested battles, and Merritt’s promptness was greatly commended by the authorities. Buffalo Bill received the chief glory of the little adventure from his dramatic duel with Yellow Hand, in full view of soldiers and Indians.

II. The Sibley Scout

The other event is known in army records as The Sibley Scout. While General Crook was waiting for reinforcements and additional supplies at his camp on Goose Creek, near the Tongue River, he decided to send out a scouting party to see what had become of his friend, Crazy Horse, who had handled him so severely at the Rosebud a few weeks before.

Lieutenant Frederick W. Sibley, of E Troop, of the Third Cavalry, an enterprising but cool-headed young officer, was given command of twenty-five picked men from the regiment. With him went scouts Frank Gruard and Baptiste Pourier, commonly known as “Big Bat,” to distinguish him from another scout, Baptiste, a smaller man. To the party also were attached John Becker, mule packer, and the indefatigable Finerty, the war correspondent of the Chicago Times, making a total of thirty men.

Each man carried one hundred rounds of ammunition on his person, and a few days’ rations in his saddle-bags. They started on the 6th of July. On the 7th they had reached the Rosebud, some fifty miles away from Crook’s camp. There they came across the Indians. Gruard and Pourier observed them from the top of a hill, behind which the rest of the expedition halted. There were hundreds of them, apparently, and the scouts rejoined the command immediately. To take the back track was impossible. Therefore, they struck westward over the mountains, leading their horses. The Indians, marching slowly southward, soon came upon the trail of the party, and followed it at some distance. Urged by the imminence of their peril, the men, led by the unerring Gruard, who was familiar with all the ramifications of the Big Horn Range, since he had often hunted there during his captivity with the Sioux, did some rapid mountain climbing, and finally thought they had escaped pursuit, especially as no one could ride up the trail up which they had climbed, and these Indians were poor trailers when on foot. Having progressed some five miles over terrific trails, they halted in a little glade under the shade of some trees, unsaddled their horses, made coffee, and ate dinner. Feeling themselves safe from pursuit, they rested for several hours, and it was not until late in the afternoon that they took up their march again.

The going here was easier than before, and they could mount their horses once more. Presently they trotted into a level, thickly wooded valley. The trail led along the right side of the mountain, which was broken and rugged. There were woods to the left and in front of them, and high rocks and open timber on the right. John Becker, who brought up the rear, suddenly alarmed everybody by the shout of “Indians, Indians!”

The next instant the timber and boulders to the right were alive with a war party of Sioux and Cheyennes, not two hundred yards away—not the same party they had seen in the valley, by the way. So soon as the Indians appeared they opened fire. Again their shooting was bad. Not a trooper was hurt, although a number of horses were hit, some seriously. Sibley acted with prompt decision. A word with Gruard determined him in his course. Under a spattering fire from the Indians, the party turned to the left and raced for the thick timber as fast as they could go. They threw themselves to the ground in a semi-circular line so soon as they reached the woods, tied their horses to the trees back of them, and taking advantage of fallen logs and boulders as a breastwork, opened fire upon the Indians, who, on their part, sought concealment and commenced firing in earnest. The soldiers were well protected in the forest, however, and although the Indians killed many of the horses, they did not hit any of the troopers.

The party was now overwhelmingly outnumbered. There were already several hundred Indians engaged. Their leader was a magnificent young Cheyenne chief, dressed in a suit of white buckskin. It was afterward learned that his name was White Antelope. Gruard was recognized by the Indians, who were desirous of taking him alive. After firing for perhaps half an hour, White Antelope led the Indians on foot in a direct charge on the woods.

Sibley ordered his men to hold their fire until they could make every shot tell. They mowed the advancing Indians down in scores. White Antelope was seen to leap into the air and fall. He had been pierced, it was afterward learned, by several bullets, and started for the happy hunting grounds then and there. The charge was handsomely repulsed, and the Indians retired in confusion, although still keeping up a severe fire.

It was evident to every one that the Indians would hold the soldiers in play until they were joined by other war parties—indeed, their numbers were increased already—when Sibley’s detachment would be surrounded and exterminated. Gruard, therefore, proposed abandoning the horses—most of them had been killed anyway—and that the whole party should steal away through the timber and endeavor to escape over the mountains on foot. Firing two or three volleys and then keeping up a scattering fire for a short time to make the Indians think they were on the alert, the troopers, exercising the greatest caution, one by one crawled through the underbrush until they were hidden by the forest trees. Then everybody got up on his feet and ran like mad.

Gruard, whose instincts as a guide were of the highest order, led them over magnificent mountains, through gloomy cañons, past overhanging cliffs, along impossible trails on the sides of tremendous precipices, one of which stretched for several hundred feet below them and three hundred feet above them, almost sheer. Not being mountaineers, they would have been utterly unable to have followed the scout had it not been for the Red Terror that lurked behind. They had succeeded in getting, perhaps, a mile away from and some distance above the valley, when they heard several heavy volleys, followed by a series of wild yells, which apprised them that the Indians had at last rushed their camp. They were so confident of escape now that they actually burst into roars of laughter at the thought of the Indian disappointment when the attackers found their victims had decamped. Those Indians were not accustomed to hunt on foot. An Indian off a horse is about as awkward as a sailor on one. The pursuit was soon abandoned, and the soldiers left to follow their course unmolested. Theirs had been a lucky escape. Without Gruard, they had all been killed.

The day was frightfully hot. The fast going caused by the exigencies of the occasion and the desperate nature of the climbing increased their discomfort. The men threw away everything in the way of superfluous clothing which would impede their progress or tire them in their hurry, save their weapons and ammunition. They camped that night, or halted, rather, for there was nothing with which to camp, on the crest of the range. It turned very cold, a terrible storm arose, and they suffered severely. They had nothing to eat; their provisions had been in their saddle-bags, and they had not dared to take them in their attempt to escape, lest the suspicions of the Indians should be excited by their efforts.

The next day, the 9th of July, they started down the mountain. Gruard’s instincts were not at fault. He led them to the foot-hills overlooking Crook’s main camp far away. In order to reach the plain they had to cross a rapid mountain brook, the water of which came almost up to their necks. Two men who could not swim and who were in a very nervous condition from their exciting adventures, stubbornly refused to try to cross the stream, even with the assistance of their comrades. They chose rather to hide themselves where they were, and begged that help might be sent back to them. The rest of the party managed to cross and started for the camp, still about fifteen miles distant. They were met in the evening by a scouting party of soldiers, who brought them back to camp.

Their clothing and shoes were torn to ribbons, and they were greatly exhausted from the terrible strains and hardships to which they had been subjected. That they escaped at all was a miracle, due to the coolness of young Sibley and the marvelous skill of Gruard. A detachment went back for the two men who had remained behind and brought them back to the camp.

Lieutenant Sibley reported to General Crook that he had found the Indians, but whether that statement is accurate is a question. It would, perhaps, be more truthful to say that the Indians had found him. Sibley and Gruard were highly complimented by Crook; and Mr. Finerty, who had displayed great courage, wrote a graphic account of it, from which this brief sketch has been abridged.

I. Crook and Mills at Slim Buttes

After the defeat of General Custer, and the successful retreat of the Sioux and Cheyennes from the Little Big Horn, the government hurried reinforcements into the field, and ordered Crook and Terry to press the pursuit of the Indians with the greatest vigor. It was not, however, until nearly a year after the disaster on the Little Big Horn that the Sioux war was concluded, and it was not until after the Indians had met with several crushing defeats and had been pursued until they were utterly exhausted that peace was declared.

The greatest individual factor in bringing about this much desired result was General George Crook, a celebrated cavalryman during the Civil War, and a more celebrated Indian fighter after its close. With unwearied tenacity and vigor he pursued the savages, striking them through his subordinates whenever and wherever they could be found. The terrible persistence with which he urged his faint, starving, foot-sore, tattered soldiers along the trail, to which he clung with a resolution and determination that nothing could shake, entitles him to the respect and admiration of his countrymen—a respect and admiration, by the way, which was fully accorded him by his gallant and equally desperate foes.

After Crook, the men who brought about the result were, first and foremost, Nelson A. Miles—singularly enough not a cavalryman, but the Colonel of the Fifth Infantry; and, next to him, Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie, of the Fourth Cavalry, and Captain Anson Mills, of the Third, whom we have already noted doing gallant service at the Battle of the Rosebud. Miles had been ordered into the field to reinforce Terry’s shattered and depleted column.

After much marching and scouting, the columns of Terry and Crook combined; but Terry’s forces were in bad condition, and his command was soon withdrawn from the field. What was left of the Seventh Cavalry was sent back to Fort Lincoln, whence they had started out with such bright hopes a few months before. Gibbon’s command was returned to Montana, where it had been made up, on account of the threatening aspect of things in that quarter, and Terry retired from active campaigning to resume command of his department. Miles, as we shall see, was sent to the Yellowstone.

Crook was left alone in the active pursuit. Space and time are lacking to describe the details of the wonderful marches he made on the trails of the Indians—now under burning suns, which parched the ground until it was as bare as the palm of a hand; again through torrents of drenching rains, which succeeded the fierce heat; and, finally, through the snows and cold of a winter of unexampled severity. During the summer there was no forage for the horses of the cavalry nor for the very small pack train, and rations for the men became shorter and shorter. Finally, early in September, the supply of provisions was reduced to two and a half days’ rations. Crook calculated that they could march two weeks on that amount.

They supplemented the rations by living on horse and mule meat and a few wild onions which they could gather from time to time in spots which had escaped the universal baking of the summer. At last the command literally reached the end of its resources. The Indians were in bad condition, too, but their situation was not nearly so desperate as was that of Crook and his men. The Indians were worn out and exhausted by the energetic and relentless pursuit which had been hurled after them by the indomitable commander, but they still had plenty to eat, and they had managed to keep ahead of him, and to avoid various scouting columns.

On the 7th of September, 1876, Crook realized that his men had reached the limit of their endurance, and that forage and food must be procured or they would all die in the wilderness. The Indians had swept the country bare of game, and the sun had swept it clean of fodder. One hundred and fifty of the best men—that is, those who showed the fewest signs of the hardships they had undergone—with the best horses and the last of the mules, were formed into an advance party under Captain Anson Mills, of the Third Cavalry. Mills had instructions to push on to Deadwood City, one of the new towns in the Black Hills, to get provisions, “Any kind of provisions, for God’s sake!” which he could bring back to the rest of the army, now in a destitute condition.

Mills was not expected to hunt for, or to fight, Indians—primarily, that is. He was to go for food in order to keep the army from starving; but as he marched southward, his scouts discovered a large village of forty or fifty lodges at a place called Slim Buttes, in the northwest corner of South Dakota. The tepees had been pitched on a little rising from the banks of a small stream called Rabbit Creek. The place was inclosed on three sides by a series of tall cliffs, whose broken sides seemed here and there to have been cut in half-formed terraces, making the ascent easy. Little ravines and small cañons ran through the buttes, gradually ascending until they met the plateau on top.

Mills instantly determined to attack the camp—a wise and soldierly action on his part. He made his dispositions with care. Reaching the vicinity of the camp, he halted in a deep gorge on the night of September 8, and prepared for battle early the next morning. The night was dark, cold, and very rainy, and the tired men suffered greatly. Marching out at dawn, Mills succeeded at daybreak in surprising the camp, which proved to be that of a band of Sioux led by American Horse, one of the most prominent chiefs. Leaving Lieutenant Bubb with the pack train and the lead horses, Mills directed Lieutenant Schwatka, afterward so well known from his Arctic explorations, to charge directly into the village with twenty-five mounted men. The remainder of his force he dismounted and divided into two parties, under Lieutenants Von Luettwitz and Crawford, respectively, with orders to move on the camp from different sides.

The attack was a complete success. The village was taken with but little loss. Some of the Sioux were killed and others captured, but most escaped through the ravines to the plateau surrounding the valley. One heroic but unfortunate little band, consisting of American Horse and four warriors, with fifteen women and children, was driven into one of the cañons which ended in a cave. One or two of the soldiers had been wounded in the attack. Lieutenant Von Luettwitz, who had fought all through the Franco-Austrian War in Italy, and who was a veteran of the Civil War, was shot in the knee and so badly wounded that his leg had to be amputated on the field.

Being now in complete command of the village, the pack train was ordered up and the captured village was examined. To the joy of Mills and his soldiers, an immense quantity of provisions, in the shape of meat, forage, and other stores, was discovered.

There still remained the little band of savages in the ravine to be dealt with. A detachment was ordered to drive them out. The Indians had been busy making rifle-pits, and as the soldiers advanced to storm the cave, they were met with a rapid and well-directed fire. Two of them were shot dead and others wounded.^[99] The Indian position appeared to be impregnable. An interpreter crept near enough under cover to make himself heard, and asked their surrender. They replied to his command with taunts and jeers. They incautiously informed him, however, that Crazy Horse with his warriors was in the vicinity, and on being apprised of their situation by some of the fugitives, he would undoubtedly come to their rescue. Crazy Horse could have made short work of Mills and his hundred and fifty. Meanwhile the survivors of the village, which had contained a hundred warriors, formed an extended line on the buttes and opened fire on the soldiers.

Mills acted promptly. He despatched a courier to Crook on the best horse in the command, to report the situation and ask him for reinforcements at once. Incidentally, he mentioned that a great quantity of provisions had been found. Then he made preparations to hold the place, and at the same time to prosecute his attack against the cave, all the time keeping up a smart fight with the men on the buttes. So soon as Crook received the message, he started forward, intending to take with him a select body of men; but the whole army, spoiling for a fight and hungry for a square meal, insisted on going along. They made a forced march, and reached Mills about half after eleven in the morning.

Crook immediately proceeded to dislodge the Indians in the cave. The men were led forward under a galling fire, to which the general, in spite of the entreaties of his staff, exposed himself with indifference. When they got in a position to command the cave, Crook, willing to spare his brave foemen, again asked them to surrender. His request was met by a decided negative. The men opened fire, and searched every cranny and recess of the cave with a storm of bullets. Gruard, one of the scouts, taking advantage of cover, crept to the very mouth of the cave, remained there unobserved, watched his opportunity, seized a squaw who incautiously exposed herself, and with her as a shield dashed forward and shot one of the warriors, escaping in safety himself.

II. The Death of American Horse

After two hours of firing, the death-chants of the squaws induced Crook to order a cessation for another parley. This time his request that the Indians surrender met with some response; for the squaws and children, to the number of thirteen, came reluctantly forth on his positive assurance that they would be protected. The braves refused to give up. They were confident that Crazy Horse would succor them. The engagement at once began again, but after it had lasted some little time the fire of the Indians ceased.

The offer of mercy was made a fourth time. A young Indian stepped out and received additional assurance that no harm should come if they surrendered. He went back into the cave and presently reappeared with another young warrior, supporting between them the tall, splendid figure of brave old American Horse. He had been shot through the bowels, and his intestines protruded from the wound. He was suffering frightful agony, and was biting hard upon a piece of wood to control himself. He handed his gun to Crook and gave up the contest. The surgeons with the command did everything they possibly could for him, but his wound was beyond human skill. That night, surrounded by his wives and children, he died, as stoically and as bravely as he had lived.

Inside the cave the rocky walls were cut and scored by the rain of bullets which had been poured into it, and lying on the floor were the bodies of the two Indian warriors, together with a woman and a child, who had been killed. The soldiers had not known, until the squaws came out, that there were any women or children there. The little band had sold their lives dearly. Even the women had used guns, and had displayed all the bravery and courage of the Sioux.

Too late Crazy Horse, with some six hundred warriors, appeared on the scene. Imagining he had only to deal with Mills’ small force, he galloped gallantly forward to the attack at about five o’clock. He was greatly astonished at the number of antagonists developed thereby. He retired to the top of the buttes, and the soldiers in gallant style dashed after him. They scaled the cliffs, finally gaining the level plateau. Crazy Horse made one or two attempts to break through the line, but it was impossible, and seeing himself greatly outnumbered, he wisely retired, having sustained some loss.

The battle was one of the most picturesque ever fought in the West. Crook and his officers stood in the camp, the center of a vast amphitheater ringed with fire, up the sides of which the soldiers steadily climbed to get at the Indians, silhouetted in all their war finery against the sky. The loss of life on either side was not great, but the capture of the village and the provisions which had been accumulated for the winter was a serious one.

In the camp were discovered many articles that had belonged to the Seventh Cavalry—a guidon, money, one of Captain Keogh’s gauntlets, marked with his name, orderly books, saddles, etc. Among other things, were letters written by officers and soldiers to friends in the East, some of them still sealed and ready for mailing. They must have come like voices from the dead when they reached those to whom they had been written.