"I never knew it," he said. And strange to add, from that day onward he never felt any pain.

The six were together again. Private Smith was conscious, but couldn't handle himself. He was fatally wounded. That didn't daunt his courage.

"Prop me sitting, boys," he begged. "Put me up where I'll do some good. You can shoot from behind me and I'll stop a few bullets, anyway."

"We'll not use you like a dead horse."

But he insisted on sitting with a pistol in his lap. He would have sat on top of the wallow, if they had let him. Amos Chapman tried to conceal his broken ankle; not a man there gave out a sign of wounds, to the enemy. While Billy Dixon dug with his knife and tin cup, the four others hastened hither-thither, serving the carbines. The Indians circled closer, swerving in and out, firing. It looked like a combat to the death. But the earth had been dug out and piled up, and just before sunset the Indians suddenly wheeled and raced away.

Pretty soon distant shooting was heard. Troops were coming? Rescue was due! No; for the darkness gathered, and although the Indians did not appear, no soldiers appeared, either.

This night a cold rain drenched the wallow and all the country around.

The six had no food; their rations had been in the saddle-pockets of the horses. They would have had no water, except for the rain. They drank and washed in the puddles that collected; but they all, save Billy Dixon, were wounded, and the puddles colored red.

They did their best for George, who lay dying. For the rest there was nothing but watching and waiting, and wondering what would happen in the morning. They had scarcely two dozen cartridges.

At last the day dawned, lowering and dark and wet. No Indians were in sight; nothing was in sight but the sodden gra.s.s and the equally cheerless sky. George was dead; four out of their remaining five were so sore and stiffened that they could barely move.

"I'm going to leave you, boys," spoke Billy Dixon. "I'm not hurt yet, and it's up to me to take the back trail and find Miles. If I get through I'll find him within thirty-six hours. If you don't hear from him with relief soon after that, you'll know I didn't get through. But there's a chance."

They agreed. Scout Dixon refused to take more than four cartridges.

That gave them five or six apiece, for the defence of the wallow. As he explained, if once he was surrounded fifty cartridges would be the same as four. He could shoot only one at a time, and the Indians would kill him.

So he strode bravely away, in a drizzle, and presently vanished.

Sergeant Woodall, shot in the side; Private Harrington, shot in the hip; Private Roth, shot in the shoulder; and Scout Chapman, his ankle shot off, peered and listened and waited.

They had waited about an hour when through the mist they saw an Indian cautiously riding in. He was reconnoitering the wallow. Their hearts sank. They kept quiet until he was within point-blank range--they could see his red blanket, rolled beneath his saddle.

"I'll get him," Sergeant Woodall uttered; took good, long aim, and fired. But he was shaky, the light was poor, and he killed only the horse.

"No matter. An Injun afoot is an Injun out of business and needs another Injun to give him a lift," Scout Chapman consoled.

Listen! Scarcely had the crashing report of the carbine rolled across the prairie and the horse fallen kicking, when from the spot where the rider had been pitched there welled the clear notes of a cavalry trumpet: "Officers' Call!"

What? Private Roth scrambled to his feet.

"That man was no Indian, sergeant! He's a trumpeter--he's a cavalry trumpeter--he's signaling us! Thank G.o.d you didn't hit him."

"I see others," Amos cried, craning and squinting. "Yonder; out beyond. Coming at a trot--one man ahead--another man holding his stirrups. It's Billy Dixon! Billy's back, with a troop of cavalry, and they sent that trumpeter on before to find us."

"Give 'em a round in the air, boys, and a cheer, to let 'em know we're all right," ordered Sergeant Woodall. "I can hear the bridles jingle.

All together, make ready, fire!"

"Bang-g-g-g! Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!"

The trumpet gaily pealed. Answering the cheer, three troops of the Eighth Cavalry led by Major W. H. Price and the puffing Billy Dixon surged in.

The "Fight of the Privates," or "Twenty-five to One," as it is known in army annals, had gloriously ended.

CHAPTER XXII

BUFFALO BILL AND YELLOW HAND (1876)

A PLAINS-DAY DUEL

The war parties of Kiowas, Comanches and Southern Cheyennes from the Indian Territory reservation rode about for a year, plundering settlers, fighting the soldiers, and trying to drive the buffalo-hunters off the range. Colonel Miles had charge of the campaign against them, which extended through the summer of 1874, and the winter, and well into the spring of 1875. Many brave deeds were done.

The Southern Cheyennes surrendered first, in March. Then the Kiowas and Comanches began to appear at Fort Sill, Indian Territory, and give themselves up. Chief Quana's Antelope Eaters were the last. They surrendered in June.

So the Military Department of the Missouri seemed a little more quiet; a few bands of outlaw Indians still roved in southwestern Kansas, southern Colorado, New Mexico and northern Texas, but the buffalo-hunters again established their camps as they pleased. General Sheridan, the commander of the whole western country to the Rocky Mountains, had said that the only way to bring real peace was to kill off the buffalo; then the Indians would have to stay on the reservations, or starve.

Trouble now thickened in the north, especially in the Department of Dakota and in Wyoming of the Department of the Platte. Forts had been planned in Chief Red Cloud's Powder River country of Wyoming, and miners were entering the Sioux and Northern Cheyennes' hunting reserve of the famous Black Hills of South Dakota. Another railroad, the Northern Pacific, was about to cross the northern buffalo range.

On their reservations in South Dakota the Sioux and Cheyennes were getting restless. Chief Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull the medicine worker stayed far outside, to hunt and fight as free men. They refused to lead their bands in, and warriors on the Dakota reservations kept slipping away, to join them.

In the spring of 1876 General George Crook, the Gray Fox, commanding the Department of the Platte, at Omaha, and General Alfred H. Terry, commanding the Department of Dakota, at St. Paul, started out to round up the Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull bands, in the Powder River and Big Horn Valley country of northern Wyoming and southeastern Montana.

General John Gibbon was to close in, with another column, from Fort Ellis, Montana, on the west.[1]

Among the troops ordered to unite with General Crook's main column on the march, were the fighting Fifth Cavalry, with headquarters at Fort Hays, Hays City, Kansas, on the Kansas Pacific Railway half way between Fort Leavenworth and Denver. Their commander was Lieutenant-Colonel (brevet Major-General) Eugene A. Carr.

The Fifth were glad to go. They already had made a great record on the plains, protecting the Union Pacific and the Kansas Pacific railroads; were just back from scouting against the Apaches in Arizona; and now they eagerly unpacked their campaign kits for another round. "Buffalo Bill" Cody, their old chief-of-scouts, was sent for, in the East where he had been acting on the stage with Texas Jack. He came in a hurry, and was given three cheers.

The Fifth Cavalry were to rendezvous at Cheyenne. The four companies at Fort Hays went by railroad, first to Denver and then north to Cheyenne. On the seventh of June there they were. They marched north to old Fort Laramie. Here the regiment was ordered to guard the great Sioux and Cheyenne trail that crossed country from the South Dakota reservations to the hostile Powder River and Big Horn villages.

There were several skirmishes, but the traveling Indians got away. On July 1 the new colonel joined the regiment. He was Brevet Major-General Wesley Merritt, from General Sheridan's staff at Chicago division headquarters. As he was a full colonel, he outranked Lieutenant-Colonel Carr, and became commander.

On July 6 terrible word was received from Fort Laramie. Buffalo Bill first announced it, as he came out of General Merritt's tent.

"Custer and five companies of the Seventh have been wiped out of existence, on the Little Big Horn, by the Sioux. It's no rumor; General Merritt's got the official dispatch."

"What! When?"

"June 25. It's awful, boys."

Sunday, of last week! Twelve days ago, and they only just now heard!

And while they had been longing for Indians, and envying other columns that might be having fights,--even a little jealous of the dashing Custer's rival Seventh, who were hunting Indians instead of watching a trail--this same Seventh had been battling for their lives.

Of course, reinforcements would be rushed in at once. The Fifth would have their chance. And sure enough, the order came for the Fifth Cavalry to march north in earnest and find the General Crook column in the Big Horn country.

The route lay from southeastern Wyoming north-west through Fort Laramie and Fort Fetterman (which was farther up the North Platte River), and on to the Big Horn. But suddenly the march was stopped. A dispatch from the Red Cloud agency of the Sioux and Cheyenne reservation said that eight hundred Cheyennes had prepared to leave on the next day, Sunday, July 16, to join Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull.

There was only one thing for General Merritt to do: throw his troops across the-war-trail between the reservation and the wagon-road of the white settlers to the Black Hills, and turn the runaways back. War Bonnet Creek of extreme southwestern South Dakota, west of the Red Cloud reservation, was the place where the red trail struck the white trail; Chief-of-Scouts Buffalo Bill knew it well. The troops must be there by Sunday night. It now was Sat.u.r.day noon; the distance, by round-about route, was eighty-five miles; the Cheyennes had only twenty-eight to come. General Merritt resolved to get there first.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Buffalo Bill. (From the Painting by Rosa Bonheur)]