e; the sky kept marriage bonds with the scene. Cold, gray clouds
hung over the ridges along which Custer rode with the daring Seventh.
They draped the summits of the Big Horn Range on the far horizon in gray
and purple. The prairie grass had come to the death of the autumn and it
too creaked amid the stones. The heart beat quick at the sight of Chief
Two Moons, a tall and stalwart Roman-faced Indian, standing amid the white
slabs where thirty-three years before, clad in a white shirt, red
leggings, without war-bonnet, he had ridden a white horse, dealing
deathblows to the boys in blue, and with these deathblows the last great
stand of the Red Man against the White Man. The battle echoes are heard
again as Two Moons tells his story:

"Custer came up along the ridge and across the mountains from the right of
the monument. The Cheyennes and the Sioux came up the coulee from the
foot of Reno Hill, and circled about. I led the Cheyennes as we came up.
Custer marched up from behind the ridge on which his monument now stands,
and deployed his soldiers along the entire line of the ridge. They rode
over beyond where the monument stands down into the valley until we could
not see them. The Cheyennes and the Sioux came up to the right over in
the valley of the Little Big Horn. Custer placed his men in groups along
this ridge. They dismounted. The men who had dismounted along the ridge
seemed to have let their horses go down the other side of the ridge.
Those who were on the hill where the monument now stands, and where I am
now standing, had gray horses and they were all in the open. The Sioux
and the Cheyennes came up the valley swarming like ants toward the bunch
of gray horses where Long Hair stood. I led the Cheyennes up the long
line of ridge from the valley blocking the soldiers, and I called to my
Cheyenne brothers: 'Come on, children; do not be scared!' And they came
after me, yelling and firing. We broke the line of soldiers and went over
the ridge. Another band of Indians and Sioux came from over beyond the
ridge, and when I got over there, I got off my white horse and told my men
to wait, and we loaded our guns and fired into the first troop which was
very near us. At the first volley the troop at which we fired were all
killed. We kept firing along the ridge on which the troops were stationed
and kept advancing. I rode my horse back along the ridge again and called
upon my children to come on after me.