a little distance from my pony, now came
charging down upon me from the hill, in the hope of cutting me off.

General Merritt had witnessed the duel, and, realizing the danger I was
in, ordered Colonel Mason with Company K to hurry to my rescue. This
order came none too soon. Had it been given one minute later two
hundred Indians would have been upon me, and this present narration
would have had to be made by some one else. As the soldiers came up I
swung the war-bonnet high in the air and shouted: "The first scalp for
Custer!"

It was by this time clear to General Merritt that he could not ambush
the Indians. So he ordered a general charge. For a time they made a
stubborn resistance, but no eight hundred Indians, or twice that
number, for that matter, could make a successful stand against such
veteran and fearless fighters as the Fifth Cavalry. They soon came to
that conclusion themselves and began a running retreat for the Red
Cloud Agency.

For thirty-five miles, over the roughest kind of ground, we drove them
before us. Soon they were forced to abandon their spare horses and all
the equipment they had brought along. Despite the imminent risk of
encountering thousands of other Indians at the Agency, we drove our
late adversaries directly into it. No one in our command had any
assurance that the Indians gathered there had not gone on the warpath,
but little difference that made to us. The Fifth Cavalry, on the
warpath itself, would stop at nothing. It was dark when we entered the
reservation. All about us we could see the huddling forms of
Indians--thousands of them--enough, in fact, to have consummated
another Custer massacre. But they showed no disposition to fight.

While at the Agency I learned that the Indian I had killed in the
morning was none other than Yellow Hand, a son of old Cut Nose, who was
a leading chief of the Cheyennes. The old man learned from the members
of Yellow Hand's party that I had killed his son, and sent a white
interpreter to me offering four mules in exchange for the young chief's
war-bonnet. This request I was obliged to refuse, as I wanted it as a
trophy of the first expedition to avenge the death of Custer and his
men.

The next morning we started to join the command of General Crook, which
was encamped at the foot of Cloud Peak in the Big Horn Mountains. They
had decided to await the arrival of the Fifth Cavalry before proceeding
against the Sioux, who were somewhere near the he