took place a remarkable
contest, Grover, alone and severely wounded, obstinately fighting the
seven Indians, and holding them at bay for the rest of the day.
Being an expert shot, and having a long-range repeating rifle, he
"stood off" the savages till dark. Then cautiously crawling away on
his belly to a deep ravine, he lay close, suffering terribly from his
wound, till the following night, when, setting out for Fort Wallace,
he arrived there the succeeding day, almost crazed from pain and
exhaustion.

Simultaneously with the fiendish atrocities committed on the Saline
and Solomon rivers and the attack on Comstock and Grover, the
pillaging and murdering began on the Smoky Hill stage-route, along
the upper Arkansas River and on the headwaters of the Cimarron. That
along the Smoky Hill and north of it was the exclusive work of, the
Cheyennes, a part of the Arapahoes, and the few Sioux allies
heretofore mentioned, while the raiding on the Arkansas and Cimarron
was done principally by the Kiowas under their chief, Satanta, aided
by some of the Comanches. The young men of these tribes set out on
their bloody work just after the annuities and guns were issued at
Larned, and as soon as they were well on the road the rest of the
Comanches and Kiowas escaped from the post and fled south of the
Arkansas. They were at once pursued by General Sully with a small
force, but by the time he reached the Cimarron the war-party had
finished its raid on the upper Arkansas, and so many Indians combined
against Sully that he was compelled to withdraw to Fort Dodge, which
he reached not without considerable difficulty, and after three
severe fights.

These, and many minor raids which followed, made it plain that a
general outbreak was upon us. The only remedy, therefore, was to
subjugate the savages immediately engaged in the forays by forcing
the several tribes to settle down on the reservations set apart by
the treaty of Medicine Lodge. The principal mischief-makers were the
Cheyennes. Next in deviltry were the Kiowas, and then the Arapahoes
and Comanches. Some few of these last two tribes continued friendly,
or at least took no active part in the raiding, but nearly all the
young men of both were the constant allies of the Cheyennes and
Kiowas. All four tribes together could put on the war-path a
formidable force of about 6,000 warriors. The subjugation of this
number of savages would be no easy task, so to give the matter m