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 Saturday 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.

[Illustration: Buffalo Bill. (From the Painting by Rosa Bonheur)]

So he did. With his seven companies of cavalry, about four hundred
men, he swung back, leaving his wagon-train and a small escort to
follow after. From one o'clock noon until ten o'clock at night he
rode; at the end of thirty-five miles camped until three o'clock in the
morning; led again by Buffalo Bill rode all day Sunday, and at nine
o'clock unsaddled, in the star-light, at the war-trail crossing of War
Bonnet Creek, twenty-eight miles from the reservation. The seven
companies had traveled their eighty-five miles over hill and plain in
thirty-one hours, and had won the race. The Cheyennes had not yet
passed here.

This night Lieutenant Charles King of K troop was in charge of the
outposts stationed toward the south-east, and covering the trail from
the reservation. At dawn he moved his posts farther on, to a steep
little hill, from which the view was better. Much farther, two miles
in the south and southeast, there was a high ridge, breaking the trail
from the reservation. The Cheyennes would cr