ed Cloud rallied his whole force, of more than two thousand. He
dismounted eight hundred and sent them forward to crawl along the
ground, as sharpshooters; they ringed the corral with bullets and
arrows.

He himself led twelve hundred, afoot, for a charge. His young nephew
was his chief aide--to win the right to be head chief after Red Cloud's
death.

But although they tried, in charge after charge, for three hours, they
could not enter the little fort. Sometimes they got within ten
yards--the soldiers threw augers at them, and they threw the augers
back--and back they reeled, themselves. The guns of the little fort
never quit!

Red Cloud still could not understand. He called a council. In the
opinion of his chiefs and braves, the white soldiers were armed with
guns that shot of themselves and did not need reloading.

The squaws on the hills were wailing; his men were discouraged; many
had fallen. So finally he ordered that the bodies be saved, and the
fight ended. His braves again crawled forward, behind shields, with
ropes; tied the ropes to the bodies, in spite of the bullets, and
running, snaked the bodies away behind them.

"Some bad god fought against us," complained the Red Cloud people.
"The white soldiers had a great medicine. We were burned by fire."

And all the Indians of the plains, hearing about the mystery, when the
breech-loading rifles mowed down the Sioux and the Cheyennes, spoke of
the bad god fight that defeated Chief Red Cloud.

The Sioux reported that they had lost eleven hundred and thirty-five
warriors. Red Cloud's nephew was sorely wounded in the charge.
Captain Fetterman's loss was Lieutenant Jenness and two men killed, two
men wounded. He said that when the reinforcements, with the cannon,
arrived from Fort Kearney, while the Sioux were removing their dead, he
was in despair. Another charge or two and he would have been wiped out.

But the road remained closed. Red Cloud remained in the path. This
fall the Government decided that, after all, it had no right to open
the road. In April of the next year, 1868, another treaty was signed
with the Sioux and the Cheyennes, by which the United States gave up
any claim to the Powder River and Big Horn country, and the Indians
promised to let the Union Pacific Railroad alone.

Red Cloud did not sign. "The white men are liars," he insisted; and he
waited until the three forts, Smith and Kearney and Reno, were
abandoned. Then,