Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/309

 which had been hit in the neck. The men wounded were not the men on the wounded horses, so that at this early stage of the skirmish we had one-fourth of our strength disabled. We held on to the village as far as the centre, but the Indians, seeing how feeble was our force, rallied, and made a bold attempt to surround and cut us off. At this moment private Schneider was killed. Egan was obliged to dismount the company and take shelter in the plum copse along the border of the ice-locked channel of the Powder, and there defend himself to the best of his ability until the arrival of the promised reënforcements.

Noyes had moved up promptly in our rear and driven off the herd of ponies, which was afterwards found to number over seven hundred; had he charged in echelon on our left, he would have swept the village, and affairs would have had a very different ending, but he complied with his instructions, and did his part as directed by his commander. In the work of securing the herd of ponies, he was assisted by the half-breed scouts.

Colonel Stanton and Lieutenant Sibley, hearing the constant and heavy firing in front, moved up without orders, leading a small party of the scouts, and opened an effective fire on our left. Half an hour had passed, and Moore had not been heard from; the Indians under the fire from Stanton and Sibley on our left, and Egan's own fire, had retired to the rocks on the other side of the "tepis," whence they kept plugging away at any one who made himself visible. They were in the very place where it was expected that Moore was to catch them, but not a shot was heard for many minutes; and when they were it was no help to us, but a detriment and a danger, as the battalion upon which we relied so much had occupied an entirely different place—one from which the fight could not be seen at all, and from which the bullets dropped into Egan's lines.

Mills advanced on foot, passing by Egan's left, but not joining him, pushed out from among the lodges the scattering parties still lurking there, and held the undergrowth on the far side; after posting his men advantageously, he detailed a strong party to burn and destroy the village. Egan established his men on the right, and sent a party to aid in the work of demolition and destruction. It was then found that a great many of our people had been severely hurt by the intense cold. In order to make the charge as effective as possible, we had disrobed and thrown