Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/429

 and women put their feet and legs in the warm entrails. We lost one officer, Lieutenant John A. McKinney, Fourth Cavalry, and six men killed and twenty-five men wounded; the enemy's loss was unknown; at least thirty bodies fell into our hands, and at times the fighting had a hand-to-hand character, especially where Wirt Davis and John M. Hamilton were engaged. The village was secured by a charge on our left in which the companies of Taylor, Hemphill, Russell, Wessells, and the Pawnees participated. The Shoshones, under Lieutenant Schuyler and Tom Cosgrove, seized a commanding peak and rained down bullets upon the brave Cheyennes, who, after putting their women and children in the best places of safety accessible, held on to the rocks, and could not be dislodged without great loss of life.

Mackenzie sent couriers to Crook, asking him to come to his help as soon as he could with the long rifles of the infantry, to drive the enemy from their natural fortifications. Crook and the foot troops under Dodge, Townsend, and Campbell made the wonderful march of twenty-six miles over the frozen, slippery ground in twelve hours, much of the distance by night. But they did not reach us in time, as the excessive cold had forced the Cheyennes to withdraw from our immediate front, eleven of their little babies having frozen to death in their mothers' arms the first night and three others the second night after the fight.

The Cheyennes were spoken to by Bill Roland and Frank Gruard, but were very sullen and not inclined to talk much; it was learned that we had struck the village of "Dull Knife," who had with him "Little Wolf," "Roman Nose," "Gray Head," "Old Bear," "Standing Elk," and "Turkey Legs." "Dull Knife" called out to our Sioux and Cheyenne scouts: "Go home—you have no business here; we can whip the white soldiers alone, but can't fight you too." The other Cheyennes called out that they were going over to a big Sioux village, which they asserted to be near by, and get its assistance, and then come back and clean us out. "You have killed and hurt a heap of our people," they said, "and you may as well stay now and kill the rest of us." The Custer massacre was represented by a perfect array of mute testimony: gauntlets, hats, and articles of clothing marked with the names of officers and men of the ill-fated Seventh Cavalry, saddles, silk guidons, and other paraphernalia pointing the one moral, that the Cheyennes had been as foremost in the battle