528 The Book of Woodcraft 



A heavy snowstorm had set in early in the afternoon, 

 and the night was so bitter and the Indians so weakened 

 by their campaign that Johnson felt safe to leave them free 

 to take the best shelter they could find in the brush along 

 the deep valley of Chadron Creek. 



This leniency he was not long in regretting. 



Dull Knife and his band had been feeding liberally for 

 two days on troopers' rations, and had so far recovered 

 strength of body and heart that when morning came on the 

 twenty-fifth the sentries were greeted with a feeble volley 

 from rifle pits in the brush, dug by Dull Knife in the frozen 

 ground during the night! 



And here in these pits indomitable old Dull Knife fought 

 stubbornly for two days more — fought and held the troops 

 at bay until Lieutenant Chase brought up a field gun from 

 Fort Robinson and shelled them to a final surrender! 



Thus ended the first episode of Dull Knife's magnificent 

 fight for liberty and fatherland, and yet had he had food, 

 ammunition, and mounts, the chances are a hundred to one 

 that his heroic purpose would have been accomplished, and 

 the entire band that left Reno, barring those killed along the 

 trail, would have escaped in safety to freedom in the then 

 wilds of the Northwest Territory. 



And that, even in this apparently final surrender to 

 hopeless odds. Dull Knife was still not without hope of fur- 

 ther resistance, was proved by the fact that when he came 

 out of his trenches only a few comparatively old and worth- 

 less arms were surrendered,while it later became known that 

 twenty-two good rifles had been taken apart and were 

 swung, concealed, beneath the clothing of the squaws! 



After taking a day's rest Johnson marched his command 

 into Fort Robinson, arriving in the evening in a heavy 

 snowstorm, where the Cheyennes were imprisoned in one 

 of the barracks and their meagre equipment dumped in 



