TWENTY YEARS IN THE ROCKIES. 67 



command fell back to their boats on the Yellowstone, where 

 they were joined by Generals Crook and Miles. 



When our party gained the other side, a horrible sight 

 met our eyes. Each soldier, who with Custer had sacri- 

 ficed his life, yet lay where he had fallen on that ill-fated 

 day. Each move that was then made could be read by us 

 as from the page of an open book. As we surveyed the bat- 

 tlefield we saw where Custer had led his brave followers 

 to the crossing of the Little Horn and where the first volley 

 of leaden hail had swept into and across that doomed com- 

 pany from a threefold ambuscade. This had poured from 

 the banks of the Little Horn on the south, where the main 

 camp of the Sioux was located, down the river to where the 

 Cheyennes filed along Dry Creek, crossed the hilltop that 

 Custer had just descended, joining the right wing of the 

 Sioux, which had but a little time before emerged from an 

 adjoining coulee, thus forming one continuous dead line 

 which so encircled the gallant soldiers that not a man es- 

 caped. We paused and counted the remains of seventy-six 

 who fell to win Montana from the savage. Continuing, we 

 came to the place where the survivors of the first attack 

 had endeavored to regain the hill and escape by the route 

 through which they had entered this death valley. Here 

 lay the bodies of fifty or sixty men and horses. 



In their vain attempt to escape by the way they had 

 entered,, the remnant of that brave command found them- 

 selves confronted by thousands of Cheyennes and Sioux, 

 who had closed in on the hill and effectually cut off their re- 

 treat,, leaving them no alternative but to return to the knoll 

 where now stands Custer's monument, and there concentrate 

 all of their remaining forces to make one desperate effort 

 for life and liberty. Thousands of warriors pouring in a 

 deadly fire from all sides soon so thinned their ranks that 



