62 IN THE BIG HORN MOUNTAINS. 



place where poor Custer made his last camp. In the early 

 morning he had sighted the Indian village in the valley of the 

 Little Big Horn, from the top of one of the peaks of the 

 Wolf mountains, thirty-five miles east of here, and rode from 

 there to this point on the Rosebud, where he halted only for 

 his men to make coffee it can scarcely be called a camp, 

 strictly speaking and as soon as they had swallowed their 

 frugal meal, they remounted, rode all night, and struck the 

 Sioux village at daylight ; with what fatal consequences to 

 himself and his brave band we all know, alas ! too well. The 

 remnants of their camp-fires still lie scattered over the river 

 bottom, as melancholy relics of this, their last supper. Poor, 

 brave boys ! little did they think, as they sipped their coffee 

 and ate their hard bread around these fires, that the morrow's 

 sun would shine upon their lifeless forms, and that not one of 

 them would live to tell the world how his comrades fell. 



The two branches of the Rosebud unite here, and the 

 locality is called the " Forks of the Rosebud." We con- 

 tinued our march up the south fork, as it would take us into 

 the mountains farther south than would the north fork. As 

 we rode leisurely along, about the middle of the afternoon a 

 coyote broke cover some two hundred yards ahead of us, and 

 started on his long, shambling trot across the prairie. We 

 turned our artillery loose on him, and to use a frontier phrase, 

 literally set the ground afire all around him. We didn't take 

 the trouble to dismount, but sat in our saddles and " fanned" 

 him just for fun. We fired no less than twenty shots at him, 

 and, though none of them hit him, we made it so hot for him 

 that he scarcely knew which way to run. Occasionally a ball 

 would strike just in front of him, plowing the dirt into his 

 face, when he would change his course, and no sooner get 

 started in another direction than a repetition of the offense 

 would give him another whirl. Then three bullets would 



