o, acting in the open country
and free from encumbrance, the Indians had been hard to reach. Now they
were being driven into their fastnesses among the mountains toward the
distant shelter whither their few wounded had been conveyed, and where
the old men, the women and children were in hiding. Now it meant that,
unless the troops could be confronted and thrown back, another transfer
of tepees and _travois_, ponies and dogs, wounded and aged would have to
be made. Lame Wolf had thought his people safe behind the walls of the
Big Horn and the shifting screen of warriors along the foothills, but
the blue skirmish lines pushed steadily on into the fringing pines,
driving the feathered braves from ridge to ridge, and Lame Wolf had
sense enough to see that here were leaders that "meant business" and
would not be held. Henry had ten veteran troops at his back when he
united with Webb, who led his own and the Beecher squadron, making
eighteen companies, or troops, of Horse, with their pack mules, all out
at the front, while the wagon train and ambulances were thoroughly
guarded by a big battalion of sturdy infantry, nearly all of them good
marksmen, against whose spiteful Springfields the warriors made only one
essay in force, and that was more than enough. The blue coats emptied
many an Indian saddle and strewed the prairie with ponies, and sent
Whistling Elk and his people to the right about in sore dismay, and then
it dawned on Lame Wolf that he must now either mislead the cavalry
leader,--throw him off the track, as it were,--or move the villages,
wounded, prisoners and all across the Big Horn river, where hereditary
foemen, Shoshone and Absaraka, would surely welcome them red-handed.

It was at this stage of the game he had his final split with Stabber.
Stabber was shrewd, and saw unerringly that with other columns out--from
Custer on the Little Horn and Washakie on the Wind River,--with
reinforcements coming from north and south, the surrounding of the Sioux
in arms would be but a matter of time. He had done much to get Lame Wolf
into the scrape and now was urging hateful measures as, unless they were
prepared for further and heavier losses, the one way out, and that way
was--surrender.

Now, this is almost the last thing the Indian will do. Not from fear of
consequences at the hands of his captors, for he well knows that,
physically, he is infinitely better off when being coddled by Uncle Sam
than when fighting in the