} fall upon the soldiers, and kept up an irregular fire,
culminating in a sustained discharge about midnight, they made no
attempt seriously to take the fort, although the soldiers, confidently
expecting an attack, lay on their arms all night. During the last half
of it not a sound came from the Indians.

The next morning Crook prepared to resume the attack by assaulting the
other forts, when his suspicions were awakened by a strange quiet,
which continued in spite of several efforts to draw the Indian fire.
Fearing some stratagem, he delayed until he could have speech with the
interior forts by means of a wounded Indian squaw, whom they captured
after cautious scouting. From this woman, whom they forced to speak by
threatening to hang her, it was learned that the Indians had decamped
during the night. The warriors had taken advantage of a long
underground passage which led south and opened in a cave in the side of
the canon. This concealed way actually took them under the feet of
Crook's soldiers, and sufficiently far from his camp and scouts to
enable them, so quietly had they moved, to steal away undetected. They
left their women and children in the caves. These caves were a perfect
maze. To attempt to search them would have been impossible. Indeed,
one soldier, Private James Carey, who saw the body of a dead Indian
near the mouth of one of them, and who sought a scalp as a trophy,
descended to the cave mouth and was shot dead by some one, probably a
wounded brave, within the dark recesses.

The Indians' loss was about forty killed. Crook had lost nearly a
moiety--50 per cent.--of his entire force, an appalling proportion!
One officer, six soldiers, one civilian had been killed, twelve
soldiers, {311} including three corporals,[2] seriously wounded, two of
them afterward died; and almost every survivor in the party had
received some slight wound or had been badly bruised by falls in
climbing over the broken rocks. Their clothing and shoes were cut to
pieces, they were utterly worn out by two sleepless nights and two
days' desperate fighting. They buried the brave soldiers in the
valley, concealing their graves so that the Indians could not discover
them and ravage them. Carrying their wounded in rude travels slung
between horses and mules, and taking the body of brave young Madigan,
who was buried in a lonely forgotten grave, one day's march from the
battlefield, they returned to Camp Warner.

With a g