n plainscraft and
horsemanship and strategy, the Cheyennes, thronged to that wild and
beautiful land once the home of the Crows. Three columns had striven to
hem them in,--three thousand wagon-hampered soldiers to surround six
thousand free lances of the plains, and the Indians laughed them to
scorn. When the columns pressed too close they swarmed upon the nearest,
stung it, sent it staggering back; then watched for the next, and swept
it out of existence. They flew at Crook on the 17th of June and fought
him luringly, begging him to follow farther into their traps in the
canon, but the Gray Fox knew them and divined the numbers that lurked in
hiding behind the bold green curtain of bluffs, and so slipped out of
the toils. They turned on Custer eight days later and left no tongue to
tell the tale. Three columns, against such energetic measures, fell back
to recruit and refit, and not until late in the season, doubled in
strength, could they resume the offensive. Then, the summer's work
accomplished, the warriors scattered, spoil laden, and the troops chased
madly hither and yon until brought up standing at the boundaries of Her
Britannic Majesty on the one side or those of the Indian Bureau on the
other. Across the border-land Sitting Bull snapped his fingers at his
pursuers. Across the reservation lines did many a jeering chief hurl
taunt and challenge at the baffled soldiery. When winter came on there
were still a few strong bands of Sioux and Cheyennes dancing to the
war-drums in the fastnesses of the Big Horn, whence Miles and Mackenzie
and the Frost King soon routed them; but most of the warriors who had
spent their season in saddle in the field were once more at home under
the sheltering wing of the Department of the Interior, while their
chiefs and leaders, their hands still red with the blood of Custer's
men, their wigwams freshly upholstered with cavalry scalps, went
eastward on their customary junket to the capital of the nation, to be
fed and feted and lionized, to come back laden with more spoil, more
arms, ammunition, clothing, blankets, tobacco, kickshaws and trumpery
dear to the savage heart, rejoicing, even though they marvelled, at the
fatuity of a people that annually rewarded instead of punishing their
murderous work. They, the heroes of the summer's campaign, rode in
triumph through the very homes of their victims, and weeping women and
children listened in amaze to the plaudits with which their townsp