its course and sent on long, tortuous
_detour_ to the northeast, until, beyond the great reservation of the
red men in the loveliest hill country of the wild frontier, it once more
turned sharply eastward at the point described in the sonorous language
of the plains as "the Big Bend of the Mina Ska." Midway between its
sweeping curve near Alkali and the sharp deflection at the big bend
there came flowing into it from the westward, through the very heart of
the Dakota lands, the clear, translucent waters of the Wakpa Wakon,--the
Spirit River of the Sioux, all along whose storied shores for mouths had
clustered the thronging villages of the tribe, living through the long,
fierce winter in sheltered comfort, fed, warmed, inspired by the spoils
and stories of the great campaign the year gone by. But now as though by
magic had the tepees vanished. Only around the protecting agency, miles
to the west, miles deeper in among the tumbling hills, were the lodges
now clustered, hundreds of them, with their swarming occupants,--old
men, old crones, Indian mothers, wives, sweethearts, maids, young boys,
children, and pappooses,--all confidingly clinging to the protecting
hand of the Great Father and claiming his bounty; while the husbands and
fathers, the stalwart young warriors of the Sioux themselves, were
skulking through the Bad Lands across the Ska, eagerly, warily watching
the coming of the little cavalry column from the distant Chasing Water,
while even in greater numbers their wild red cohorts patrolled the deep
valley, the overhanging heights of the Ska itself, watching every move
of the coming force from Ransom, bent on luring both, if possible, far
within their borders, far in among those tangling, treacherous ravines
and canons, and, there surrounding, to massacre the last man.

Southwestward, at Painted Lodge Butte, after a long, long march through
the heat and glare of the long June day, Colonel Winthrop had ordered
his men to bivouac for the night. Riding steadily eastward by the
"foot-hill" trail from Ransom, they had reached Willow Springs on Friday
noon, purposing to camp there until the following dawn, but so alarming
were the reports of the few fleeing settlers whom they met that the old
colonel decided after an hour's rest to push on again. Without being
trammelled by precise orders, the general tenor of his instructions was
to march on down the Ska, and strike and punish any Indian war-parties
he could find, and