n, over the bluff, out from the tall grass, across the slope on
the south, came Indians, hundreds on hundreds. They seemed to spring
from the sod like Roderick Dhu's Highland Scots, and people every curve
and hollow. Swift as the wind, savage as hate, cruel as hell, they bore
down upon us from every way the wind blows. The thrill of that moment is
in my blood as I write this. It was then I first understood the tie
between the commanding officer and his men. It is easy to laud the file
of privates on dress parade, but the man who directs the file in the
hour of battle is the real power. In that instant of peril I turned to
Forsyth with that trust that the little child gives to its father. How
cool he was, and yet how lightning-swift in thought and action.

In all the valley there was no refuge where we might hide, nor height on
which we might defend ourselves. The Indians had counted on our making a
dash to the eastward, and had left that way open for us. They had not
reckoned well on Colonel Forsyth. He knew intuitively that the gorge at
the lower end of the valley was even then filled with a hidden foe, and
not a man of us would ever have passed through it alive. To advance
meant death, and there was no retreat possible. Out in the middle of the
Arickaree, hardly three feet above the river-bed, lay a little island.
In the years to be when the history of the West shall be fully told, it
may become one of the Nation's shrines. But now in this dim morning
light it showed only an insignificant elevation. Its sandy surface was
grown over with tall sage grasses and weeds.

A few wild plums and alder bushes, a clump of low willow shrubs, and a
small cottonwood tree completed its vegetation.

"How about that island, Grover?" I heard Forsyth ask.

"It's all we can do," the scout answered; and the command: "Reach the
island! hitch the horses!" rang through the camp.

It takes long to tell it, this dash for the island. The execution of the
order was like the passing of a hurricane. Horses, mules, men, all
dashed toward the place, but in the rush the hospital supplies and
rations were lost. The Indians had not counted on the island, and they
raged in fury at their oversight. There were a thousand savage warriors
attacking half a hundred soldiers, and they had gloated over the fifty
scalps to be taken in the little gorge to the east. The break in their
plans confused them but momentarily, however.

On the island we tied our ho