blood of the brave man beside me I was baptized a soldier.

The force drew back from this first attempt to take the island, but the
fire of the hidden enemy did not cease. In this brief breathing spell we
dug deeper into our pits, making our defences stronger where we lay.
Disaster was heavy upon us. The sun beat down pitilessly on the hot, dry
earth where we burrowed. Out in the open the Indians were crawling like
serpents through the tall grasses toward our poor house of sand, hoping
to fall upon us unseen. They had every advantage, for we did not dare to
let our bodies be exposed above the low breastworks, and we could not
see their advance. Nearly one-half of our own men were dead or wounded.
Each man counted for so much on that battle-girt island that day. Our
surgeon had been struck in the first round and through all the rest of
his living hours he was in a delirium. Forsyth himself, grievously
wounded in both lower limbs, could only drag his body about by his arms.
A rifle ball had grazed his scalp and fractured his skull. The pain from
this wound was almost unbearable. But he did not loosen his grip on the
military power delegated to him. From a hastily scooped-out pit where we
laid him he directed the whole battle.

And now we girded on our armor for the supreme ordeal. The unbounded
wrath of the Indians at their unlooked-for failure in their first attack
told us what to expect. Our own guns were ready for instant use. The
arms of our dead and wounded comrades were placed beside our own. No
time was there in those awful hours to listen to the groans of the
stricken ones nor to close the dying eyes. Not a soul of us in those
sand-pits had any thought that we should ever see another sunset. All we
could do was to put the highest price upon our lives. It was ten o'clock
in the forenoon. The firing about the island had almost ceased, and the
silence was more ominous than the noise of bullets. Over on the bluff
the powers were gathering. The sunlight glinted on their arms and
lighted up their fantastic equipments of war. They formed in battle
array. And then there came a sight the Plains will never see again, a
sight that history records not once in a century. There were hundreds of
these warriors, the flower of the fierce Cheyenne tribe, drawn up in
military order, mounted on great horses, riding bareback, their rifles
held aloft in their right hands, the left hand grasping the flowing
mane, their naked bodies hide