to transport the dead body further, Captain Yates ordered
preparations made for interring it in camp that night.
Knowing that the Indians would thoroughly search the deserted
camp-ground almost before the troops should get out of sight,
and would be quick, with their watchful eyes, to detect a
grave, and, if successful in discovering it, would unearth
the body in order to get the scalp, directions were given
to prepare the grave after nightfall; and the spot selected
would have baffled any one but an Indian. The grave was
dug under the picket line to which the seventy or eighty
horses of the troop would be tethered during the night,
so that their constant tramping and pawing should completely
cover up and obliterate all traces. The following morning,
even those who had performed the sad rites of burial to
their fallen comrade could scarcely have indicated the exact
location of the grave. Yet when we returned to that point
a few weeks later, it was discovered that the wily savages
had found the place, unearthed the body, and removed the
scalp of their victim on the day following the interment.[71]

After leaving the camp at Supply, the Indians gradually increased their
force, until they mustered about two thousand warriors. For four days
and nights they hovered around the command, and by the time it reached
Mulberry Creek there were not one thousand rounds of ammunition left in
the whole force of troopers and infantrymen. At the creek, the incessant
charges of the now infuriated savages compelled the troops to use this
small amount held in reserve, and they found themselves almost at the
mercy of the Indians. But before they were absolutely defenceless,
Colonel Keogh had sent a trusty messenger in the night to Fort Dodge
for a supply of cartridges to meet the command at the creek, which
fortunately arrived there in time to save that spot from being a
veritable "last ditch."

The savages, in the little but exciting encounter at the creek before
the ammunition arrived, would ride up boldly toward the squadrons of
cavalry, discharge the shots from their revolvers, and then, in their
rage, throw them at the skirmishers on the flanks of the supply-train,
while the latter, nearly out of ammunition, were compelled to sit
quietly in the