ed to
consider themselves masters of the situation. Most of the citizens had
now deserted Rawn; some because they believed the Indians had escaped
and that there would be no fight, others because they believed Rawn
would overtake them and that there would be a fight. Rawn's force was
reduced to less than one hundred men, all told, and he saw that to
attack the Indians in their chosen position, outnumbering him as they
did, more than four to one, would be madness. He therefore wisely
decided to return to his post and await the reinforcements that he knew
were coming.

Some of the rear critics, who invariably talk loudest after the danger
is over, who are "invincible in peace" and "invisible in war," have
accused Captain Rawn of mismanagement, in allowing the Indians to pass
him in the canyon, and of cowardice in not attacking them when he
overtook them in the valley; but all who were there, and competent to
judge, agree that the escape of the savages could not possibly have
been prevented with the handful of men he had, and that he exercised
judgment and discretion of a high order in not attacking them on their
chosen ground, when such an attack could only have resulted in a
repetition of the Custer massacre. His action proved, in the end, the
wisest he could have taken in a strictly military sense; and, besides,
it saved the Bitter Root country from being devastated; for White Bird
said, afterward, that had the Indians been compelled to fight their way
out of Lo Lo they would have fired the whole country, and many a
ranchman would have lost his crops and his home if not his scalp.

But brave old General Gibbon, the hero of South Mountain, was on the
war path. On receipt of General Howard's dispatch that the Nez Perces
were coming his way, he hastily summoned Company F, of his regiment,
from Fort Benton, and D from Camp Baker, to move with all possible
speed to his post. Meantime he gave orders that Company K and every man
that could be spared from Fort Shaw should prepare at once for the
field. When Companies F and D arrived there, he took the field at their
head, with the troops detailed from his own post, and moved rapidly
toward Fort Missoula, crossing the Rocky Mountains through Cadotte's
Pass, carrying a limited supply of provisions on pack-mules. The
distance, 150 miles, over a rough mountainous country, was covered in
seven days, the command reaching Fort Missoula on the afternoon of
August 3.

On the 4th, wi