strike once more their old-time foes.

Above them a few stray, fleecy clouds flecked the blue of the arching
sky, serving only to reveal its depth of color. On every side extended
the rough irregularity of a region neither mountain nor plain, a land
of ridges and bluffs, depressions and ravines. Over all rested the
golden sunlight of late June; and in all the broad expanse there was no
sign of human presence.

With Custer riding at the head of the column, and only a little to the
rear of the advance scouts, his adjutant Cook, together with a
volunteer aide, beside him, the five depleted troops filed resolutely
forward, dreaming not of possible defeat. Suddenly distant shots were
heard far off to their left and rear, and deepening into a rumble,
evidencing a warm engagement. The interested troopers lifted their
heads, listening intently, while eager whispers ran from man to man
along the closed files.

"Reno is going in, boys; it will be our turn next."

"Close up! Quiet there, lads, quiet," officer after officer passed the
word of command.

Yet there were those among them who felt a strange dread--that firing
sounded so far up the stream from where Reno should have been by that
time. Still it might be that those overhanging bluffs would muffle and
deflect the reports. Those fighting men of the Seventh rode steadily
on, unquestioningly pressing forward at the word of their beloved
leader. All about them hovered death in dreadful guise. None among
them saw those cruel, spying eyes watching from distant ridges, peering
at them from concealed ravines; none marked the rapidly massing hordes,
hideous in war-paint, crowded into near-by _coulees_ and behind
protecting hills.

It burst upon them with wild yells. The gloomy ridges blazed into
their startled faces, the dark ravines hurled at them skurrying
horsemen, while, wherever their eyes turned, they beheld savage forms
leaping forth from hill and _coulee_, gulch and rock shadow. Horses
fell, or ran about neighing; men flung up their hands and died in that
first awful minute of consternation, and the little column seemed to
shrivel away as if consumed by the flame which struck it, front and
flank and rear. It was as if those men had ridden into the mouth of
hell. God only knows the horror of that first moment of shrinking
suspense--the screams of agony from wounded men and horses, the dies of
fear, the thunder of charging hoofs, the deafening roar of rifl