le; and now barely a hundred men, smoke-begrimed,
thirsty, bleeding, half their carbines empty, they still formed an
impenetrable ring around their chief. The struggle was over, and they
realized the fact. When that wave of savage horsemen swept forth again
it would be to ride them down, to crush them under their horses'
pounding hoofs. They turned their loyal eyes toward him they loved and
followed for the last time, and when he uttered one final word of
undaunted courage, they cheered him faintly, with parched and fevered
lips.

Like a whirlwind those red demons came,--howling wolves now certain of
their prey. From rock and hill, ridge, ravine, and _coulee_, lashing
their half-crazed ponies, yelling their fierce war-cries, swinging
aloft their rifles, they poured resistlessly forth, sweeping down on
that doomed remnant. On both flanks of the short slender line struck
Gall and Crazy Horse, while like a thunderbolt Crow-King and
Rain-in-the-Face attacked the centre. These three storms converged at
the foot of the little hill, crushing the little band of troopers.
With ammunition gone, the helpless victims could meet that mighty
on-rushing torrent only with clubbed guns, for one instant of desperate
struggle. Shoulder to shoulder, in ever-contracting circle, officers
and men stood shielding their commander to the last. Foot by foot,
they were forced back, treading on their wounded, stumbling over their
dead; they were choked in the stifling smoke, scorched by the flaming
guns, clutched at by red hands, beaten down by horses' hoofs. Twenty
or thirty made a despairing dash, in a vain endeavor to burst through
the red enveloping lines, only to be tomahawked or shot; but the most
remained, a thin struggling ring, with Custer in its centre. Then came
the inevitable end. The red waves surged completely across the crest,
no white man left alive upon the field. They had fought a good fight;
they had kept the faith.

Two days later, having relieved Reno from his unpleasant predicament in
the valley, Terry's and Gibbons's infantry tramped up the ravine, and
emerged upon the stricken field. In lines of motionless dead they read
the fearful story; and there they found that man we know. Lying upon a
bed of emptied cartridge-shells, his body riddled with shot and
mutilated with knives, his clothing torn to rags, his hands grasping a
smashed and twisted carbine, his lips smiling even in death, was that
soldier whom the