'em a round in the air, boys, and a cheer, to let 'em know we're
all right," ordered Sergeant Woodall. "I can hear the bridles jingle.
All together, make ready, fire!"

"Bang-g-g-g! Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!"

The trumpet gaily pealed. Answering the cheer, three troops of the
Eighth Cavalry led by Major W. H. Price and the puffing Billy Dixon
surged in.

The "Fight of the Privates," or "Twenty-five to One," as it is known in
army annals, had gloriously ended.

CHAPTER XXII

BUFFALO BILL AND YELLOW HAND (1876)

A PLAINS-DAY DUEL

The war parties of Kiowas, Comanches and Southern Cheyennes from the
Indian Territory reservation rode about for a year, plundering
settlers, fighting the soldiers, and trying to drive the
buffalo-hunters off the range. Colonel Miles had charge of the
campaign against them, which extended through the summer of 1874, and
the winter, and well into the spring of 1875. Many brave deeds were
done.

The Southern Cheyennes surrendered first, in March. Then the Kiowas
and Comanches began to appear at Fort Sill, Indian Territory, and give
themselves up. Chief Quana's Antelope Eaters were the last. They
surrendered in June.

So the Military Department of the Missouri seemed a little more quiet;
a few bands of outlaw Indians still roved in southwestern Kansas,
southern Colorado, New Mexico and northern Texas, but the
buffalo-hunters again established their camps as they pleased. General
Sheridan, the commander of the whole western country to the Rocky
Mountains, had said that the only way to bring real peace was to kill
off the buffalo; then the Indians would have to stay on the
reservations, or starve.

Trouble now thickened in the north, especially in the Department of
Dakota and in Wyoming of the Department of the Platte. Forts had been
planned in Chief Red Cloud's Powder River country of Wyoming, and
miners were entering the Sioux and Northern Cheyennes' hunting reserve
of the famous Black Hills of South Dakota. Another railroad, the
Northern Pacific, was about to cross the northern buffalo range.

On their reservations in South Dakota the Sioux and Cheyennes were
getting restless. Chief Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull the medicine
worker stayed far outside, to hunt and fight as free men. They refused
to lead their bands in, and warriors on the Dakota reservations kept
slipping away, to join them.

In the spring of 1876 General George Crook, the Gray Fox, commanding
t