ut four miles along, and ordered it attacked.
He had spies upon a ridge of hills, to watch the fort.

When the attack was heard at the fort, soldiers dashed out. The Red
Cloud warriors allowed the wagon train to think that it had whipped
them. He withdrew, across the ridge.

The leader of the soldiers was Captain Fetterman, again. He had asked
for the command. With him was Captain Fred H. Brown, who expected to
go back to Fort Laramie, and wished, first, to get a scalp. He and
Captain Fetterman were rivals for scalps and had almost forgotten the
affair of December 6. They were gallant soldiers, but reckless.

Altogether the detachment numbered seventy-nine officers and men, and
two scouts named Wheatley and Fisher.

Captain Fetterman was distinctly ordered by Colonel Carrington to do
nothing but rescue the wagon train. He must not cross the ridge in
pursuit of the Sioux.

Captain Fetterman did not move directly for the place of the wagon
train. He made a circuit, to cut off the attacking Sioux, at their
rear, or between the wagon train and the ridge to the north of it.

He had taken no surgeon, so Dr. Hines was hurried after him. The
doctor came back in another hurry. He reported that the wagon train
was on its way to the timber, without the captain; and that the captain
had disappeared, over the ridge! Many Indians were in sight, and the
doctor had been obliged to stop short.

Now, on a sudden, there was a burst of distant gun-fire. In twelve
minutes a second detachment of soldiers was on the run, from the fort
for the battle; wagons and ambulances and more men followed; and soon
only one hundred and nineteen men remained.

The firing was very heavy, in volleys--then in fire-at-will; then it
died down--quit. Not a sound could be heard, as the women and men in
Fort Kearney strained their ears and eyes.

Presently a courier from the second detachment galloped headlong in.
He said that the valley beyond the ridge was swarming with Sioux; they
yelled and dared the soldiers to come down to the road there. But of
the Captain Fetterman command, no trace could be sighted.

The soldiers and the reinforcements stayed out all the afternoon. They
returned at dark; but of the eighty-one others, none came back. All of
them, the entire eighty-one, had fallen to the army of Red Cloud.

Nobody was alive to tell the story of the fight. The signs on the
field were plain, though; and of course the Red Cloud wa