e and baggage. Behind him he
left blood and disabled horses and cows. One hundred and fifty miles
behind him he left the toiling, panting soldiers, whose forty axe-men
were constantly at work clearing a passage for the artillery and the
packs.

Even at that, the soldiers marched sixteen miles a day; but the Pierced
Noses marched faster.

The telegraph was swifter still. Fort Missoula, at the east end of the
trail, had been notified. Captain C. C. Rawn of the Seventh Infantry
hastily fortified the pass down, with fifty regulars and one hundred
volunteers. Chief Joseph side-stepped him also, left him waiting, and
by new trails turned south down the Bitter Root Valley on the east side
of the mountains! The Bitter Root Valley was well settled. The
Pierced Noses molested no ranches or towns. They traded, as they went,
for supplies.

Colonel John Gibbon, who had campaigned against Sitting Bull, now took
up the chase. Chief Joseph did not know about Colonel Gibbon's troops,
and made camp on the Big Hole River, near the border in south-western
Montana. He was preparing lodge-poles, to take to the buffalo country.

Here, at dawn of August 9, Colonel Gibbon with two hundred regulars and
volunteers surprised him completely. A storm of bullets swept his
lodges, before his people were astir. Everybody dived for safety.

Some of the warriors left their guns. The white soldiers charged into
the camp. All was confusion; all was death--but the warriors rallied.

In twenty minutes the white soldiers were destroying the camp with
fire. In an hour they were fighting for their lives. The Pierced
Noses had not fled, as Indians usually fled in a surprise; they had
stayed, had surrounded the camp place, and were riddling the soldiers'
lines.

The squaws and boys helped. On the other side, Colonel Gibbon himself
used a rifle. He ordered his troops into the timber. The Chief Joseph
people rushed into their camp, packed up under hot fire, and bundled
the women and children and loose horses to safety. The warriors
remained.

The soldiers threw up entrenchments. Colonel Gibbon was wounded. The
Indians captured his field-piece, and a pack mule loaded with two
thousand rounds of rifle ammunition. They disabled the cannon and
drove off the mule. They fired the grass, and only a change of wind
saved the soldiers from being driven into the open.

All that day and the next day the battle lasted. At dusk of August 9
Co