An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill

Publisher Marketing: Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Grouard and "Big Bat" (Baptiste Pourier) were the two scouts that guided Lieutenant Sib- ley, a young officer of experience and ability, on a scout with about thirty officers and John Fin- nerty of the Chicago textit{Times, a newspaper man who was known all over the West. At eight o 'clock at night they left their halting- place, Big Goose Creek, and in the silent moonlight made a phantom promenade toward the Little Big Horn. Presently they made out the presence of a war party ahead of them, and one of the scouts of this outfit began riding around in a circle, which meant that the enemy had been discovered. There were too many Indians to fight in the open, so Grouard led the soldiers to a deep thicket where there were plenty of logs and fallen timber out of which to make breastworks. The Indians repeatedly circled around them and often charged, but the white men, facing a massacre like that of Ouster's men, steadily held them at bay by accurate shooting. Soon red reinforcements began to arrive. The Indians, feeling that they had now a sufficient advantage, attempted another charge, as the result of which they lost White Antelope, one of the bravest of their chiefs. This dampened their ardor, but they kept up an incessant firing that rattled against the log breastworks like hailstones. Fearing that the Indians would soon start a fire and burn them out, Sibley ordered a retreat. The two scouts were left behind to keep up a desultory fire after night had fallen, in order to make the Indians think the party was still in its breastworks. Then the other men in single file struggled up the precipitous sides of the mountain above them, marching, stumbling, climbing, and, falling according to the character of the ground they passed over. The men left behind finally ...