All these bands were ugly and belligerent, and it was plain from the spirit they showed that there had been a general understanding among all the redskins thereabout that the time had come to drive the white man from the country.

Brevet-General Wesley Merritt, who had lately received his promotion to the colonelcy of the Fifth Cavalry, now took command of the regiment.  I regretted that the command had been taken from General Carr.  I was fond of him personally, and it was under him that the regiment made its fine reputation as a fighting organization.  I soon became well acquainted with General Merritt, however, and found him to be a brave man and an excellent officer.

The regiment did continuous and hard scouting.  We soon believed we had driven all the hostile Indians out of that part of the country.  In fact, we were starting back to Fort Laramie, regarding the business at hand as finished, when a scout arrived at our camp and reported the massacre of General Custer and his whole force on the Little Big Horn.

This massacre occurred June 25, 1876, and its details are known, or ought to be known, by every schoolboy.  Custer was a brave, dashing, headlong soldier, whose only fault was recklessness.

He had been warned many times never to expose a small command to a superior force of Indians, and never to underestimate the ability and generalship of the Sioux.  He had unbounded confidence, however, in himself and his men, and I believe that not until he was struck down did he ever doubt that he would be able to cut his way out of the wall of warriors about him and turn defeat into a glorious and conspicuous victory.

The news of the massacre, which was the most terrible that ever overtook a command of our soldiers, was a profound shock to all of us.  We knew at once that we would all have work to do, and settled grimly into the preparations for it.

Colonel Stanton, who was with the Fifth Cavalry on this scout, had been sent to the Red Cloud Agency two days before.  That night a message came from him that eight hundred warriors had left the agency to join Sitting Bull on the Little Big Horn.  Notwithstanding instructions to proceed immediately by way of Fort Fetterman to join Crook, General Merritt took the responsibility of endeavoring to intercept the Cheyennes and thereby performed a very important service.

For this job the general selected five hundred men and horses.  In two hours we were making a forced march back to War Bonnet Creek.  Our intention was to reach the Indian trail running to the north across this watercourse before the Cheyennes could get there.  We arrived the next night.

At daylight the next morning, July 17, I proceeded ahead on a scout.  I found that the Indians had not yet crossed the creek.  On my way back to the command I discovered a large party of Indians.  I got close enough to observe them, and they proved to be Cheyennes, coming from the south.  With this information.  I hurried back to report.