“But just to digress or switch off, or whatever that big word is, for a minute.  I want t’ say that our Old Man, whatever his faults was,—­an’ I guess he had a-plenty,—­he was game.  He was a fighter.  He said, ’Come ahead,’ every time:  he never said, ‘Go ahead,’ An’ if all th’ boys layin’ out there on th’ prairie in their graves c’d tell, I’m bettin’ my six-shooter ag’in’ what you all know about th’ Rooshian langwidge that they’d say as how th’ Old Man died with a sword in one hand an’ a gun in th’ other, a-lookin’ right into th’ sun.

“Well, we made a wide circle—­a detower—­an’ come up ag’in ’way behind th’ village, an’ right there th’ Old Man made his great mistake.  I ain’t blamin’ him none, but it sure shows how a big man c’n lose his head just by bein’ crazy mad an’ wantin’ t’ fight.  Even th’ rookies, what had seen a lot o’ service, knowed that he was makin’ himself liable—­an’ him a general—­t’ be called up on a drumhead court-martial.

“There he was, a thousand miles from anywhere, dividin’ his force in th’ face of a superior enemy.  An’ that enemy th’ greatest fighters that ever th’ sun shined on.  You know we men that fighted Injuns knows what they was made of.  All this talk ‘bout Injuns not bein’ fighters, an’ not bein’ game, an’ one white man bein’ as good as ten Injuns, makes me feel like th’ organ-grinder Dago what said, ‘It makes me sick, an’ makes th’ monkey sick, too!’

“Well, to git back.  Gee, you fellers’ll think I’m a Williams J. Bryant runnin’ f’r President.  Notice I said runnin’!  No, I ain’t tryin’ t’ be funny.  I just wish I could be.  It’d sort o’ take th’ weight off th’ awfulness of what I remember as what happened, an’ what I can’t tell right ‘cause I ain’t got eddication an’ brains enough.

“Th’ Old Man, he split us up, him takin’ companies C, E, F, I, and L, givin’ Benteen four companies an’ Reno three companies.  He ordered Reno t’ go t’ th’ left an’ cross th’ Little Big Horn an’ attack, th’ Injuns from th’ rear.  Benteen he told t’ go straight ahead, an’ he himself took th’ right.  I was with Reno, an’ I saw personal what he was up ag’inst.  We crossed th’ Little Big Horn an’ went right into what seemed a million warriors.

“I was right alongside of Lieutenant Hodgson, Lieutenant McIntosh, an’ Doctor De Wolf when they fell, an’ I see Charlie Reynolds—­he’d refused t’ go with th’ Old Man—­put up a fight that if I was a artist, an’ c’d draw pictures, I c’d make a fortune puttin’ it on paper.  He started with a Springfield, then went to his six-shooter, an’ wound up with a knife before he went down with a bullet through his heart an’ at least a dozen Injuns piled all ’round him.  Suicide, I reck’n it was.  He knowed he was right, but he also knowed he’d disobeyed orders, an’ he just kept pilin’ right in till he got his.

“Reno done th’ only thing he could do.  He retreated back across th’ river, an’ got up ag’in a bluff ’bout three hunderd feet high.  Reno Hill, they call it now.  An’ there we fought for five or six hours, when Benteen, who’d bin fightin’ in th’ center, heard heavy firin’ over on his right where Custer was.  An’ Benteen, he bein’ a honest-t’-God Injun fighter, he knowed that Custer was gone, so he fought his way through to us, knowin’ that we had th’ hill behind us.