Curley got through the lines—­his boldness in mixing with the Indians and his red skin saving him.  He took a long way round and ran to tell Terry the seriousness of the situation.

Terry was advancing, but was hampered and harassed by Indians for twenty miles.  They fired at him from gullies, ridges, rocks, prairie-dog mounds, and then retreated.  He had to move with caution.  Instead of arriving at daylight as he expected, Terry was three hours behind.  The Indians surrounding Custer saw the dust from the advancing troop.

They hesitated to charge Custer boldly as he lay on the hilltop, entrenched by little ditches dug in the night with knives, tin cups and bleeding fingers.

It was easy to destroy Custer, but it meant a dead Sioux for every white soldier.

The Indians made sham charges to draw Custer’s fire, and then withdrew.

They circled closer.  The squaws came up with sticks and stones and menaced wildly.

Custer’s fire grew less and less.  He was running out of ammunition.

Terry was only five miles away.

The Indians closed in like a cloud around Custer and his few survivors.

It was a hand-to-hand fight—­one against a hundred.

In five minutes every man was dead, and the squaws were stripping the mangled and bleeding forms.

Already the main body of Indians was trailing across the plains toward the mountains.

Terry arrived, but it was too late.

An hour later Reno limped in, famished, half of his men dead or wounded, sick, undone.

To follow the fleeing Indians was useless—­the dead soldiers must be decently buried, and the living succored.  Terry himself had suffered sore.

The Indians were five thousand strong, not two.  They had gathered up all the other tribes for more than a hundred miles.  Now they moved North toward Canada.  Terry tried to follow, but they held him off with a rear-guard, like white veterans.  The Indians escaped across the border.

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Anybody can order, but to serve with grace, tact and
effectiveness is a fine art.

Sam

In San Francisco lived a lawyer—­age, sixty—­rich in money, rich in intellect, a business man with many interests.

Now, this lawyer was a bachelor, and lived in apartments with his Chinese servant “Sam.”

Sam and his master had been together for fifteen years.

The servant knew the wants of his employer as though he were his other self.  No orders were necessary.

If there was to be a company—­one guest or a hundred—­Sam was told the number, that was all, and everything was provided.

This servant was cook, valet, watchman, friend.

No stray, unwished-for visitor ever got to the master to rob him of his rest when he was at home.

If extra help was wanted, Sam secured it; he bought what was needed; and when the lawyer awakened in the morning, it was to the singing of a tiny music-box with a clock attachment set for seven o’clock.