across their front of dense bodies of mounted warriors, hideous in paint and feathers.  Men fell cursing, and the frightened horses swerved, their riders struggling madly with their mounts, the column thrown into momentary confusion.  But the surprised cavalrymen, quailing beneath the hot fire poured into them, rallied to the shouts of their officers, and swung into a slender battle-front, stretching out their thin line from the bank of the river to the sharp uplift of the western bluffs.  Riderless horses crashed through them, neighing with pain; the wounded begged for help; while, with cries of terror, the cowardly Arikara scouts lashed their ponies in wild efforts to escape.  Scarcely one hundred and fifty white troopers waited to stem as best they might that fierce onrush of twelve hundred battle-crazed braves.

For an almost breathless space those mingled hordes of Sioux and Cheyennes hesitated to drive straight home their death-blow.  They knew those silent men in the blue shirts, knew they died hard.  Upon that slight pause pivoted the fate of the day; upon it hung the lives of those other men riding boldly and trustfully across the sunlit ridges above.  “Audacity, always audacity,” that is the accepted motto for a cavalryman.  And be the cause what it may, it was here that Major Reno failed.  In that supreme instant he was guilty of hesitancy, doubt, delay.  He chose defence in preference to attack, dallied where he should have acted.  Instead of hurling like a thunderbolt that handful of eager fighting men straight at the exposed heart of the foe, making dash and momentum, discipline and daring, an offset to lack of numbers, he lingered in indecision, until the observing savages, gathering courage from his apparent weakness, burst forth in resistless torrent against the slender, unsupported line, turned his flank by one fierce charge, and hurled the struggling troopers back with a rush into the narrow strip of timber bordering the river.

Driven thus to bay, the stream at their back rendering farther retreat impossible, for a few moments the light carbines of the soldiers met the Indian rifles, giving back lead for lead.  But already every chance for successful attack had vanished; the whole narrow valley seemed to swarm with braves; they poured forth from sheltering coulees and shadowed ravines; they dashed down in countless numbers from the distant village.  Custer, now far away behind the bluffs, and almost beyond sound of the firing, was utterly ignored.  Every savage chief knew exactly where that column was, but it could await its turn; Gall, Crazy Horse, and Crow King mustered their red warriors for one determined effort to crush Reno, to grind him into dust beneath their ponies’ hoofs.  Ay, and they nearly did it!