“Close up!  Quiet there, lads, quiet,” officer after officer passed the word of command.

Yet there were those among them who felt a strange dread—­that firing sounded so far up the stream from where Reno should have been by that time.  Still it might be that those overhanging bluffs would muffle and deflect the reports.  Those fighting men of the Seventh rode steadily on, unquestioningly pressing forward at the word of their beloved leader.  All about them hovered death in dreadful guise.  None among them saw those cruel, spying eyes watching from distant ridges, peering at them from concealed ravines; none marked the rapidly massing hordes, hideous in war-paint, crowded into near-by coulees and behind protecting hills.

It burst upon them with wild yells.  The gloomy ridges blazed into their startled faces, the dark ravines hurled at them skurrying horsemen, while, wherever their eyes turned, they beheld savage forms leaping forth from hill and coulee, gulch and rock shadow.  Horses fell, or ran about neighing; men flung up their hands and died in that first awful minute of consternation, and the little column seemed to shrivel away as if consumed by the flame which struck it, front and flank and rear.  It was as if those men had ridden into the mouth of hell.  God only knows the horror of that first moment of shrinking suspense—­the screams of agony from wounded men and horses, the dies of fear, the thunder of charging hoofs, the deafening roar of rifles.

Yet it was for scarcely more than a minute.  Men trained, strong, clear of brain, were in those stricken lines—­men who had seen Indian battle before.  The recoil came, swift as had been the surprise.  Voice after voice rang out in old familiar orders, steadying instantly the startled nerves; discipline conquered disorder, and the shattered column rolled out, as if by magic, into the semblance of a battle line.  On foot and on horseback, the troopers of the Seventh turned desperately at bay.

It was magnificently done.  Custer and his troop-commanders brought their sorely smitten men into a position of defence, even hurled them cheering forward in short, swift charges, so as to clear the front and gain room in which to deploy.  Out of confusion emerged discipline, confidence, esprit de corps.  The savages skurried away on their quirt-lashed ponies, beyond range of those flaming carbines, while the cavalry-men, pausing from vain pursuit, gathered up their wounded, and re-formed their disordered ranks.

“Wait till Reno rides into their village,” cried encouraged voices through parched lips.  “Then we’ll give them hell!”