Stránka:book 1913.djvu/561

Campfire Stories of Indian Character 539 Almost daily for months had I ridden beneath this bluff and would readily have sworn not even a mountain goat could ascend to its summit; but, hidden away in an angle of the cliff lay a slope accessible to footmen, and this the Indians knew and sought. Just below this slope Vroom brought the rear guard to bay, and a brief, desperate engagement was fought. The Indians succeeded in holding the troops in check until all but those fallen under the fire of Vroom's command were able to reach the summit. Here on this slope, fighting in the front ranks of the rear guard, the "Princess," Dull Knife's youngest daughter, was kiUed! Further pursuit until daylight being impossible, the troopers were marched back into the garrison. By daylight the hospital was filled with wounded Indians, and thirty-odd dead — bucks, squaws, and children — lay in a row by the roadside near the sawmill, and there later they were buried in a common trench. At dawn of the tenth, Captain Wessells led out four troops of cavalry, and, after a couple of hours' scouting, found that the Indians had followed for ten miles the summit of the high divide between White River and Soldier Creek, travel- ing straight away westward, and then had descended to the narrow valley of Soldier Creek, up which the trail lay plain to foUow through the snow as a beaten road. Along this trail Captain Vroom led the column at the head of his troop. Next behind him rode Lieut. George A. Dodd, then a youngster not long out of West Point, and later for many years recognized as the crack cavalry captain of the army. Next behind Dodd I rode. Ahead of the column a hundred yards rode Woman's Dress, a Sioux scout. For seventeen miles from the post the trail showed that