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Updated: June 28, 2025
"Haven't seen us, I think," Scout Gruard remarked. "Don't act like it. If they don't strike our trail, we may be all right." The four among the boulders could only wait. The Sioux were closing in. It was scarcely possible that they would miss the fresh trail of the thirty-one horses.
Nothing happened. About two o'clock in the morning Lieutenant Sibley ordered camp. They were forty miles from General Crook, and near ahead, over the next divide, lay the upper end of the Valley of the Little Big Horn in the Rosebud country. "We will find the Sioux villages in there, all right," promised Frank Gruard. "And," he added again, "we won't have far to go, either."
Even in the hurry some of the men chuckled over the game that had been played on the enemy. The Sioux and the Cheyennes would be sorely disappointed in their hope of scalps. They had made a water haul; had killed the horses, and gained nothing. It was a tough climb in a country where white man apparently had never been before. Gruard and Big Bat did not slacken.
The last man, and the lieutenant, came breathless; the single file followed Gruard and Big Bat at a trot, afoot, and only the few horses were left, as a blind. The horses were doomed, but there was no other way.
Gruard and Big Bat guided up the opposite side of the canyon. They had to cling like squirrels, following a sheep trail not more than a foot wide, five hundred feet above the stream, and two hundred feet below the rim. But they got out. Gruard swung more eastward, toward the foothills. Beyond the foothills lay the camp of the Crook column. Presently the men were gasping for water.
He might be glimpsed, now and then, as he darted about, placing his warriors. "White Antelope, that," asserted Gruard. "Eh, Bat?" "Think so," Big Bat nodded. "And he's a good one; among the best of the Cheyennes. Pass the word to get him, when we can." After that, every carbine sought for White Antelope. His time came when he led a charge.
The Indians on right and left of him hastened in. "Here's where we'd better look out," Scout Gruard sharply warned. "That fellow has found our trail, and they'll be after us in five minutes." "What's the best thing to do, then?" coolly asked Lieutenant Sibley. The scouts knew the country, and in a pinch their advice was good. "Well, we've just one chance of escape.
In about an hour and a half they saddled up and rode on, still heading from the Sioux and into the mountains. Where they were going, nobody knew save Scouts Gruard and Big Bat. Frank led, with Big Bat close behind him. Then came the lieutenant, and Reporter Finerty, and in long single file the troopers, with Packer John Becker closing the rear.
The column were forbidden to talk; they rode on, northward, through the long grass of the rich bottoms; the two scouts led, Scout Gruard every now and again halting, to scan about from the high points. The full moon rose at eight o'clock, and the lonely land of sage and grass and willows and pines and rocks stretched silvery; on the west the snowy tips of the Big Horn Mountains glistened.
The Indians were making certain of the cavalry mounts. That was the first job to put the enemy afoot. The attackers were Sioux and Cheyennes both. How they had come in so cunningly, was a mystery. Gruard thought it was an accident; they were not the same Indians who had been sighted, below. But that cut no figure. The head chief wore white buckskin and an imposing war bonnet.
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