The Mintage | Page 6

to do
his duty.
Terry did not like his attitude and told him so. Poor Custer was stung
by the reprimand.
He was only a boy, thirty-seven years old, to be sure, but with the
whimsical, daring, ambitious and jealous quality of the center-rush.
Custer at times had his eye on the White House--why not! Had not
Grant been a soldier?

Women worshiped Custer, and men who knew him, never doubted his
earnestness and honesty. He lacked humor.
He was both sincere and serious.
The expedition moved on up the tortuous Missouri, tying up at night to
avoid the treacherous sandbars that lay in wait.
They had reached the Yellowstone River, and were getting into the
Indian Country.
To lighten the boats, Terry divided his force into two parts. Custer
disembarked on the morning of the Twenty-fifth of June, with four
hundred forty-three men, besides a dozen who looked after the
pack-train.
Scouts reported that the hostile Sioux were camped on the Little Big
Horn, seventy-five miles across the country.
Terry gave Custer orders to march the seventy-five miles in forty-eight
hours, and attack the Indians at the head of their camp at daylight on
the morning of the Twenty-seventh. There was to be no parley--panic
was the thing desired, and when Custer had started the savages on the
run, Terry would attack them at the other end of their village, and the
two fleeing mobs of savages would be driven on each other, and then
they would cast down their arms and the trick would be done.
Next, to throw a cordon of soldiers around the camp and hold it would
be easy.
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Custer and his men rode away at about eight o'clock on the morning of
the Twenty-fifth. They were in high spirits, for the cramped quarters on
the transports made freedom doubly grateful.
They disappeared across the mesa and through the gray-brown hills,
and soon only a cloud of dust marked their passage.

After five miles had been turned off on a walk, Custer ordered a trot,
and then, where the ground was level, a canter.
On they went.
They pitched camp at four o'clock, having covered forty miles. The
horses were unsaddled and fed, and supper cooked and eaten.
But sleep was not to be--these men shall sleep no more!
The bugles sounded "Boots and Saddles." Before sunset they were
again on their way.
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By three o'clock on the morning of the Twenty-sixth, they had covered
more than seventy miles.
They halted for coffee.
The night, waiting for the dawn, was doubly dark.
Fast-riding scouts had gone on ahead, and now reported the Indians
camped just over the ridge, four miles away.
Custer divided his force into two parts. The Indians were camped along
the river for three miles. There were about two thousand of them, and
the women and children were with them.
Reno with two hundred fifty men was ordered to swing around and
attack the village from the South. Custer with one hundred ninety-three
men would watch the charge, and when the valiant Reno had started the
panic and the Indians were in confusion, his force would then sweep
around and charge them from the other end of the village.
This was Terry's plan of battle, only Custer was going to make the
capture without Terry's help.
When Terry came up the following day, he would find the work all

done and neatly, too. Results are the only things that count, and victory
justifies itself.
The battle would go down on the records as Custer's triumph!
Reno took a two-mile detour, and just at peep of day, ere the sun had
gilded the tops of the cottonwoods, charged, with yells and rapid firing,
into the Indian village. Custer stood on the ridge, his men mounted and
impatient just below on the other side.
He could distinguish Reno's soldiers as they charged into the
underbrush. Their shouts and the sound of firing filled his fighter's
heart.
The Indians were in confusion--he could see them by the dim light,
stampeding. They were running in brownish masses right around the
front of the hill where he stood. He ordered the bugles to blow the
charge.
The soldiers greeted the order with a yell--tired muscles, the sleepless
night, its seventy-five miles of hard riding, were forgotten. The battle
would be fought and won in less time than a man takes to eat his
breakfast.
Down the slope swept Custer's men to meet the fleeing foe.
But now the savages had ceased to flee. They lay in the grass and fired.
Several of Custer's horses fell.
Three of his men threw up their hands, and dropped from their saddles,
limp like bags of oats, and their horses ran on alone.
The gully below was full of Indians, and these