“The major’s compliments, and will you advance your skirmish line to cover volunteers getting water.”
The water-getters were making way, by hollow and ravine, toward the river in front. They carried camp-kettles and bunches of canteens. Dangerous work was this, and some of them were wounded; but they filled the canteens. These were handed along the lines. Ah, but it was good, to have a drink at last!
The sun had traveled from east across to the west. The afternoon waxed and waned: sometimes the Indians shot angrily; sometimes they seemed to be resting. What was to occur next? What were they scheming? The officers walked about, bidding the men be ready and not afraid.
“Sure, but looks to me as if the beggars were leavin’,” mused Private McDermott, gazing puzzled.
Then, toward sunset and the close of this the second day of fighting, from the bluff arose a murmur and a cry. The Indians were quitting, and riding off! ’Twas too good to be true; but nevertheless tipis were falling, as the squaws labored hard to pack the village. Soon billows of fresh smoke rolled up. The grass had again been fired; figures could be seen behind it, fanning it with blankets.
Officers and men stared. In the cool glow of twilight the whole village—or what looked to be the whole village—emerged from the concealing smoke and moved away across the bare plateau which had been the pony pasture.
An enormous, regular mass they made; no wonder that the Seventh Cavalry battalions had not whipped all this people.
“They’re as large as a brigade of the Army of the Potomac, and in as fine order,” pronounced Major Reno, watching from amidst his officers.
However, the Indians might be planning a trap. Eighteen dead and fifty-two wounded was the report of Doctor Porter, the surgeon on the bluff. Major Reno did not dare to venture far, but he moved the companies nearer to the river, for the water. Thus night descended upon Monday, June 26, 1876, by the Little Big Horn.