At eight o'clock that night Colonel Clarke wired his chief that his command was ready, and at midnight he received orders to proceed the next morning at daylight, by forced marches up to the junction of the forks of the Red Bud, and take position there to intercept the Indians should they attempt to cross. Two regiments from the more northern posts were due to reach there at the same time, and the combined strength of the three commands was supposed to be sufficient to drive back any body of Indians. There was little sleep in Fort Flint that night.
Now, Hogan wasn't much of a success as a garrison soldier, but when a chance for a genuine fight presented itself, all the Irish blood in his nature came to the surface, and after much pleading and begging, the adjutant allowed him to join his company, detailing Jones of D Company as operator in his stead. Jones wasn't as good an operator by far as Denny, but in a pinch he could do the work, and besides, he had just come out of the hospital and was unable to stand the rigors attendant upon a winter campaign in Montana.
Denny went to the company quarters in high glee and soon had his kit all packed. Some weeks before he had been out repairing the line and when he returned to the post he had left a small pocket instrument and a few feet of office wire in his haversack. He saw these things and was about to remove them, when something impelled him to take them along. What this was no one ever knew. Perhaps premonition.
The next morning just as the first dim shadows of early dawn stole over the snow-clad earth, the gallant old 29th, five hundred strong, swung out of Fort Flint, on its long tramp. From out of half-closed blinds on the officer's line gazed many a tear-stained face, and up on "Soapsuds Row" many an honest-hearted laundress was bemoaning the fates that parted her from her "ould mon."
The weather turned bitter cold and after seven days of the hardest kind of marching they reached and crossed the Red Bud just below the junction of the two forks. A strong position was taken and every disposition made to prevent surprise. The expected re-enforcement would surely come soon and then all would be safe.
The next day dawned and passed, but not a sign of that re-enforcement. That night queer looking red glows were seen at stated intervals on the horizon—North, West and East on the north side of the river, and to the South on the other bank did they gleam and glow. Colonel Clarke was old and tried in Indian warfare and well did he know what those fires meant—Indians—and lots of them all around his command. His hope now was that the two northern regiments would strike them in the rear while he smashed them in front.
The next morning, first one, two, three, four, an hundred, a thousand figures mounted on fleet footed ponies appeared silhouetted against the clear sky, and it wasn't long before that little command of sturdy bluecoats was surrounded by a superior force of the wildest red devils that ever strode a horse or fired a Winchester rifle. Slowly they drew their lines closer about the troops like the clinging tentacles of some monster devilfish, and about eleven o'clock, Bang! and the battle was on.
"Husband your fire, men. Don't shoot until you have taken deliberate aim, and can see the object aimed at," was the word passed along the line by Colonel Clarke.
Behind hastily constructed shelter trenches the soldiers fought off that encircling band of Indians, with a desperation and valor born of an almost hopeless situation. Ever and anon, from across the river came the ping of a Winchester bullet, proving that retreat was cut off that way. The Indians had completely marched around them.
Where was the re-enforcement? Why didn't it come? Was this to be another Little Big Horn, and were these brave men to be massacred like the gallant 7th Cavalry under Custer? As long as his ammunition held out Colonel Clarke knew he could stand them off, but after three days of hard fighting, resulting in the loss of many brave men, the situation was becoming desperate. Fires could not be lighted and more than one brave fellow went to kingdom come in filling the canteens at the river's bank. Most of the animals had been shot, many of them being used for breastworks.