“Let only fifty or a hundred men reply to their fire. Keep about four hundred in reserve, ready to pour a terrible volley into the redskins when they try to rush the fort, encouraged by what they suppose to be our weakness.
“A surprise like that always knocks the heart out of an Indian. As soon as they recoil, we might make a sudden sortie and charge them vigorously.
“By adopting this plan, I believe we shall have a good chance of inflicting a crushing defeat upon them, although they so greatly outnumber us.”
“It’s a capital idea,” said the colonel, “and we will carry it out. I won’t let more than about seventy men reply to their first volleys, and I’ll tell the officers in charge of our four field guns not to fire until the redskins are swarming outside the walls.”
He hurried away to give these orders, and by the time he had done so the redskin host appeared in sight.
It numbered between two and three thousand men, and approached swiftly, for all the braves were mounted. They belonged to tribes which practically lived in the saddle—the Sioux, the Cheyennes, and the Crows.