“The chief was riding his horse back and forth in front of his men, as if to banter me, and I accepted the challenge. I galloped toward him for fifty yards and he advanced toward me about the same distance, both of us riding at full speed, and then when we were only about thirty yards apart I raised my rifle and fired. His horse fell to the ground, having been killed by my bullet. Almost at the same instant my horse went down, having stepped in a gopher-hole. The fall did not hurt me much, and I instantly sprang to my feet. The Indian had also recovered himself, and we were now both on foot, and not more than twenty paces apart. We fired at each other simultaneously. My usual luck did not desert me on this occasion, for his bullet missed me, while mine struck him in the breast. He reeled and fell, but before he had fairly touched the ground I was upon him, knife in hand, and had driven the keen-edged weapon to its hilt in his heart. Jerking his war-bonnet off, I scientifically scalped him in about five seconds....
“The Indians came charging down upon me from a hill in hopes of cutting me off. General Merritt ... ordered ... Company K to hurry to my rescue. The order came none too soon.... As the soldiers came up I swung the Indian chieftain’s topknot and bonnet in the air, and shouted: ‘The first scalp for Custer!’”
Far up to the northward, Sitting Bull, with the war chief Spotted Tail and about three thousand warriors fled from the scene of the Custer massacre. And as they traveled on the lonely plains they came to a little fort with the gates closed. “Open your gates and hand out your grub,” said the Indians.
“Come and get the grub,” answered the fort.
So the gates were thrown open and the three thousand warriors stormed in to loot the fort. They found only two white men standing outside a door, but all round the square the log buildings were loopholed and from every hole stuck out the muzzle of a rifle. The Indians were caught in such a deadly trap that they ran for their lives back to camp.
Very soon news reached the Blackfeet that their enemies the Sioux were camped by the new fort at Wood Mountain, so the whole nation marched to wipe them out, and Sitting Bull appealed for help to the white men. “Be good,” said the fort, “and nobody shall hurt you.”
So the hostile armies camped on either side, and the thirty white men kept the peace between them. One day the Sioux complained that the Blackfeet had stolen fifty horses. So six of the white men were sent to the Blackfoot herd to bring the horses back. They did not know which horses to select so they drove off one hundred fifty for good measure straight at a gallop through the Blackfoot camp, closely pursued by that indignant nation. Barely in time they ran the stock within the fort, and slammed the gates home in the face of the raging Blackfeet. They were delighted with themselves until the officer commanding fined them a month’s pay each for insulting the Blackfoot nation.
The winter came, the spring and then the summer, when those thirty white men arrived at the Canada-United States boundary where they handed over three thousand Sioux prisoners to the American troops. From that time the redcoats of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police of Canada have been respected on the frontier.
And now came a very wonderful adventure. Sitting Bull, the leader of the Sioux nation who had defeated General Custer’s division and surrendered his army to thirty Canadian soldiers, went to Europe to take part in a circus personally conducted by the chief of scouts of the United States Army, Buffalo Bill. Poor Sitting Bull was afterward murdered by United States troops in the piteous massacre of Wounded Knee. Buffalo Bill for twenty-six years paraded Europe and America with his gorgeous Wild West show, slowly earning the wealth which he lavished in the founding of Cody City, Wyoming.
Toward the end of these tours I used to frequent the show camp much like a stray dog expecting to be kicked, would spend hours swapping lies with the cowboys in the old Deadwood Coach, or sit at meat with the colonel and his six hundred followers. On the last tour the old man was thrown by a bad horse at Bristol and afterward rode with two broken bones in splints. Only the cowboys knew, who told me, as day by day I watched him back his horse from the ring with all the old incomparable grace.