Half an hour later, Falcon held up the bullet to show it. Then, tossing it aside, he found the cleanest piece of cloth he could find, and bound up Coletrain’s wounds.
He had no sooner finished with Coletrain than the Indians attacked again, and again the casualties among the Indians were very high. The cavalry suffered casualties as well, and because their numbers were so small, each loss was multiplied in its effect. Three more soldiers were killed and one more wounded.
Somewhat later the Indians made another charge, but were again repulsed, though not without cost, as two more soldiers were killed and two more wounded. After that, it turned into a waiting game. Now, there were only fifteen soldiers left alive, four of whom were wounded. The nature of the wounds ranged from slight to serious.
Mean to His Horses changed his tactics. Realizing that he had the soldiers trapped on the island, he decided he could wait them out, so he put his men on both sides of the island to deny the soldiers any opportunity to escape.
“Sergeant, they’s Injuns all around us,” one of the troopers said. “We are trapped here!”
“Look out there, Schuler,” Coletrain said, pointing to the river and the riverbank. The river and the bank were strewn with bodies. “What do you see?”
“I see Injuns,” Schuler said.
“Dead Injuns,” Coletrain said. “We’ve killed nearly a hundred of them now.”
“Yeah,” Schuler said. He smiled. “Yeah, we have, ain’t we?”
“Ol’ Mean to His Horses has already decided that he can’t run us off this island, so he plans to try and wait us out. Only, he can’t do that, either.”
“How come he can’t?”
“We have plenty of ammunition, we have water, and we have fifteen days of rations. And if we had to, we can cut up one of the dead horses and cook it. But we aren’t goin’ to have to wait here fifteen days, because by then Lieutenant Bond will connect with us.”
“Yeah,” Schuler said. “Yeah, that’s right, ain’t it?”
Coletrain came back over to Falcon, then sat down, painfully, beside him.
“How is Jackson?” Coletrain asked, inquiring about the most seriously wounded of the soldiers.
Falcon shook his head. “I don’t think he’s going to make it,” he said.
“Jackson is a good soldier,” Coletrain said.
“Sergeant, from what I have observed, they are all good soldiers,” Falcon replied.
“Thank you, Colonel,” Coletrain said. “Comin’ from you, that means a lot.”
That night, two of the men volunteered to try and sneak through the Indians to go for help, but they were seen by the Indians and had to return to the island.
Bellefontaine personally led the group he called the Wyoming Citizens Militia to the Crow village on the Meeteetsee River. It was two o’clock in the morning as the men rode across the Meeteetsee River, the hooves of their horses churning up the water and sending up a froth of bubbles as they did. As Bellefontaine had said, no one in the village expected anything.
High Hawk, perhaps to show the loyalty of the Crow, was flying an American flag over his tipi.
“Look at that,” Regret said. “That Injun bastard is flyin’ an American flag. Where do you reckon he got that?”
“More than likely he stole it from some soldiers he kilt somewhere,” Davis said.
“That son of a bitch has some nerve,” one of the others in the Citizen’s Militia said.
“What are we goin’ to do?” Regret asked.
“We’re goin’ to kill as many as we can,” Bellefontaine replied. “That’s what we are going to do.”
A horse of one of the militiamen, perhaps nervous from the darkness and the tension, whinnied, then turned around. As he did so, one of his hooves struck a metal bucket that was lying on the bank of the river.
In her tipi, Quiet Stream heard the sound and she opened her eyes, not sure if it was something she actually heard, or whether it was something she dreamed. She lay there in the dark for a moment longer, drifting comfortably in that zone between sleep and wake, when she heard another sound. This time it was the sound of shod horses’ hooves striking rocks.
None of the villagers’ horses were shod.
“Father,” she said. “There are white men in the camp.”
Big Hand sat up and listened. Like Quiet Stream, he heard the sound of shod hooves on stone. He grabbed his rifle, then stepped through the opening of the tipi.
“Village awake! Village awake!” he called loudly. “White men are in camp!”
“Kill that screaming son of a bitch!” Bellefontaine shouted, and several fired at the same time. Big Hand fell, even as other warriors, heeding his call, were beginning to appear outside.
Bellefontaine’s men began shooting at everyone they saw, men, women, and children. When they didn’t have a specific target, they fired into the tipis. They also began setting fire to the tipis. They continued their indiscriminate assault for the next half hour, keeping up such a rate of fire that it was impossible for the Crow to marshal any type of organized resistance.
Davis and Regret, in a personal killing frenzy, killed and scalped three women and five children who had
