Many soldiers were being killed, and the fire from the pits grew weaker.
The men were beside themselves with rage. "Charge!" rang through the now
still air from some strong voice, and, with a volley, over the works
poured the troops, with six-shooters going, and clubbed carbines. Yells,
explosions, and amid a whirlwind of smoke the soldiers and Indians
swayed about, now more slowly and quieter, until the smoke eddied away.
Men stood still, peering about with wild open eyes through blackened
faces. They held desperately to their weapons. An old bunch of buckskin
rags rose slowly and fired a carbine aimlessly. Twenty bullets rolled
and tumbled it along the ground, and again the smoke drifted off the
mount. This time the air grew clear. Buffalo-robes lay all about, blood
spotted everywhere. The dead bodies of thirty-two Cheyennes lay, writhed
and twisted, on the packed snow, and among them many women and children,
cut and furrowed with lead. In a corner was a pile of wounded squaws,
half covered with dirt swept over them by the storm of bullets. One
broken creature half raised herself from the bunch. A maddened trumpeter
threw up his gun to shoot, but Sergeant Johnson leaped and kicked his
gun out of his hands high into the air, saying, "This fight is over."
THE SPIRIT OF MAHONGUI
IT is so I have called this old document, which is an extract from the
memoirs of le Chevalier Bailloquet, a Frenchman living in Canada, where
he was engaged in the Indian fur trade, about the middle of the
seventeenth century, and as yet they are unpublished.
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