thousand men. These were the entire fighting Seventh Cavalry-twelve companies, of twenty-eight officers and six hundred troopers, under Lieutenant-Colonel George A. Custer the Yellow Hair; two companies of the Sixth Infantry and one of the Seventeenth Infantry; a platoon of the Twentieth Infantry to serve three gatling guns; forty-five Arikara Indian scouts led by Chief Bloody Knife; and one hundred and seventynine teamsters and packers to handle the wagons and pack mules.

On June 21 this "Dakota" column was camped beside the Yellowstone River in Montana, at the mouth of the Rosebud River. That was the same Rosebud upon the headwaters of which, ninety or one hundred miles southward, General Crook had had his fight, four days before.

But General Terry did not know of this. He did not know where the Gray Fox was, and the Gray Fox did not know where he was. The country between

them was red.

The Yellowstone River cuts southeastern Montana almost into a corner triangle. The Sitting Bull camp was pretty well known to be in that corner.

Colonel Gibbon had arrived down the Yellowstone from the west. His column was encamped across the Yellowstone, opposite the mouth of the Rosebud. The Gray Fox was supposed to be coming on from the south and driving Crazy Horse before him.

But Major Marcus Reno had taken six troops of the Seventh Cavalry and scouted south. On June 17 he had been only forty miles northeast of the very place

where General Crook was then fighting Crazy Horse; of course he had heard no sounds.

On his return he reported that he had struck an Indian trail nine or ten days old, pointing southwest up the Rosebud; a large trail, of three hundred and eighty lodges, meaning perhaps fifteen hundred people. This night of June 21 a council was held by General Terry, Colonel Gibbon and Lieutenant-Colonel Custer aboard the steamboat Far West, which had brought supplies up the Missouri and the Yellowstone. The Indians had not crossed the Yellowstone; that had been made certain by the marches of the two columns, from east and west. They were still in the south. General Terry believed that the trail found by Major Reno was bound for a rendezvous in the country of the Little Big Horn River-the next stream west of the Rosebud.

General Alfred Howe Terry was a Yale man and lawyer who had entered the Civil War with the Connecticut Volunteers; had been appointed brigadier general of Regulars and brevetted major-general of Volunteers for gallantry in the storming of Fort Fisher, January, 1865.

He was a kindly looking man, with a long beard and a limp; was not yet counted an Indian fighter, but was a trustworthy, cautious soldier. Because of his limp, the Indians scouts called him No-hip-bone. He may not have fought Indians; nevertheless he shrewdly guessed what Indians were likely to do. He had his maps.

The Little Big Horn River flows northwest into the

"big" Big Horn River, and that flows north into the Yellowstone about one hundred and ten miles on up from the mouth of the Rosebud.

Now General Custer was directed to take his Seventh Cavalry and scout south and examine the Indian trail. The General Terry infantry and the Colonel Gibbon infantry and cavalry were to go on up the Yellowstone to the mouth of the Big Horn; then they should march south up the Big Horn, to the Little Big Horn.

"It is, of course, impossible to give you any definite instructions in regard to your movement," said the written orders issued, June 22, to General Custer; "and the Department Commander places too much confidence in your zeal, energy and ability to wish to impose upon you precise orders which might hamper your action when nearly in contact with the enemy. He will, however, indicate to you his own views of what your action should be, and he desires that you should conform to them, unless you should see sufficient reasons for departing from them."

General Terry, the commanding officer, thought that Lieutenant-Colonel Custer should follow the Indian trail until he found out its final direction. If it led west from the Rosebud, toward the Little Big Horn, he should leave it and should still scout south, perhaps into Wyoming, swinging widely in an arc to make sure that the Indians were not escaping around his left flank. He was to turn into the northwest, and complete the half circle by marching toward the other column, in the Big Horn and Little Big Horn country.