When Custer reached the top of the hill, instead of a village of some 800 or 1,000 warriors, he saw beneath him a veritable city of wigwams spread out in the valley. The smoke from the fires clouded the sky, great herds of ponies cropped the grass as far as the eye could see, thousands of painted Sioux, armed, and astride their shaggy ponies, galloped in circles, working themselves into a frenzy of fury to fight the White man. Medicine-men danced and yelled their incantations, and squaws busily struck the tents and hurried their papooses and swarms of dusky children out of harm’s way. When this scene of angry life met his gaze, General Custer, old Indian fighter that he was, must have recognised that he was in for what seemed likely to be his last fight. But the mistake had been made. The time had passed for new plans of battle. He could not turn his back on the warriors to join his battalion with the others, for already the painted bucks were circling round him and firing into his ranks, and already, in all probability, he heard the crack of rifles to his left, telling him that the Indians were upon Reno. Hemmed in, retreat out of the question, and trusting that his other battalions would hurry to his support, he called to his men, and together they plunged into the shrieking, shouting, seething mass of painted and befeathered Red men--and died. Reno acted differently. Whether or no he carried caution to an unjustifiable length is a question that has been fiercely discussed, at least some of the officers who were with him being his greatest denouncers. So bitter were the charges made against him that a Government inquiry was instituted, and, it is only right to say, it exonerated him from blame. Reno’s battalion struck the Indians shortly after crossing the Little Big Horn, and the Ree scouts at once made for the rear to be out of danger. When the Sioux Indians appeared in considerable force on his front, instead of charging the village as Custer had ordered, Reno dismounted his troops to fight on foot, and taking advantage of timber he remained stationary for some long time in almost absolute security. Later he ordered a retreat to the Bluffs, and while executing this order, and in the preceding skirmishes, Lieutenants McIntosh and Hodgson, Dr. De Wolf, and twenty-nine men and scouts were killed.