"Wah-nee-chee!" he said. "No good! Why do you come here and ask for what you have already taken? A fort has been built, and the road is being used. I say again, we will not sell our hunting grounds for a road." But the United States had decided. The Government had been assured by the treaty makers that all the Sioux would finally yield. There was last fall's treaty, as a starter. The Sioux from every band had signed. Besides, the Government could not give up the right to open roads. A railroad had the power to take right-of-way through towns and lands; and a Government wagon road should have the same license. So certain was the Government that the road would be opened, that even while the council with the Red Cloud Oglalas was in session, there arrived at Fort Laramie Colonel Henry B. Carrington of the Eighteenth Infantry, with seven hundred soldiers. Red Cloud saw the camp. "Where are those soldiers going?" "They are sent to open the new road and build forts." "The Americans seek to steal our land whether we say yes or no!" angrily uttered Red Cloud. "They will have to fight." He and They-fear-even-his-horses (whom the white men called "Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses") seized their rifles, and rode away, and three hundred of their warriors followed them. "Red Cloud means war," warned the Indians who remained. "The Great Father makes us presents, to buy the road; but the white soldiers come to steal it first. In two moons the white war chief will not have a hoof left." An express sent after Red Cloud, to ask him to return, was whipped with bows and ordered to get out and tell the white chiefs that Red Cloud would not talk about the road. Colonel Carrington marched on, into the forbidden land. The officers' wives were with them. Traders along the line insisted that the Indians were determined to fight; but some of the emigrant outfits bound over the trail to the mines were scornful of danger. One emigrant captain laughed, when the women were timid. "You'll never see an Injun unless he comes in to beg for sugar and tobacco," he said. "I've been on the plains too long to be scared by such trash." This was at Fort Reno. That very morning, in broad daylight Red Cloud's band ran off all the post sutler's horses and mules while the soldiers looked on. Eighty men pursued, and captured only one Indian pony loaded with goods obtained at Fort Laramie. Colonel Carrington left a detachment here at the Powder River, to build a better Fort Reno. He marched on. Meanwhile Red Cloud had been growing stronger. Sioux warriors were hastening to join him. Spotted Tail of the Brules had declined to accept the treaty for opening the road--he waited for Red Cloud; but he was wisely staying at home. However, his Brule young men were riding away in large numbers, and he told the white people at Fort Laramie that if they "went far on the trail they had better go prepared to look out for their hair."