In twenty minutes the white soldiers were destroying the camp with fire. In an hour they were fighting for their lives. The Pierced Noses had not fled, as Indians usually fled in a surprise; they had stayed, had surrounded the camp place, and were riddling the soldiers' lines. The squaws and boys helped. On the other side, Colonel Gibbon himself used a rifle. He ordered his troops into the timber. The Chief Joseph people rushed into their camp, packed up under hot fire, and bundled the women and children and loose horses to safety. The warriors remained. The soldiers threw up entrenchments. Colonel Gibbon was wounded. The Indians captured his field-piece, and a pack mule loaded with two thousand rounds of rifle ammunition. They disabled the cannon and drove off the mule. They fired the grass, and only a change of wind saved the soldiers from being driven into the open. All that day and the next day the battle lasted. At dusk of August 9 Colonel Gibbon had sent out couriers, with call for reinforcements. "Hope you will hurry to our relief," he appealed, to General Howard. Couriers rode to the Montana forts, also. The whole country was being stirred. Even Arizona was getting troops ready. This night of August 10 Chief Joseph learned from one of his scouts who had been posted on the back trail, that General Howard was hurrying to the rescue. So he withdrew his people again, to make another march. He had lost heavily. Eighty men, women and children were dead. Out of one hundred and ninety men in the battle of the Big Hole, Colonel Gibbon had lost sixty-nine in killed and wounded, including six officers. But the white men could easily get more soldiers; Chief Joseph could get no more warriors. He decided to join with Sitting Bull's Sioux, in Canada. Canada was a long way; maybe a thousand miles. General Howard and Colonel Gibbon pursued. Joseph crossed the mountains again, into the southward. He veered east for the Yellowstone National Park. On the road he found two hundred and fifty fresh ponies. General Howard sent Lieutenant G. B. Bacon with cavalry to cut in front of him and defend a pass; and camped, himself, for a short rest, on the Camas Meadows, one day's march behind the enemy. Chief Joseph turned on him, deceived his sentries with a column of fours that looked like Lieutenant Bacon's men coming back, and ran off all of General Howard's pack mules. "I got tired of General Howard, and wanted to put him afoot," said Chief Joseph. And he almost did it; for had not the cavalry horses been picketed close in, they would have been stampeded, too. General Howard had to wait for mules from Virginia City. Lieutenant Bacon wearied of watching the pass; left it--and Chief Joseph marched through, into the Yellowstone Park. Now Colonel Miles, at Fort Keogh, far in the east, had been notified. He sent out Colonel S. D. Sturgis and six companies of the fighting Seventh Cavalry, with Crow scouts, to head Joseph off.