On the morning of June 30th, with Major Reno's wounded aboard, the _Far West_ cast off for the start of her epic run to Fort Lincoln. Major Joseph Hanson records that that Captain Marsh all but collapsed in the pilot-house as the terrible responsibility of that fifty-three-mile run down the rock-paved channel of the Big Horn suddenly assailed him on stepping to the wheel. General Terry had just said to him: "Captain, you have on board the most precious cargo a boat ever carried. Every soldier here who is suffering with wounds is the victim of a terrible blunder; a sad and terrible blunder." Crabbing up stream with supplies was one thing, floundering down with a shattered human cargo of that kind, quite another. Captain Marsh declared the moment the most sickening of his life. Then he pulled himself together and drove her through. I tried to imagine the relief her skipper must have felt as he rounded that last bend above where I now saw a railway bridge and headed the _Far West_ into the deep, clear channel of the Yellowstone, but couldn't come near to compassing it. A man has to have carried a load of that kind to know what it means to put it down. The _Far West_ broke all upper river records for speed in her run to Fort Lincoln, below Bismarck, the nearest hospital. Captain Marsh's splendid achievement in saving Reno's wounded by his masterly navigation is the one bright bit of silver lining on the sodden black cloud of the Massacre of the Little Big Horn. At the mouth of the Rosebud I passed another important rendezvous of the Sioux campaign. From here, after taking his final orders from General Terry, Custer had departed on the march that was to finish upon the Little Big Horn. Major Hanson relates an incident that occurred here an hour or two after the ill-fated command had disappeared up the valley, and which was particularly interesting to me at the moment as it involved the upset of a skiff in a riffle I was about to run. All of the letters written by Custer's men since leaving Fort Lincoln were put in a bag and started by boat for Fort Buford. "Sergeant Fox and two privates of the escort were detailed to carry the precious cargo down," wrote Major Hanson. "Amid a chorus of hearty cheers from the people on the steamer, they started out. But they were totally unfamiliar with the handling of a small boat in the swirling current of the Yellowstone. Before they had gone fifty feet their skiff overturned. There, in full view of all their comrades, who could not reach them in time to save, all three of the unfortunate fellows sank from sight, while the mail sack went to the bottom of the river."