About half after eight o’clock in the morning, the resting soldiers were called to attention by the sound of shots from the bluffs in front of them, over which their allies had disappeared. It was at first supposed that these friendly Indians had run across another herd of buffalo, but a few moments told the practised troopers that the firing was the beginning of a battle rather than that of a hunt. At the same time the Indian auxiliaries came galloping back to the main body at full speed, yelling: “Sioux, Sioux! Heap Sioux!” Without waiting for orders, the troopers saddled their horses and fell in. They got ready none too soon, for right on the heels of the fleeing Crows and Shoshones came the Sioux. In front of them to the right, the left, the low bluffs inclosing the plain, were ringed with Indians in full war-gear. As one observer described it to me, they looked like swarms of blackbirds, there were so many of them and in such rapid motion. They kept coming and coming into view, and as they dashed up to the brink of the hills upon their war ponies they opened a long-range fire upon the soldiers, which from the distance did little damage. There were at least a thousand of them in plain sight. How many others there might be, no one could tell. It was a safe guess that those in sight constituted but a small part of the force. It is said that there were at least six thousand warriors that day under the command of Crazy Horse, but that most of them were not engaged. Crazy Horse had planned an ambush for General Crook, and he had hoped to defeat him by luring the soldiers into it, or by separating the army into small detachments and overwhelming them in detail. His plans were well devised, and came very near being successful. That they did not succeed is probably due more to the acts of the Indians themselves than because of the wariness of the soldiers. [Illustration: _Courtesy of The Century Co._ THE DIFFICULT TASK OF THE HORSE-HOLDERS IN ACTION _Drawing by Frederic Remington_ ] Crook acted at once. Sending his staff officers to rally the Crows and Shoshones, he directed them to circle to the right and left, and make ready to fall on the flanks of the Indians. Mills, who had behaved so gallantly at the Tongue River, was ordered to charge the Indians straight up the valley to the bluff to the northward, the front. Two troops of Van Vliet’s squadron were rushed off to the southward, the rear, to seize a commanding position to prevent the Indians from circling around in that direction and getting in Crook’s rear. The infantry and part of the Second Cavalry were dismounted, and thrown forward as skirmishers around the foot of the bluffs. Royall took Henry’s battalion, with Van Vliet’s remaining troop, one of Mills’ troops which he detached while the battalion was on the gallop, and another of Noyes’ troops, and charged the Indians on the left.