It may be pointed out with due reverence to Colonel Godfrey—whom I consider one of the ablest officers in the United States Army, by the way—that it is hard to see how Custer could have been blamed for obeying his orders, and that it is by no means certain that the Indians would have discovered Custer’s column. Indeed, his previous success in concealing his movements and surprising the Indians (witness the Washita campaign) leads me to believe that he could have carried out his orders without observation. If Gibbon had struck the Indians first and had held them in play Custer could have annihilated them. General Fry’s comments in the _Century_ (appended to Colonel Godfrey’s article) on Custer’s action are entirely wrong. As to what would have happened if Custer had been successful, it is more or less idle to speculate. Certainly, if he had overwhelmingly defeated the Indians, I do not think he would have been court-martialed; but if he had been in Reno’s place and had been besieged with heavy loss, then I feel certain that Terry would have been in duty bound to prefer charges against him. All this is beside the main question, however, and it is now time to return to the history of the expedition. Terry offered Custer four troops of the Second Cavalry and two Gatling guns, which were refused. Custer said that any force that was too big for the Seventh Cavalry alone to deal with would be too big for the Seventh Cavalry plus the four troops, and urged that the guns would hamper and harass his movements. Terry, who elected to go with Gibbon’s infantry column, agreed with him. Neither Terry nor Custer nor any one expected to meet more than one thousand warriors. They had no knowledge whatever of the large numbers of the so-called peaceable Indians, for whom rations had been regularly issued, who had broken away from the agencies and joined the hostiles. They did not know of Crook’s defeat, and the great effect it had in inducing wavering bucks to give their allegiance to the brave men on the war-path. It will, perhaps, be fair to estimate the number of Indian warriors in the field at a mean between the white and Indian accounts, which range from twelve hundred on the one hand to three thousand on the other. To be on the safe side, I shall call it at least two thousand.[75] Whatever their number, there were enough of them.