The party was now overwhelmingly outnumbered. There were already several hundred Indians engaged. Their leader was a magnificent young Cheyenne chief, dressed in a suit of white buckskin. It was afterward learned that his name was White Antelope. Gruard was recognized by the Indians, who were desirous of taking him alive. After firing for perhaps half an hour, White Antelope led the Indians on foot in a direct charge on the woods. Sibley ordered his men to hold their fire until they could make every shot tell. They mowed the advancing Indians down in scores. White Antelope was seen to leap into the air and fall. He had been pierced, it was afterward learned, by several bullets, and started for the happy hunting grounds then and there. The charge was handsomely repulsed, and the Indians retired in confusion, although still keeping up a severe fire. [Illustration: CHIEF TWO MOON OF THE NORTHERN CHEYENNES Allies of the Sioux at Little Big Horn _Painted from life by F. A. Burbank_ ] It was evident to every one that the Indians would hold the soldiers in play until they were joined by other war parties—indeed, their numbers were increased already—when Sibley’s detachment would be surrounded and exterminated. Gruard, therefore, proposed abandoning the horses—most of them had been killed anyway—and that the whole party should steal away through the timber and endeavor to escape over the mountains on foot. Firing two or three volleys and then keeping up a scattering fire for a short time to make the Indians think they were on the alert, the troopers, exercising the greatest caution, one by one crawled through the underbrush until they were hidden by the forest trees. Then everybody got up on his feet and ran like mad. Gruard, whose instincts as a guide were of the highest order, led them over magnificent mountains, through gloomy cañons, past overhanging cliffs, along impossible trails on the sides of tremendous precipices, one of which stretched for several hundred feet below them and three hundred feet above them, almost sheer. Not being mountaineers, they would have been utterly unable to have followed the scout had it not been for the Red Terror that lurked behind. They had succeeded in getting, perhaps, a mile away from and some distance above the valley, when they heard several heavy volleys, followed by a series of wild yells, which apprised them that the Indians had at last rushed their camp. They were so confident of escape now that they actually burst into roars of laughter at the thought of the Indian disappointment when the attackers found their victims had decamped. Those Indians were not accustomed to hunt on foot. An Indian off a horse is about as awkward as a sailor on one. The pursuit was soon abandoned, and the soldiers left to follow their course unmolested. Theirs had been a lucky escape. Without Gruard, they had all been killed.