Under a fire of redoubled intensity from their skirmishers they broke into a charge. Again they advanced in the face of a terrible silence. Again at the appointed moment the order rang out. Again the fearful discharge swept them away in scores. Powell’s own rifle brought down the dauntless young chief in the lead. Others sprang to the fore when he fell and gallantly led on their men. Undaunted, they came on and on, in spite of a slaughter such as no living Indian had experienced or heard of. The Indians could account for the continuous fire only by supposing that the corral contained a greater number of defenders than its area would indicate it capable of receiving. So, in the hope that the infernal fire would slacken, they pressed home the attack until they were almost at the wagon beds. Back on the hills Red Cloud and the veteran chiefs, with the women and children, watched the progress of the battle with eager intensity and marked with painful apprehension the slaughter of their bold warriors. The situation was terribly critical. If they came on a few feet farther the rifles would be useless, and the little party of twenty-eight would have to fight hand-to-hand without reloading. In that event the end would be certain; but just before the Indians reached the corral, they broke and gave way. So close had they come that some of the troopers in their excitement actually rose to their knees and threw the augers with which the loopholes had been made, and other missiles, in the faces of the Indians. Others, however, kept up the fire, which was indeed more than mortal humanity could stand. What relief filled the minds of the defenders, when they saw the great force which had come on so gallantly reeling back over the plains in frantic desire to get to cover, can easily be imagined. Yet such was the courage, the desperation of these Indians, in spite of repulse after repulse and a slaughter awful to contemplate, that they made no less than six several and distinct charges in three hours upon that devoted band. After the first attack made by the men on horseback, not a single casualty occurred among the defenders of the corral. It was afternoon before the Sioux got enough. The Indians could not account for this sustained and frightful fire which came from the little fort, except by attributing it to magic. “The white man must have made bad medicine,” they said afterwards, before they learned the secret of the long-range, breech-loading firearm, “to make the guns fire themselves without stopping.” Indeed, such had been the rapidity of the fire that many of the gun-barrels became so hot that they were rendered useless. To this day the Indians refer to that battle as “the bad medicine fight of the white man.”