Fifteen minutes later, Hatton resolved on a bold move. Mounting his wounded men on mules, and leading his little party, soldiers, teamsters, and quadrupeds, he slipped away from the hillock, and, keeping well to the east of the road, groped through the darkness back to the high range overlooking the valleys of "Old Woman's Fork" of the South Cheyenne and Hat Creek to the eastward; and morning found him bivouacked at a little spring not ten miles from the stockade. Thither, of course, the Indians trailed and followed at daybreak. There again they attacked and besieged and were repulsed, again and again; and there at dawn on the second day, after an all-night march, the trumpets of the cavalry rang the signal of rescue, and the charging troopers sent the Sioux whirling in scattered bands over the bold and beautiful upland. The little detachment was safe, but its brave commander was prostrate with a rifle-bullet through the thigh and another in the shoulder. Dr. Weeks declared it impossible to attempt to move him back to Laramie; and in a litter made with lariats and saddle-blankets the men carried their wounded leader back to the stockade at the head of Sage Creek, and there, wrote Weeks, he might have to remain a month, and there, unless otherwise ordered, the other wounded men would remain with him, Weeks himself attending them in his improvised field-hospital. Major Miller and Dr. Bayard, after brief consultation, had decided that the young surgeon's ideas were sound. The stockade was well guarded and provisioned. Medical and surgical supplies were promptly forwarded under strong cavalry escort, and that same day the entire cavalry battalion struck its tents and moved away northward over the route Hatton had taken. Once more was Laramie left with only a handful of men and hardly a company officer for duty.