In addition, three hundred head of beef cattle browsed slowly along the way in mooing testimony that this expedition would live off the very fattest of the land. The personnel included, in addition to Custer’s highly trained troops, a hundred Indian scouts, a platoon of expert white guides and trappers, and, mounted upon docile mares, a special contingent of botanists, geologists, geographers, and assorted expert college professors. Also, as has been reported, there were two miners. To the north of the Hills, crossing the Belle Fourche River first, the army made its gentle way, and then down the west slope of the forbidding mountains, seeking for an easy pass into the dark interior. Tall in the saddle rode golden-haired George Custer, for he was commanding the strongest army ever put into Indian country. It is little wonder that he slept quietly at night, or that he wrote in his diary: “It is a strange sight to look back at the advancing column of cavalry and behold the men with beautiful bouquets in their hands while their horses were decorated with wreathes of flowers fit to crown a Queen of the May.” In that holiday mood the army moved down inside the great bowl of mountains on its sightseeing tour, and presently it camped about three miles west of the present town of Custer. All this while the miners had not been inactive, but had plied their pans here and there as the company passed across various streams. Until this bivouac, though, they had had no luck, and, as a matter of fact, had actually been expecting none. They had come along to quell the rumor of gold as much as to bear it out. Preferably to quell it, if General Sheridan were to have his way. On August 2 of that year, 1874, McKay turned out to try his implements once again on French Creek. An early account gives this dramatic version of the famed discovery: “When the earth [in the pan] was gone, he held up his pan in the evening sun and found the rim lined with nearly a hundred little particles of gold. These he carried to General Custer, whose head was almost turned at the sight.” Through the magic of his discipline Custer managed to keep his army from beating their ration tins into placer pans and “claiming” on the spot. Getting under way almost immediately, the men continued their march eastward through the heart of the Hills, and on August 30 emerged from the great park and headed back to Fort Lincoln. In the meanwhile a messenger had been sent ahead with the news of gold. Scout Charley Reynolds, who was to die with his commander just two years later, was detached from the base camp and sent scurrying down to Fort Laramie, to the nearest telegraph station. Within an hour of his arrival at the post, two hundred miles to the south and west of the Black Hills, the tremendous news was burning over the wires to General Sheridan in St. Louis.