Reno with two hundred fifty men was ordered to swing around and attack the village from the South. Custer with one hundred ninety-three men would watch the charge, and when the valiant Reno had started the panic and the Indians were in confusion, his force would then sweep around and charge them from the other end of the village. This was Terry’s plan of battle, only Custer was going to make the capture without Terry’s help. When Terry came up the following day, he would find the work all done and neatly, too. Results are the only things that count, and victory justifies itself. The battle would go down on the records as Custer’s triumph! Reno took a two-mile detour, and just at peep of day, ere the sun had gilded the tops of the cottonwoods, charged, with yells and rapid firing, into the Indian village. Custer stood on the ridge, his men mounted and impatient just below on the other side. He could distinguish Reno’s soldiers as they charged into the underbrush. Their shouts and the sound of firing filled his fighter’s heart. The Indians were in confusion—he could see them by the dim light, stampeding. They were running in brownish masses right around the front of the hill where he stood. He ordered the bugles to blow the charge. The soldiers greeted the order with a yell—tired muscles, the sleepless night, its seventy-five miles of hard riding, were forgotten. The battle would be fought and won in less time than a man takes to eat his breakfast. Down the slope swept Custer’s men to meet the fleeing foe. But now the savages had ceased to flee. They lay in the grass and fired. Several of Custer’s horses fell. Three of his men threw up their hands, and dropped from their saddles, limp like bags of oats, and their horses ran on alone. The gully below was full of Indians, and these sent a murderous fire at Custer as he came. His horses swerved, but several ran right on and disappeared, horse and rider in the sunken ditch, as did Napoleon’s men at Waterloo. The mad, headlong charge hesitated. The cottonwoods, the water and the teepees were a hundred yards away. Custer glanced back, and a mile distant saw Reno’s soldiers galloping wildly up the steep slope of the hill. Reno’s charge had failed—instead of riding straight down through the length of the village and meeting Custer, he had gotten only fifty rods, and then had been met by a steady fire from Indians who held their ground. He wedged them back, but his horses, already overridden, refused to go on, and the charging troops were simply carried out of the woods into the open, and once there they took to the hills for safety, leaving behind, dead, one-third of their force. Custer quickly realized the hopelessness of charging alone into a mass of Indians, who were exultant and savage in the thought of victory. Panic was not for them. ------------------------------------- They were armed with Springfield rifles, while the soldiers had only short-range carbines.