“I cried for Dillingham,” said one, on being told that his wife and daughters had expended their grief upon the wrong persons. “Oh, you did,” was the reply. “Well thought of. Who will pray for him? Will you do it, judge?” Judge Bissell responded by kneeling upon the spot and offering up an appropriate prayer, as the body of the unfortunate young man was consigned to its mother-earth. Soon after the murder of Dillingham, Charley Forbes suddenly disappeared. No one knew what became of him, but it was supposed that he had fallen a victim to the vengeance of his comrades for the course he had taken in securing for himself a separate trial. This supposition was afterwards confirmed by some of the robbers themselves, who stated that in a quarrel with Moore at the Big Hole River, Forbes was killed. Fearing that the friends of the murdered ruffian would retaliate, Moore killed Forbes’s horse at the same time, and burned to ashes the bodies of horse and rider. This fact was known to Plummer only, at the time of its occurrence. Dillingham was a straightforward, honest young man, and his office as deputy sheriff was given him under the supposition that he would readily affiliate with the roughs. Lyons, Stinson, and Forbes, who were also deputies, supposed him to be as bad as they were. On my trip east in 1863, the Overland coach in which I had taken passage was detained a night by snow at Hook’s Station in Nebraska. Ascertaining that I was from Bannack, a young man at the station asked me many questions about Hayes Lyons, telling me that he had heard that he narrowly escaped hanging the previous summer. I narrated to him the circumstances attending the murder of Dillingham and the trial. “He is my brother,” said the young man, and invited me to go with him and see his mother and sister. I learned that Hayes had been well brought up, but was the victim of evil associations. His mother wept while deploring his criminal career, which she ascribed to bad company. CHEYENNES AND SIOUX GENERAL GEORGE A. CUSTER 1867 From “My Life on the Plains.” Reprinted by permission of the publishers, J. D. Sheldon Company, New York.[22] Of the many important expeditions organized to operate in the Indian country, none, perhaps, of late years has excited more general and unfriendly comment, considering the slight loss of life inflicted upon the Indians, than the expedition organized and led in person by Major-General Hancock in the spring of 1867. The clique generally known as the “Indian ring” were particularly malevolent and bitter in their denunciations of General Hancock for precipitating, as they expressed it, an Indian war. This expedition was quite formidable in appearance, being made up of eight troops of cavalry, seven companies of infantry, and one battery of light artillery, numbering altogether about 1,400 men.