The following spring, Custer, at the head of an expedition of one thousand two hundred men, entered into a long scout with the avowed purpose of exploring the Black Hills for indications of gold. In this he acted directly under his governmental orders. Thus was the treaty first broken. Next year the Hills were overrun with miners, illegal miners, just as the troops had been with illegal explorers. They scattered through the wilderness in vast numbers, and about a hundred of them staked out, near the centre of the Southern Hills, a town which they named Custer City. The irony was unconscious. What followed was farcical, and was relished as such by the participants. Bodies of troops were sent to enforce the treaty. Legally they did so. Although inferior in numbers to the miners, and no better armed, they succeeded several times in sweeping all the trespassers together into one band. The latter submitted good-naturedly. The culprits were then turned over to civil authority. Civil authority waited only for the disappearance of the troops to set the miners at liberty; whereupon they scurried, as fast as their animals could carry them, back to the prospect-holes of their choice. It was all a huge joke, and everybody knew it. In the meantime the Indians were becoming restive. It may not be known to the general reader, but it is a fact, that one of the strongest virtues of the red man's character is his fidelity to his given word. A liar is, in his moral code, the most despised of men. He cannot conceive the possibility of broken faith, and there are recorded instances wherein an Indian condemned to capital punishment has been set free on his oral promise to return for his hanging; and he has returned. Therefore the Sioux could not understand the infraction of the treaty. They had viewed with alarm the scouting expedition by Custer. On the invasion by the horde of miners, the following spring, an outbreak was only avoided by the prompt action of the troops in evicting the trespassers; but now, this winter of 1875, the more sagacious of the Indian leaders were beginning to suspect the truth, namely, that the eviction had been nothing but a form, and that Pah-sap-pah, in spite of the treaty, was lost to them forever. Affairs were ripe for a great Indian war; and, realizing this, the department set on foot Crook's and Reynolds' unfortunate expedition toward the Big Horn. The savages at once began to gather under a famous chief, Sitting Bull. The storm rumbled, and Custer was despatched to effect a junction with his brother officers somewhere north of the Hills. VIII THE MAKING OF A HOSTILE Meanwhile a personal animus had sprung up against that general because of a mild stroke of justice on his part against a singularly proud man.