“We had our village where Peno Creek runs into the Tongue, and Big Road was the leader of our band. The day was just coming when our warriors rode away to fight the soldiers and many others rode with them--Cheyennes, Arapahoes. They rode up Peno Creek; and when the sun was halfway up the sky, they stopped where the Wasichu road came down the steep, narrow ridge to the ford. “It was a good place to fight; so they sent some warriors up the road to coax the soldiers out of their town; and while those were yonder, we hid in the gullies and the brush all along the sides of the ridge. No, I was just a little boy at home, but so our warriors did. “And when they had waited and waited, there were shots off yonder and the sound of horsebacks riding fast. It is our warriors coming back. I can see them there at the top of the hill, and they have stopped to shoot at the soldiers. Then they turn and gallop down the ridge. “The road is empty. It is still. We hear iron hoofs yonder. Now the soldiers come out of the sky up there. They stop and look. Now they are riding two together down the ridge, walking their big horses. There is a long blue line of them. Their breaths are white; their horses’ breaths are white. They are looking here and looking there, and they are seeing nothing. They are listening and listening. They are hearing their saddles whine. They are hearing iron hoofs on the frozen road. Maybe a horse shakes its head, and they hear the bridle bit. “It is still. There is no sound in the gullies and the brush. We are holding our ponies’ noses so that they cannot cry out to the big Wasichu horses. “The first soldiers are at the bottom of the ridge.” Eagle Voice paused. Leaning forward tensely, with a hand at his brow, he gazed beyond the tepee wall, listening open-mouthed and breathless. “What do you see, Grandfather?” I urged. He threw both hands aloft and in a high excited voice, cried: “Yonder! He is standing up! He is waving a spear! It is the Cheyenne, Little Horse! _Hoka-hey! Hoka-hey!_ It is a good day to die! It is a good day to kill and die! Poof!” He clapped his hands like gunshots. “The brush and the gullies are alive! There is noise everywhere--cries everywhere. We are swarming up along the sides of the ridge. The arrows are a cloud. They are grasshoppers clouding the sun. The soldiers’ horses are feathered. They are screaming in the evening that the arrows make. They are crowding back up the hill in the smoke of the guns. Saddles are empty; feathered soldiers are falling. They are fighting hard and falling, full of arrows, and the kicking horses upon them are sprouting feathers. “They are all dead at the ford.... Halfway up the ridge they are dead.... They are huddled together fighting at the top with the dead around them--and they are dying. A great cry goes up and they are covered with warriors swarming in. “It is over.”