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But the soldiers were not idle. Guns from each side were thrust through every loophole or crevice and discharged blindly. In this desperate method of fighting, the Indians, being contracted within the circle, suffered the more. While some were fighting thus, others were tearing down the rocky wall with hands and bayonets. A breach was soon made, and through it the soldiers streamed. The Indians, after one hasty volley, fled precipitately. The last man to leave the fort was the chief, Sa-hei-ta. As he leaped over the wall Crook’s unerring Spencer sent a bullet into his spine, and he fell dead at the bottom of the ravine. The fort had been defended by at least fifty Indians, and there were fifteen dead bodies in it. Among these was that of the chief medicine man.

The soldiers ran to the western wall, and through loopholes opened a fire upon the Indians, who had joined their fellows in the other forts. The fire was fiercely returned. About nine in the morning one of the infantrymen, peering through a small crevice in the rock, found his view obstructed by a small weed. In spite of Parnell’s caution, he uprooted it, leaving quite an opening, in which he was completely exposed. He was shot through the head instantly and fell unconscious.[1]

The wounded, of which there were a number, were now taken to the camp about 11 A. M. The fire of the Indians having slackened, Crook, leaving a detachment in the fort, withdrew the rest of the men to the camp for breakfast. The Indians took advantage of this opportunity to charge the fort. The few defenders were driven out of the fortification and Sergeant Russler was killed, the third sergeant to lose his life that day! Rallying on the banquette, upon the return of the others, they in turn drove the Indians out of the fort. Neither party could occupy it all day long. The soldiers clung to the platform covering their dead in the fort on one side, while the Indians from the forts on the other side prevented the soldiers from re-entering.

It was not until nightfall that the dead could be withdrawn. The soldiers re-occupied the fort at night, and although the Indians sent frequent volleys of arrows, which they shot into the air, hoping they would fall upon the soldiers, and kept up an irregular fire, culminating in a sustained discharge about midnight, they made no attempt seriously to take the fort, although the soldiers, confidently expecting an attack, lay on their arms all night. During the last half of it not a sound came from the Indians.

The next morning Crook prepared to resume the attack by assaulting the other forts, when his suspicions were awakened by a strange quiet, which continued in spite of several efforts to draw the Indian fire. Fearing some stratagem, he delayed until he could have speech with the interior forts by means of a wounded Indian squaw, whom they captured after cautious scouting. From this woman, whom they forced to speak by threatening to hang her, it was learned that the Indians had decamped during the night. The warriors had taken advantage of a long underground passage which led south and opened in a cave in the side of the canon. This concealed way actually took them under the feet of Crook’s soldiers, and sufficiently far from his camp and scouts to enable them, so quietly had they moved, to steal away undetected. They left their women and children in the caves. These caves were a perfect maze. To attempt to search them would have been impossible. Indeed, one soldier, Private James Carey, who saw the body of a dead Indian near the mouth of one of them, and who sought a scalp as a trophy, descended to the cave mouth and was shot dead by some one, probably a wounded brave, within the dark recesses.