obtained permission to go with Bradley and share in this hazardous undertaking. This detachment, amounting, all told, to sixty men, made a night march across the mountains, while the main command camped at the foot of the divide on the night of the 7th, and at 5 o'clock the next morning, resumed the march. The road up the mountain, a steep and difficult one at best, was seriously obstructed at this time by large quantities of down timber that had to be cut out or passed around, so that the ascent was very slow and trying to men and beasts. The wagons were but lightly loaded, and by doubling teams and using all the men at drag ropes, the command succeeded in reaching the summit, a distance of three miles, in six hours, and by the performance of such labor and hardship as only those can realize who have campaigned in a mountainous country.

1. Lieut. J. H. Bradley.	6. Lieut. J. W. Jacobs.
2. Lieut. W. L. English.	7. Lieut. C. A. Woodruff.
3. Lieut. G. H. Wright.	8. Lieut. J. T. Van Orsdale.
4. Lieut. C. H. Coolidge.	9. Lieut. E. E. Hardin.
5. Lieut. A. H. Jackson.	10. Lieut. F. Woodbridge.

From the summit the road leads down a gentle incline for a mile, when it reaches the head of Trail Creek, and follows down that stream a distance of ten miles into the Big Hole basin. It crosses the creek probably fifty times, and the banks being abrupt, and the road obstructed in many places by down timber, the progress of the command was extremely slow and tedious.

While ascending the mountain on the morning of the 8th, General Gibbon received a courier from Lieutenant Bradley, with a dispatch stating that, owing to the difficult nature of the trail and the distance to the Indian camp, he had been unable to reach it before daylight, and that the Indians had broken camp and moved on. Later in the day, however, another courier brought news that they had again gone into camp, after making but a short march, at the mouth of Trail Creek, and that, not deeming it safe to attack in daylight, Bradley had concealed his command in the hills, and was now awaiting the arrival of the infantry.

Upon receipt of this information, Gibbon took his men from the wagons (leaving twenty men to guard the train), gave each man ninety rounds of ammunition and one day's rations, and pushed, on on foot, having ordered that the wagons should come up as fast as possible. The gallant General with his faithful little band moved quietly but rapidly forward, but owing to the bad condition of the trail, it was nearly sundown when they reached Bradley's camp. Bradley informed his chief that he believed the Indians intended to remain in their camp several days, for he had secretly observed their movements from the top of a neighboring hill, and found that the squaws were engaged in cutting and peeling lodge-poles to take with them for use on the treeless plains of the buffalo country.

On arriving at Bradley's camp, the men filed into the gulch, ate a scanty supper of hard tack and raw pork, and, without camp-fires or blankets, laid down to rest. Having conferred with Lieutenant Bradley and his scouts as to the best disposition of the proposed attack, General Gibbon ordered his adjutant to call him at 10 o'clock at night, and lying down under the spreading branches of a pine tree, slept as peacefully as a child.

He knew there was bloody work at hand for him and his veterans; that the rising sun would see them contending against a savage foe that outnumbered his own command more than three to one; that ere nightfall many of his noble men, and perchance he himself, would sleep their long sleep; yet he had a solemn duty to perform. It was a sad one; an awful one, but it was nevertheless a duty. He and his men were there to fight their country's battle. They were to avenge the blood of innocent men and women, whom these savages had wantonly murdered but a few days before in a neighboring Territory. He had been ordered to strike and to punish them. He would strike, and the blow would be a telling one. Yet, in the face of these facts—facts that would chill the blood of any man unused to wars and scenes of carnage—this old warrior, this veteran of twenty bloody fields at the South, whereon he had behaved so gallantly as to receive merited promotion and congratulatory recognition from his superiors, was as cool, as self-collected, and could lie down and sleep as peacefully as though no enemy were within a thousand miles of him.

"Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just."

This old hero was to compete with a foe greatly his superior in point of numbers; a foe schooled in craftiness; a foe known and dreaded by every tribe of Indians in the Northwest; a foe who had stricken terror to the hearts of settlers and frontiersmen far and near; who had often camped on the ground he now occupied and knew every foot of it, while to the troops it was a veritable terra incognita.

Yet General Gibbon knew the men on whom he relied for victory. He knew they would stand by him, no matter what odds they might have to contend with. Thirteen of his seventeen officers were veterans of the war of the Rebellion, as were nearly all the citizen volunteers. The other four officers, and nearly all the enlisted men had seen years of hard service on the frontier, and had acquitted themselves nobly in many an Indian campaign. What marvel then that a man of such experience, and with such a record, in command of such men, and on such a mission, should feel an assurance of success that would bring sweet sleep to tired eyelids on the eve of battle?

Lieutenants Bradley and Jacobs did a piece of reconnoitering on this day for which they deserve great credit. Having failed to reach the Indian camp during the previous night, when it would have been safe to undertake to capture or stampede the pony herd; and knowing it would be rash to attempt it in daylight, it then became important to learn the exact situation of the village, in order that the commanding General might be given the most minute information concerning it when he came up.

Having secreted his command in the woods, therefore, Bradley sent out scouts in different directions with instructions to proceed cautiously and stealthily about the valley and ascertain, if practicable, the actual whereabouts of the Indians.

In about two hours these men returned and reported numerous fresh signs of Indians in the immediate vicinity, while one of them, Corporal Drummond, he said had, standing in the timber some distance to the east, heard voices and other sounds that evidently came from a busy Indian camp near by, but, fearing he might give an alarm, he had not gone near enough to the camp to see it.

Lieutenant Jacobs asked Bradley to let him take Drummond, return to the spot and verify such important information. Bradley replied that they would both go, and, leaving Sergeant Wilson in charge of the camp, both officers started with Drummond on foot.

SERGT. MILDON H. WILSON.

They proceeded with the greatest caution a distance of about a mile and a half, when the Corporal whispered to Lieutenant Bradley that they were near the place where he had heard the voices. They were surrounded by a thick growth of small pine trees, through which it was impossible to see to any