But when at length, as the handle of the Great Dipper reached the point agreed, the line of the Sioux clansmen crawled away from the fringe of trees and out into the cover of a little slough that made toward the village of tepees on wheels, a quarter of a mile in front of the village men arose out of the ground and shot into them.  Five of their warriors fell.  Tall men in the dark came out and counted coup on them, took off their war bonnets; took off even more below the bonnets.  And there was a warrior who rode this way and that, on a great black horse, and who had a strange war cry not heard before, and who seemed to have no fear.  So said the clan leader when he told the story of the repulse.

Taken aback, the attacking party found cover.  But the Sioux would charge three times.  So they scattered and crawled in again over a half circle.  They found the wall of tepees solid; found that the white nation knew more of war than they had thought.  They sped arrow after arrow, ball after ball, against the circle of the white tepees, but they did not break, and inside no one moved or cried out in terror; whereas outside, in the grass, men rose up and fired into them and did not run back, but came forward.  Some had short rifles in their hands that did not need to be loaded, but kept on shooting.  And none of the white nation ran away.  And the elk-dogs with long ears, and the spotted buffalo, were no longer outside the village in the grass, but inside the village.  What men could fight a nation whose warriors were so unfair as all this came to?

The tribesmen drew back to the cottonwoods a half mile.

“My heart is weak,” said their clan leader.  “I believe they are going to shoot us all.  They have killed twenty of us now, and we have not taken a scalp.”

“I was close,” said a young boy whom they called Bull Gets Up or The Sitting Bull.  “I was close, and I heard the spotted buffalo running about inside the village; I heard the children.  To-morrow we can run them away.”

“But to-night what man knows the gate into their village?  They have got a new chief to-day.  They are many as the grass leaves.  Their medicine is strong.  I believe they are going to kill us all if we stay here.”  Thus the partisan.

So they did not stay there, but went away.  And at dawn Banion and Bridger and Jackson and each of the column captains—­others also—­came into the corral carrying war bonnets, shields and bows; and some had things which had been once below war bonnets.  The young men of this clan always fought on foot or on horse in full regalia of their secret order, day or night.  The emigrants had plenty of this savage war gear now.

“We’ve beat them off,” said Bridger, “an’ maybe they won’t ring us now.  Get the cookin’ done, Cap’n Banion, an’ let’s roll out.  But for your wagon park they’d have cleaned us.”

The whites had by no means escaped scathless.  A dozen arrows stood sunk into the sides of the wagons inside the park, hundreds had thudded into the outer sides, nearest the enemy.  One shaft was driven into the hard wood of a plow beam.  Eight oxen staggered, legs wide apart, shafts fast in their bodies; four lay dead; two horses also; as many mules.