At the appointed hour both young men
appeared in their handsome war dress, galloped to the top of the hill
near the encampment, and deliberately opened fire on the troops. The
latter merely fired a few shots to keep the young desperadoes off, while
Lieutenant Pitcher and a score of cavalrymen left camp to make a circle
and drive them in; they did not wish to hurt them, but to capture
and give them over to the Indians, so that the latter might be forced
themselves to inflict the punishment. However, they were unable to
accomplish their purpose; one of the young braves went straight at them,
firing his rifle and wounding the horse of one of the cavalrymen, so
that, simply in self-defence, the latter had to fire a volley, which
laid low the assailant; the other, his horse having been shot, was
killed in the brush, fighting to the last. All the while, from the
moment the two doomed braves appeared until they fell, the Cheyennes on
the hill-side had been steadily singing the death chant. When the young
men had both died, and had thus averted the fate which their misdeeds
would else have brought upon the tribe, the warriors took their bodies
and bore them away for burial honors, the soldiers looking on in
silence.
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