A flash came from the wagon gun at the stockade and a ball burst over Crazy Horse and the decoys, knocking one from his horse.

There were several shots, close together, from the soldiers at the wood camp, the signal for help. The flag on the signal hill above the fort moved and soldiers began to stream out of the gate. First there were a lot of horses, riding four abreast and behind them were many walking soldiers. No one took the time to count but they seemed to be the hundred Ice dreamed he brought back in his hands.
As the soldiers left the fort to help the wood train, Crazy Horse led the rest of the decoy party out of hiding making loud scared howlings they all ran for the hills and ravines, especially those afoot, jumping and zigzagging as if afraid for their lives and scalps. And now the soldiers were coming hard, the walking men, too, all of them running with their guns ready in their hands, the wood train they were to help forgotten.

I signaled the party hidden in the hills while Crazy Horse rode back and forth with several other warriors on the slope before the soldiers, the soldiers’ bullets spurting up earth and rocks around him, the smoke from the rifles, making blue puffs in the cold air. First one, then another of the decoys charged towards the whites, whooping and waving blankets as if trying to scare the soldiers and hold them off while the others got away.

Slowly Crazy Horse let his decoys be pushed up the travois trail running along the ridge, the horse soldiers stopping several times to let the foot soldiers catch up. The little soldier chief was Fetterman, the man who said he would ride through the Lakota nation with just eighty men. And there were two Whites, hunters with plenty of shooting guns, went with the woodcutting party.

Several times Crazy Horse got off his horse; once pretending to tie his war rope closer, once to lift up a foot of the bay horse, and then to lead the soldiers on, jerking at the jaw bridle like the horse was in trouble. Whipping after the other decoys Crazy Horse plunged down the end of Lodge Trail ridge towards the brushy forks of the Peno, the soldiers following fast. Then, when even the walking men were past the mouth of the trap and not a warrior, not a horse of all those hidden had been seen or heard, I signaled the hidden warriors to charge out of the brush from both sides, crying, "Hoppo! Let us go," whooping as they came. Then I signaled the Akacita women guarding the young warriors to let them go, too. And they whooped as they leapt on their horses and rode into battle.

The soldier chief halted his men, trying to turn them back, but it was too late. The Minneconjou were already across their flank, Little Hawk counting coup with his bow across the face of a soldier, the Cheyenne and Oglalas coming hard from the other side. Two horse soldiers went down and the rest stopped, trying to make a stand while those afoot ran for a rocky place up the slope, their long guns booming, the smoke puffing out blue and strong.

The push of the warriors drove the troops back and higher up the ridge. I signaled again and we charged the foot soldiers, He Dog and Lone Bear with the Oglalas and Cheyenne from their side, the Minneconjou coming from the other, the two parties like boiling flood waters meeting.