anything of the intervening country, left us at this point to carry dispatches to Fort Lincoln. Under these unfavorable conditions the command moved from its camp directly south on the morning of September 6, and marched 30 miles over a broken, rolling country, and camped on alkaline water holes, without enough wood to even boil coffee with. On the 7th we again made 30 miles over the same kind of country, and had an equally bad camp. All the litters, nine in number, were in use this day; many horses were abandoned, and men continued to struggle into camp until 10 P.M. On this day the men began to kill abandoned horses for food. The sick and exhausted men of the infantry were carried on pack mules, whose loads were now used up, but only a small part of those applying could be so carried. Dr. Clements' report describes an exhausting trek through the badlands of the Dakota Territory, which became lakes of mud in the stormy weather that accompanied the journey. Before the march ended, many of the soldiers were sick and wounded, while others were forced to dismount from their horses and to walk through the mud in order for the horses to be eaten. It was a dismal follow-up to the disastrous Battle of the Little Bighorn, with General Crook, who had been considered the most talented general in the U.S. Army, losing a large proportion of his force to starvation and disease. Battle of Slim Buttes By September 8, the troops were living off the meat from the cavalry's horses. Crook sent ahead a request for a train to bring supplies into Deadwood, a mining town in the Black Hills, and a small group of troops to pick up the supplies and carry them back to his column. On the way there, the troops discovered the Lakota tribe, in particular, an encampment of Oglala men, women, and children near Slim Buttes, in present-day South Dakota. At dawn on September 9, roughly 150 men led by Captain Anson Mills attacked the Oglala encampment, though the Natives fought back fiercely. The Battle of Slim Buttes quickly spiraled into one of the largest battles on the Northern Plains since the Battle of the Little Bighorn itself. Crook arrived with the rest of his forces the next day, but the Oglala camp was still much larger. Ultimately, Crook's forces captured