General Custer was a close observer and student of personal character.

Frontiersmen good and bad, gunmen as well as inspired prophets of the future, have been my camp companions. Thus, I know the country of which I am about to write as few men now living have known it.

Indians were frequently off their reservations.

With the help of a friend I got father into a wagon, when the crowd had gone. I held his head in my lap during the ride home. I believed he was mortally wounded. He had been stabbed down through the kidneys, leaving an ugly wound.

The Indians kept increasing in numbers until it was estimated that we were fighting from 800 to 1,000 of them.

I felt only as a man can feel who is roaming over the prairies of the far West, well armed, and mounted on a fleet and gallant steed.

I began to think that my time had come, as the saying is.