Maybe Lieutenant Casper Collins felt he had something to prove.

He had been humiliated in front of other soldiers by the new firebrand commander at Fort

Lairmey, and maybe he was now trying to prove he wasn't a coward.

Maybe he thought it wouldn't be as bad as it was.

Whatever the reason, when he rode out of a small army outpost in the summer of 1865,

he took just 28 men with him.

They could all see the braves racing up and down the hills in the distance, and even the

youngest soldiers knew the tribes used decoys to lure unsuspecting troopers to their doom.

What the soldiers didn't know, what they couldn't know, was how many warriors were hiding

behind those hills.

The lieutenant Collins led his unit out anyway.

The army looked like it was falling for the old Indian trick, but it wasn't.

Collins was leading his unit out to meet up with freight wagons that were on their way

from an even smaller outpost to the west.

To the warriors, it looked like the dumb bluecoats were doing what they always did, eagerly

chasing a few braves until they walked right into an ambush.

In the end, it didn't matter which side was right.

The outcome was the same.

Hundreds of red clouds warriors poured over the hills and swarmed the small unit of soldiers.

The melee that followed was such a whirlwind of men and horses and dust that the army

looked out at the fort completely lost sight of the soldiers.

Except one.

...