Terry was only five miles away.

The Indians closed in like a cloud around Custer and his few
survivors.

It was a hand-to-hand fight—one against a hundred.

In five minutes every man was dead, and the squaws were stripping the
mangled and bleeding forms.

Already the main body of Indians was trailing across the plains toward
the mountains.

Terry arrived, but it was too late.

An hour later Reno limped in, famished, half of his men dead or
wounded, sick, undone.

To follow the fleeing Indians was useless—the dead soldiers must be
decently buried, and the living succored. Terry himself had suffered
sore.

The Indians were five thousand strong, not two. They had gathered up
all the other tribes for more than a hundred miles. Now they moved
North toward Canada. Terry tried to follow, but they held him off with
a rear-guard, like white veterans. The Indians escaped across the
border.