the infantry goes out -- that was one of the amazing things about fort phil kearney, one of the nails in their coffin, was that they are largely marching everywhere they are going and they are completely worn out from starvation or the effects of scurvy and now they are trying to walk to these engagements. so the wood train is attacked, the infantry marches out and they head out to the ridge four miles north of here. the cavalry goes out and we don't know the conversation that happened on the ridge, and it is the core of a lot of speculation about what happened on december 21 1866, but for whatever reason , all 81 men did decide to go over lodge trail ridge, who knows if they fought, a small band of warriors down there and they thought they could take them, but we do know they were completely surrounded by 1500 warriors and wiped out in about half an hour. at that point, carrington realizes red cloud has been incredibly successful putting together a fighting force that could totally overwhelm them if they wanted to. that 1500 warriors did not come to the fort that day but they were re