They sent out scouts — always scouts, reading the landscape ahead for signs of soldiers.

They crossed rivers in the darkness, driving their horses through the current with the children held above the water.

They went days without food.

They kept going.

They fought when the Army caught up with them — skirmishes in the hills and ravines of Nebraska, firefights that left people dead on both sides but that the Northern Cheyenne survived well enough to keep moving.

They were outnumbered and outgunned and never stopped.

The group eventually split.

Dull Knife’s band was captured in Nebraska and brought to Fort Robinson.

Little Wolf’s band continued north and reached the Powder River country — the heart of the Northern Cheyenne homeland — in the spring of 1879.

The fate of Dull Knife’s band at Fort Robinson was another chapter of horror in a story that already had too many.