After the brief encounter near the river, Custer’s two companies retreated up the ravine known as Deep Coulee while the remainder of his command skirmished with warriors on the high ridge one-half mile away. Seizing the initiative, Crow King, Gall, and Two Moons led warriors in pursuit of the retreating soldiers. Curley, a Crow Scout, recalled that while Custer’s firing at the cut bank was in progress he saw no large body of Indians fording, but as soon as the retreat began they must have swarmed across both above and below, for before the soldiers had gone one-third of the way to the ridge the Sioux were thick upon both flanks and firing heavily into them. White Bull, a Minneconjou Lakota, remembered Indians riding in many small parties streaming northeast up the ravine toward the troops, and He Dog, an Oglala Lakota, said that before the fight started they drove Custer up a slope to a ridge and over to the other side while the soldiers remained mounted and kept going.