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The Far West rushed this terrible news to the outside world. Covering the main deck with swathes of freshly cut grass, Pilot Marsh took aboard some 50 of the wounded survivors, ordered his engineer to get up a head of steam, drove his vessel from the mouth of the Big Horn to Bismarck, Dakota Territory, in 54 hours— at the unprecedented speed of 13 miles an hour. The local telegraph office had the news within minutes of the Far West's arrival. The next morning the world at large had it—Bismarck, D.T., July 5, 1876: General Custer attacked the Indians June 25. . . . He [and] every officer and man in five companies were killed.