A Cold Day in Hell: The Dull Knife Battle, 1876

Chapter 21

Freezing Moon 1876

Snow fell off and on throughout the first three days Young Two Moon and the others pushed southeast toward the course of the Powder River. From time to time the clouds parted and they would see patches of startling blue, but the broken sky did not last for long. Again and again the heavens darkened, lowered, then spat sharp, icy flakes in a swirl around the scouts and their ponies.

They shivered as they rode ever onward. They shivered each night they made camp and lit their small fire, sat around the low flames, talking in quiet voices, and one by one tried to sleep while the ponies stood nearby, rump-tucked to the north wind. The four grew colder as the journey grew longer.

The third day they pushed past Warbonnet Ridge—which they named because the three trees that grew upon it made the prominence resemble a warrior’s feathered bonnet from a distance—then on to House Ridge, which they named because at its top sat a large boulder that resembled a white man’s house. It was there the four turned their faces into the cold wind, urging their ponies north by east toward the Powder River at last. Once they neared the divide that would take them into the Powder River Valley, the young scouts put more distance between themselves, spreading apart in a broad front, moving slowly, slowly, studying the frozen ground, the icy mud in every coulee, the tracked-up snow in every bottom, searching for tracks.

By the time the sun set that third day, the Cheyenne warriors reached a wagon road that appeared to take them down to the river itself. The storm had returned on the back of a ferocious wind, making it difficult to see left or right, up or down in the dark.

Hail stopped them on the road after a short distance. “Now I believe we can take this road and follow it down across Powder River, until it reaches the top of those three bald buttes, and stay there till morning; from there in the daylight we can see much country.”

With only nods of agreement, the other three followed Hail, the oldest among them. Upon reaching the buttes, they moved in the lee of the tallest, halted, and let the ponies blow. After some time Hail spoke again.

“With this storm it is useless to climb this hill until it is near daylight.”

Young Two Moon said, “You are right. We won’t see anything, not even a fire’s light in this weather.”

High Wolf added, “Let’s just stay down here out of the wind and try to keep warm until there is enough light to see come morning.”

Together the four walked their ponies into the crevice between the tall butte and one next to it, keeping their ponies close at hand for the warmth the weary animals put off. Young Two Moon dozed fitfully, unable to really sleep, each time awaking with his muscles cramped from the cold ground. His belly growled for food, but he did not really hunger for the dried meat they had brought along in the small parfleches. The cold and the hunger were merely trials that an honorable young man had to suffer for what good his people expected of him.

He was nudged and only then realized he had finally fallen asleep near first light.

Hail said, “Now we must climb this hill and be ready when day comes to look over the ridge up and down Powder River Valley.”

Bellying to the top, the four immediately made out the firesmoke hanging in a layer low in the supercold air, off in the middistance along a bend in the river. As the light slowly brightened, the scouts gradually made out the whiteness of the soldier tents against the stark and spidery blackness of the leafless willow and cottonwood. When the graying light ballooned a bit more, Young Two Moon saw some of the white soldiers along with some Indians dressed in soldier uniforms and some Indians wearing their own native clothing all turning their horses loose to graze the snowy ground. One group led their herd to the base of the bluff where the scouts watched, leaving the ponies and returning to their fires. Another group of Indians drove their ponies across the icy river to graze on the far side of the Powder. And still a third group of soldier scouts returned to the herd beneath the tall bluff, climbed a distance up the side, and sat down to watch the ponies.

Because of those enemy herders, the four wolves dared not speak to one another, nor could they move without alerting those soldier scouts watching over their animals. They could only lie flat and motionless, mouthing their silent words to one another as the day became brighter and the river bottom came alive with men, wagons, mules, and horses.

Crow Necklace, the youngest among them, wanted action, whispering, “Let’s go down there, make our charge, and drive off some of those horses.”

“No,” Hail scolded between his chattering teeth.

“We can steal those horses,” Crow Necklace persisted. “It will be easy, and we can return to our families with something to show for this cold journey!”

“No,” Hail snapped, his eyes watching the soldier scouts below them on the slope. “If we do as you suggest, we might not ever make it home to our families.”

“Hail is right,” Young Two Moon asserted. “Look, Crow Necklace—the snow is deep. There are many people down there. They could overtake and capture us. Look, see how far it is now to the foot of the mountains where our village lies. Our ponies are tired from the last three days. The enemy’s horses are strong. And it is a long, level stretch of ground where we would have to run—we would not even make it into the breaks before they would catch us.”

They lay on the frozen ground among the squat sage for most of that day,* afraid to move for attracting attention. Not until late in the afternoon as the sun pitched into the southwest did the soldiers and the soldiers’ Indian scouts begin driving in all their horses for the night. Still the four wolves waited as the soldier fires began to glow, the dancing flames shimmering against the skeletal cottonwood trees and willow, the orangetitted flames reflected off the low, heavy clouds. How Young Two Moon yearned for some of that warmth for himself.

Long after dark they pushed themselves back from the brow of the hill and crept down toward the soldier camp, finding the horses all tied in long lines to picket ropes strung between the bare trees.

“I think we should leave our ponies here,” Young Two Moon suggested. “Two of us should go in, and two of us should stay with the horses.”

Hail nodded. “It is a good plan. If the soldiers or their scouts catch the two, then the others can mount up and escape in the dark.”

“I will go,” Young Two Moon said emphatically. “Who chooses to go with me?”

Eagerly Crow Necklace replied, “I will go with you!”

Turning to the younger man, Young Two Moon said, “This is good, for we may have ourselves a chance to get some soldier horses down there.”

“High Wolf and I will wait for you here,” Hail said. “Be careful.”

Young Two Moon gripped Hail’s wrist and looked into his friend’s eyes. “If you hear guns, or we do not come back soon—mount up and ride like a snow wind back to our village. Tell my family that I died doing my duty for my people.”

Hail grinned, saying, “You will be back. And you will be the one to tell the village of these soldiers yourself. Now, go. And we will rest here with the ponies until you return.”

“That young Cheyenne they caught up on Clear Creek is named Beaver Dam,” Frank Grouard told the white and half-breed scouts huddled by the fire late that Tuesday night, 21 November.

“Young and stupid!” snorted Baptiste Pourier.

Seamus Donegan shrugged. “Maybeso, Big Bat. But out in this weather, the way a man has to bundle himself up to keep out the cold—I couldn’t tell one Injin from another. Can’t blame the boy for making that mistake, I can’t. G’won, Frank—tell us what Crook learned.”

“Smart it was, for them Lakota and Arapaho scouts Crook sent out wasn’t wearing a bit of soldier gear—being fifty miles off in enemy country,” Grouard continued his story. “So this Beaver Dam come right up to them, figuring them to be a scouting or hunting party from Crazy Horse’s village. They waited till the boy was in the middle of ’em—jabbering away about all the villages in the neighborhood, him answering all their questions and such—before they grabbed the boy, tied him up, and hurried him back here to the general.”

“Means there must be Cheyenne in the country,” Seamus said.

“Damn if there ain’t a big bunch of ’em over on a branch of the Powder,” Frank went on. “But that youngster claimed he come from a small village of only some five or six lodges. He told Crook that his people would get afraid if he didn’t show up after he’d been out hunting—then they’d likely scamper off for Crazy Horse’s camp.”

“I’ll bet that got Crook’s attention!” Pourier said.

“Bloody well right,” Donegan agreed. “Crook’s been wanting to get eye to eye with Crazy Horse for the better part of a year now. Where’s Beaver Dam’s village, Frank?”

“Said it was up on the head of the Crazy Woman Fork.”

“He tell Crook where the Crazy Horse band was camped now?”

Grouard nodded. “A long ways off from here. Clear up on the Rosebud, near where we had our little fight with him in June.”

“That’ll be a goddamned long march—it will, it will,” Seamus muttered, stomping the deepening snow to shock some feeling back into a numbing foot. The cold was simply too much even for the double pair of socks he wore in the tall stovepipe boots he always bought two sizes too large. He feared he might lose some toes to the surgeon before this trip was over.

“So now Crook’s give out orders to all the units: moving northwest toward the mountains as soon as it’s light,” Frank explained. “He wants this expedition to come back with a worthy trophy.”

Big Bat cried, “Like Crazy Horse’s scalp!”

“The whole outfit’s moving in the morning?” Donegan asked.

“Yep, the whole shebang,” Grouard replied. “At least for now.”

“I figure Crook’ll break off Mackenzie soon enough—once he’s found the Crazy Horse village,” Seamus added as the wind seemed to stiffen and the snowfall thickened. “Damn,” he muttered again, stomping his feet. “Think I’ll go do what some of the others is doing, fellas: taking this last chance to write down a few words to send back to Fetterman with one of Teddy Egan’s couriers tomorrow. Too cold to sleep anyways.”

After midnight Crook sent off a Second Cavalry courier to race the ninety miles back to Fetterman with his wire to Sheridan:

Scouts returned to-day and reported that Cheyennes have crossed over to that other side of the Big Horn Mountains, and that Crazy Horse and his band are encamped on the Rosebud near where we had the fight with them last summer. We start out after his band to-morrow morning.

It was better that the two of them act as bold as they could. So Young Two Moon and Crow Necklace walked right along the string of horses on the picket lines, in among the soldiers and their tents as if they were two of the Indian scouts. Their bravado worked.

At the near edge of the camp a large fire blazed where many Shoshone and Arapaho scouts were busy cleaning weapons, drinking coffee, and playing several noisy games of “hand” on blankets and buffalo robes. There beside the fire a handful of their own people stood, singing Cheyenne war songs.

But they were not prisoners! Who were these Cheyenne in the soldier camp?

“I think that is Old Crow,” Crow Necklace whispered right against Young Two Moon’s ear. “And the other, he looks like a friend of my uncle’s—named Satchel.”

“I know of Satchel,” Young Two Moon replied, his gall rising. “Now I realize why these Tse-Tsehese are here. This Satchel is a relative of Bill Rowland at the White River Agency.”

“The white man married to one of our women?”

“Yes. That must be why they are here,” Young Two Moon replied. “Bill Rowland brought them here to find our camp in the mountains. To capture our ponies and take away our guns—just like the soldiers are doing at the White River Agency.”

“If these two are here with Bill Rowland,” Crow Necklace said sadly, “then there must surely be more of our people here with them.”

“I am ashamed for them,” Young Two Moon said, a sour ball of disappointment thick in his throat. “We have come to this: the white man making some of our relatives hunt down the rest of our people.”

After watching the singing and the games for a while, the pair moved on through the firelit darkness, walking below the soldier bivouac until they reached the camp where some Indians spoke a strange language.

“Who are these people?” Crow Necklace asked in a whisper.

For some time Young Two Moon stood and listened, studying the warriors who for the most part wore pieces of soldier uniforms. “I believe they must be the Ho-nehe-taneo-o, the Wolf People.”*

“Many, many winters have they have scouted for the soldiers.”

Looking about them in all directions, Young Two Moon grew frightened for the first time on this journey. The disappointment he had felt in finding Tse-Tsehese from the agency was now replaced by the beginning of fear for his people. He waited and did not lead Crow Necklace away from the camp of the Wolf People until the enemy had all gone to their war lodges made of blankets laid over bent willow branches, until the enemy’s fires burned low. In all that time of waiting his fear slowly boiled into hatred—until he decided they must do something to injure these ancient enemies.

When the whole camp had grown very quiet, Young Two Moon led his friend toward the enemy’s horses. They selected three of the nicest ponies the Wolf People had tied to a picket rope and cut them loose. Then the two started back across the length of the river bottom, skirting the camp to reach the spot where the other two scouts waited.

But in passing by the Arapaho camp, they found a fire still glowing cheerfully, around it a few Indians singing and eating, and a warrior frying cakes in a skillet. Beside the fire sat a large stack of cakes. The warm, luring fragrance was simply too much for Young Two Moon’s empty stomach. It growled at him not to walk on by.

“I must get me some of those cakes from that man,” he explained to Crow Necklace.

“I am hungry too. But what do we do with these horses?”

He thought a minute, trying to keep his stomach from speaking louder than his good sense. “We will let them go here. They should not wander far before we have eaten our fill.”

They released their stolen ponies, then walked boldly toward the fire. Just as they reached the light, two soldiers rode up and shouted to the Arapaho in English.

“Stop your singing and keep your eyes open!”

The soldiers rode off once the Arapaho fell silent. Grumbling, the Indians trudged off to their beds, disappearing within their makeshift war lodges. As the last Arapaho went to his blankets, the two Cheyenne scouts dashed in, scooping up a handful of the hot flour cakes, then cut loose three more ponies.

Crow Necklace claimed one, and Young Two Moon led the other two back to find their friends.

They found Hail and High Wolf curled up beneath their blankets, back to back—asleep. And discovered that their four Cheyenne ponies had wandered off.

“Hail, you come ride with me,” Young Two Moon said. “Jump up behind me. High Wolf can ride a horse, and so can Crow Necklace.”

They did their best to follow the tracks of the four horses and eventually found them, heading north by west, wending their way back home to the village.

Now they climbed onto the backs of their own war ponies, and leading their three captured animals, the four young scouts set off at a gallop into the cold and the dark.

They had news to tell Morning Star, Little Wolf, and the other chiefs.

The ve-ho-e soldiers were coming!

* 21 November 1876.

* Pawnee.