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

Chapter 27

Big Freezing Moon 1876

The power of Maahotse must protect the People!

As he raced back to his Sacred Arrow Lodge from the hillside, raising the alarm, Black Hairy Dog found his woman already taking the Maahotse bundle from its tripod where the Arrows hung at that singular place of honor in the lodge. When he burst into the lodge, his woman turned toward him with a start, carefully cradling the Arrows in their kit-fox quiver. Around it she had wrapped a layer of thick buffalo rawhide.

“I will follow you,” she said to her husband as she laid the bundle across his arms.

“Together we will protect them,” he said as her fingers brushed the back of his hand lovingly. “Just as these Arrows have protected our people far back into the time beyond memory.”

Outside the lodge a group of men and boys had already gathered by the time Black Hairy Dog ducked through the door into the swirling, freezing mist that clung about their ankles. Most wore a shirt, or a vest of wool or buffalo hide, yet none wore leggings. On every face was the grim mask of determination. They had come there to protect the second of those two sacred objects of the Ohmeseheso.

“We must go to the hills,” the Arrow Priest told them, slowly stepping into the small gathering without another word, parting them like a boulder thrown down in the middle of a narrow creek, the group closing in behind Black Hairy Dog’s woman.

He knew he must take the Sacred Arrows to a hill overlooking the upper end of the village, leading that small procession of those who would protect him and the Maahotse as the terrible clamor grew at the far end of the village: gunshots, hoofbeats, the cries of enemy Indians, and the shrill blasts of the soldier horns.

Only then, from the Heights overlooking the battle, could Black Hairy Dog rain the terrible unseen power of the Arrows down upon the enemy … and those Tse-Tsehese scouts who had come to help the soldiers against their own people.

“Dammit!” Ranald S. Mackenzie hollered, shrill as could be above the tumult as he slowed the orderlies and aides around him.

From what he could now see off to his left front, the Pawnee hadn’t got into the village quick enough to shut the back door on the damned Cheyenne. They were streaming out of the far end of the lodges, fanning across that flat ground taking them toward the deep gulch and the rocky slopes at the western end of the valley.

That had been the whole purpose of sending those damned North brothers in at the head of the charge with their Pawnee! That, and making sure he didn’t get his soldiers snared in a trap.

With the way the first of his troops had failed to form up into position during their charge, he had ordered the Norths to recross to the north side of the stream. In that way Ranald felt he had those additional horsemen close by—

Suddenly the air around him erupted with pistol fire. He spun in the saddle at the crack. Nearly every one of his orderlies had their revolvers barking, smoke curling up from the muzzles of the long-barrels, smoke whipped away on the brutally cold breeze. He spun to the other side in the saddle—spotting the Cheyenne warrior who had popped up nearly under their horses’ bellies as they had passed by. The near naked body flopped back into the thick brush, quivered a moment, then lay still.

Now we’re in the thick of it.

To the right his eyes quickly bounced over the slopes above him along that low plateau stretching a mile or so against the north side of the valley.

They could be anywhere in those rocks and brush. They’ll fight us like that—one at a time from behind a tree, a clump of willow, down at the edge of a ravine. Dammit, it’s going to be a dirty job to clean them out and mop this thing up now that the whole goddamned village is scattering.

“Smith!”

He watched the young orderly nudge his horse closer.

“Yessir, General?”

“Get back there as fast as you can ride.” Mackenzie spat his words out with Gatling-gun speed. “Tell those company commanders to hurry their outfits through that neck and get across the creek! Got that?”

“Yessir!”

“Wait, Smith—I want those troops here and into the fight faster than on the double! Can you get that across to them!”

“Yessir!”

“Dismissed—now go!”

Smith hunched forward as his legs pummeled the ribs of his mount, all the while savagely sawing the reins of his horse to the side—nearly twisting the animal back on itself before it bolted away like the spring in a child’s jack-in-the-box toy when the lid came flying back.

“General!” hollered Edward Wilson.

Mackenzie turned again, expecting to find another sniper along the hillside, but instead found some of his orderlies pointing in the same direction Private Wilson indicated.

“Bastards are making for that herd, aren’t they?” the colonel growled.

Damn! For starters they hadn’t sealed off the village, so now they would have to make a long and messy fight of it. And now it looked as if those damned Pawnee had got themselves bogged down in the village with those scouts from the Red Cloud Agency—which meant none of them were rounding up the enemy’s herds.

Which just might mean some of the Cheyenne would be free to scurry after the herds themselves and drive them off before Mackenzie’s force could capture them.

If the Cheyenne got those ponies into that broken ground at the far end of the valley, there was little his men could do to get them back, short of suicide. He had to keep those warriors—maybe two dozen or more from what he could count through his field glasses before the eyepieces fogged up against his face—had to keep every last one of them from reaching that big herd grazing up toward the bench to the west.

“Lieutenant McKinney!”

“General!” The handsome twenty-nine-year-old officer came up and skidded his horse to a halt, swapping his pistol to his left hand and saluted.

“My compliments,” Mackenzie said, once more proud of this young officer he had taken under his wing since his graduation from the U.S. Military Academy in seventy-one. “You see those reds yonder?” the colonel continued. “The ones hurrying to get their hands on that pony herd?”

The Tennessee-born McKinney squinted in the misty gray of that dawn. “Yes, I see them, General.”

“Can you see more of the enemy has taken up position behind that far hill down to the left of the herd?”

“Yes—I can make them out too.”

“I want you to take your men—”

“K Troop, yessir!” McKinney interrupted enthusiastically.

“Take your men and drive a wedge between those sonsabitches running on foot for those ponies yonder. Drive them off, keep them from getting the herd. Then turn your attention on those bastards setting up shop along the top of the knoll there,” Mackenzie said, grinding his teeth in frustration at possibly losing that herd to the enemy. “When you’ve got those warriors tied down on the knoll, take some of your men to wrangle that herd the enemy is attempting to recapture and get them headed back this way! Do you understand your orders?”

“Yes, sir—I think I do.”

“I’ve given you a handful, Lieutenant,” the colonel repeated with the affection he felt for McKinney evident.

“Yes, General!”

He watched the officer start to turn his horse away, then yell at McKinney’s back, “Lieutenant!” The officer reined up suddenly and turned, his face eager, expectant, a great smile cut across its lower half. “Lieutenant McKinney—this is your day to shine!”

“Yes, General!” McKinney cried out loudly. “Thank you! Thank you, sir!”

“For a goddamned brevet!” Mackenzie reminded with a flourish and a smile, flinging his fist in the air as the officer wheeled about to dash back to his men.

“Yes, sir!”

“Carpe diem, Lieutenant! Seize the day, by God! Seize the day!”

* * *

Box Elder and Coal Bear walked a respectful distance behind the Buffalo Hat Woman, while Medicine Bear rode behind them all on a skittish pony, holding aloft Nimhoyoh, waving the thick hide of the Sacred Turner and its long black buffalo tails back and forth to ward off the enemy’s bullets that kicked up snow and dirt from the ground at their feet, sticks and splinters from the trees all about them.

“We have a long way to go,” young Medicine Bear called out, his voice filled with strain.

Distance mattered little to Box Elder. He could not see near nor far anyway. “We will get there. The powerful medicine in the Sacred Wheel I hold has made us invisible to the enemy—and the power in Nimhoyoh you carry turns away all the bullets flying around us. Do not be afraid!”

But the young man’s words were true: they did have a long way to go. Barely out of the village, the party was progressing all too slowly. From off to their right arose the thunder of many, many hoofbeats. Only iron-shod American horses made such noise on frozen ground.

“I see a dry creekbed—not far!” Coal Bear announced, his voice raspy with apprehension.

“We will make it there safely,” Box Elder replied confidently.

After reaching the mouth of the shallow ravine, the Buffalo Hat Woman led them up its twisting course as the ravine became deeper, until it intersected with the narrow canyon west of the village. Far up the sides of the canyon the women and children were climbing to the top, where the first arrivals were already digging rocks out of the side of the slope to stack one upon the other, forming breastworks for what they knew was coming: an all-out siege.

“Father!” a man’s voice called out from among the noisy din of many crying, wailing, cursing women.

“Is it you, Medicine Top?”

“Yes, father,” and the middle-aged warrior was at his father’s side, touching Box Elder’s arm.

“Your wife and daughter?”

“I brought them here,” Medicine Top answered. “They are safe. Now I return to the village to fight.”

A new voice called out, “Medicine Top!”

“Spotted Blackbird!” the son sang out. “Is your family safe?”

“My mother and sisters are all here now. Come with me back into the village to fight these Wolf People.”*

“Wait,” Box Elder said to restrain them, turning his face out of the sharp wind that stung his wrinkled cheeks as it fiercely drove the particles of old snow against his bare flesh. “Look back toward the village, into the valley. Is there a low hill where I might go to look down upon all that takes place?”

For a moment the old man waited on Medicine Top; then the young man answered.

“Yes. I see it. A rounded hill.”

He gripped his son’s arm tightly. “How far?”

“Not far.”

“Take me there,” his voice pleaded at the same time it demanded.

Spotted Blackbird protested. “We should be fighting the soldiers and their scouts in the village before they destroy all that we have!”

“No,” Medicine Top argued, laying a hand atop the old man’s. “I will stay with my father for now.”

“Spotted Blackbird—you both will take me to the hill,” Box Elder said. “From there I will show you how our medicine fights the soldiers just as powerfully as our bullets and guns.”

“Irishman!”

“General!” Seamus called out in reply as he reined up near Mackenzie and his aides.

“You’ve been to the village?”

“Barely. Fighting off snipers.”

“How goes the fight?”

“The Pawnee are having a time of it, what with the struggle the Cheyenne are making of it—determined to hold on to their village,” Donegan huffed, twisting in the saddle to point behind him at the high ridge to the south of the camp. “But up there Cosgrove and Schuyler have the Snakes laying down a pretty heavy fire among those lodges. Making things hot for what warriors are still in there.”

“There—that’s the bunch that worries me,” Mackenzie said, pointing his gauntleted arm to the southwest.

“Along the brow of that hill?” Seamus asked, squinting into the growing light reflected off the bright and crusty snow.

“They’re covering the retreat of their women, and harassing our men already in among the lodges, securing the village.”

“But from the looks of things,” Donegan replied, seeing the troopers formed up and beginning to move out, “you’ll have that under control in short time.”

“That’s McKinney’s troop—they’re going to have a field day of it!” the colonel said enthusiastically.

“May I join them?”

“By all means, Irishman,” Mackenzie answered. “Get your licks in before there’s nothing more than some mopping up—by all means!”

“General!” Seamus whooped, his adrenaline bubbling as he saluted before wheeling away at a gallop.

He had covered most of that gently rolling, level ground, easing the bay into a full-out gallop to reach the tail roots of the last of McKinney’s men racing forward in a tight column of fours, pistols drawn up, elbows bent, at the ready—when he saw the lieutenant suddenly rise in his stirrups, waving, reining to the side at the sudden appearance of that lip of a dark scar slashed across the white prairie.

At the next moment those first four troopers behind McKinney immediately sawed to the right, two dozen—maybe as many as thirty—Cheyenne warriors sprang out of the ground directly in front of the soldiers.

Right out of the bloody ground!

For that instant Donegan’s mind grappled with it, knowing the enemy must have hidden themselves down in that twenty-foot-deep ravine so well that the soldiers were powerless to see the enemy until they were right upon them.

As the second group of four struggled to wheel right, they jammed into McKinney’s first four as the shots exploded into them, point-blank.

His breath frozen in his chest, Donegan watched the muzzles of those Cheyenne rifles spit bright-orange jets of flame, illuminating the dawn mist, gray gun smoke wisping up from the lip of that ravine to congeal over the warriors’ heads as they fired more shots into the confused ranks.

Then the rest of McKinney’s troopers were all thrust together: many of M Troop’s horses suddenly reared at the gunshots and the Cheyenne’s cries, fighting their riders who twisted on their reins. The mounts corkscrewed about on their hind legs, pitching backward wildly with forelegs slashing the air, hurtling their riders off to the side as the sound of those deadly volleys rumbled across the flat ground toward the north slope.

As Seamus leaped off his horse, dragging the Winchester over the saddle with him, he watched McKinney’s horse go down in a twisted heap, flinging its rider off toward the edge of the ravine. While the Irishman crouched forward on his knees, he fired, then chambered another cartridge.

Beyond him the young captain struggled valiantly to one elbow atop that snow quickly turning crimson beneath him, spitting blood as he stared for a moment down at the glove he slowly took away from one of his half-dozen wounds, finding it slicked with red, then collapsed beside the animal wheezing its last.

The muzzles from those countless Indian rifles puffed with red flames again as most of the other horses struggled up on their legs, tearing off in panic and terror to the four winds, their hooves throwing up clods of frozen snow behind them. One by one McKinney’s fallen got to hands and knees, some able to do no more than claw themselves away on their bellies.

Then Seamus became aware of the distant roar of more gunfire coming from that nearby knoll, where more warriors lay now, all those guns trained down at these fallen soldiers like ducks in a tiny backwoods pond. Beneath the rattle and echo of near and distant gunfire, on the cold wind floated the cries of the wounded and the dying.

He chambered and fired into the teeth of those screaming Cheyenne bristling along the rim of the ravine.

Five of McKinney’s troopers moved, some better than the others, as most of those not hit circled and milled. In their midst Second Lieutenant Harrison G. Otis attempted to regain control and order over M Troop. Most had all they could handle struggling against their balky horses, at the same time attempting to fire their pistols down at the side of that ravine where the Cheyenne had waited, and waited … until the last moment—then burst up to shoot point-blank, all but under the bellies of the big American horses.

Two of the soldiers did not move, sprawled on the snow like some dark insects squashed there, their legs and arms akimbo. Just a few yards back from them the first of the mortally wounded horses were collapsing at last, one already flopping down, and the second going to its knees, then keeling over to its side, where all four legs thrashed until there was no movement in that air so quickly stinking of death, and blood, and the acrid smell of burned black powder.

That stench of burning sulfur reminded the Irishman of Hell … the cries of both the Cheyenne and the wounded troopers convincing Seamus that this was Hades itself.

Another man lay beneath his dying horse, its big, muscular neck struggling time and again to lift its heavy head until it finally collapsed. The soldier was McKinney’s bugler, Hicks, bleeding badly and with his legs pinned, bright crimson gushing from his mouth each time he called out in a hoarse voice for the others not to abandon him, for someone to free him before the Cheyenne would rush out to get him.

Try as Otis did to rally the remnants of McKinney’s shredded command, M Troop milled, yelling at one another, some of them ready to bolt, some sitting numbly in their saddles, most ready to obey Otis’s orders and stand their ground, although frightened to the core by the sudden, devastating shock of it. The young lieutenant suddenly ducked; a bullet spun his big black hat completely around on his head and pitched it to the snowy ground.

That was enough for two.

A pair of the soldiers suddenly wheeled about and put heels to their horses, breaking away in a wild retreat, making straight for the Irishman as he crabbed up on hands and knees. Behind the two, it was clear four more were ready to scatter in wild disorder.

Seamus stood suddenly, leveling his rifle at them, his hands shaking—sensing that gravity of pointing his weapon at white men, soldiers, comrades in arms … as the first two soldiers drew close.

“Halt!” he bellowed, watching their wide eyes grow even wider, realizing these were youngsters likely never before tested in battle—green as recruits could come. “You can’t retreat!”

“Just who the hell are you?” one of them demanded as both soldiers reined up, pitching up clods of icy snow.

“I’m the one gonna shoot you if you don’t turn back to help!” he bellowed, eyes narrowing as he now saw the wounded trumpeter twist his body beneath the horse so he could position himself to shoot over the animal’s quivering body at the Cheyenne crawling out of the ravine less than ten yards away from where the bugler lay trapped and stranded.

Of a sudden behind Seamus arose a clatter of hooves hammering the frozen ground, men’s voices raised in unintelligible panic and battle lust. Donegan twisted about, reluctant to take his eyes off the two soldiers ready to run in retreat but suddenly frozen by the sight of that something behind the Irishman.

A troop of cavalry was racing headlong for them, both flanks spreading out left and right, moments before ordered out of a walk into a rolling gallop across a broad front. At Ranald Mackenzie’s excited order, Captain John M. Hamilton was the first to lead the men of his H Troop, Fifth U.S. Cavalry, to the rescue.

More gunfire exploded back near the far head of the deep ravine—off to his right—drawing Donegan’s attention. Another H Troop, these men from the Third U.S. Cavalry under Captain Henry W. Wessels, Jr., suddenly found themselves in the thick of it as they too dashed up under orders to support McKinney’s butchered company on the extreme right side of the line. Now they became the big targets on those tall American horses.

Wessels’s men began dismounting in ragged confusion and a rush of adrenaline as more Cheyenne warriors flooded over the lip of the ravine, continuing to lay down a galling fire among the arriving soldiers. Some of Wessels’s horses escaped, yanking free of their riders and bolting to the rear, while a few horse-holders managed to grab hold of reins or bridles, clumsily snapping on the throatlatches to pull the unruly, frightened animals out of the action while the rest of H Troop inched forward, fighting on foot.

Close and dirty.

As Wessels’s men hurried to the right, up toward the northern end of that jagged ravine so they could cut off the advance of the Cheyenne snipers, Seamus turned back to the coming thunder, finding Hamilton’s mounted company was almost upon them.

“Get out of our way!” one of McKinney’s terrified soldiers screeched, digging his brass spurs into his horse’s belly as he shot past the Irishman.

Donegan leveled the rifle, then lowered it from his shoulder.

“I’ll … I’ll go back … with you,” the other young soldier coughed the words out with a struggle, swallowing down his fear, no less terrified than the coward who already had his back to them and was tearing off at an angle away from the wide front of riders coming at a gallop to the rescue.

“Then get down here and fight on foot, sojur!” he cried as the massed front neared.

He watched McKinney’s man wheel out of the saddle and slap his horse on the rear flank—sending it off with a clatter as he joined Donegan to sprint headlong back into the breach while the first of that battlefront Hamilton had arrayed finally reached the bloody battleground where McKinney’s soldiers lay dead and dying, all but swallowed by the warriors sweeping over them to count coup and claim the soldier weapons.

Hamilton’s men were but moments from finding out they had just pitched into what would be the toughest fighting of that cold day.

* The Pawnee.