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

Chapter 29

25 November 1876

The cold in her belly was far icier than the cold in that tiny room at the top of Old Bedlam.

Gripped with its sudden, startling, frightening presence, she awoke with a start in the dark, blinking … and her arm habitually reached across that narrow bed for him. To assure herself of his presence, the warmth of his bulk—but that great abiding security of his nearness was not there.

Samantha sat up with a start. Her heart beat as if it would fly out of her chest, her breath catching in her throat like a ragged scrap of muslin snagged on a rusty strand of barbed wire. Streamers of frost gathered before her face. The small stove in the corner barely glowed at all.

Then she remembered the baby. Turned. Found him wrapped in his swaddling, beneath his old blanket so worn and soft with the years and washings beyond number. The blanket she had wrapped around herself as a child, then laid away in a cedar chest until it came time that she went to Texas to join sister Rebecca, knowing that in it one day she would wrap her own babies.

She touched his face gently. How warm he was, and at such peace when he slept. What with the colic and all, they both snatched nothing more than fevered bits of rest through these days and nights of waiting.

He was seven weeks old this morning.

Slowly laying her head down once more on the pillow, Samantha pulled the babe against her as he slept. Then drew him even closer to her breasts to feel the very warmth of him, his breath against the base of her neck in tiny puffs as the cold solidified in the pit of her the way the ice had formed along each bank of the creeks, each side straining day by day for the other as the cold deepened in these first weeks of winter.

Try as she might to shake that cold cake of river ice congealing within her, Samantha could not escape the feeling that she had awakened of a purpose: that something terrible had just happened to him, far to the north in Indian country.

Had he fallen in battle? Oh, God!

She squeezed her eyes shut to stop the tears, biting her lower lip so she would not cry out and wake the child. Seamus’s son.

Had he been wounded? Was he lying somewhere in the snow, the frozen white turning red and mushy beneath him? Was he still alive—and thinking of her right at this moment? Is that why she awoke, because his soul was calling out to hers across all the miles?

Yes, she decided, and with a tiny yelp stifled deep within her throat, Samantha began to sob quietly in that dark room where the gray of dawn had just begun to intrude.

There drifted to her the muffled sounds of footsteps and stove doors opening as coals were stirred and fires stoked for the morning, concerns with coffee and breakfast—a woman’s lot, this matter of waiting out another day while her man was off to war.

He was wounded. M-mortally, she convinced herself. That is why his spirit had reached out to her in these, his final minutes. There in the cold and the dark, upon the snow, perhaps fearing that the next footsteps he heard would be those of a painted warrior who would step over him—driving a war club down between his eyes, then slashing off his scalp.

At that moment in the dark and the cold, she felt his anguish as if it were her own—shuddering in the aloneness, she and the babe more alone at this moment than in all the days Seamus had been gone.

Colder now than she could ever remember being. Here her second winter at Laramie—knowing in the core of her that if he did not return whole to her … that she would never again be warm, not for the rest of her life.

Near the mouth of the gulch where Bull Hump and the others had ambushed the pony soldiers, Yellow Eagle fell back during the fighting, his attention drawn by a small group of women and children who were trapped between the soldier scouts in the village and the soldiers being reinforced along the edge of the deep ravine.

“Yellow Eagle!” cried one of the old women, her arms extended to him, imploring. “Help us!”

He burst into a sprint, turning his back on the fighting, his lungs searing with the dry, extremely cold air. Bullets smacked into the snow around the group as they scurried a few feet in one direction, then back in the other, snow kicked up as the lead landed around them. They reminded him of a covey of small, frightened sage hens. He had to find a way out for them.

“Hurry, Yellow Eagle!” another woman called out.

In her arms she held a small child, one of its tiny feet clearly gone, a bloody pulp from the ankle down where the mother clamped with a hand to stop the bleeding.

This way and that he looked as he ran, searching, not knowing where he could lead them. There—beyond them across a dry wash was the wide mouth of another ravine. Perhaps …

Then he knew it would not work. The Wolf People scouts on the southern slope among the lodges would have a clear shot into the ravine. These women and children would all be dead before the cold sun climbed much farther in that achingly blue sky.

As he reached them, the women grabbed him, the children clustered at his bare legs, young and old alike whimpering at him like wild; frightened animals caught in a snare. Then he saw a way. Perhaps the only way.

“I will go first,” he explained, laying his hand atop an old woman’s head. Her cheeks were smeared with blood and frozen tears. “That way I can show you the way. Come with me now.”

Without a word of protest the women herded the children before them, following the young warrior as he slipped back into the mouth of the ravine and quickly retraced a few of his steps.

It was there he stopped at the narrow entrance of another coulee.

“You will go in there,” he instructed, his voice terse. “The head of the ravine runs out in the distance of an arrow shot away from here.”

“Then where do we go?” one of the women pleaded, clutching at his bare arm.

“You will climb right up to the prairie,” he told her, looking the woman straight in the eye. “And run the rest of the way to another coulee you will find at the back of that hill, where our warriors are firing down on the soldiers over by the deep ravine.”

“But … but we will be running right out in the open!” an old woman cried.

“Yes! And right under those soldiers guns at the deep ravine!” another protested.

“If you do as I tell you,” Yellow Eagle tried to calm them, “go one at a time—even the children—then the soldiers are not likely to see you. You will not draw their attention in that way. But you must go one at a time. Do you understand me?”

One of the old women nodded, then answered for all of them. “Yes.”

“The second of you must not leave the head of this shallow ravine until the first has made it all the way to the back of that hill—where you will all be safe. From there you can make it into the canyon and up to the breastworks, where the others are singing the strong-heart songs to our warriors.”

A small, frail woman pushed herself up between two younger women and clutched at the warrior’s hand, gazing up into his face with watery, rheumy eyes. “I have no husband, and now my son is dead this day. But I will be the first to run as you say, Yellow Eagle. And when I reach the breastworks—I will sing the strong-heart songs for you!”

So it was that he took her bony hand and led her to the head of the ravine, and there helped her to the top.

“Now—run! Run like the rabbit!” he hollered at her as she took off in a lumbering gait, all too slow. “Run like the wolf was after you!”

Then the soldier guns exploded. He jerked around to look at the distant ravine, seeing the gray powder smoke lifting above the blue-clad soldiers. They had fired in volley—with a roar so loud, it made a sound like a riverbank caving in come the torrent of a spring runoff.

Holding his breath, he watched her reach the other shallow ravine behind the knoll, where she disappeared over the side. For a heartbeat he worried, ready to send the second person—this time a child, but keeping the youngster until …

There! He saw the ancient one wave back at them. And knew she was safe.

One by one by one he lifted them up the slick, icy side of the ravine, raising their frozen, bare feet as he heaved them onto the snowy prairie, where they began their dash to safety. Time and again the soldier guns exploded as a woman or a child zigzagged the way he told them, all the way to the shallow ravine where the ancient woman stood waving them on. Calling out for them to be brave in her frail, reedy voice.

Four of them fell, wounded by soldier bullets. But every one of them rose again as quickly, dragging a bleeding leg, or clutching a bloody arm that dripped a telltale path on the snow. Three times ten he helped out of that ravine. Three times ten would now live on.

The last one had reached the distant coulee, and Yellow Eagle had turned to find Little Wolf and one of the other Old-Man Chiefs … when he heard a high, wispy voice lift itself over that corner of their battlefield.

She had reached the breastworks. The ancient one with no men to sing for that day. No man, except for Yellow Eagle.

It was for him that now she sang the strong-heart songs.

Hoka hey! If this was to be Yellow Eagle’s day … then it was a fine day to die!

With Medicine Top on one arm and Spotted Blackbird clutching the other, Box Elder made it to the slope of the low hill.

“Take me up, almost to the top, then both of you must turn back,” the shaman instructed them.

“You will climb the rest of the way by yourself?”

“I must,” Box Elder told them.

The last struggle was his alone in his darkness, knowing he had reached the top only when he felt the wind on his face once more and the ground falling away from beneath his moccasins on the far side.

Setting his feet, Box Elder spread his arms out for a moment—so good was it to feel the sun’s coming warmth as it bathed the valley. Then he sat and pulled his small pipe and some tobacco from the pouch that he had carried away from his lodge and fit the bowl to stem. Packing pinches of tobacco into the bowl, he sang loud enough that his voice encircled the knoll for all the others to hear above the noise of the battle.

When he had the pipe ready, Box Elder got to his knees, raising the pipe overhead while he bowed—offering the pipe to Ma-heo-O, the All Spirit, and to the Sacred Persons … asking for their blessing on his people this terrible, bloody day.

Startled, he felt the pipe bowl grow warm in his hand, and he smelled pipe smoke on the wind.

Bringing the stem to his lips, the old man sucked—surprised to find that it was burning.

“Blessings, Ma-heo-?!” he sang out in a high, thin voice. “You have lit the pipe for me! Thank you!”

As he completed his fourth puff from the pipe, the first soldier bullet landed near his knee, striking one of the red sandstone rocks with a splatter of lead.

Box Elder next blew smoke toward the heavens.

Several more bullets whined past his head or collided with the ground at his knees.

The old shaman calmly blew his last puff at the earth—the mother of them all.

Now the soldier bullets were coming so close and with such frequency that he knew the white man must have spotted him atop this knoll.

Yet again he held the pipe up to the heavens at the end of his arms and prayed for his people’s safety, not thinking about the soldier bullets at all.

Even though he had left the Sacred Wheel Lance below with his son and was no longer invisible, Box Elder knew no bullets would touch a holy man.

He kept on praying.

Already some of the soldier scouts were pounding victoriously on that big drum in the center of camp.

Little Wolf’s heart bled a little more. It felt as cold as his bare legs, and surely laid upon the ground.

The enemy was in possession of their village … beating that drum in victory even as the battle raged around the perimeter of the valley, the Wolf People scouts playing their flutes and whistles, the Shoshone firing from the ridge above him, and those Lakota who came to guide the soldiers—how it sickened his belly.

But what threatened to rob his spirit were the Tse-Tsehese scouts who had led the soldiers down upon their own people!

If he had the chance this day, Little Wolf vowed he would use all the strength in the Sacred Arrows and the Buffalo Hat to call down the wrath of the Everywhere Spirit upon those who not only turned their backs on their own people, but led the soldiers down upon this village to help in destroying the Ohmeseheso.

With his own eyes Little Wolf had seen Old Crow—who was himself one of the Council of Forty-four Chiefs—among the soldiers’ scouts entering the village. With the pony soldiers as well were Cut Nose, Little Fish, Hard Robe, Bird, Blown Away, Wolf Satchel, and more … most of them relatives of the one the People called Long Knife, the squaw man known as William Rowland among his own white people. These men were brothers and uncles and nephews of the daughter of Old Frog, the woman Rowland had married. Why, Old Frog had been a member of the Council of Forty-four in the time before the great treaty at Horse Creek.

And now these relatives had joined the white man in destroying their own people!

“Little Wolf!” one of his warriors cried in panic. “See!”

There at the mouth of the narrow canyon where he had taken charge of the other men who were helping the women and children to flee toward the mountainside and up to the breastworks, he turned to look. Little Wolf saw.

Through the last fringe of lodges advanced many pony soldiers; among the first of them to come out of those shrinking shadows were a few Wolf People. Voices called out among them and the horsemen stopped, the scouts too. All of them dismounted their big American horses, which were led away—back into the abandoned village.

Then the enemy began their advance on the mouth of the ravine and that high, narrow canyon where the helpless ones had disappeared in fleeing to the breastworks. Where they now stood behind their rocky fortifications and raised their strong-heart songs over this western end of the battlefield.

“Behind the trees!” Little Wolf shouted to his men. “Take cover behind the rocks—anywhere you can hide!”

“We cannot fight so many!” one of the faint-hearted screeched.

“We must,” Little Wolf growled, snatching hold of the man’s arm and shaking him as one might try shaking some sense into a wayward child. “If we cannot hold the soldiers here—then all will be lost.”

“But they have the village!” another cried as the lead began to snarl by them into the trees, slapping the bare, skeletal branches. “We are lost!”

“Let them have the village!” he shouted them down. “But we must not give up these hills. Never must we give up the hills where our people take refuge!”

He whirled as the white voices grew louder—snapping off a shot at the ve-ho-e. A soldier fell against those behind him, screaming as he clutched his chest.

As the other warriors took cover behind rocks or trees, down in the brush or behind a finger of land at the opening to the canyon, Little Wolf nonetheless stood his ground. Just as he always had. For he was an Old-Man Chief—and his first duty was to protect the People, even at the sacrifice of his life.

From moment to moment one of his companions cried out in pain, declaring they had been wounded in the leg, or the shoulder, perhaps an arm or hand. All the while the soldiers and their wolves continued to advance slowly, warily, for they did not know that they greatly outnumbered Little Wolf’s pitifully small force protecting the mouth of the ravine as the women sang out above them.

So it was that the brave chief stood in the open that morning, doing his best to draw the enemy’s fire, to taunt them, to make the soldiers angry as he sprinted back and forth before their massed front. Showing the other warriors just how poorly the soldiers and their allies shot their weapons.

Of a sudden he felt the sting at his back. The force of it bowling him over and over in the cold snow that shocked his bare legs. Lying there, breathing quick and shallow, Little Wolf put his hand to his lower back, brought it away with a thin film of red beginning to crystallize in the terrible cold. Then he pushed aside the short tail on his war shirt. An ugly, narrow finger of ooze was all it was. A flesh wound.

“Hoka hey!” he cried, leaping to his feet like a youngster a third of his years.

Little Wolf turned this way, then that so that his fellow warriors could see that he had not been seriously hurt.

A bullet whisked over the top of his shoulder—opening a painful furrow in the muscle atop his arm that hurt in the extreme cold, bloodying the shirt he wore.

“This is not our day to die, my friends!” he sang out, turning his back to the white men and their dogs who led the soldiers to this camp. “See me dance in the midst of their bullets!”

Others with him cried out with exultation, exposing themselves here and there, jumping out to take a shot, then falling back to reload and appear on the other side of the tree or rock or brush—their strategy causing the front rows of that massed assault to begin losing its stomach for fighting such daring warriors.

At times one or more of them were hit and bleeding, yet—like Little Wolf—they too suffered only minor wounds. At the mouth of the ravine they rallied around their chief, standing their ground to protect the ones who could not protect themselves.

After all, a man’s blood coagulated very quickly in the cold of such a terrible day.

Donegan watched as Lieutenant McKinney clutched the front of the surgeon’s coat with one of his bloody hands pale as the crusty snow beneath him—hoisting himself up slightly with the last shred of heroic strength that remained in his riddled body.

At least six bullets had struck the officer at the moment the Cheyenne rose out of that ravine and fired point-blank into the front of McKinney’s charge.

“Dr. La … LaGarde,” the dying soldier gurgled, blood bubbling at his lips. “See that … see my mother gets my … my—”

Then McKinney went rigid for a moment and fell backward onto the blanket where the survivors of his company had laid him only minutes before.

The lieutenant and the others who fell at the edge of that bloody ravine had been hurried behind this low red butte, where the surgeons were establishing their temporary field hospital. There was far less danger of any more Cheyenne bullets falling among these men here at the base of this gentle slope among the brush as the sun continued to climb in that dazzling blue sky above.

“Is he … is he dead?” one of the soldiers asked, snatching hold of the surgeon’s coat sleeve.

LaGarde shrugged off the man’s grip as he laid his head down on the bloodied chest. He listened intently, his eyes closed—then opened them to look up at the expectant faces closing in about him.

As. the surgeon used two fingers to ease down McKinney’s eyelids, he said, “The lieutenant’s dead. From every one of these wounds … hell, any one of which could have killed him on the spot, and all the goddamned loss of blood … why—it’s nothing short of a miracle that he lasted until you got him here.”

A big soldier grabbed hold of LaGarde, dragging the surgeon to his feet there beside the body. “But you couldn’t do a damned thing for him, could you?”

Donegan stepped in, putting his left hand on the soldier’s thick arm. “Leave it go, Cawpril.”

The man’s eyes shot to Donegan’s, filled with hurt as much as they were filled with rage. For a moment Seamus inched his right hand nearer to the butt of the pistol riding over his left hip.

Then the soldier sagged and looked back at LaGarde. “G’won now, damn you!” he snarled between his teeth as if he were trying his best to control his rage. “See what you and the rest of your cloth can do for the others.”

Without a word, only the gesture of tugging down his coat to straighten it, LaGarde turned away and stepped over McKinney’s body, ready to kneel beside one of the five other surgeons at work on the rest of the lieutenant’s wounded.

“How ’bout looking at this one, Doc?” Frank Grouard asked, tapping on LaGarde’s shoulder.

“What one?”

The half-breed pointed at Donegan.

“You’re bleeding?” the surgeon asked, turning to the Irishman.

“No. Just my shoulder.”

“You fall?” And LaGarde took hold of the Irishman’s left arm in both hands, beginning to raise it gently.

“No—easy there!”

“What happened?”

“A war club.”

“Back here across the shoulder blade?”

“I s’pose,” Seamus replied, beginning to wince in pain as the arm came up even more under the surgeon’s urging. “I don’t know for sure: I wasn’t really watching what was going on behind me—hold it! God-bleeming-damn!”

Releasing the arm slowly, LaGarde asked, “How far can you raise it on your own.”

“Don’t wanna raise it very far a’t’all.”

“Show me.”

“’Bout there,” Donegan declared.

“Don’t you think you ought’n keep him outta the fighting, Doc?” Grouard asked. “Just to keep a eye on it?”

“No way a few bruises gonna keep me outta this fight, you bloody half-breed!”

LaGarde shrugged. “You can see I’ve got lots of bleeding men here. Some of them gonna die soon too. So the two of you can go argue somewhere else for all I care.”

“But what about his arm and shoulder?” Frank demanded.

“It isn’t broken—if that’s what you’re asking,” the surgeon replied and turned away.

Grouard quickly stepped in front of the retreating doctor. “But don’t you think he should do something about it?”

“If he wants, he can tie it down. Wrap a bandage around his chest like this,” and he pantomimed the arm being splinted against the left side of his rib cage.

Seamus said, “I’ll be all right, Frank. Leave the man go to see to them others.”

“You’re about as mule-headed as a Lakota woman I once knowed,” Grouard grumbled.

Donegan grinned as he took up his rifle and started back for their horses. “Bet I’m prettier’n she was too.”

Frank stopped, cupping a hand underneath Donegan’s bearded chin, turning the Irishman’s face this way, then that before he replied, “You just might be at that, you ugly son of a bitch.”

Seamus knocked the half-breed’s hand away from his chin. “The hell you say. I’m just as pretty as the next man. C’mon, you horse-faced renegade—let’s go see if Mackenzie’s got something for us to do.”