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

Chapter 36

Big Freezing Moon 1876

Two of Morning Star’s sons were dead. The other could not be found.

Four of his grandchildren lay dead.

In all his sixty-eight winters, he had never seen such devastation and despair visited upon the Ohmeseheso.

Perhaps there was hope for that third son. Morning Star wanted so to hope, because at the moment of attack one of his friends, Black White Man, had managed to save his son, Working Man.

In the recent fight with the Shoshone, Working Man had been badly wounded: a rifle ball striking him in the buttock and exiting from the meat of his right thigh. His father and others had constructed a travois to haul the young warrior back to the village of his people after wiping out the enemy.

So it was that Working Man lay helpless in their lodge earlier that morning when the soldiers attacked. Black White Man had herded his wife from their lodge, thrusting her atop his war pony he kept picketed by the door.

“Wait for me here!” he ordered as he ducked into their lodge.

Then, as the bullets fell about the village like hailstones upon the canvas-and-hide covers, the father returned for his son. After slashing a tall opening in the back of their lodge, Black White Man lifted the young warrior into his arms and carried him to the pony, hoisting him behind his mother.

“Ride to the breastworks!” he was shouting when Morning Star ran through camp on his old legs—driving all the people before him. He told his wife and son, “Go before the bullets find you!”

“You are not coming?” his wife shrieked.

“No. I stay to fight. Take our son to safety, now!”

Then Morning Star watched as Black White Man turned away to join first one group, then another, fiercely protecting the flight of all women and children.

A little later Morning Star caught sight of his friend again. This time Black White Man had been joined by Elk River and others who were on their way down a shallow ravine, on their way to recapture some of the ponies run off by the soldiers’ Indian scouts. From time to time they disappeared from view among the winter-bare brush clogging the brow of the coulee … so Morning Star had turned away to help others escape the village.

When his attention was yanked back with the great noise: the shouting of the angry soldiers, the thunder of the hooves on the cold, solid ground, and the yelling of the brave warriors who had leaped atop the bare backs and were escaping with some of their prized animals. An enemy bullet struck one of the boys with Black White Man in the neck, and he nearly fell. But almost as soon as the blood began to stream down the boy’s chest, another warrior was there beside him so that he would not fall.

As the sun rose high that day, in that final desperate struggle before they lost their village to the enemy’s scouts, Morning Star watched with Black White Man from the low ridge where together they saw the Wolf People scouts fight their way through the scattered cluster of lodges.

“There,” Black White Man had said, gesturing to the side of the hill. “Those are some of my ponies the enemy will steal! I must get them!”

“You cannot—it is too dangerous!” Morning Star told his friend. “Those soldiers will see you—and train their guns on you.”

“Look there!” Black White Man had said suddenly, pointing into the dazzling light of that sunny morning.

“I see!” Morning Star exclaimed, his heart rising in hope.

Some of Little Wolf’s warriors were crawling up on their bellies to the crest of the adjoining ridge. There they began to train their fire on the soldiers among the fringe of the village.

Black White Man got to his knees, slapping his friend on the back enthusiastically. “Because those ve-ho-e will be worried about the bullets—they will not worry about one lone warrior going in among the ponies! Aiyeee!”

And with that he bolted to his feet, dashing away from Morning Star, who watched, his heart in his throat, as the daring warrior reached his lodge pitched close to the stream. There he plunged into the midst of the frightened, rearing ponies he had picketed nearby, each of the frightened animals darting, lunging, pitching back and forth at the ends of their tethers.

One by one he cut them loose, then waved and shouted, “Hey! Hey! Hey!”

Running behind them, he drove his ponies toward the upper end of the village, into the narrow canyon behind the ridge where the women and children were singing with loud, clear voices at the breastworks.

As he was fleeing the village, Black White Man encountered a young boy who dashed from the doorway of a lodge to join him in his race to safety. While Morning Star watched, the enemy’s bullets landed all around the two, warrior and boy, sometimes kicking up the trampled snow between their legs—but neither was hit.

Later, as the sun continued to slip into the southwest that long winter afternoon, Morning Star heard a lone warrior begin the steady, rhythmic work with his big gun, tucked somewhere among the rocks down the slope of the ridge where the women sang. With each shot came a deep boom, then its fainter echo—as the warrior placed his bullets in among those who were destroying the village. Burning everything that belonged to the Ohmeseheso. Bringing to a sudden, savage end their whole way of life.

When Morning Star went to talk with the white squaw man named “Long Knife” Rowland who had married the daughter of Old Frog, Little Wolf, Roman Nose, and Turkey Leg joined the sour-tongued Last Bull in refusing to surrender long enough to assure that the little ones, the sick, and the wounded would have a warm place beside fires in the valley while twilight descended and this brutal night fell around them like winter ice.

As many of his people as he had seen die this day, now he mourned most his relatives: sons and grandsons and nephews.

Why some fathers like Black White Man were spared by the spirits, while others had to die in this fight, Morning Star did not understand.

Oh, Ma-heo-o, why?

Perhaps the Everywhere Spirit was punishing him for selfishly wanting his family to remain in this north country, their true home … when the ve-ho-e demanded they move to that hot southern land.

Oh, Ma-heo-o, spare us this terrible day!

How many times before had he learned that in all things concerning the white man—there was simply too high a price to pay.

By now it was plain to Colonel Mackenzie and everyone else around him that the Northern Cheyenne were not about to surrender.

Since it would be nothing short of suicide to attempt to dislodge the warriors from their fortifications in the hills, that work would be left to Dodge’s infantry, being summoned up by the half-breed Grouard. In the meantime, Mackenzie’s cavalry and Indian scouts would proceed with rounding up the enemy’s ponies and turning to ash everything the Cheyenne possessed.

With the pack train finally reaching the valley and the units being fed in rotation after a night-long march and more than half a day of battle, the colonel got down to the business of not just defeating the Cheyenne, but decimating any hope Morning Star’s people might ever have of again becoming a powerful people.

“We must end once and for all any thought these people might entertain of surviving off their reservation,” the colonel instructed.

“Hear! Hear!” some of the officers shouted enthusiastically as they pitched into the destruction.

“Every blanket and buffalo robe, every last shred of clothing, every bit of shelter these people can put between themselves and the wrath of winter,” Mackenzie instructed his officers as they set a torch to the village. “Those of you who fought with me on the southern plains know firsthand how vital it is to thoroughly destroy the enemy’s ability to wage war in the future.”

“Hurrah!” a chorus of officers cheered.

“We drove Quanah Parker’s Comanche into that winter. So as you feed everything to the flames—think how much deadlier will be our destruction here on these northern plains.”

William Earl Smith shuddered involuntarily.

Not that it was any colder than it had been a moment ago. The young brakeman from Illinois shook with the cold fire he saw blazing in the colonel’s eyes as Mackenzie rallied his officers.

As icy as the weather had been for the past week, the surgeons were nonetheless already predicting that this night would see temperatures dropping further still. How they would know, Smith could not dare to figure out.

After all, this afternoon beneath a bright winter sun the mercury in the surgeons’ thermometers had risen to a high of fourteen below—which meant it didn’t have all that much to fall before it froze into a solid silver bead at the bottom of the bulbs … at thirty-nine below zero.

By the time Donegan returned to the village with Bill Rowland, the destruction of the Northern Cheyenne was well under way.

“Mackenzie sent North’s Pawnee into the camp to get things started,” John Bourke explained as he walked up while Seamus dismounted, tying his horse off beneath the rocks of the south ridge. “Major North told me that within minutes of starting their work, four of his battalion’s horses had been hit by enemy fire and killed.”

Nodding, Seamus said, “They’re in the hills around us—and it will take too damned many good lives to blast them out.” Bitterly, he gazed around at the cavalry-horse carcasses scattered here and there upon the trampled snow.

Bourke went on to explain that by keeping out of sight of those Cheyenne snipers while the sun was still hung in the sky, the Pawnee were able to go about their grisly work nonetheless, concealed behind the lodges they were plundering and burning.

Then the lieutenant said, “You all right, Irishman?”

He sighed. “Yes. Just that … the fighting don’t ever get any easier, Johnny.”

For some time Bourke didn’t say anything; then he explained, “Just a while back Mackenzie told me that he most regrets losing McKinney.”

“All of us can regret losing a good fighting man.”

“Mackenzie seems especially … well, morose about it,” Bourke continued. “In his private despair he said that he alone had recognized young McKinney’s potential four years ago when the lieutenant had been what the general called a hard-drinking and irresponsible shavetail.”

“He came out of the Academy and into Mackenzie’s Fourth to get the green worn off, that it?”

With a nod Bourke said, “Sadly, the general told me he watched over McKinney and pushed him along until he could call McKinney one of the most gallant officers and honorable men that he’s ever known.”

“You and me both have seen a lot of good men fall in this struggle, Johnny,” Seamus said, reflecting on all the faces, young and old, that passed through his mind.

“But some deaths a man takes harder than others,” Bourke replied. “I don’t know if Mackenzie’s going to hold up, Seamus. As the afternoon has waned, so have the general’s spirits. I feel his despair … his gloom is deepening.”

Nearby, the noisy, dirty work of complete and utter destruction continued. What the Pawnee had begun, soldiers now relished in completing. Captain Gerald Russell’s K Troop, Third U.S. Cavalry, along with Captain Wirt Davis’s F Troop of the Fourth, had been dispatched to get on with this matter before night descended upon the valley.

With camp axes and tomahawks found among the lodges, Russell’s and Davis’s soldiers had begun by cutting each canvas or buffalo-hide lodge cover from its graceful spiral of poles. Dozens of cold and brittle blades rang out as the thin poles were cut down, hacked into pieces, then fed to the roaring bonfires, where many of the detail warmed themselves momentarily before they plunged back into this ruinous business of total war.

Everything that could not be consumed to ash was broken: metal bits were smashed beneath rocks; holes were knocked in the bottoms of kettles, punched through canteens and pans and other utensils; all manner of ironware—including spades, picks, shovels, hammers, scissors, and all manner of knives—all of it broken before they were tossed into the fires.

Everything else was fed to the flames that grew hotter and higher as the sun slipped toward the west and the shadows lengthened like the talons of the long winter night itself.

In several unusually big lodges the soldiers found the inner walls ringed with countless saddles and woven bridles, along with war regalia hung from the liner ropes in these warrior-society gathering places.

From every family dwelling the Pawnee and troopers pulled clothing and craftwork. Into the flames went skin paunches, bladders, and rawhide parfleches stuffed with fat and marrow. Flames roared audibly over the distant, eerie keening of the women courageously gathered at the breastworks. Nowhere in the valley could a man escape that audible crackle produced by the many immense fires, a roaring, gushing sound akin to some monstrous appetite demanding more and more sustenance.

Early on it was clear the Pawnee and soldiers had failed to uncover small kegs and cans of powder among the provisions tossed upon the flames. In consequence, from time to time the valley rocked with that occasional throb of explosion, men shouting out warnings with each booming bark of sudden thunder, spewing a cascade of showering sparks that never failed to scatter the nearby soldiers as burning lodgepoles rained down like jackstraws until the roiling flames once again diminished from their spectacular, fiery heights.

Near the edges of each warming bonfire, soldiers and scouts clustered, some slowly feeding themselves and the flames from the same hide satchels, ordered this night to burn what they could not eat of the Cheyennes’ winter meat. With muted pop, crackle, and sizzle—the victors laid tons of buffalo meat to waste as a hungry people watched from the hills.

Empty bellies, Seamus knew, seemed always to fill hearts with hate.

“These are funeral pyres,” Bourke declared proudly. “Great, scalding, ruinous funeral pyres of what was once Cheyenne glory.”

“Johnny, I’m sure you remember what Reynolds destroyed, and what he left behind in that Cheyenne village beside the Powder River last winter.”

“I damn well do. Because of that vivid memory, I’ve reminded General Mackenzie that here the destruction must be complete,” Bourke explained as the two walked on. “We know firsthand from our experience with these hostiles what can become of them if we don’t completely destroy everything the enemy possesses.”

Into the piles of plunder or the great, leaping bonfires went the clatter of bottles filled with the white man’s strychnine used to poison wolves.

Joining unimaginable amounts of fixed ammunition and loose—bullet molds, cartridge cases, and black powder.

Then an angry voice pricked Donegan’s attention.

“I don’t figger I oughtta pay for that saddle, Lieutenant!”

Close at hand a soldier stood his ground against young Homer Wheeler, commanding G Troop of the Fifth Cavalry.

“Easy, Private! As you were before you’ll be disciplined! You know as well as the next man that a soldier loses his saddle and bridle—he’s docked the pay!” Wheeler argued.

“But, sir! I had that goddamned horse shot out from under me,” Private Kline declared. “You know your own self I was carrying a dispatch for the general, right across that open ground yonder—and the horse went down under me. The way them bullets were smacking all around, I wasn’t about to hang on until I could somehow get that saddle off my own dead horse!”

“Very well,” Wheeler replied in exasperation, looking up to see Bourke and Donegan approaching. “I’ll make a note of it here in my memorandum book so you’ll not be charged for lost equipment assigned you.”

Kline stood rigid, snapped a salute, and said, “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

“Report over there to our company at the foot of the hill and get yourself some food, soldier.”

“Yes, sir!”

Wheeler watched the private go, then turned to Bourke and Donegan. “Lieutenant Bourke—good to see you. Why, you can’t believe what we’ve been finding among the belongings pulled from the redskins’ lodges.”

Donegan followed the two lieutenants over to a pile of plunder lit by the last rose glow of the falling sun and by the leaping yellow flames nearby. Wheeler knelt, barely touching the human hair, then looked up at Donegan.

“Doesn’t take a scout like you, mister,” Wheeler said, “to see that these here scalps belonged to a pair of young girls—neither one of them older than ten years, I’d imagine. One blond. The fellow with Cosgrove, one named Eckles, he said the other’s likely Shoshone.”

“Cosgrove’s bunch been down from the heights?” Donegan inquired, gazing for a moment at the high ridge south of camp.

With a nod Wheeler answered, “I’ll say. And when they went among the lodges, a few of his boys found some Cheyenne souvenirs of a battle they fought with a band of Shoshone not long back.”

The lieutenant went on to tell about what grisly trophies had been pulled from the lodges slated for destruction: a buckskin bag containing the right hands of twelve Shoshone babies; several of Tom Cosgrove’s auxiliaries readily recognized the scalp of one of their herders killed at the outset of the Battle of the Rosebud, easily identifiable by the ornaments the departed youngster had worn in his hair; besides, there were at least thirty Shoshone scalps taken in a recent battle; in addition, the Pawnee had come across a large pouch containing the right arm and hand of a Shoshone woman.

Something caught the Irishman’s eye. “I’ll be damned,” Seamus said as he examined a cartridge belt he picked up from one of the blankets spread upon the snowy ground. “Look here, Johnny.”

Bourke took the belt, studying a shiny silver plate that served as its buckle. “Little Wolf.”

“You suppose it belongs to the Cheyenne war chief?”

Wheeler explained, “One of Wessel’s men took it off a dead Indian he killed on the far side of the valley. The sergeant said it was hand-to-hand, over at the head of that deep ravine.”

“You can believe him, Lieutenant,” Seamus said. “On my dear mither’s grave: that was some of the toughest fighting I’ve ever dragged myself out of.”

Wheeler studied the Irishman’s face a moment, then asked, “From the looks of that belt and buckle—you figure we got one of the chiefs, eh?”

Bourke wagged his head. “Could be—I know Little Wolf was one of the leaders who went back east to Washington City here lately.”

Donegan said, “Mayhap he got this as a present from the President, Johnny.”

Bourke wagged his head, “Or from some kindhearted official in the Indian Bureau.” Throwing the belt down onto the blanket, the lieutenant grumbled. “The red bastard sure showed his gratitude in a strange way, didn’t he?”

“Come with me,” Wheeler suggested, leading the two away. “I’ve got a lot more to show you.”

He stopped beside another pile of plunder.

“Was that a guidon?” Bourke asked, bending to feel the cloth.

“Damn right it was,” Wheeler replied. “You can see who it once belonged to.”

From that bloody silk swallowtail guidon of the Seventh Cavalry some industrious woman had fashioned herself a pillow stuffed with prairie grass and sage.

“You figure these belonged to a white man?” Bourke asked as he rose holding a crude, grisly necklace at the end of his outstretched arm.

“Badly mortified,” Wheeler replied, “but—yes—looks like the fingers of many different white men to me.”

Bourke asked, “Mind if I keep this?”

Wheeler shrugged, saying, “It was going into the fire anyway, Lieutenant.”

“I know just where I can send this back east where folks will get a chance to see it in the museum,” Bourke added as he toed aside some saddle blankets as if searching for something to put the finger necklace in for safekeeping. Suddenly he leaped back. “What the goddamned hell is that?”

Seamus bent to look at it, nudged with his toe, turning the object over and over. “Looks to me like it was once some man’s ball-bag, Johnny.”

Bourke shuddered at the thought, swallowing hard. “As much as I try my best to understand these people, they never cease to surprise me with their penchant for supreme savagery. I suppose I’d better take that for the museum too.”

Donegan asked, “Not for your collection, Johnny?”

“Hell no, Irishman. I’ve got one of my own,” and he cupped a hand beneath his own scrotum when he answered. “I’ll keep it all with me until I can ship them back east.”

Donegan snorted, saying, “Good idea. Having a reminder like that around just might help you take better care of your own balls.”

From pile to pile Wheeler went on to lead the lieutenant and the scout, showing them many of the other remarkable souvenirs pulled from the Cheyenne lodges.

That taffeta-lined buckskin jacket recognized as having belonged to Tom Custer.

A hat bearing inside the headband the name of Sergeant William Allen, I Troop, Third U.S. Cavalry—killed at June’s Battle of the Rosebud and buried in the creekbed with the other casualties.

“Did you know him, Johnny?” Donegan asked quietly.

“Not that well, but I could have picked him out of a crowd nonetheless,” Bourke replied sourly as he carefully set the hat back atop a greasy blanket where other items lay for the viewing of all.

There were currycombs marked with troop initials and the Seventh Cavalry brand, as well as hairbrushes, some with men’s initials crudely scratched into the wood.

Donegan leafed through a notebook that listed the best marksmen at every target practice held by Lieutenant Donald Mcintosh, killed in Reno’s retreat across the Little Bighorn and up to the heights.

Next he carefully thumbed page by page through a memorandum book. Its one-time owner, a Seventh Cavalry sergeant, had penciled in his last entry: “Left Rosebud June 25th.” That page and many of the rest were embellished with drawings by an unknown Cheyenne warrior to illustrate his battle exploits and coups—one showing him lancing a cavalryman who clearly wore sergeant major’s chevrons, on another page the warrior was seen killing a teamster, on the following page the Cheyenne was shown killing a wretched miner somewhere in the Black Hills, and across two facing pages of the book he adorned an illustration of himself escaping from Reno’s barricade on the hill—represented by a round line of rifle fire, with saddled horses lying down inside—amid a hurricane of bullets. On other pages the Cheyenne represented himself as having been wounded once and his horse shot four times in that battle beside the Little Bighorn.

Bourke examined an officer’s blue mackintosh cape for signs of ownership, but no name was found.

Likewise, a gold pencil case and a silver watch provided no clues as to who had been their previous owners.

On another Indian blanket the troopers had collected China plates, cups, and saucers.

“It’s clear to me,” John Bourke commented, “that contact with the white man has given these aboriginal people a profound taste for acquiring the finer things in life.”

“I saw a few of these earlier today,” Donegan said, holding up a wallet partially stuffed with greenbacks. He asked of Wheeler, “How many of these have you come across?”

“Enough to know that Custer’s men hadn’t had a chance to spend their pay before they were butchered—”

“Dear God,” Bourke suddenly murmured softly there by the crackle of the fire as he handed Donegan an envelope.

Seamus turned it over, immediately recognizing it as a letter addressed to a woman back east, stamped and sealed by some soldier, ready for mailing.

“Look on any of these blankets,” Wheeler commented. “You’ll find even more. We’ve come across a lot of mail once addressed to members of the Seventh Cavalry, come from relatives and loved ones.”

Among the beaded pouches and shields, the shirts and leggings adorned with quillwork, lay many faded, wrinkled chromos and cabinet photos of many a soldier’s family members: parents, wives, children, and sweethearts all far away from these men gone off to war.

These small articles of personal value lay scattered among the many McClellan saddles, canteens, and nose bags all emblazoned with 7th.

That twilight, as the sun began to sink beyond the southwestern hills, a bitter John Bourke flung a canteen down onto the blanket with a loud clatter, saying, “No man now in this valley with Mackenzie should dare think—after looking at all of this bloodied loot—that we aren’t completely justified in such extreme punishment being meted out this very day to such a band of thieves and robbers.”

“I’d daresay from the looks of it, Johnny,” Donegan added, “surely some of these warriors have fought against the army in every encounter this year.”

“By damn!” Bourke growled. “Not even a gunnysack must be spared the flames and left behind for these murderers!”

From the angry intensity of the soldiers’ work, it was clear to the Irishman that all such reminders of dead soldiers fallen in battle to this warrior band during the months of what had become known as the Great Sioux War only increased the thoroughness with which Mackenzie’s men went about destroying what had been the greatness of the Northern Cheyenne.

More than seven hundred Cheyenne ponies and horses, some of which had once belonged to the cavalry—their flanks plainly branded with US and 7—had been captured and were now in the hands of the cavalry. Close to a hundred of the finest war ponies were claimed by the Norths’ Pawnee and were already loaded with plunder hauled from the lodges by the time the first spire of oily black smoke had curled into the afternoon sky.

As an eerie background to the destruction, the Shoshone scouts continued beating on that huge drum found near the center of the horseshoe of lodges as twilight deepened into the gloom of winter’s night. That same drum captured from their people, and now back in their hands once more, throbbing with the thunder of victory that reverberated from the hills where the conquered Cheyenne faced the coming dark and frightening cold.

One hundred seventy-three lodges once stood in the valley of the Red Fork of the Powder River.

Until that day the Northern Cheyenne had been a prosperous people, by far the wealthiest of warrior bands on the northern plains.

Never had so rich a prize fallen into the hands of the frontier army.

Still, Ranald Slidell Mackenzie had paid a price for his victory: McKinney and four troopers had been killed in the battle; a fifth had been felled by the sniper with the big gun hidden among the rocks.

As the canopy of blue turned to a deep indigo over their heads, Bourke asked, “You realize how fitting it is, don’t you, Irishman?”

He turned to the lieutenant. “What’s so fitting?”

“The date.”

Turning away to regard the huge, leaping flames once more, Seamus struggled to sort it out, then replied, “I’m afraid I don’t know what the date is, Johnny.”

“It’s the twenty-fifth, Irishman,” Bourke said almost prayerfully as the darkness came down around them like an oozy wound.

Donegan’s breath caught in his chest a moment; then he said, “I … I hadn’t realized.”

“Just think of it: five months—to the day, Seamus … since these Cheyenne bastards joined Sitting Bull’s devils to wipe out Custer. Five months to the day.”