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

Chapter 41

Big Freezing Moon 1876

THE INDIANS

Late News from Crook’s Command—All Well.

CHEYENNE, November 27.—General Crook’s command reached Fort Reno November 14, in good condition, and was paid off by Major Stanton. The weather is severe but the troops are well prepared for a winter campaign. One hundred Snake and Shoshone Indians joined the command there, making nearly 400 Indian allies in all, and the total strength of the command 2,000. The hostile Indians, according to the best information, are scattered on both sides of the Big Horn mountains, and a campaign on each side may be necessary before completing the work. Meantime Crazy Horse, with about 4,000 lodges, is on the Rosebud, near the scene of the June fight, for which point a cavalry command left under General McKenzie, and would have to march about six days before reaching it. The cavalry are in excellent condition, and if this movement is successful the heaviest work of the winter would have been accomplished.

Oh, Father of All Things! You see into the heart of all men. We thank you for sparing so many of us that we may flee to rebuild our people. Watch over all who you have chosen to carry on. Keep our feet on the road you would have us walk.

And help us to see that in death, there is also rebirth.

Little Wolf opened his eyes to the rising sun as it came up far, far away across the frozen white plains.

He stared, his arms outstretched, clad only in his leggings and breechclout, crude and stiffened pieces of green horsehide tied around his feet in place of the beautiful war moccasins he had lost in the fires that had destroyed nearly everything his family owned. Bare-chested, shivering with the fierce cold of that dawn, fighting down the pain in each of his six wounds, the Sweet Medicine Chief breathed his silent prayers, then knelt to fill the small pipe he took from the bag he snatched up in his lodge the morning of the attack.

Slow to move in the cold, slow to move with those wounds he had suffered from soldier bullets, perhaps wounds caused him by the Tse-Tsehese scouts who had come with the soldiers, Little Wolf lit the pipe from a smoldering coal he had laid among the white sage at his feet in the center of a patch of bare ground he had kicked free of the drifted snow moments ago.

To the four winds and to the spirits that watched from both earth and sky, he gave thanks for the deliverance of the People.

Then Little Wolf thanked the Everywhere Spirit for the deliverance of the People’s greatest treasures: Maahotse was safely on their way south with Black Hairy Dog and a small escort of warriors; Esevone hung in a bundle strapped on the back of Coal Bear’s woman back in the shadows and the ravines of the mountainside where Lodgepole Creek* issued from its canyon, rushing onto the rugged plain.

Standing in silence some twenty feet behind the Sweet Medicine Chief, the old, blind prophet, Box Elder, turned his own wrinkled face toward the warmth of the coming sun. It made Little Wolf’s tears fall and freeze in tracks on his bronzed cheeks when he turned to look a moment at the ancient one. Standing so stoic, brave, steadfast there … sightlessly standing guard over Little Wolf with his veiny, deformed hands gripping tightly the tall staff from which hung the Sacred Wheel Lance. Behind the old man another ten feet stood Medicine Bear, the young apprentice who held the Turner, its buffalo tails dancing upon each gust of wind.

With the power of those objects, the two men protected Little Wolf as the Sweet Medicine Chief said his prayers for the People. Asking the Everywhere Spirit to protect His people one more day as they moved out of the fastness of the mountains, trudging northeast toward the plains where they hoped to find the Crazy Horse people.

He prayed no more infants would be asked to die of the endless, horrid cold. The first night nine had given over their spirits. Then three more last night.

This morning there were faces missing from the fires built along the spine of these White Mountains. Old, wrinkled faces—ones who had seen so much greatness, now witness to so much devastation. Few of the old ones had the strength to last out this grueling march, most preferring to step aside and let the others pass, there to find a place where they could sit among the rocks, beneath the branches of the great sheltering trees.

And there to wait for death to come on the wings of Winter Man’s hoary cold.

Today, just as they had done from that first night of flight, the able-bodied warriors would go ahead of the march until they were almost out of sight. There the young men would gather wood and kindle a new fire with a coal carried from one of the old fires where the People sat waiting, trying to warm themselves. When that new fire blazed, sending its shimmering waves of heat into the cold of that vast mountain wilderness, a lone warrior would ride back to signal the others to come ahead. The many would reluctantly rise, setting off toward the distant blaze, where they would again sit and rest while a new fire was kindled farther down the trail toward the Hunkpatila of Crazy Horse.

They were leaving a trail chopped with the footprints of the old and the small ones, footprints spotted with blood. As well as a trail of pony carcasses. A few times each day a horse would be slaughtered for food to feed the many cold, empty bellies. As the warm green hide was stripped off to be wrapped around cold children, or cut into crude boots to protect frozen feet, some of the half-dead old ones stumbled over to stuff their own hands and feet into the warm gut piles steaming in the terrible cold. Just enough warmth to allow them to trudge on, on through the wilderness to find the Oglalla wintering on the Tongue.

One of his old friends, White Frog, had been wounded four times in the battle as he drew bullets to himself protecting the women and children. Although he stumbled with the agony of his wounds and oftentimes fell in the snow, White Frog nonetheless struggled to be one of the first who led the others from fire to fire, cheering them on.

Behind White Frog proudly walked Comes Together, White Frog’s woman, clutching their infant son beneath her hide dress, sharing what warmth she had with the tiny, sick child.*

“Ma-heo-o!” Little Wolf called out as loudly as he could with a hoarse throat. “Hear your people! We belong only to you! When you remain steadfast to us—not even the power of the ve-ho-e can ever destroy us!”

A generous portion of the meat butchered from those buffalo killed during last night’s folly was distributed among the wounded that Homer Wheeler was escorting back to the wagon camp on the Crazy Woman. Those soldiers who could eat found themselves strengthened for the arduous journey that Tuesday, 28 November—their third day struggling through a mix of sand and deep snow icing the hilly country.

Well after sunrise the lieutenant’s detail loaded the frozen dead onto the backs of the restive mules once more, preparing to move out with their ghoulish cargo. Then the travois were attached to the mules, each set of poles strapped to their aparejos pair by pair. The wounded had not been moved since sundown the day before, placed at that time in two rows, their feet to glowing fires, their travois pitched at an incline upon pack saddles for their comfort.

“Sir?”

Wheeler turned, finding one of his men coming up. “What is it, soldier? We’re preparing to move out.”

“I know, Lieutenant,” the private answered, grave worry carved on his face. “It’s … it’s private McFarland, sir. He’s … well—he’s gone out of his mind.”

“Out of his mind?”

“I don’t think he’ll make it through the day,” the soldier replied. “He’s in a real bad way.”

Sighing, Wheeler said, “All right. See that you make him as comfortable and warm as you can. Then get him hitched up with the others. There’s nothing we can do that the surgeons haven’t already done for him.”

“You mean … them surgeons say he’s gonna die anyway?”

“That’s no concern of yours,” Wheeler snapped impatiently. “You have a job to do for Private McFarland while he’s still alive. So you go do it.”

“Yes, sir.” He saluted and turned away.

Already Homer could hear the chanting as the Indian scouts were the first to pull away from last night’s bivouac. Throughout most of the last two days’ march they sang over the few scalps Mackenzie had allowed them to take from the Cheyenne, holding the hair aloft at the end of long wands where the bloody trophies tossed in the fitful, icy wind.

Not long after they set off that morning, Wheeler spotted three Shoshone horsemen sitting motionless atop their ponies at the side of the trail. As he drew closer, the lieutenant recognized the greasy blanket coat the middle warrior wore. Homer halted before them. “Anzi,” he said, not surprised to see the pain written across the Indian’s face.

“Melican medicine man,” the wounded warrior said, the mere sound of his words echoing the agony of his wound as he stoically remained hunched over in the saddle.

“Want to ride,” said one of the other two riders in his broken English. He and his companion supported a wobbly Anzi between them.

“Ride?”

“There, Melican medicine man.” Anzi pointed at the travois just then going past them.

“On one of the litters?” Wheeler asked in consternation. “You want to lay down in a travois?”

“Yes, yes, medicine man,” Anzi gasped, seized with pain. “No whiskey—Anzi do no good.”

“No whiskey, Anzi,” Wheeler replied sourly. “And I’m afraid I don’t have a litter for you either.”

“No?” asked one of Anzi’s companions.

“No,” Wheeler repeated. “The one you got out of two days back is now carrying a sick soldier.”

“Soldier sick as me?”

“No,” the lieutenant admitted. “But you gave up your travois when you found out we had no more whiskey.”

“Yes, whiskey. Whiskey good for Anzi.”

“No travois, Anzi,” Wheeler replied, beginning to feel his patience draining. “You’ll make it.”

“To Cluke wagon camp?”

“Yes. Hang on. You’ll make it there. And—you’ll find more whiskey there too.”

“Whiskey. Anzi not die he got whiskey in belly with bullet.”

With the remnants of a grin, Wheeler reined away and rejoined his hospital group as they plodded east away from the mountains.

An occasional snowflake lanced down from the intermittent clouds rolling off the Bighorns and onto the plains as Wheeler’s men and mules plodded on in a ragged column, surrounded by their escort of two troops of cavalry. It wasn’t long before they heard the dim reports echo back along the trail as soldiers began to shoot their played-out horses—daring not to leave them for the Cheyenne to capture. While the country was nowhere near as rugged as the mountain trail had been, that day’s journey nonetheless required the skill and hard work of Wheeler’s crew in crossing every steep-sided ravine and ice-banked stream, easing their way down and back up every snowy slope.

“Lieutenant Wheeler, sir!”

Homer turned in the saddle, recognizing the young soldier riding up from that morning. The lieutenant halted and reined about, awaiting the man.

“Sir, it’s McFarland,” he said as he came to a stop before Wheeler.

“Is he dead?”

“All but, Lieutenant.”

“C’mon,” Wheeler said as he put heels to his weary, ill-fed horse, moving back along the column.

Private Alexander McFarland’s attendants had pulled their patient, mule, and travois out of column and halted. Two of them had even removed their hats, holding them clutched at their chest as they stood over the soldier’s body suspended in its blankets. The wind repeatedly tousled their hair into their red-rimmed eyes that bespoke of grief silently endured.

Leaping down from his saddle, Wheeler bent over the private, placing his ear over McFarland’s nose and mouth. He heard nothing at first, but waited for something, anything. Then came a long, low death rattle deep within the dying man’s chest.

“Sir?”

Without looking up at the soldier near his shoulder, Wheeler kept his ear over McFarland’s face a moment more, then straightened. “We’ll wait here a little longer, men.”

“He ain’t dead yet, sir?”

“Not … just yet.”

It wasn’t long before McFarland’s heart finally beat its last. No breath wisping from his nostrils.

“All right,” Wheeler said with resignation as he straightened his fur cap on his head. “Let’s get the private wrapped up in a blanket and lashed with rope like the other dead men.”

“Beg pardon, Lieutenant,” grumped one of the escort, who stepped up to rest a gloved hand on the dead soldier’s body. “Alexander … Private McFarland, he was a friend of mine, sir. What you got in mind for him, you go tying him up in a blanket like the other dead, sir?”

“Why, I’m fixing to put him on one of the mules,” Wheeler explained, growing annoyed after so many days bare of sleep and warm food, filled only with bone-numbing work and spirit-robbing cold. “Like those others—”

“I beg you, Lieutenant,” a second attendant pleaded as he came up. “McFarland don’t deserve to be hunched over no goddamned mule’s back to freeze like a croquet hoop, sir! Let us leave him be on the litter till we get back to—”

“But I need that litter, Private.”

“Who you need it for?” demanded the first soldier suspiciously.

“For one of the scouts.”

The second soldier prodded, “You mean one of the civilians was wounded?”

“No,” Wheeler explained, growing more nettled as more and more of the column inched past them in the snow. “I mean one of the Shoshone.”

“Take his litter away for a goddamned Injun?” a soldier cried.

Another shrieked, “Not even no white man?”

“As you were, soldiers!” Wheeler ordered. “I’ve made my decision. While I understand your friendship for McFarland, we also owe what we can to the scouts who put their lives on the line too.”

“But you can’t put my bunkie on no god-blamed mule!”

“Why not?”

“’Cause he’s … he’s dead, sir!”

“Exactly, Private,” Wheeler answered. “Don’t take this wrong, but McFarland doesn’t know the difference any longer. And I’ll damn well do what I can to make one of our allies comfortable.”

How he hated feeling their eyes between his shoulder blades as he turned, waving one of his noncoms over. “Sergeant, go up to the Shoshone detachment and locate the one called Anzi.”

“Anzi, sir?”

“You’ll remember him,” Wheeler sighed. “He was the one drank most of the whiskey we had us the night after the battle.”

“Yes, sir. I remember that one. For sure I do.”

As the sergeant reined off into a lope, it started to snow again right overhead. Wheeler looked to the east where the sky was a patchwork of clouds and sunlight, blue and gray. But above the column it was beginning to snow again to beat the band. Big, thick, soft flakes that seemed to hiss through the brittle air as they tumbled from the lowering sky.

Behind Wheeler a voice grumbled, “That son of a bitch—”

Turning, throwing his shoulders back wearily, so tired he did not want a fight, the lieutenant declared, “I hope whoever spoke out of turn will be a man and own up to calling his superior a son of a bitch behind his back.”

The eyes shot here and there until an older private admitted, “It was me, sir.”

“You?”

“B-but I didn’t mean you, Lieutenant,” the older man apologized. “I was saying that Shoshone scout you call Anzi is the red-bellied son of a bitch. Him, sir: for taking McFarland’s—”

“I see,” Wheeler interrupted with a sigh, telling himself to be patient with these weary, half-frozen men. “Well, now—we all know that red-bellied Shoshone son of a bitch has lasted two days longer than our army surgeons said he would. So if he’s what you say he is, soldier … at least he’s one goddamned tough red-bellied son of a bitch.”

George Crook had pushed Colonel Richard I. Dodge’s doughboys to their limit, driving them some thirty-six miles in twelve hours that first day—a march of astonishing speed and endurance considering the temperature, the wind-driven snow, and the difficult terrain.

Just before ten A.M. yesterday, 27 November, five Indian couriers had reached Crook’s bivouac as the infantry was preparing to continue its march west. From the scouts the general learned that Mackenzie had departed the battlefield and was headed his way, bearing his dead and wounded out of the mountains.

“It appears General Mackenzie no longer requires your services,” Crook informed Dodge.

The glum infantry commander asked, “What now, General?”

Crook regarded the fuss-budget Dodge a moment longer, then replied, “Why, we countermarch to our wagons.”

“Do you plan on reaching the crossing tonight, sir?”

“I most certainly do, Colonel. I most certainly do.”

Late that Tuesday morning, the twenty-eighth, another trio of couriers rode into the Crazy Woman camp. They bore Mackenzie’s official written report of the engagement. Barely able to contain his excitement, George Crook read and reread the first word the outside world knew of that dramatic and tragic confrontation in the valley of the Red Fork:

Sir: I have the honor to report that at about twelve o’clock AM, on the twenty fourth (24th) inst. while marching in a south westerly direction towards the Sioux Pass of the Big Horn Mountains I was met by five (5) of the seven (7) indian scouts who had been sent out the evening before who reported that they had discovered the main camp of the Cheyennes at a point in the mountains, about fifteen or twenty miles distant. Two of the seven (7) indians remaining to watch their camp, the command was halted near sunset and then moved toward the village intending to reach it at or before daylight, owing to the nature of the country, which was very rough and in some places difficult to pass with Cavalry. The command did not reach the village until about half an hour after daylight. The surprise was, however, almost complete. The approach to the village, the only practicable one, entered the lower end and the indians taking alarm took refuge in a network of very difficult ravines, beyond the upper end of the village, leaving it on foot and taking nothing but their arms with them. A brisk fight for about an hour ensued after which shooting was kept up until night. The village consisting of one hundred and seventy three (173) lodges and their entire contents were destroyed. About five hundred (500) ponies were taken & twenty-five (25) indians killed whose bodies fell into our hands. And from reports which I have no reason to doubt, I believe a much larger number were killed. Our loss was one (1) officer and five (5) men killed & twenty five (25) soldiers & one (1) Shoshone indian wounded. Fifteen (15) cavalry horses and four horses belonging to the indian scouts were killed. The command remained in the village during the night and moved on to this point today. Lieut. McKinney, Fourth (4th) Cavalry who was killed in this affair was one of the most gallant officers and honorable men that I have ever known.

(signed) R.S. Mackenzie

Colonel, commanding

Fourth U.S. Cavalry

Immediately calling for Dodge, Crook showed the colonel Mackenzie’s report.

“He’s done all that you asked of him, General,” Dodge replied, returning the dispatch to Crook.

“Yes,” the general said. “From the sounds of things, I think the fighting is finally over.”

“I certainly hope so, General.”

Crook nodded, peering down at the maps littering his field desk. “Perhaps now Crazy Horse will either surrender, or decamp and go off to hide himself in the badlands.”

“You seem much pleased with your success.”

Crook’s eyes narrowed as he regarded the prim Dodge, as if the colonel were passing judgment on him. “I have every reason to be pleased. I have marched hundreds of miles and fired hundreds of thousands of rounds, killing and wounding soldiers as well as wasting an entire regiment of horses … to be able to stand here today—finally able to state that we have had a success!”

“Then, here’s to Mackenzie, General!”

“By all means,” Crook responded with gusto. “Here’s to Mackenzie!”

* Present-day Clear Creek.

* Little Coyote—one day himself to become the Keeper of the Sacred Medicine Hat, Esevone.