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

Chapter 43

Big Freezing Moon 1876

For many days now, more than two-times-ten by the count of notches on the stick in his belt pouch, Wooden Leg had been out hunting with a small party of other young warriors. The last they had seen of Morning Star’s village, it was moving south slowly toward the Red Canyon of the White Mountains.* There Wooden Leg and the others expected to find their people camped a few days from now as the young men began turning about, slowly working their way back to their village.

That morning as the sun rose pale and heatless in a cold blue sky, Wooden Leg’s party was moving upriver along the western bank of the Tongue River, slowly working the game trails before them as they eased along.

“Look!” one of those in front called out.

Quickly they all halted—putting hands to their brows, frost curling from their faces as they squinted into the distance.

“They are walking,” Wooden Leg declared.

“A few ride,” said Stops in a Hurry. “Why do they have only a few horses?”

“Yes. Who are these people?” Wooden Leg wondered aloud. “Why would they be so poor that they are not riding?”

“Indeed, they are very poor,” commented Fox, another of their warriors. “You see they have few robes and no blankets to speak of.”

“Let us go closer and take a good look,” Wooden Leg suggested. “Then we might know if these are friends of the Ohmeseheso or if these are our enemies.”

Quickly retreating down the slope into the long, wide ravine, the young hunters hurried their pack animals south by east in the direction of the strangers. Then, upon leaving their horses in a coulee, some of them went to the brow of a snowy hill to have themselves a closer look at the slow procession inching its way below like a dark worm wriggling against a white world.

The more he studied the people, the more confused he became. Few wore moccasins. Most had stiff, frozen pieces of raw hides lashed crudely around their feet. Some helped old women and men hobbling along between them. Small children rode in the arms of the women, or on the shoulders of the men. There were no travois. These strangers had nothing to carry from place to place!

“These …” Wooden Leg gulped in shame, feeling the burn of sadness sting his heart, “these are the poorest people I have ever known.”

“Perhaps we should take them to our village,” Fox suggested. “We are prosperous and we can share all we have with those who have nothing.”

Then both of them heard the breath catch in the throat of Stops in a Hurry. He had the far-seeing eyes. And with them he stared at the strangers in shock.

Wooden Leg demanded, “What do you see?”

Painfully, Stops in a Hurry turned, his face gone pale with horror. “These are … are our people.”

“Our p-people?”

“Tse-Tsehese?” asked Fox. “Ohmeseheso?”

To the rising despair of the young hunters, it was indeed their own people—their own families, their own relatives and friends who had been driven into this winter wilderness with little but those green horsehides frozen on their backs. The young men rushed back to the coulee, leaped atop their ponies, and kicked them into a lope.

When the hunters were still a long way off, the women started trilling their tongues in warning. At first the warriors escorting the sad procession hurried forward on cold, stiffened limbs—prepared to meet the attack. But in a few moments they realized the young horsemen had not come to attack them. The older warriors, the chiefs, began to call out.

And the young hunters answered to their names, quickly searching among the many for their loved ones and relatives. Women began to cry and old men began to weep. And it made Wooden Leg cry too, for here he looked over the three Old-Man Chiefs. And thanked Ma-heo-o that Coal Bear’s woman still carried Esevone upon her back. Too, Medicine Bear helped the feeble prophet called Box Elder hobble forward, his bony hands still clutching his Scared Wheel Lance and the Turner over their heads.

While they might have no lodges and few weapons, while they no longer owned the finest in clothing and an ample supply of winter meat—the Ohmeseheso still had what mattered most. They had protected their most sacred objects. The People could rebuild!

“The soldiers and Wolf People came to our camp in the Red Canyon,” the story was told to the young hunters in a gush of words and tears, both happy and sad.

“We were camped far up Powder River near where you left us,” said another.

“Our women and children had to run away with only a few small packs.”

Wooden Leg nodded bitterly with remembrance, then said, “Just as we did last winter far down on the Powder River.”*

“This time the soldiers and their Indian scouts made sure they burned all our lodges and most of our horses were stolen. Many of our men, women, and children have been killed in the fight. Others have died of their battle wounds or have starved or frozen on our journey here.”

And a woman shrieked, “One of my sisters and her boy were captured with two other women by the Wolf People!”

“Where are you going?” Wooden Leg asked.

Little Wolf looked away into the distance a moment, then back into the young warrior’s face. “We are going there.” He pointed north. “Down the Tongue River … to find the Hunkpatila people.”

“Here,” Wooden Leg replied as the other hunters came forward, “take our horses for those who cannot walk. We will cross the ice with you and go down the river until we find Crazy Horse. Last winter when the soldiers drove us out into the snow and cold, Crazy Horse welcomed us … welcomed us as if we were his brothers.”

Headqrs. Mil. Div. of the Mo.

Chicago, Dec. 1, 1876

Gen. W. T. Sherman

Washington:

The following telegram from General Crook, dated Crazy Woman’s Fork, Wyoming Territory, November 28th, has just been received:

(signed) P. H. Sheridan

Lieutenant General

Before reaching General Mackenzie, I learned of the Indians’ retreat, and that he was returning with his command; so I countermanded the foot troops to this place. I sent you Mackenzie’s report of his operations against the Cheyennes. I cannot commend too highly his brilliant achievements and the great gallantry of the troops of his command. This will be a terrible blow to the hostiles, as those Cheyennes were not only the bravest warriors, but have been the head and front of most all the raids and deviltry committed in this part of the country.

(signed) George Crook

Brigadier General, U.S.A.

Commanding

The day before had been a damned forgettable Thanksgiving, Seamus brooded that next morning, the first of December. What with the burials of those dead soldiers, and the presence of that lone pine box Crook would have Lieutenant O. L. Wieting of the Twenty-third Infantry deliver by rail to McKinney’s family back in Memphis, Tennessee. For the rest of the afternoon details of the Fourth Cavalry rode teams of horses back and forth over the mass grave, and that evening the men started fires over the site in hopes of betraying that sacred ground to both the enemy and any four-legged predators roaming this wilderness.

Donegan could not remember ever seeing Mackenzie nearly as melancholy. The colonel marched to the grave site with Crook and Dodge at the head of the procession, but while the others sang the hymns and bowed their heads in prayer, Mackenzie only stared into the distance, transfixed on the clouds mantled across the snowy mountains. The man looked numb, almost unaware of events around him, his face a mask to some private torment and despair.

Perhaps Mackenzie was dwelling on the same dark thoughts that tormented Donegan: more soldiers buried in more unmarked graves, those final resting places abandoned to the ages.

Come the end of this month a full decade will have passed, he thought that next morning as he huddled beside a grease-wood fire and clutched his hands around a steamy tin of coffee. Ten full years since we buried Fetterman’s dead inside Carringtons stockade.*

Ten long, long years of scooping holes out of this bloody wilderness where dead soldiers can sleep alone and forgotten for all of eternity.

That Friday, the first of December, a horse fell beneath a Fourth Cavalry sergeant, rolling over on the soldier, crushing him so that he died in agony within minutes, his lungs filling up with blood as he thrashed on the snow in the midst of his friends helpless to save him.

A quiet and somber camp again that night as Crook grew restive and anxious, awaiting Luther North and the Pawnee he had sent north to pick up the Cheyenne trail, hoping it would eventually lead him to Crazy Horse. Just past nightfall word began to circulate that they were to be ready to march back to Reno Cantonment at dawn.

On top of the twenty-eight miles of icy, windblown, snow-drifted prairie the command put behind them before reaching the north bank of the Powder that second day of December, the continued and extreme cold was taking the last bit of starch out of the horses. The temperature continued to slide down ever more rapidly as the sky cleared.

Early that Saturday evening two Cheyenne scouts came in from the Red Cloud Agency. To Crook they reported having learned that the Sioux war chief Lame Deer and a sizable war party was on its way from the Belle Fourche for the Little Powder.

Into the night wild speculation coursed its way through the column. Was it too much to hope that Crook would move them back to Fetterman and Laramie to retire the expedition? Or—as some of the senior officers hinted—could the general really be contemplating another march to the Belle Fourche and the Black Hills in hopes of snagging himself another victory by cutting off Lame Deer’s band?

The last of Mackenzie’s command did not dismount on the banks of the Powder until well after dark, not eating until nine o’clock—for the first time since breakfast. And Furey’s wagon train did not roll in until shortly after midnight.

At dawn on the third orders came down for the cavalry to mount fifty of the best men from each company on fifty of their strongest horses and be prepared to move out by nine. That Sunday morning chief medical officer Joseph R. Gibson turned over his wounded to Marshall W. Wood and some of his five surgeons, who would begin the southward trek with the casualties to Fort Fetterman the following day under the command of Major George A. Gordon.

With the rising of the cold buttermilk-yellow sun, Tom Cosgrove reported to Crook that his auxiliaries were anxious to be relieved of their duties and return home, certain from the trophies they had discovered in the Cheyenne camp that a disaster had befallen some band of their people.

“How soon do you wish to leave?” Crook asked.

Cosgrove turned slightly, gesturing with an arm as the Shoshone battalion mounted in the distance and began to move in his direction. “We’re pulling out now,” he explained in his Texas drawl.

“I see,” Crook replied, his brow knitting in disappointment.

“With your permission, General—we’ll be mustered out so that we can return to see to the safety of our homes and families.”

“Yes, well,” Crook muttered, cleared his throat, and blinked into the brilliant cold light lancing off the glittering snow. The Shoshone came to a halt in a long, colorful line behind Cosgrove and Eckles, knee to knee in silence as their horses pawed the icy snow and thick streamers of frost wreathed their muzzles. “Very well, Captain Cosgrove. Your men have served me well for many a campaign.”

“We’ll go where you need us, General.”

“You always have,” Crook replied, smiling bravely.

Twisting in his saddle, the civilian motioned forward Dick Washakie, the great chief’s son. “Before we go, my men wanted to present you with a gift.”

“A gift?”

Washakie brought his pony to a halt beside Crook, handing a ceremonial pipe down to the general who stood on foot.

Feathers fluttered from the long stem as Crook inspected it, then finally whispered, “This is … quite a gift, Captain.”

“And for Major Pollock,” Cosgrove said as a second Shoshone came forward bearing his gift, “a war shirt.”

Captain Edwin Pollock, commander of Reno Cantonment, stepped forward, his cheeks red with embarrassment as he took the buckskin shirt that had been painted black—the color of war—and decorated with scalp locks as well as yellow horsehair plumes. “Th-thank you. Thank all of these fine men,” Pollock stammered.

“And especially for Lieutenant Schuyler,” Cosgrove said, motioning a third warrior forward to lay his gift at the feet of the young officer who had commanded the Shoshone battalion atop the high ground the day of the battle, “this token of their regard for you as a war chief.”

For a long moment Walter S. Schuyler was speechless as he picked up the bow case and quiver filled with iron-tipped arrows, as well as a saddle cover of beaded buckskin, a pair of beaded moccasins, and a war shield ringed with eagle feathers.

“General Crook,” Cosgrove said with finality and a salute as his horse pranced backward of a sudden. “Till we meet on another war trail, on another battlefield.”

Crook, Schuyler, Pollock, and the rest saluted as the two old Confederates snapped their arms down, reined right in silence, and kicked their ponies into a lope. At the end of the long, colorful line of Shoshone they signaled with their arms only, and as one all the warriors heeled smartly into a column of twos, their unshod ponies kicking up clods of icy snow, feathers bristling and scalp locks flying on the cold breeze as they climbed the far slope, crested the top, and began to fade into the distance.

Donegan somberly watched the old friends slowly disappear in the cold, sunlit distance of that snow-caked land, those brave men hurrying southwest toward the Wind River Mountains, sensing the remorse at that parting of men who have together borne the terrifying weight of battle and utter hardship.

For the rest of the morning while the command was packing up, the Irishman found his throat all but clogged with a sour ball of sentiment, his eyes close to betraying him as he thought on all those years he had watched friends fall in battles, or perhaps just as painful, watched friends ride off—perhaps never again to gallop stirrup to stirrup into the jaws of death.

“I figure you ought to know what the general’s up to with this march, Johnny,” Seamus declared later that day as he brought his horse into line beside Lieutenant Bourke’s shortly after the column moved out up the Dry Fork of the Powder, headed south by east.

“Hell, this is as much a mystery to me as any man,” Bourke replied with a shrug.

“Crook ain’t said a thing to you where we’re going or for why?”

With a shake of his head the lieutenant answered, “Only thing I know is that the general conferred with Mackenzie about making this march.”

Seamus’s eyes narrowed. “Mackenzie?”

“That’s right. I was there when the two of them studied the general’s maps.”

“Looking for what?”

“Where best to make the crossing of that country between the Little Powder and the Belle Fourche.”

“By the saints! That’s back to that god-bleeming desert country we crossed last September!”

Nodding, Bourke replied, “About sixty miles worth of desert crossing, Seamus.”

“No wood, no graze, and damn well no water to speak of!”

“Sixty miles of it,” the lieutenant said. “But both Crook and Mackenzie figure the gamble is worth the test.”

“To save some days?”

“Exactly. About ten days by the looks of things on the maps.”

“Crook wants Crazy Horse even more’n I ever dreamed he could hunger to get his hands around that red savage’s throat.”

That day they put twenty miles under them before stopping for the night at Buffalo Springs on the Dry Fork. Then Crook kept them there—in camp and in the dark—for both the fourth and the fifth. As did many of the men during that interminable wait, Seamus wrote his loved ones.

Finally on the morning of the sixth Crook moved them out again, marching only seven miles in the wind-driven snow, where they found little water—what there was proved to be muddy and loaded with alkali salts—as well as finding they had no firewood. The command had all but emptied the wagons of forage for their animals, and there was little hope of any reaching Mackenzie’s men from the south anytime soon, what with the severity of the recent storms likely blocking rail shipments to Medicine Bow Gap, the same horrid weather blocking wagon shipments from there north to Fort Fetterman on the North Platte.

The men huddled together as best they could through the night, suffering greatly, as did their horses, while winter continued to pummel the high plains. Just before dawn the surgeons reported that the mercury in their thermometers hovered at thirty below zero. Hundreds of men reported cases of frostbitten fingers, toes, noses, and ears at sick call upon awaking.

They packed up in light marching order in a severe snowstorm that morning of the seventh, ordered to make ready for the fifteen-mile march north by east that would take them to the Belle Fourche. Off in the shimmering, icy distance to the south stood the hulking monoliths of the Pumpkin Buttes, orange and ocher against the newly fallen snow. Only the leafless branches of cottonwood and willow marked each frozen water course winding its way down to the Belle Fourche. Few if any birds were seen roosting along the line of march, while far overhead the great longnecks honked, these last to hurry south in great undulating vees. For as far as the eye could see, the land lay beneath a solid sheet of white—more desolate, bare, and destitute of life than ever Seamus could have imagined it.

In camp late that night after the wagons had finally rolled in so the men could boil their coffee and prepare supper of what deer, elk, antelope, jackrabbits, and even a few porcupines they had managed to kill along the trail that day, a few soldiers grumbled their bitter recriminations about Crook, sharing their tales of how the general had punished another command and its horses three months earlier.

“Some say Crook figures to find Crazy Horse near Slim Buttes,” Billy Garnett explained.

“Now, that’s hard to believe,” Seamus said. “Surely the general’s smart enough to know those Lakota aren’t still in this country, that they’re gonna move on after all this time. That’s better’n four months now!”

With a shrug Garnett replied, “Can’t figure what Crook’s thinking. Only know what we all know: the general’s been wanting that red son of a bitch for the better part of a year now.

“Sweet Mither of God! Crook ain’t gonna find Crazy Horse anywhere near them Slim Buttes or the Black Hills country.”

“Shit!” Garnett scoffed with a grin. “So, mister know-it-all, why don’t you tell me why in the hell Crook’s gonna take us off in this direction if he doesn’t expect to find Crazy Horse in this here country?”

But for the life of him … Donegan couldn’t come up with a single good answer.

* The Big Horn Mountains.

* Blood Song, Vol. 8, The Plainsmen Series.

* Sioux Dawn, Vol. 1, The Plainsmen Series.