A Cold Day in Hell (11 page)

In the early spring the ice began to break up in those northern rivers. Every day they watched the passing carcasses of buffalo, some of the beasts becoming lodged at the upper end of the islands or pinned against piles of driftwood. Some were creatures that had drowned, having broken through the river’s icy crust the previous winter. Even more had been captured by the quicksands, slowly sinking to their death. Buzzards and magpies, coyotes and wolves, even grizzlies feasted upon such rich carrion tangled with the trash-wood snarled along the banks each spring.

Together with their father and others, the Jackson boys had trapped the Milk, Deep Creek, the Judith, and the Musselshell both spring and fall, returning to the post for the winter. By the time they were in their teens, American soldiers had begun to occupy the old fort, making their presence known among the tribes of the northern plains. One by one a long line of stores, hotels, and saloons went up nearby, almost overnight, after gold was discovered in the nearby country. Their father decided it was time to move downriver, away from the goldfields.

At Fort Buford, Thomas became a clerk for Charles Larpenteur’s Northwest Company. Here they traded with the Yanktonais and some of the Lakota bands. The Sioux bands were a haughty, standoffish people who wanted nothing to do with the Jackson boys. Yet there were a few Arikara who camped near the fort. In fact, William and Robert became best friends with an older boy who was, like them, a half-breed. While his father was Sioux, his mother was Arikara—the two of them had married years before when the two tribes were enjoying a rare period of peace between them. With the coming of the white man, hostilities resumed
between the tribes, so the woman returned to her own people and taught her son the Ankara’s hatred of the Lakota.

This night at his tiny fire, with the cold stars like pinpricks in the black curtain overhead, William remembered his good friend, the Arikara named Bloody Knife. Remembered how for three summers he boasted of being Custer’s favorite scout. So this night William thought on how Bloody Knife had died with Custer at the hands of his father’s people—the Lakota—there in the valley of the Greasy Grass. Killed not that many months ago by these same warriors who followed Sitting Bull north in search of the buffalo herds.

Bloody Knife had been a good friend, warning them almost from that first day about the Lakota—how the Lakota made enemies all too easily and would never get along with the white man. From him and other Rees, the brothers learned the Arikara language that summer of 1871.

Two summers later at Fort Buford they learned that the railroad would be coming west.

“This will be the beginning of a real war,” Bloody Knife had warned them. “The Lakota, the Cheyenne—now they will do everything they can to keep the white man out of their last buffalo ground.”

No matter, both Robert and William were eager to become army scouts. When they told their parents they had enlisted, Thomas frowned and bellowed that he would not have it.

“Thomas,” their mother intervened in that gentle way of hers, “the wild blood that is in these boys—the blood of Hugh Monroe and his fighting Scotch ancestors, the blood of many generations of Pikuni warriors—that blood cannot be denied. They are warriors. They must follow their hearts.”

“Well, then,” Thomas replied after some thought, “you always have your way.”

Tonight William fondly remembered that afternoon three years before. How they had left their quarters with their father so that he could give his blessing before the post commander. He remembered how his mother’s voice had risen plaintively as soon as they left the room: that high-pitched, mournful song, calling on the spirits, calling on the power of the Ancient Coyote, the sacred helper to watch over her sons as they rode into battle. As they chose to face death.

That summer they went downriver on a steamer for the first time with Bloody Knife and other Ree scouts. At Fort Lincoln they joined Custer’s cavalry and the men who were mapping the
route for the new railroad that would follow the Yellowstone west. The Sioux found them, harassed them time and again that summer before the soldiers finally turned back. William knew it would not be the last time he would face and fight Lakota warriors.

Nor would Custer shrink from returning—to fight them again, and eventually fall at the Greasy Grass.

Then the next summer—1874—the Jackson boys joined Custer once more, this time on a scout into the Black Hills.

Bloody Knife told them, “You know this is sacred ground to the Lakota. They watch us every day, wanting our scalps, but we are too strong for them. They will wait—and one day they will be too strong for Custer.”

William remembered the look on Bloody Knife’s face, remembered how they knew it would come to pass one day: this big fight when many of the scouts, and many soldiers, would be killed. And Custer would fall.

The past spring as the Jackson boys prepared to leave Fort Abraham Lincoln with General Alfred Terry’s column, bound for the Sioux country, Bloody Knife came to speak to the Arikara.

“I have just come from a talk with the Long Hair Custer. He says that his woman is terribly low of heart, and that the women of the other officers are also. So when we leave in the morning, Long Hair wants us to parade past the fort, to show the women that we are many and strong, to quiet their fears. We, my friends—we Indian scouts—are to lead this parade. It is truly a great honor.”

As Bloody Knife and Charlie Reynolds led them away from the fort the next morning, the Ree women sang a sad song that chilled William’s heart. Tonight he remembered the day he rode into the valley of the Greasy Grass with Reno’s men. He watched as Bloody Knife and Charlie Reynolds fell to the Lakota. He would always remember how the scouts had warned Long Hair that the Sioux were too many.

Tonight William wondered if there were too many for them to fight tomorrow.

   Johnny Bruguier stared into the darkness and tried to imagine how those soldiers felt—knowing they were surrounded by more than the night. He wondered if any of them had been with Reno’s men months ago: surrounded, bleeding, chewed up, and thirsty as they waited for the rising of the summer’s sun. If there
were any of Reno’s men with these soldiers, their hearts would be small and frightened this dark night.

Knowing that the warriors of Sitting Bull and Gall had them encircled once more.

Out of the darkness, where the fire’s light did not reach, emerged a warrior who came up to touch Johnny on the shoulder.

“The Bull wants to speak with you,” the man said quietly before he pointed off in a certain direction and sat down at Johnny’s fire, joining the other men, who talked in low tones of the day’s fighting.

Bruguier rose and went briefly to stroke the neck of his pony. The bay was a gift from Sitting Bull, who had named it Hohe Horse. In return Johnny had given the chief a Winchester rifle.

As he set off, he knew where he would find Sitting Bull and the rest of the war chiefs. But what would they want of him, Johnny wondered as he moved through the darkness, between patches of firelight where the hundreds of warriors sat through the night, waiting for the coming of the sun when they could renew their attack on the soldiers’ wagon train. Why had they called him?

If they ask me to help them figure out the heart of these soldiers, what am I to say?

Surely these Lakota can see the soldiers are not about to give in, to turn back the way the others did five days before. When Sitting Bull had led the bands across the Elk River a day before discovering that first train of soldier wagons, they had been looking for buffalo. The herds were great, and the beasts were fat. It was to be a good hunt—allowing the women to put away more than enough meat to last the winter as they did their best to avoid the white man.

“You have come, Big Leggings,” said the Bull as he motioned for Johnny to come join the group ringing the cheery fire where women passed pots of coffee among them all. The great chief’s most important advisers were all there in their blankets and robes: No Neck, Bull Eagle, Red Skirt, and Pretty Bear.

“What does Sitting Bull want of me this cold night?”

“Sit. Have some coffee to warm you. Then we will talk.”

Bruguier took his cup of coffee, holding it beneath his chin to feel the steam, enjoying the warmth of it between his two hands. He took a sip, then asked, “How is White Bull’s wound?”

“A soldier bullet tore through his left arm this afternoon before
the fighting ended. The bones are broken and may not heal right. But already as the sun was falling—he talks of wanting to fight the soldiers again tomorrow.”

“There are many in this camp who want to continue the fight tomorrow.”

Sitting Bull looked pensive as he replied, “More fighting, is it? All we wanted was to be left alone. When it came time to cross to the north bank of the Elk River, our scouts told us soldiers were huddled in their camp to the east of us,
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and that the Bear Coat had his soldiers building their log lodges west of us.
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It was the right thing to cross between them to reach this country so rich in buffalo.”

Around them, many of the elders and old warriors grunted in approbation of the Bull’s words.

Then the chief continued, saying, “After we put meat away for the coming time of cold and took many hides for the women to work through the winter moons, we always go north to the white man’s Fort Peck where we can trade with the Yanktonais Lakota and the Red River métis.”

“For more guns and bullets, yes,” Johnny agreed.

Sitting Bull sucked on his lower lip a few moments, staring at the fire before he said, “These soldiers are in our country. We try to stay away from them, but they come to our country, Big Leggings. We want only our country and to be left alone—but the soldiers come and trouble us in our hunting, trouble us in what our people have done for many, many winters on this buffalo ground. So it was that Gall and our warriors attacked the wagon train and drove it back the day after we crossed the Elk River. So it was that we again attacked the next wagon train yesterday.”

Johnny wagged his head, saying, “I don’t understand why the soldiers haven’t turned back as they did the last time we shot their mules and made things hard on them. We have them outnumbered. Maybe it is the far-shooting soldier guns.”

The chief glanced across the fire at the war chief who had lost two wives and three of his children in Reno’s attack on the Greasy Grass that past summer. “My friend’s heart still burns to kill more soldiers.”

“It always will burn,” Gall replied. “I don’t think there is
enough soldier blood to quench how my heart burns with hate for them.”

Sitting Bull nodded, looking back at Johnny to say, “At dawn Gall wants to lead his warriors against the wagon soldiers once again.”

With concern, Johnny’s eyes flicked at Gall for an instant before he asked of Sitting Bull, “And what if our warriors cannot stop the wagons tomorrow?”

Sitting Bull continued to stare at the fire some more before he finally looked up at Johnny. “It might soon be time for you to talk to these soldiers who refuse to turn back from our buffalo country.”