A Cold Day in Hell (39 page)

Would they ever get into position to make their charge and begin the attack before daylight?

Or would they find they had to lay to another day in some pocket away from the village and not be able to have their fight until the twenty-sixth?

He fretted at their snail’s pace, knowing most of the others must be every bit as anxious as he was to get on with the fight. Now that they were there, now that it was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass office monkey, there simply was nothing that could warm a man up like a fight for his life. A good blood-throbbing scrap of it.

How he wanted to get this over and done with, then home to both of them.

I’ll figure out the boy’s name on the trip back, he promised himself again. Time enough to do that, Seamus. Get this fight out of the way—and you can name your son.

Near two o’clock the column squeezed itself again through a narrowing crimson defile the scouts from Red Cloud’s agency called “Sioux Pass.” For more than five miles the column snaked through the tall, rocky canyon, the immense walls of which were
stippled with stunted trees. Directly above them glittered no more than a long angular strip of star-studded sky. Ahead in the distance hung the silver-blue quarter of a moon, quickly falling into the west after its own brief ride across the heavens.

“Eight more miles,” came the whispered word back from the Indian trackers leading them through the darkness.

Eight miles below the valley where the scouts claimed Mackenzie’s soldiers would find the Cheyenne village, they struck the Red Fork of the Powder River. Out of that bleak, early-morning darkness two horsemen approached the head of the column. They proved to be Red Shirt and Jackass, the two Sioux scouts who had stayed behind to keep an eye on the village. It was plain to see that their ponies were done in: Jackass’s animal stumbled, about with its weary rider and eventually fell. Both men jabbered excitedly about seeing many ponies and even counting a few lodges in the dark. During the brief halt the pair was fed hardtack and cold bacon, then told to rejoin their fellow warriors as the column pressed on into the darkness.

Hoar frost from every nostril and mouth hung like a thickening blanket over the entire serpentine column eventually slithering itself out of the rocky gorge, emerging upon a patch of smoother, more open ground some half-mile wide by three miles in length, which the Sioux had long ago named the “Race Course.” Behind them to the east, the first telltale narrow thread of gray light stretched atop the distant horizon.

How close were they now?

While Seamus and the head of the march spread out there where the narrow ravine widened beside the nearby stream tumbling over its icy bed, its faint echo splashing off the canyon walls, the rest of the column came to a halt behind him. The men quieted their animals without instruction from their officers. And listened.

They needed no prodding, for all could hear the distant, throbbing, man-made reverberation wending its way up to them from afar.

“That’s a goddamned drum!” whispered Billy Garnett, Sioux interpreter with the expedition.

“Hell if it ain’t!” said Billy Hunter, half-breed guide serving the North’s Pawnee battalion.

“Shush!” someone ordered nearby.

You could almost feel them hold their breath—eleven hundred of them now. So damned quiet a man could make out the snort of a horse halfway down the entire length of the column,
maybe even hear the fart of one of Tom Moore’s mules at the very end of the entire procession.

“Rowland!” Mackenzie called out to his headquarters group.

“I’m here,” the squaw man replied, inching his horse forward.

“Bring some of your Cheyenne,” the colonel ordered. “Have them take us ahead to where we might get us a look at the village.”

Rowland gestured to Roan Bear, Cut Nose, and Little Fish, three of those who sat their ponies behind him. Wordlessly the trio led off as the squaw man and Mackenzie followed until all five were swallowed by the leafless willow choking a bend in the valley ahead.

Now the nearly four hundred Indian allies visibly became restless, muttering and restive, barely able to contain their primal excitement. Most of them took this moment to pull off to one side or another, leaping from their ponies. Donegan had seen the whole process many times before, yet it never ceased to make his heart leap in anticipation—to watch these Indians go about their toilet, pulling out paints and grease, bringing forth feathers and amulets, those stuffed birds and animal skins they would tie in their hair, smearing their braids with white earth or hanging empty brass cartridges in their black tresses, every last one of them mumbling to the spirits and invoking his private war medicine now that they were within earshot of the enemy.

Now that every last one of them knew they would not have to wait out another day.

This was the morning of the attack.

There were Northern Cheyenne in there. While the various Lakota bands might eventually be whipped in detail and driven back to the agencies—the Northern Cheyenne were known to fight to the last man.

As Sharp Nose rode among the Red Cloud scouts, whispering low, signing with his quick hands, the scouts dropped to the ground, adjusting their reins and pad saddles.

Behind Donegan the soldiers were now ordered out of their McClellans, instructed that here they would tighten cinches, check the loads in their .45-caliber single-action Colt revolvers with the seven-and-a-half-inch barrels. Make sure they had handy the hundred rounds of ammunition each of them carried for his .45/70 Springfield carbine.

The Indians went among one another, talking low, touching hands, pounding one another on the shoulders, making low cries
of the wolf or some other creature which would provide its spiritual protection now that they stood on the brink of battle.

Donegan knew they were reminding one another that this would be a glorious day—perhaps a great day to die. Knowing that these Northern Cheyenne would put up a fight truly worthy of a warrior’s reputation.

He fingered the buckle on his bridle, then nervously loosened both pistols in their holsters, checking next the lever and trigger action on the Model ’73 Winchester, and finally allowed himself to turn, looking up the darkened canyon whence came that low, steady hammer of a great war drum. The enemy was awake. And perhaps they were ready for the attack.

As he stood beneath the halo of frost steaming from the bay’s nostrils, Seamus thought of Samantha and the boy. Hoping she would not worry, praying she would talk to the child about his father every day, just as he had pledged her to do while he was gone from them both.

Then he thought on his mother, his eyes drawn up to the sides of the canyon that rose before them. Thoughts of Uncle Ian far to the west in that Oregon country—how he raised family and stock and crops, his feet buried in the rich soil, the sort of man a woman could clearly count on.

Then as his eyes climbed even farther, ascending from the ridgetop into that icy blue pricked with countless stars, his thoughts naturally turned to Uncle Liam. And Seamus began to weep, silent tears spilling from his eyes, freezing on his cheeks, icing in the mat of winter’s beard.

Somehow sensing that man was with him at this very minute, in this forbidding land—at his shoulder once more, now that the fighting was at hand.

Last night as the sun began to lengthen shadows at the upper end of the valley, Last Bull’s warriors organized the men of the village to drag in dry timber from the surrounding area. They stood the huge trunks on end to form a conical “skunk,” into the center of which they then stuffed smaller kindling wood. As the light disappeared from the sky, the Kit Fox Society ignited their bonfire while others dragged up the huge drum they had captured from the Shoshone village. Six men could sit around it without crowding, each of them singing and beating time for the dancers.

At the quivering fringe of the firelight some of the mothers protectively hovered beside their daughters. Other mothers tied
lengths of rawhide or braided horsehair from their daughter’s belt to another until five or six of them were joined together in this fashion. It was their hope that such a precaution would prevent the young Kit Fox warriors from dashing up to snatch one of the young women and pirate her away when the celebration became heady with passion. By and large most of the mothers did not stray far from the dancing circle, staying in sight of their daughters, hoping to protect them from Last Bull’s strutting warriors.

And strut they did.

They came through the village, herding everyone toward the huge dance arena. And when the hundreds were gathered and the drum began to throb, the cocky warriors went among the crowd, commanding all to dance or be beaten with bows—a degrading humiliation. Only the most courageous refused to dance to the Kit Foxes’ victory over the Shoshone.

Men like Brave Wolf, who had taken a vow as a Contrary. Even Last Bull did not molest such a crazy, wanting-to-die warrior. It was gratifying to Morning Star to find that Brave Wolf and a handful of other young Contraries kept moving in and out of camp to the east in their lonely vigil—their keen senses on edge for the soldiers they expected to come from that direction. Up among the huge boulders along the sides of the canyon they rode, listening for any sound, watching for the glint of a rifle barrel or bridle in the winter moonlight.

Then the moon fell in the southwest and only the stars lit the sky with a cold blue light. Brave Wolf and the others returned to camp, reporting in to the three Old-Man Chiefs. What starlight fell from the sky was not enough to help them see an enemy far away in that rugged country.

The singing and dancing continued as the People grew more and more weary, and the Kit Foxes worked themselves into a frenzy of war lust.

Sometime after the moon had fallen, Sits in the Night went to check on his ponies he had driven down below the village to graze. As he was approaching the open glade where he had left them Sits in the Night saw someone driving the ponies off to the east. His heart in his throat, he reined about immediately and raced back to the village. There he told his story to the camp crier, who immediately went through those gathered at the dance to tell the story of someone stealing the horses.

“I got there in time to see people driving off my ponies. I could see them whipping my ponies. I could hear the blows as
they struck my animals. I think the soldiers have come—for farther down from there I heard a rumbling noise!”

“Aiyee!”
screeched several people in terror.

Many held their hands over their mouths, their eyes wide as silver conchos, afraid that Box Elder’s vision was coming to pass.

The crier declared, “We had better look to making breastworks! The soldiers are nearly upon us!”

Crow Split Nose—chief of the
Himo-we-yuhk-is
, the Crooked Lances, and second in command of the Elk Society only to Little Wolf—stepped forward to bravely declare, “I think it would be a good idea for the women and children to tear down the lodges and take them up to that cutbank to the west where there is a good place to throw up breastworks. They should do this at once.”

Emboldened by the news of strangers around their camp and the courageous words of those who would defy Last Bull’s Kit Foxes, many of the families turned away at this time and once more prepared to take blankets and robes and special treasures into the surrounding hills to safety.

But as quickly the brazen chief and Wrapped Hair appeared in their midst, screaming for their warriors, sending the bold young men here and there—ordering them to whip anyone who attempted to leave the village. If simply cutting cinches would not work, the Kit Foxes were to beat their own people with their bows.

“No one will leave this village tonight!”

Wrapped Hair agreed, raising his voice in the martial call. “We will stay up all night and dance—then defeat the soldiers come morning!”

Last Bull whirled on Crow Split Nose with a cruel sneer, spiting out his words, “Why are you so afraid of the
ve-ho-e
soldiers, Crow Split Nose? You will not be the only man killed if we are attacked!”

“I do not care for myself,” the Elk Society leader replied stoically. “I care only for the women and children who will be killed because of your foolishness. I want to get them up where they will be safe when the bullets fly about our heads. We must leave only men in camp.”

“Yes—there will be men in camp!” Last Bull roared.

“Good,” Crow Split Nose said, his eyes gleaming with fury. “Come morning you will know what is to happen to our people. Wait until morning, Last Bull—and your fate will be at your door!”

Laughing off that challenge, the war chief of the Kit Foxes turned to his warriors and once more commanded them to scatter, staying on guard to see that no one fled camp. Once more he waved his arms and the drum began, the songs rising into the cold night air as the hundreds of feet pounded the frozen earth.

It filled Morning Star’s heart with sadness as he watched his own three sons join the dancing.