A Cold Day in Hell (43 page)

Feathers on the Head was across the embankment and among the enemy lodges before a dazed Three Bears even had his legs under him. The horseman held out a foot and extending a hand as he wheeled his pony about, putting himself and his animal between the Cheyenne and his war chief, grunting as he pulled Three Bears up behind him.

It was a pretty, pretty show, Seamus decided, watching the
two of them spin about in the next heartbeat, all four of their legs kicking the pony into a gallop to speed them out of that devil’s den of whining lead.

Something warned him, something so airy and ethereal—yet with enough substance that he thought he recognized it as Sam’s voice in his ear, crying out. Seamus jerked around, certain he would find her there, the voice had been that real. Instead, at seventy yards he saw them coming, ten, perhaps a dozen of them: bare-breasted warriors yelling as they raced toward him.

In that next breath Donegan realized he was alone.

With the whine of a bullet passing by his cheek, the Irishman collapsed along the neck of the bay and slapped the long end of the reins down its front shoulder, feeling it explode into motion beneath him. The animal leaped back out of the brush, across the icy stream, where it slipped twice before clawing its way up the cutbank to the north side of the Red Fork, hooves cutting into the crusty snow as lead followed man and horse across the flat toward Mackenzie and his bunch now that the other companies were just emerging along the north side of the canyon.

The cold, icy fingers of frozen mist were only then beginning to lift from the willow-clogged bottom ground.

Why everyone believed Hades was hot, Seamus figured he would never understand. As far as he was concerned, this morning had all the makings of hell itself.

T
he power of
Maahotse
must protect the People!

As he raced back to his Sacred Arrow Lodge from the hillside, raising the alarm, Black Hairy Dog found his woman already taking the
Maahotse
bundle from its tripod where the Arrows hung at that singular place of honor in the lodge. When he burst into the lodge, his woman turned toward him with a start, carefully cradling the Arrows in their kit-fox quiver. Around it she had wrapped a layer of thick buffalo rawhide.

“I will follow you,” she said to her husband as she laid the bundle across his arms.

“Together we will protect them,” he said as her fingers brushed the back of his hand lovingly. “Just as these Arrows have protected our people far back into the time beyond memory.”

Outside the lodge a group of men and boys had already gathered by the time Black Hairy Dog ducked through the door into the swirling, freezing mist that clung about their ankles. Most wore a shirt, or a vest of wool or buffalo hide, yet none wore leggings. On every face was the grim mask of determination. They had come there to protect the second of those two sacred objects of the
Ohmeseheso
.

“We must go to the hills,” the Arrow Priest told them, slowly stepping into the small gathering without another word, parting them like a boulder thrown down in the middle of a narrow
creek, the group closing in behind Black Hairy Dog’s woman.

He knew he must take the Sacred Arrows to a hill overlooking the upper end of the village, leading that small procession of those who would protect him and the
Maahotse
as the terrible clamor grew at the far end of the village: gunshots, hoofbeats, the cries of enemy Indians, and the shrill blasts of the soldier horns.

Only then, from the Heights overlooking the battle, could Black Hairy Dog rain the terrible unseen power of the Arrows down upon the enemy … and those
Tse-Tsehese
scouts who had come to help the soldiers against their own people.

“Dammit!” Ranald S. Mackenzie hollered, shrill as could be above the tumult as he slowed the orderlies and aides around him.

From what he could now see off to his left front, the Pawnee hadn’t got into the village quick enough to shut the back door on the damned Cheyenne. They were streaming out of the far end of the lodges, fanning across that flat ground taking them toward the deep gulch and the rocky slopes at the western end of the valley.

That had been the whole purpose of sending those damned North brothers in at the head of the charge with their Pawnee! That, and making sure he didn’t get his soldiers snared in a trap.

With the way the first of his troops had failed to form up into position during their charge, he had ordered the Norths to recross to the north side of the stream. In that way Ranald felt he had those additional horsemen close by—

Suddenly the air around him erupted with pistol fire. He spun in the saddle at the crack. Nearly every one of his orderlies had their revolvers barking, smoke curling up from the muzzles of the long-barrels, smoke whipped away on the brutally cold breeze. He spun to the other side in the saddle—spotting the Cheyenne warrior who had popped up nearly under their horses’ bellies as they had passed by. The near naked body flopped back into the thick brush, quivered a moment, then lay still.

Now we’re in the thick of it.

To the right his eyes quickly bounced over the slopes above him along that low plateau stretching a mile or so against the north side of the valley.

They could be anywhere in those rocks and brush. They’ll fight us like that—one at a time from behind a tree, a clump of
willow, down at the edge of a ravine. Dammit, it’s going to be a dirty job to clean them out and mop this thing up now that the whole goddamned village is scattering.

“Smith!”

He watched the young orderly nudge his horse closer.

“Yessir, General?”

“Get back there as fast as you can ride.” Mackenzie spat his words out with Gatling-gun speed. “Tell those company commanders to hurry their outfits through that neck and get across the creek! Got that?”

“Yessir!”

“Wait, Smith—I want those troops here and into the fight faster than on the double! Can you get that across to them!”

“Yessir!”

“Dismissed—now
go!”

Smith hunched forward as his legs pummeled the ribs of his mount, all the while savagely sawing the reins of his horse to the side—nearly twisting the animal back on itself before it bolted away like the spring in a child’s jack-in-the-box toy when the lid came flying back.

“General!” hollered Edward Wilson.

Mackenzie turned again, expecting to find another sniper along the hillside, but instead found some of his orderlies pointing in the same direction Private Wilson indicated.

“Bastards are making for that herd, aren’t they?” the colonel growled.

Damn! For starters they hadn’t sealed off the village, so now they would have to make a long and messy fight of it. And now it looked as if those damned Pawnee had got themselves bogged down in the village with those scouts from the Red Cloud Agency—which meant none of them were rounding up the enemy’s herds.

Which just might mean some of the Cheyenne would be free to scurry after the herds themselves and drive them off before Mackenzie’s force could capture them.

If the Cheyenne got those ponies into that broken ground at the far end of the valley, there was little his men could do to get them back, short of suicide. He had to keep those warriors—maybe two dozen or more from what he could count through his field glasses before the eyepieces fogged up against his face—had to keep every last one of them from reaching that big herd grazing up toward the bench to the west.

“Lieutenant McKinney!”

“General!” The handsome twenty-nine-year-old officer came up and skidded his horse to a halt, swapping his pistol to his left hand and saluted.

“My compliments,” Mackenzie said, once more proud of this young officer he had taken under his wing since his graduation from the U.S. Military Academy in seventy-one. “You see those reds yonder?” the colonel continued. “The ones hurrying to get their hands on that pony herd?”

The Tennessee-born McKinney squinted in the misty gray of that dawn. “Yes, I see them, General.”

“Can you see more of the enemy has taken up position behind that far hill down to the left of the herd?”

“Yes—I can make them out too.”

“I want you to take your men—”

“K Troop, yessir!” McKinney interrupted enthusiastically.

“Take your men and drive a wedge between those sonsabitches running on foot for those ponies yonder. Drive them off, keep them from getting the herd. Then turn your attention on those bastards setting up shop along the top of the knoll there,” Mackenzie said, grinding his teeth in frustration at possibly losing that herd to the enemy. “When you’ve got those warriors tied down on the knoll, take some of your men to wrangle that herd the enemy is attempting to recapture and get them headed back this way! Do you understand your orders?”

“Yes, sir—I think I do.”

“I’ve given you a handful, Lieutenant,” the colonel repeated with the affection he felt for McKinney evident.

“Yes, General!”

He watched the officer start to turn his horse away, then yell at McKinney’s back, “Lieutenant!” The officer reined up suddenly and turned, his face eager, expectant, a great smile cut across its lower half. “Lieutenant McKinney—this is your day to shine!”

“Yes, General!” McKinney cried out loudly. “Thank you! Thank you, sir!”

“For a goddamned brevet!” Mackenzie reminded with a flourish and a smile, flinging his fist in the air as the officer wheeled about to dash back to his men.

“Yes, sir!”

“Carpe
diem, Lieutenant! Seize the day, by God! Seize the day!”

* * *

Box Elder and Coal Bear walked a respectful distance behind the Buffalo Hat Woman, while Medicine Bear rode behind them all on a skittish pony, holding aloft
Nimhoyoh
, waving the thick hide of the Sacred Turner and its long black buffalo tails back and forth to ward off the enemy’s bullets that kicked up snow and dirt from the ground at their feet, sticks and splinters from the trees all about them.

“We have a long way to go,” young Medicine Bear called out, his voice filled with strain.

Distance mattered little to Box Elder. He could not see near nor far anyway. “We will get there. The powerful medicine in the Sacred Wheel I hold has made us invisible to the enemy—and the power in
Nimhoyoh
you carry turns away all the bullets flying around us. Do not be afraid!”

But the young man’s words were true: they did have a long way to go. Barely out of the village, the party was progressing all too slowly. From off to their right arose the thunder of many, many hoofbeats. Only iron-shod American horses made such noise on frozen ground.

“I see a dry creekbed—not far!” Coal Bear announced, his voice raspy with apprehension.

“We will make it there safely,” Box Elder replied confidently.

After reaching the mouth of the shallow ravine, the Buffalo Hat Woman led them up its twisting course as the ravine became deeper, until it intersected with the narrow canyon west of the village. Far up the sides of the canyon the women and children were climbing to the top, where the first arrivals were already digging rocks out of the side of the slope to stack one upon the other, forming breastworks for what they knew was coming: an all-out siege.

“Father!” a man’s voice called out from among the noisy din of many crying, wailing, cursing women.

“Is it you, Medicine Top?”

“Yes, father,” and the middle-aged warrior was at his father’s side, touching Box Elder’s arm.

“Your wife and daughter?”

“I brought them here,” Medicine Top answered. “They are safe. Now I return to the village to fight.”

A new voice called out, “Medicine Top!”

“Spotted Blackbird!” the son sang out. “Is your family safe?”

“My mother and sisters are all here now. Come with me back into the village to fight these Wolf People.”
*