A Cold Day in Hell (46 page)

More warriors now at the edge of the ravine.

They were almost within spitting distance of the enemy. Still advancing on the Cheyenne. Foot by bloody foot. Another soldier cried out, and two men on either side of him knelt to grab the wounded one, turned and dragged him to the rear as he
flailed his legs and screamed for immortal mercy, the front of his belly slicked with a dark stain.

“Damned gut wound,” the Irishman whispered under his breath. A horrible way to die. A slow journey, one filled with teethgrinding agony.

So it was he suddenly remembered American Horse, how bravely the chief had died that night within the smoking ruin of his village at Slim Buttes.
*
Would this madness ever end?

But as quickly Seamus knew it would not. Could not. Not until the Indian was back on each miserable patch of ground the government laid out for him and called a reservation. Not until these brave men had all been stripped of weapons and ponies—stripped of their warriorhood.

It was plain that these at the ravine had chosen to die standing up, fighting to the end as they protected family and home. Such a man fought savagely, Seamus recalled. Because he had so much to lose … and at the same time had nothing more to lose.

Such an enemy fought much, much harder than any soldier far away from home would ever fight.

Off to the right and at the center of the line the soldiers made the first close-quarters contact with the Cheyenne in a sudden clash of shock and noise and voices, grunts and screams. Then as quickly the rest of them were in the maw of that hand-to-hand struggle. Suddenly so close the troopers could smell last night’s supper on the breath of the warriors who flung their bodies against the two troops, close enough to smell the frozen grease on their hair. Close enough to smell the fear seeping from a man’s pores.

He smelled no fear from the Cheyenne this day.

Just in front of Seamus one of McKinney’s men flopped down onto his back, both his empty hands locked around the wrist of a warrior as the half-naked Cheyenne leaped onto him, a huge bear-jaw knife poised over his head. It was McKinney’s sergeant, Thomas H. Forsyth.

Seamus turned at the hip, aimed at the warrior’s head, point-blank, and squeezed the Winchester’s trigger. Watched the Cheyenne’s head snap away to the side in a bright spray of blood. Some of the crimson splattered upon that well-tanned face, which showed instant gratitude to him before the sergeant rolled out of the bloody snow.

Forsyth and another, Private Thomas Ryan, knelt over the
body of their lieutenant, protecting McKinney as more warriors swarmed out of the deep ravine. Cartridge by cartridge they slammed beneath the trapdoors of their Springfields, daring to hold back the horde that screeched defiance and death.

“Deploy, goddammit!” the old sergeant bellowed again above the lieutenant’s body. “Don’t let them overrun us! Deploy as skirmishers! And
stand!”

Then Donegan himself bawled a command above the clamor as he levered another cartridge into the breech and turned to meet the red onslaught, “Look the bastards in the eye, goddammit! Stand and look ’em in the eye!”

In the next breath Sergeant Frank Murray and Corporal William J. Linn were beside Ryan and Forsyth over the officer’s body, standing, waving, hollering, rallying others who were still some twenty yards behind—exhorting every man of them to make a stand over their fallen comrades.

Lieutenant Otis darted here, then there, moving among the rest of the men as they knelt and went about their bloody, dirty work of it, ordering his soldiers of M Troop to lay down fire to cover the four who were protecting their commanding officer.

Linn pitched back, clutching at his hip, groaning as his legs thrashed in the snow and he scooted off in a bloody furrow, clawing the snow for his carbine. Another soldier knelt over him holding the wounded man down as he stretched for the Springfield.

Forsyth suddenly twisted to the side as he was reaching out to the wounded corporal—struck along the side of the head with a bullet that knocked off his hat, opening up a bloody flesh wound.

“We’ll keep at ’em, Sarge!” Linn hollered in a pain-ridden gasp. Then he rolled over onto his side and dragged up his carbine, coolly slamming home another copper cartridge as he went on fighting despite the disabling wound.

Emboldened by the spirit of such brave men, Seamus inched forward, fired at a sudden appearance of more warriors breaking over the rim of the ravine, then crouched to reload. His scar prickled.

Whirling at the same moment he heard the whistle of the war club knifing through the freezing air. At the end of the club stood a tall, sinewy warrior whose eyes glittered with the fires of hate. Seamus started to lunge aside—

Grunting as the club’s handle smacked across his left shoulder, the Irishman collapsed into the snow. Stars shot from his
eyes as he sensed the startling cold smack his cheek; then he slowly realized a shadow blotted out the brilliant sunlight.

Pulling his ’73 Model Colt and raking back the hammer in one motion, Donegan pointed it at the wide, screeching mouth above him … as the pistol jerked in his left hand.

He quickly rolled aside onto the wounded shoulder and fired again from his back. A second time the warrior jerked as another bullet struck him … then slowly the club pitched from his hands and he fell stiff-legged all but atop the Irishman.

Heaving the dead warrior off him, Donegan rose to one knee shakily. He swapped the pistol to his right hand, the whole left arm gone numb of a sudden, all but refusing to move. There on his knee he snapped the hammer back, aimed, and fired. Drew the hammer back again. Aimed at one of the warriors swarming over the nearby soldiers. Pulled the trigger. Watched the Cheyenne heave forward, clutching his armpit—as the Irishman yanked down on the hammer once more. Then fired as he pitched to his feet.

The screeching cries pulled him around as surely as if someone had him on a short length of rope. Up the bottom of the ravine bolted more warriors hurtling into the eye-to-eye combat, the first of them throwing themselves against the slick side of the coulee after firing a few shots at the soldiers, there to claw their way up through the icy snow to reach the heart of the battle itself.

In those few terrible minutes the ground lay littered with the refuse of that close and dirty fight: discarded weapons here and there among the bodies of the fallen warriors and the wounded soldiers.

Hamilton’s men began to fall back against Davis’s troopers beneath the ferocity of the warriors’ attack as the Cheyenne cut and slashed and hacked their way into the blue ranks. Muscle strained against muscle until a knife or club, tomahawk or bullet, found its mark.

Then Donegan realized there was something wrong about the sound of those bullets whining in among the skirmish, most of them landing in the midst of the Cheyenne reinforcements clambering out of the ravine. The shots hadn’t been fired from anywhere close—those bullets were instead fired from the far ridge … where Cosgrove and Schuyler had their Shoshone scouts positioned.

As the allies walked their rounds into the melee, the Cheyenne turned, one by one, suddenly aware that they were drawing
fire from far away. Just as quickly as it seemed the weary, frightened soldiers were about to be overwhelmed and to die among the bodies of McKinney’s men, the tide of that skirmish shifted dramatically. Precipitously. In the time it would take a man to pass his hand over a candle.

Perhaps believing it to be something mysterious that bullets were falling among them from the sky—at the very least a bad omen—the warriors began shouting among themselves, falling back, most of them tumbling back down the icy side of the ravine, picking themselves out of the disturbed snow at the bottom and racing away from the soldiers.

Like the rest, Seamus fired the last shot in his revolver at the backs of those warriors, then pulled his second pistol and cocked it—aiming this time at the Cheyenne riflemen who still lay ensconced on the top of the nearby knoll, where they were doing their best to hold a long-range duel with the Shoshone and put short-range pressure on the soldiers arrayed all along the rim of that ravine of death.

How his shoulder ached when he dared move it, but move it he could. Only the cold made it hurt, he promised himself. It would get better once he got warm. He cocked and fired again at the distant targets as he recognized the approaching sound of hoofbeats. At least two more companies were hurrying to the rescue, a battalion made up of some Fifth and Third cavalry troopers under Major G. A. Gordon. Puffs of pistol smoke rose like gray tatters above the racing horsemen as they bore down on the fleeing warriors, yelling, urging on their mounts as the soldiers wheeled left, following that path the ravine slashed across the prairie. Perhaps to cut off the warriors’ retreat.

As the heat of that close and dirty fighting passed, the cold seemed to rush back in to take its place. Donegan turned, stepping back to join the others who knelt over the wounded.

Gazing to the northeast, Donegan realized Mackenzie had committed all his troops. The colonel had himself no more reserves to pitch into the fray. Which meant … if Hamilton and Davis and Wessels hadn’t got the job done by themselves—they too would have likely been overrun.

“How many you figure we got?”

Seamus looked up suddenly, finding the young soldier who had been with McKinney’s company when they were ambushed, the same young soldier who had been in full retreat before he agreed to return to the fight.

Gazing toward the ravine, Seamus quickly counted the bodies
the fleeing warriors were carrying off. “Ten. Maybeso it looks like it could be a dozen.”

Around him a handful of the troopers were making sure what Cheyenne still lay on the battleground were dead. One, two shots or more as the blood lust flushed out of the young soldiers brought so close to death themselves.

“And at least eight up here they didn’t get off with,” Frank Grouard said as he came up to pound Donegan on the shoulder.

Shards of pain splintered up his neck and shot down his backbone. “Dammit, don’t do that!”

“You hit?” the half-breed asked with worry on his face as a bullet whispered over their heads.

“No. Leastways I ain’t been shot,” Seamus replied. “Where the hell did you come from?”

“Up there with that captain’s outfit at the head of the ravine,” Frank replied, pointing his rifle toward the north side of the valley. “I hear his name is Wessels.”

Turning to the youngster, Donegan said, “Twenty of ’em—we got at least twenty of ’em, Private.”

“Yeah,” the soldier whispered with a shudder. “Twenty.”

Seamus studied his face a moment, then said, “You can bloody well be proud of that fight you just come through.”

The young soldier glanced around quickly as the officers formed up platoons to lay down covering fire while a few others gathered up the dead and wounded, dragging them back out of range of those Cheyenne riflemen on the knoll.

“Things still feel a little hot here,” Grouard said, cradling the Irishman’s left wrist. “Let’s go find you a surgeon—have him take a look at your shoulder.”

Donegan shrugged him off. “Leave it be, dammit. Look at them others they’re taking off—lot worse off’n me. There’s more here for them sawbones to worry about than my bleeming shoulder.”

T
he cold in her belly was far icier than the cold in that tiny room at the top of Old Bedlam.

Gripped with its sudden, startling, frightening presence, she awoke with a start in the dark, blinking … and her arm habitually reached across that narrow bed for him. To assure herself of his presence, the warmth of his bulk—but that great abiding security of his nearness was not there.

Samantha sat up with a start. Her heart beat as if it would fly out of her chest, her breath catching in her throat like a ragged scrap of muslin snagged on a rusty strand of barbed wire. Streamers of frost gathered before her face. The small stove in the corner barely glowed at all.