A Cold Day in Hell (49 page)

“Young Two Moon!” Crow Necklace hollered, still atop his pinto, as he saw his friend emerge out of the rolling, frosty mist hugging the frozen ground.

Then, as Young Two Moon watched, his friend was slung sideways off his pony, blood smearing his belly.

Racing to Crow Necklace’s side, Young Two Moon leaped to the ground, grabbing the young warrior’s arm to wrap around his neck. Bullets sang around them like angry hornets. Young Two Moon struggled to rise with Crow Necklace, murmuring all the time to calm his friend and the pony until he succeeded in hoisting Crow Necklace over the back of the pinto. Then, scooping up the pinto’s rein, Young Two Moon climbed atop his own horse and kicked it into motion—fleeing that furious close-quarters fighting with the Wolf People.

He sped with the body of his friend into the mouth of the narrow canyon where the women and children had gone, hoping
to find someone to help him. Ahead of him a short distance ran five barefoot women, both young and old. He called out to them.

“Come back!”

After they stopped and finally seemed resigned to return to the young warrior, he told them, “My friend is hurt. Will you help him?”

“Is he a relative?” a woman asked, her eyes as frightened as the others.

“No. He is my friend.”

A second woman spoke up as she looked into Crow Necklace’s face. “This man is one of the scouts who found out that the soldiers were coming. Are you one too?”

“Yes, together we saw the soldiers and their scouts coming from the Powder.”

“We will take him,” the first woman said as she stepped forward and slipped the pinto’s rein from Young Two Moon’s hand. “If your friend is meant to live, he will live. You go and fight now.”

The power of the People brought tears to Coal Bear’s old eyes that bitterly cold morning. Not only did they have the strength of
Esevone
—the Sacred Buffalo Hat protecting them. Not only did they have the power of
Nimhoyoh
, which Medicine Bear continued to wave from side to side up there atop the breastworks. Not only did the
Tse-Tsehese
have the strange magic of Box Elder’s Sacred Wheel Lance to make them invisible.

They had men like Long Jaw drawing the soldier and scout bullets away from Coal Bear and his woman as they hurried
Esevone
through the shallow ravine and onto another ridge. While they scrambled as quickly as their old legs would allow them, they again attracted the attention of soldier bullets. But as quickly as the snarling wasps began to strike the ground around them, up raced the boy called Medicine Bear on his pony, waving the Sacred Turner on the wand at the end of his arm with its sacred power to turn aside all harm from the old couple.

It was only in this way—from ridge to gully, from gully to bluff, and on to the next ravine—that Coal Bear and his woman finally made it to the deep canyon where the others had fled, where the women old and young clutched their children against them and together sang the songs their warriors needed to hear as they plunged into battle.

Foot by foot the old man climbed, stopping often to turn and reach down a hand to his woman, who would pass up the
Buffalo Hat; then she would climb on around him, and he would pass the Sacred Hat up to her. Leapfrogging their way up the steep side of that cliff, they made it to the top of the breastworks where the others had gathered.

Many of the women trilled their tongues when they recognized it was Coal Bear—keeper of the Northern People’s power.

There in the cruel wind that kicked up frozen, icy snow off the ground around him, the old chief raised the sacred bundle over his head, looked into the rising sun, and began singing.

His eyes closed, tears streaming down his cheeks.

“Hear me,
Ma-heo-o!
Save my people! If you must take someone—take me, I pray you! But save my people!”

By the time Donegan and Grouard reached Mackenzie, the colonel and his orderlies were more than halfway up the side of a red sandstone spur that jutted from the north wall of the canyon onto the valley floor. From the heights Mackenzie could monitor most of the battlefield, save only for what fierce fighting was still raging at the south side of the village as the Pawnee and Sioux punched their way through the camp yard by yard, lodge by lodge.

The Cheyenne had fallen back foot by foot, covering the retreat of their families. And for the first time that morning as the sun climbed fully above the eastern rim of the valley, it looked as if the village was all but in control of Mackenzie’s forces. The colonel had deployed his battalions with deadly effectiveness.

Some of the companies hung back of the others to act as a rear guard and to prevent the Cheyenne from slipping around behind the soldiers’ flanks.

Other units worked in concert with the Pawnee as well as the Sioux and Cheyenne scouts to muscle their way into the village, plunging through it, where the fighting was tough against the hardy horsemen and snipers who hid within the lodges, contesting every foot of ground.

Still more of the troopers hunkered down in a copse of timber at the far western edge of the village, pinned there after beginning an assault on the warriors who tenaciously held on to the narrow mouth of a deep canyon where the women and children had escaped. Despite the fact that they were fighting against great odds in that skirmish, the warriors put up a stern resistance, firing from behind boulders and piles of rock, from behind this tree or that as they seemed to be constantly moving, never giving the soldiers a stationary target.

And from that low hill just to the northeast of the village came bullets that rained down here and there—as warriors sought to harass the soldiers on three sides of that battlefield. As the moments dragged on, fewer and fewer of the Cheyenne remained atop that knoll, until there were only five.

Mackenzie pulled the field glasses from his eyes, squinting in the brilliant sunlight bouncing off the snow. “That handful are making a damned nuisance of themselves.”

“They’re almost in the middle of the fight now,” commented Lieutenant Joseph H. Dorst. “They command quite a field of fire, General.”

“I can see that!” Mackenzie snapped uncharacteristically at his regimental adjutant. Then he turned to the half-breed and the Irishman. “How about you two? Should we wipe that hilltop clear?”

“As long as those Cheyenne are up there making things hot for your sojurs,” Seamus said, “none of us gonna be safe in that village.”

“Just my thinking exactly,” Mackenzie replied, wheeling about to pull Dorst close. “Take my compliments to Captain Taylor over there by the village. Tell him I need to clear that hilltop as soon as I can, and for him to form up a charge on the heights.”

Dorst saluted, saying, “I’ll leave in just a moment, General.”

He slid from the saddle and threw up the stirrup fender so he could give a tug on the cinch. Finding it secure, the adjutant climbed back atop his horse, asking, “Am I to return here, sir?”

“By all means, Lieutenant. Report back as soon as practicable. And whatever you do—stay low on your ride. Until that hill is cleared, any courier crossing that open plain makes a sitting duck of himself.”

Tugging down the brim of his hat, Dorst bade farewell to the headquarters group with a smile. “So—until I see your hairy mugs again!”

And he was off, lying back in the saddle a ways as his horse picked its way down the steep incline of the rock outcrop until he neared the bottom. There the wiry Dorst leaned forward and leaped his mount onto the rolling prairie, shooting off like a jockey spurring his blooded thoroughbred in a sudden burst of speed out of the starting gate. Lying low along the animal’s withers, he slapped its front flanks with a side-to-side arch of his reins.

“General?”

They all turned to find interpreter Billy Garnett loping to a halt with the Sioux leader Three Bears.

“What is it?”

“I better tell you something now while I got the chance.”

“Tell me what?” Mackenzie asked. His eyes flicked toward the Sioux chief impatiently.

“Three Bears says you gotta listen to his way of fighting—or all your men gonna fall like Custer’s.”

The colonel snorted. Some of his aides laughed outright. “Jesus H. Christ, Garnett!” Mackenzie scoffed. “Just look at the battlefield! Does it appear we’re about to be overrun?”

Garnett’s stoic face did not betray his belief in the words of Three Bears. He continued, “The Cheyenne are all driven out. Meaning they’re all around us now. They got the hills, the high ground, General. Three Bears is dead set on telling you what he thinks you oughtta know.”

“And what is that?”

“He says you gotta order your men to fight one by one. Not like soldiers anymore. Not like them what got killed with Custer—they hung together like soldiers. Officers kept ’em bunched up like sheep. You gotta tell your men to fight the Indians one on one, like these here Cheyenne are gonna do to us.”

Mackenzie turned quickly to the Sioux chief. “Is that how these Cheyenne are going to fight me now, Three Bears?”

The Indian nodded, not requiring any translation.

“From bush to bush, is it? Fighting from rock to rock, man to man, eh?” Mackenzie asked. “I don’t think so, gentlemen. In fact, you will soon see my battle plan prevail.” Then he turned his back on Three Bears and Garnett as if dismissing them both, placing the field glasses to his eyes as he slowly perused the terrain below him.

“How do things look, General?” asked Major George Gordon, still seeming a bit anxious. “Do the Cheyenne have us surrounded, like they did Custer’s outfit?”

“The day is won, gentlemen,” Mackenzie reassured them as they all watched the bullets begin to kick up tiny cascades of snow around that lone horseman, Dorst, sprinting across that open ground below. “But we still have much to do before this victory is complete.”

“Will we destroy the village and its contents, General?” asked Lieutenant Henry W. Lawton.

“Damn right I will,” the colonel replied, then—noticing the dour expression on the two civilians’ faces—Mackenzie asked,
“Don’t you two think we should wipe the earth clear of all that this band of renegade Cheyenne ever owned?”

“I suppose that’s what you’re needing to do,” Donegan said. “It’s just that I can’t shake the memory of what Reynolds did all too quickly last winter farther north on the Powder.”

Mackenzie visibly bristled, his eyes glowering. “Damn you, Irishman! I’m no pompous desk straddler like Reynolds! And I’ve never been accused of an error in judgment. Now, you yourself were with me at the Palo Duro
*
when we impoverished the Kwahadi of Quanah Parker, then slaughtered their wealth in ponies. It was a total success. So that’s exactly what we’ll do here.”

“As long as your men ain’t freezing and you ask ’em to march on empty bellies,” Grouard commented.

His eyes became cold fires as he glared at the half-breed. “Never have I asked more of any man than I was willing to sacrifice myself. I have my orders. General Crook expects me to finish the job here.”

Donegan said, “That’s right, General. Just like Reynolds was told to finish the job on the Powder.”

“Listen, you son of a bitch,” Mackenzie snapped with uncharacteristic alarm. “I don’t know what’s come over you, but maybe you don’t remember just who the hell asked you to join in on this expedition.”

“Hold on, General,” Seamus began to apologize, his tone becoming softer. “Perhaps I was a bit out of the barracks with that talk about Reynolds. Sorry that what I said nettled you the way it did. No offense meant toward you. Damn, if I don’t find myself running loose in the tongue department when I oughtta be keeping this bleeding mouth shut.”

“It’s all right,” Mackenzie said, his face softening as well, the anger passed.

Donegan explained, “General, I for one should damn well know you’re not the kind to go off and do something stupid … leaving your men without food or protection against the weather. I’m sorry, for I plainly spoke out of line.”

“Apology accepted, Mr. Donegan.” Then Mackenzie’s smile was gone as he rose in the stirrups and brought the field glasses to his eyes. “Looks like Mr. Dorst is at the end of a pretty ride, gentlemen.”

Seamus squinted across the dazzling shimmer reflecting off
the snow. Dorst was nearing the end of his race across the open no-man’s-land hard to their left.

No longer was it a close and dirty scrap, hand-to-hand and mean. Now Mackenzie had himself what was shaping up to be a day-long battle to fight.

And the sun had barely lifted off the ridges to the east.

In their front at the center of the open ground, troopers under Hamilton and Hemphill were hunkered down, all but under the guns of the Cheyenne who had taken up protected positions among the rocks dippling the nearby heights.

Off to the far right at the northern spread of the valley, Wessels and Russell of the Third were holding their own far up at the head of that deadly ravine where McKinney’s men had charged into the jaws of Hell.

And some minutes earlier Captain Alfred B. Taylor’s battalion of L and G troops, Fifth U.S. Cavalry, had just set up a dismounted skirmish line where they began a long-range duel with those dogged and persistent warriors atop the low knoll on the far side of the deep ravine. That skirmishing began at the completion of a gallant charge into the lower end of the Cheyenne camp, where they slashed their way lengthwise through the long, narrow horseshoe crescent of lodges—driving before them the last snipers who burst from the far end of the camp.

Killing every warrior who would not be driven before them.

As he strode up and down the skirmish line behind his men, Taylor himself discovered the tattered hole in the wide, flapping lapel of his caped mackintosh: pierced by a Cheyenne bullet—right over his heart.

He licked his dry lips and shook his head, soundlessly uttering his prayer of thanks as he kept on moving up and down the line, cheering on his men in that hot little fight they were having of it.

“It’s our day!” he cried in the bitter cold. “They’re whipped and on the run now!”