A Cold Day in Hell

by Terry C. Johnston

  “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.”*

  “Wait,” Box Elder said to restrain them, turning his face out of the sharp wind that stung his wrinkled cheeks as it fiercely drove the particles of old snow against his bare flesh. “Look back toward the village, into the valley. Is there a low hill where I might go to look down upon all that takes place?”

  For a moment the old man waited on Medicine Top; then the young man answered.

  “Yes. I see it. A rounded hill.”

  He gripped his son’s arm tightly. “How far?”

  “Not far.”

  “Take me there,” his voice pleaded at the same time it demanded.

  Spotted Blackbird protested. “We should be fighting the soldiers and their scouts in the village before they destroy all that we have!”

  “No,” Medicine Top argued, laying a hand atop the old man’s. “I will stay with my father for now.”

  “Spotted Blackbird—you both will take me to the hill,” Box Elder said. “From there I will show you how our medicine fights the soldiers just as powerfully as our bullets and guns.”

  “Irishman!”

  “General!” Seamus called out in reply as he reined up near Mackenzie and his aides.

  “You’ve been to the village?”

  “Barely. Fighting off snipers.”

  “How goes the fight?”

  “The Pawnee are having a time of it, what with the struggle the Cheyenne are making of it—determined to hold on to their village,” Donegan huffed, twisting in the saddle to point behind him at the high ridge to the south of the camp. “But up there Cosgrove and Schuyler have the Snakes laying down a pretty heavy fire among those lodges. Making things hot for what warriors are still in there.”

  “There—that’s the bunch that worries me,” Mackenzie said, pointing his gauntleted arm to the southwest.

  “Along the brow of that hill?” Seamus asked, squinting into the growing light reflected off the bright and crusty snow.

  “They’re covering the retreat of their women, and harassing our men already in among the lodges, securing the village.”

  “But from the looks of things,” Donegan replied, seeing the troopers formed up and beginning to move out, “you’ll have that under control in short time.”

  “That’s McKinney’s troop—they’re going to have a field day of it!” the colonel said enthusiastically.

  “May I join them?”

  “By all means, Irishman,” Mackenzie answered. “Get your licks in before there’s nothing more than some mopping up—by all means!”

  “General!” Seamus whooped, his adrenaline bubbling as he saluted before wheeling away at a gallop.

  He had covered most of that gently rolling, level ground, easing the bay into a full-out gallop to reach the tail roots of the last of McKinney’s men racing forward in a tight column of fours, pistols drawn up, elbows bent, at the ready—when he saw the lieutenant suddenly rise in his stirrups, waving, reining to the side at the sudden appearance of that lip of a dark scar slashed across the white prairie.

  At the next moment those first four troopers behind McKinney immediately sawed to the right, two dozen—maybe as many as thirty—Cheyenne warriors sprang out of the ground directly in front of the soldiers.

  Right out of the bloody ground!

  For that instant Donegan’s mind grappled with it, knowing the enemy must have hidden themselves down in that twenty-foot-deep ravine so well that the soldiers were powerless to see the enemy until they were right upon them.

  As the second group of four struggl
ed to wheel right, they jammed into McKinney’s first four as the shots exploded into them, point-blank.

  His breath frozen in his chest, Donegan watched the muzzles of those Cheyenne rifles spit bright-orange jets of flame, illuminating the dawn mist, gray gun smoke wisping up from the lip of that ravine to congeal over the warriors’ heads as they fired more shots into the confused ranks.

  Then the rest of McKinney’s troopers were all thrust together: many of M Troop’s horses suddenly reared at the gunshots and the Cheyenne’s cries, fighting their riders who twisted on their reins. The mounts corkscrewed about on their hind legs, pitching backward wildly with forelegs slashing the air, hurtling their riders off to the side as the sound of those deadly volleys rumbled across the flat ground toward the north slope.

  As Seamus leaped off his horse, dragging the Winchester over the saddle with him, he watched McKinney’s horse go down in a twisted heap, flinging its rider off toward the edge of the ravine. While the Irishman crouched forward on his knees, he fired, then chambered another cartridge.

  Beyond him the young captain struggled valiantly to one elbow atop that snow quickly turning crimson beneath him, spitting blood as he stared for a moment down at the glove he slowly took away from one of his half-dozen wounds, finding it slicked with red, then collapsed beside the animal wheezing its last.

  The muzzles from those countless Indian rifles puffed with red flames again as most of the other horses struggled up on their legs, tearing off in panic and terror to the four winds, their hooves throwing up clods of frozen snow behind them. One by one McKinney’s fallen got to hands and knees, some able to do no more than claw themselves away on their bellies.

  Then Seamus became aware of the distant roar of more gunfire coming from that nearby knoll, where more warriors lay now, all those guns trained down at these fallen soldiers like ducks in a tiny backwoods pond. Beneath the rattle and echo of near and distant gunfire, on the cold wind floated the cries of the wounded and the dying.

  He chambered and fired into the teeth of those screaming Cheyenne bristling along the rim of the ravine.

  Five of McKinney’s troopers moved, some better than the others, as most of those not hit circled and milled. In their midst Second Lieutenant Harrison G. Otis attempted to regain control and order over M Troop. Most had all they could handle struggling against their balky horses, at the same time attempting to fire their pistols down at the side of that ravine where the Cheyenne had waited, and waited … until the last moment—then burst up to shoot point-blank, all but under the bellies of the big American horses.

  Two of the soldiers did not move, sprawled on the snow like some dark insects squashed there, their legs and arms akimbo. Just a few yards back from them the first of the mortally wounded horses were collapsing at last, one already flopping down, and the second going to its knees, then keeling over to its side, where all four legs thrashed until there was no movement in that air so quickly stinking of death, and blood, and the acrid smell of burned black powder.

  That stench of burning sulfur reminded the Irishman of Hell … the cries of both the Cheyenne and the wounded troopers convincing Seamus that this was Hades itself.

  Another man lay beneath his dying horse, its big, muscular neck struggling time and again to lift its heavy head until it finally collapsed. The soldier was McKinney’s bugler, Hicks, bleeding badly and with his legs pinned, bright crimson gushing from his mouth each time he called out in a hoarse voice for the others not to abandon him, for someone to free him before the Cheyenne would rush out to get him.

  Try as Otis did to rally the remnants of McKinney’s shredded command, M Troop milled, yelling at one another, some of them ready to bolt, some sitting numbly in their saddles, most ready to obey Otis’s orders and stand their ground, although frightened to the core by the sudden, devastating shock of it. The young lieutenant suddenly ducked; a bullet spun his big black hat completely around on his head and pitched it to the snowy ground.

  That was enough for two.

  A pair of the soldiers suddenly wheeled about and put heels to their horses, breaking away in a wild retreat, making straight for the Irishman as he crabbed up on hands and knees. Behind the two, it was clear four more were ready to scatter in wild disorder.

  Seamus stood suddenly, leveling his rifle at them, his hands shaking—sensing that gravity of pointing his weapon at white men, soldiers, comrades in arms … as the first two soldiers drew close.

  “Halt!” he bellowed, watching their wide eyes grow even wider, realizing these were youngsters likely never before tested in battle—green as recruits could come. “You can’t retreat!”

  “Just who the hell are you?” one of them demanded as both soldiers reined up, pitching up clods of icy snow.

  “I’m the one gonna shoot you if you don’t turn back to help!” he bellowed, eyes narrowing as he now saw the wounded trumpeter twist his body beneath the horse so he could position himself to shoot over the animal’s quivering body at the Cheyenne crawling out of the ravine less than ten yards away from where the bugler lay trapped and stranded.

  Of a sudden behind Seamus arose a clatter of hooves hammering the frozen ground, men’s voices raised in unintelligible panic and battle lust. Donegan twisted about, reluctant to take his eyes off the two soldiers ready to run in retreat but suddenly frozen by the sight of that something behind the Irishman.

  A troop of cavalry was racing headlong for them, both flanks spreading out left and right, moments before ordered out of a walk into a rolling gallop across a broad front. At Ranald Mackenzie’s excited order, Captain John M. Hamilton was the first to lead the men of his H Troop, Fifth U.S. Cavalry, to the rescue.

  More gunfire exploded back near the far head of the deep ravine—off to his right—drawing Donegan’s attention. Another H Troop, these men from the Third U.S. Cavalry under Captain Henry W. Wessels, Jr., suddenly found themselves in the thick of it as they too dashed up under orders to support McKinney’s butchered company on the extreme right side of the line. Now they became the big targets on those tall American horses.

  Wessels’s men began dismounting in ragged confusion and a rush of adrenaline as more Cheyenne warriors flooded over the lip of the ravine, continuing to lay down a galling fire among the arriving soldiers. Some of Wessels’s horses escaped, yanking free of their riders and bolting to the rear, while a few horse-holders managed to grab hold of reins or bridles, clumsily snapping on the throatlatches to pull the unruly, frightened animals out of the action while the rest of H Troop inched forward, fighting on foot.

  Close and dirty.

  As Wessels’s men hurried to the right, up toward the northern end of that jagged ravine so they could cut off the advance of the Cheyenne snipers, Seamus turned back to the coming thunder, finding Hamilton’s mounted company was almost upon them.

  “Get out of our way!” one of McKinney’s terrified soldiers screeched, digging his brass spurs into his horse’s belly as he shot past the Irishman.

  Donegan leveled the rifle, then lowered it from his shoulder.

  “I’ll … I’ll go back … with you,” the other young soldier coughed the words out with a struggle, swallowing down his fear, no less terrified than the coward who already had his back to them and was tearing off at an angle away from the wide front of riders coming at a gallop to the rescue.

  “Then get down here and fight on foot, sojur!” he cried as the massed front neared.

  He watched McKinney’s man wheel out of the saddle and slap his horse on the rear flank—sending it off with a clatter as he joined Donegan to sprint headlong back into the breach while the first of that battlefront Hamilton had arrayed finally reached the bloody battleground where McKinney’s soldiers lay dead and dying, all but swallowed by the warriors sweeping over them to count coup and claim the soldier weapons.

  Hamilton’s men were but moments from finding out they had just pitched into what would be the toughest fighting of that cold day.

  * Th
e Pawnee.

  Chapter 28

  Big Freezing Moon 1876

  “Get your guns!”

  At the terror in that warning cry, Morning Star jerked up with a start, clawing for his leggings, kicking his feet out of the blankets and heavy robes.

  “The camp is being attacked!”

  Now he realized it was Black Hairy Dog’s voice, crying out from the hillside at the upper end of camp.

  “The soldiers are here! Get your guns! Get your guns!”

  The enemy was swarming everywhere the moment he poked his head from the long opening he slashed in the back of his lodge with a butcher knife, pushing his wives and a nephew into the shockingly cold air. Guns boomed, their echoes reverberating from the red sandstone walls towering over the sleeping lodges.

  War whoops cracked the frosty air on all sides. The shrill call of wing-bone whistles cried with the off-key notes of a flute. Then he saw them through the frozen mist.

  Wolf People!

  Bullets smacked into the lodge where he stood.

  Morning Star whirled to find more soldiers’ scouts high upon the red, snowy ridge that rose high over the south side of their camp. Fire spat from the muzzles of their many, many guns. But those were not Wolf People. Instead they wore their hair like Snake—a tribe friendly with the white man for a long, long time. They fired down on the village, some of their bullets even landing among the warriors covering the retreat on the west side of camp.

  By now the Wolf People were already among the lodges, dashing in and out with screams of joy as they plundered the Cheyenne homes. These were old enemies too—so it was natural that they would join the soldiers in making war on Morning Star’s peaceful Ohmeseheso.

  Then he cocked his head slightly, listening carefully above the noisy din a moment as he watched his family flee from that slit in the back of his lodge. So painful to hear Lakota spoken by many of those scouts rushing to capture the village’s ponies.