A Cold Day in Hell

by Terry C. Johnston

  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!”

  * Dying Thunder, Vol. 7, The Plainsmen Series.

  Chapter 31

  25 November 1876

  When the daring warrior appeared from behind the knoll atop his pinto, Second Lieutenant Homer W. Wheeler wasn’t ready for the sight of such a man prancing his animal back and forth out there, clearly within range of their carbines, a man who taunted the soldiers and the Pawnee scouts as he exposed himself to their bullets with no more protection than a buffalo-hide shield on his left arm and a bonnet of eagle feathers on his head, it’s red wool trailer spilling over the pony’s rump and all but brushing the snowy ground.

  “Goddammit,” Wheeler growled as his unit’s bullets kicked up spouts of snow here and there around the pony’s hooves. He turned to the trooper next to him, reaching for the soldier’s Springfield. “Gimme your carbine! I’ll take a crack at him!”

  But try as he might—holding high on the chest, then raising his sight to the warbonnet, in addition to adjusting what he thought he should for windage—not a damn one of his shots hit their target as a small but growing crowd around him cheered for all of those taking a crack at the warrior, jeering the magically charmed Cheyenne horseman.

  “Lookee there, Lieutenant!” one of the troopers yelled, pointing to their left among the brush that bordered the village.

  Just then a warrior poked his head up, yelling something quickly before his head disappeared again within the thick clump of willow.

  “All right, fellas,” Wheeler declared. “Looks like we got us another good target to practice on. Let’s see if any of you can hit that damned redskin!”

  Immediately a half-dozen guns cracked into service, but in that momentary lull while the soldiers reloaded, the warrior’s voice cried out—more shrilly this time, and plainly terrified.

  “Pawnee!” a voice shrieked behind the Lieutenant.

  Wheeler turned on his heel as a Pawnee scout came sprinting up to the skirmish line, terror on his face.

  Gesturing wildly, the scout repeatedly shouted, “No shoot Pawnee!”

  Standing to wave his arm, and shouting, Wheeler ordered the second platoon to hold their fire while he sorted things out. “That’s one of your Pawnee in there?” he asked slowly of the scout, pointing at the brush. “In there?”

  Without hesitation the scout nodded his head, pointing too. “Pawnee, him. Pawnee, me. Pawnee!” Then he turned away from the lieutenant and hollered to the distant clump of brush.

  Like a frightened bird poking its head from a clump of ground cover, the warrior peered out. When both the Pawnee scout and Wheeler began to wave him on, the warrior finally leaped from his place of hiding, darting straight for the soldiers.

  “Pawnee,” the frightened scout said breathlessly as he reached the skirmish line, pounding himself on the chest. “See, Pawnee!” He grabbed hold of his long scalp lock, braided with three shiny conchos and the claws of a red hawk. “Pawnee!”

  “Pawnee hair, yeah,” Wheeler said, shaking his head and turning back to the rest of his men, who went back to their attempts at knocking that lone Cheyenne warrior off the back of his prancing, dancing pony.

  Wheeler wasn’t sure whose shot it was—there were so many guns going off together in a steady staccato—when the warbonnet began to tip to the side and the man under it slowly slipped from the pony’s bare back into the snow, causing a small eruption of the trampled white flakes as he sprawled across the ground in a heap.

  “I got him! I got him!” someone hollered, jubilant enough to leap to his feet and dance a quick jig.

  “You stupid bunghole!” another challenged. “It was me!”

  “Both of you—take yourselves a good look there!”

  And from beyond the slope of that hill came another elaborately dressed warrior also displaying a great eagle-feather warbonnet, with a slightly oblong shield attached at his left elbow. His pony shot out to halt in a spray of snow between the soldier lines and the fallen Cheyenne, where its rider leaped off, knelt, and immediately swept the wounded warrior into his arms. Rising, he laid his comrade across the pony’s withers, then leaped up behind the warrior and kicked the animal into motion.

  At the crest of the hill other warriors stood cheering that act of bravery, raising their weapons and shields, bows and lances, raising their voices to the heavens above.

  And down there at the timber, the soldiers went back to work. Some stood to aim at that retreating target. Others knelt, locking an elbow into the crook of a knee to steady their weapons. The rest plopped to their bellies in the frozen, icy snow, attempting to keep that front blade on a distant bobbing target.

&n
bsp; Almost reaching the hillside … when the rescuer threw out his arms, his head pitching back as he twisted off the rear flank of the pony. The warrior he had rescued bounced along upon the horse’s withers for a few more yards before tumbling off as well, cartwheeling along a skiff of wind-crusted snow.

  “Two of the bastards!” a corporal muttered with a grim satisfaction. “Two for the price of one, I’d say!”

  “Their medicine was bad today,” Wheeler corrected. “That’s all it was. Just a bad day for their medicine.”

  Then the lieutenant closed his eyes a moment.

  And I pray mine will be stronger.

  In that first hour of the battle the fighting had been hot and furious as the Ohmeseheso contested control of their village, countering the charges of the cavalry—hastily setting up an ambush here and there as they covered the retreat of their women and children.

  But now that the sun had fully risen over that frozen valley to dispel the slinking mists from every last one of the cold places, dazzling the eyes with its painful brilliance reflecting off the snow, the battle was slowly becoming no more than a painful standoff.

  The army had possession of the valley in a jagged line running from the twin buttes west of Mackenzie’s observation point on the north, across and through the village to the southwest, where the Pawnee and Shoshone were ensconced up the slopes and at the top of the high ridges where they could fire down on the enemy. Any Cheyenne now left behind that blue line lay dead in the village abandoned by all to the dogs. Out of the cold shadows slunk the wild-eyed curs, creeping so low their bellies nearly brushed the snow, ears back and noses wary as each one went to sniff the freezing horse carcasses, the motionless bodies of the Cheyenne who hadn’t broken from their lodges quickly enough.

  A sniff, then a lick. Dead, yes. But not yet dead long enough to become carrion to these half-feral beasts.

  On they loped, those wild dogs picking up the scent of the next odor. Then the next. And the next. The stench of death hung heavy over what had been their village.