A Cold Day in Hell

by Terry C. Johnston

  A stunned silence fell upon the soldiers as the wounded trooper collapsed.

  “Yes … they can too, Cap’n,” the trooper cried out in shock and pain as he stared down at his own blood. “Give ’em hell for me!”

  As it turned out, his wound was but a slight one, and the soldier was soon back with his company at the skirmish line—this time showing a more healthy respect for the abilities of the enemy.

  Throughout the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, the man’s comrades good-naturedly gave the soldier no mercy as they continued to roar with laughter, lightening everyone’s spirits as they repeatedly called out to one another in the midst of that terrible battle, “Yes, they can too!”

  “Yes, they can too!”

  * The Stalkers, Vol. 3, The Plainsmen Series.

  * Little Bighorn River.

  Chapter 33

  Big Freezing Moon 1876

  After leaving his wife with the other women near the breastworks, Black Hairy Dog plunged into the dangerous and rugged landscape at the northwest rim of the valley. Together with a handful of other warriors, the Keeper of the Sacred Arrows climbed over and around rocks, slid down the steep sides of ravines, and then clambered back up the far side, again and again through every one of those thickly timbered wrinkles until he found the spot he knew Ma-heo-o had guided him to.

  A level thumb of ground jutted out into the valley ever so slightly. Here Black Hairy Dog would bring the power of the Maahotse into the light of day and thereby save the People.

  “Quickly!” he told those who had followed him. “Gather up the white ‘man’ sage for me.”

  Without a word of question or protest the others bent in search of not just any sage, but that pale variety considered both male and sacred by the Tse-Tsehese. As the warriors brought back their harvest, Black Hairy Dog had them spread the branches upon the ground at the very lip of that height of land extending out over the valley floor. Only then did he kneel beside that bed of white sage and reverently begin to open the bundle.

  First he released the thick sheet of buffalo rawhide and set it aside. Next he untied the top of the kit-fox-skin quiver, reached inside, and pulled forth the first Arrow.

  Some of the warriors gasped quietly, taking a step back, while two leaned in closer for a better look at this powerfully sacred object the Keeper laid upon the bed of sage—arrow point facing the enemy.

  Black Hairy Dog reached in and pulled out a second Arrow he laid so that the fletching of the arrows touched, and its stone tip pointed toward the enemy, lying a few inches from the first point.

  A third came into the light of day, then the fourth, until he had them all arrayed upon the bed of sacred sage, the power emanating from their points streaming across the entire valley where soldiers and their scouts battled the People from long distance.

  “All of you,” he told the others as he got to his feet. “Come here and stand on either side of me.”

  The warriors lined up to his left and right, facing the village the enemy had captured from them.

  “Each of you do as I do—for we must release the power of these Arrows upon those who would do us harm, those who would take away our buffalo and our way of life.”

  Black Hairy Dog stamped the earth four times. The others did the same. Then he pawed the snowy ground with one foot, like a buffalo bull in the rut. The others copied him, each of them growling as he continued to bellow in challenge.

  “Now, take your bows and pull on the strings—pointing your weapons at our enemies in our village.”

  Each of the warriors took their bows from the quivers at their backs and held them at arm’s length, pulling the strings back and twanging them as if shooting invisible arrows into what had been the People’s camp. Those who carried only rifles pointed the weapons at the village and pretended to shoot their firearms at the enemies.

  Below that high point Black Hairy Dog could see some of the other warriors turn where they had been fighting—each of them drawn to the buffalo sounds and the magnetic pull of the shaman’s powerful magic. They spotted the Arrow Keeper and the handful of helpers above them—and they realized the significance of this powerful ceremony.

  His prayers to Ma-heo-o gave the warriors in the nearby ravines and on the faraway knoll a strong heart, renewing the resolve among those who were helping the last of the old and the sick to climb the steep sides of the rocky hills to reach the breastworks.

  Eight winters before Black Hairy Dog’s father, the powerful mystic known as Stone Forehead—later called Medicine Arrow after he became the Keeper of Maahotse—had used his power to place a curse upon the soldier chief called Hiestzi, the Yellow Hair* who was driving all the Southern People back to their miserable agency.

  These Northern People knew well the power that rested in the Arrows, and in their Keeper.

  As Black Hairy Dog and his companions continued to paw the earth and roar with the furor of the buffalo bull, the warriors below turned back to the fighting with renewed strength, knowing they now had the protection of the Everlasting.

  Never would Ma-heo-o fail His people.

  “General wants to know if you and your Pawnee will go shut up those red-bellies shooting from them rocks,” the young orderly breathlessly asked the North brothers after he had raced across that three-eighths of a mile of open ground. “The sonsabitches are really making it hot on the hospital yonder.”

  Like the other civilians and five of the Pawnee sergeants, Seamus turned toward the low hill behind which the surgeons had set up their bloody shop. He squinted into the harsh, metallic glare of the bright winter sun ricocheting off the icy snow. Tiny forms hovered over the prostrate soldiers that lay in an irregular semicircle between the base of the hill and some clumps of leafless willow. The surgeons’ stewards had started several fires—the smoke rising some ten feet before it disappeared on the strong wind that gusted and swirled, kicking up the snow on converging eddies that danced across the floor of the valley.

  Like a persistent shred of cobweb that refused to tear itself loose of his memory, the stench of those Civil War field hospitals remained with Donegan. Not a single one of them he had run across really was any better than that stinking island out on the middle of the plains of Colorado Territory as more than half of Forsyth’s fifty lay dead or wounded beneath the hot sun that continued to bake the carcasses of their horses and mules, each and every one of their animals shot in the head and brought down in a spray of horse piss, stagnant river-pool water, and gritty sand to form what breastworks they could hide behind for the charge they all knew was coming.†

  Whether it was in marching away from Pennsylvania’s Gettysburg or down the length of Virginia’s Shenandoah—those field hospitals all smelled the same. Long ago Donegan realized he never would cleanse his memory of that rank odor of blood and cauterized flesh, the sight and smell of those unattached arms and legs, bloodied hands and feet all piled obscenely high. Those wartime surgeons with their gum ponchos tied at their necks and around their waists—grim, humorless men splattered with the blood of more than a thousand soldiers, each one now become something less as men. Splattered with the blood of those they could save.

  “Yeah,” Seamus answered the courier before anyone else spoke up. “We’ll go keep them Cheyenne from making it any tougher’n it has to be for your surgeons. Right, Frank?”

  For a flicker of a moment the older North studied the Irishman’s eyes, then looked at the young orderly. “Yeah. Go tell the general he can consider it done.”

  “I’m coming too, Frank,” Luther said as he tugged his collar up around his ears.

  “No, Lute—I got something for you and one of our boys to do while the rest of us are working our way up on those snipers,” Frank explained.

  Luther licked his cracked lips, the bottom one oozing blood that froze as it seeped into the dark whiskers bristling below his lower lip. “It damn well better be as much fun as you two are gonna have.”

  Frank winked at Doneg
an. “You can be sure of that, little brother. Take one man—your pick—and … you see them Cheyenne ponies yonder?”

  “I sure as hell do,” Luther answered as they all turned their attention to the herd still grazing beyond the northwest end of the deep ravine, some two or three hundred yards from the Cheyenne breastworks. “Must be a hundred or more of ’em.”

  “You remember when we was boys, Lute? How you was always the one to raise more hell than me?”

  “Damn if I didn’t.”

  “Well, it’s time you went and raised some hell,” Frank declared, clamping a hand on Luther’s shoulder.

  “Now, you and me both know some of them Arapaho scouts tried to run them horses off a while back and they couldn’t get close enough. Then a bit later, some of Cosgrove’s Shoshone boys tried too—but they had the same poor luck.”

  “And one of ’em was shot for all his trying,” Donegan added, the beginnings of a grin wrinkling the corners of his red-flecked eyes. “Besides, your friend, Three Bears, and some of his boys gave it a shot too before they failed.”

  The elder North nodded, saying, “But none of them had the Irishman and me working with ’em at the same time.”

  Luther cocked his head slightly. “I’d like to give it a try, brother.”

  “No fry,” Frank replied stiffly. “If our boys try it, I’ll expect them to bring in those horses—right?”

  “What you got in mind, Frank?”

  “I want you to take them ponies away from the Cheyenne. Just you and one more.”

  Luther shrugged. “Only two of us, eh? Tell me what your thinking is.”

  “All right—the two of you head down east, hugging the timber,” Frank replied. “And when you hear the signal—Seamus and me firing steady-like right under them rocks—you go ride out across that open ground where those snipers been laying their shots all morning. Get over yonder fast as you can, whooping and hollering and waving your hat … and you wrangle them horses back this direction.”

  “Whoooeee!” Luther exclaimed, pounding the side of his fist against his big brother’s chest. “Does sound like a fine chiveree of it!”

  “And while you’re having yourself a good time and drawing the attention of them snipers, little brother,” Frank continued, “this big dumb Irish Mick and me are gonna take us a handful of our Pawnee—and we’re gonna silence them guns once and for all.”

  “Well, shit, Frank—now I don’t know just who’s gonna have the most fun!”

  “Get on with you,” Frank declared. “Go pick a man and get yourselves ready.”

  “I know who I’ll pick, brother—Boy Chief.”

  Donegan asked, “Wasn’t he with us when we took Tall Bull’s village in sixty-nine?”*

  Luther nodded. “Pe-isk-le-shar. But a few years back he took the white man name of Pete Headman.” Then Luther turned away, heading toward the saddled horses.

  The older North took up the short reed pipe he carried around his neck and blew on it. The shrill call of that whistle orought up more than twenty of the Pawnee. From them he quickly picked five to accompany him and Donegan. When Frank had informed them of their mission, the five turned away to begin stripping for battle. Each one of them took off all they had left of army clothing, changing from boots to moccasins, but were sure to tie bandannas around their heads to look as unlike the Cheyenne as possible, since they would be plunging into that no-man’s-land and thereby coming under the muzzles of half a thousand soldier guns.

  Only an hour or so before, Frank North had ordered some thirty of his scouts to climb the far slope at the upper end of the : amp in hopes of getting around and behind those Cheyenne fleeing into the breastworks. But to the cold, battle-jarred troopers, North’s men looked too much like Cheyenne against the Snowy heights. When the soldiers began firing into his Pawnee, the scouts had to retreat under cover, rock to rock, back to the Village while Frank and Luther raged at some of Mackenzie’s officers for their stupidity.

  A half hour later as Seamus and the rest had circled east from the camp, Frank whispered, “Here’s where I figure we’ve got to be right under ’em.”

  From the captured village he and Donegan had led the five Pawnee through the leafless thickets bordering the valley floor, heading east into the thickest of the willow bog on horseback, finally tying the animals at the bottom of that long, low plateau that jutted from the northern heights. From there the seven had crept on foot from rock to rock, ever so slowly, keeping an eye On both the distant snipers across the valley floor and on those snipers up above them in the rocks with the big guns trained on the field hospital.

  “Lute oughtta be chomping at the bit by now,” North said after he signaled the Pawnee to check their weapons and be ready to open fire.

  “If you’re ready—let’s open the dance!” Donegan bawled.

  Frank rolled out to his left, and the Irishman to his right, plopping onto their bellies to fire almost simultaneously. To one side or the other the Pawnee scouts darted, hoping to cause the most surprise and confusion in the Cheyenne marksmen. Hoping for a little fear as well.

  The steady staccato of gunshots booming from that northern rim of the valley was Luther North’s signal. With a whoop and a war yelp from the Pawnee sergeant, the pair kicked their heels into their horses and sprinted into the open—immediately drawing the fire of the warriors still on the rounded knoll, along with a few shots from those Cheyenne above Frank and Seamus.

  As the handful of Pawnee pumped their bullets into that hole in the rocks where the enemy marksmen had set up shop, North and Donegan scrambled up onto their feet and hurried into another patch of scrub timber. Yard by yard they climbed the steep slope, ice and talus spilling away beneath their boots, making the footing treacherous.

  A shadow crossed the snow in front of the Irishman.

  One of the marksmen suddenly pitched out of a crack between two large rocks and slid twenty feet down the snowy slope, lying as still as the old snow where he was sprawled.

  In that twenty-below-zero cold, bullets whistled past their heads, slapping the bare branches of the brush around them as the Cheyenne and the Pawnee traded war songs and hurled taunts at one another. A second Cheyenne was hit, pitching backward out of sight to the angry wails of his companions.

  For a few long moments the gunfire from above fell silent … then some loose talus pitched down the slope toward the white men with a clatter.

  Donegan dared stick out his head for a better look, finding at least six warriors fleeing up and across the slope toward the west.

  “Lookee there! Those war dogs’re skedaddling!” Frank cried out.

  “By the saints if they’re not!” Donegan cheered. “Whaaahooo!”

  North took up the reed whistle and blew on it, a different call this time. As the handful of Pawnee turned their attention to their leader—Frank silently signaled them to pursue the Cheyenne.

  “Just for good measure,” North growled. “Make sure they’re on the run, all the way home.”

  “Them Cheyenne can’t go home,” Donegan replied dolefully, looking out across the valley at the village. “Mackenzie’s fixing to put the whole damn thing to the torch.”

  Frank sighed, watching the Pawnee scrambling up the talus and around the scrub brush after the warriors for a few moments. Then he blew on the whistle a last time, recalling his scouts. At first they seemed reluctant to return when they stopped, talking among themselves, arguing, perhaps—then ultimately turned back donwslope.

  Down below on the valley floor Luther North and Boy Chief rode along the fringe of the captured herd, driving them along with yelps and grunts, waving saddle blankets in the air as shots rang out and bullets hissed over their heads. First one of the Cheyenne ponies dropped. Then a second pitched headlong into the snow. Finally a third and forth horse dropped before the two whooping wranglers raced the stolen ponies out of rifle range and across the creek into the village.

  To the young warrior named Dog, Crow Split Nose was an u
ncle who had helped raise him, the sort of man each boy needed to teach him the ways of man and honor in battle. Chief of the Himo-we-yuhk-is, the Crooked Lances, Crow Split Nose had been an undisputed hero during the fight with the soldiers at Little Sheep River.*

  As glorious as that summer battle had been, for Crow Split Nose today must surely have been a better day to die.

  Camped at the upper end of the village, Dog had sought out his mentor when the first shots and shouts rang out in the valley. During those frantic heartbeats as the People poured from the lodges and warriors began to organize the retreat of their women and children, throwing up their solid line of defense squarely in the middle of the village where they would make their stand and give no ground—Dog found Crow Split Nose in the heart of the fighting.

  Not only were the soldiers’ scouts attacking from the eastern edge of the village, and the soldiers themselves riding in from the north rim of the valley, but there were some of the enemy firing from the edge of the ridge just to the south of the lodges. In those frightening moments Crow Split Nose’s gallant band of warriors were holding ground against an enemy pouring bullets at them from three directions.

  When the last of the little and old ones had been hurried to the west, Crow Split Nose turned to his fellow warriors and ordered that they begin their retreat at last, lodge by lodge, until they could find safety among the ravines at the upper end of camp. He declared he would be the last to withdraw from the enemy, then ordered the rest of his warrior society to fall back.

  For his bravery, Crow Split Nose fell beneath at least two Snake bullets fired from the ridge over their heads.

  Dog watched it happen, sensing almost as much pain as if the bullet had torn through his own gut. When he started back for Crow Split Nose, two older warriors had to drag Dog from the field into the mouth of a narrow, twisting ravine.