A Cold Day in Hell

by Terry C. Johnston

  “We must get his body!” Dog had yelled at them. “We are Crooked Lances!”

  Eventually he convinced them, although they would be coming under the same murderous fire that had just killed the chief of the Himo-we-yuhk-is.

  When Dog and some of the others dashed in to attempt the rescue, the enemy’s fire was hot all about them. So concentrated was it that when they attempted to drag the body away, three of them were wounded and they had to give up. For the moment Dog had to content himself by covering his uncle with a burial blanket.

  “Those Indians will scalp him and butcher his body,” Dog growled once he and the others had reached the safety of the ravine. “We cannot leave our chief to the enemy!”

  “It is no use,” one of the voices protested.

  “For you, perhaps,” Dog protested, no longer a young man—feeling the power of his People this terrible day. “For me, I must die trying. As I would die trying to rescue any one of you, my brother Crooked Lances.” He scooted forward, picking up a flat red stone.

  “I will come,” said one as he crabbed forward to join the youthful warrior.

  Another inched up on hands and knees, crouching by Dog. “I will come too.”

  Across the stream they dashed again, only three of them this time, zigzagging as they ran through the willow and up onto the flat beneath the red ridge where the Shoshone began to call out their taunts and shoot down into their midst. Quickly Dog and another grabbed the dead man’s arms while the third snatched up the burial blanket. Turning, grunting, dragging, weaving this way and that, the trio lumbered back to cover with the body as the bullets slapped the icy snow and zinged off the red rocks, rattling among the nearby lodges like hailstones.

  Back at the mouth of the narrow ravine, all three were panting as the others congratulated them on their courage.

  “We must remember this day,” a young warrior said, gulping air.

  Dog replied, “We will remember this day—and all Crooked Lances will remember where our chief fell.”

  “How will we remember?” asked another.

  “I put a red stone on the spot, marked with the sign of Crow Split Nose. We will remember—for at that place a brave man died for his people”

  * George Armstrong Custer, Long Winter Gone, Vol. 1, Son of The Plains Trilogy.

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

  * Black Sun, Vol. 4, The Plainsmen Series.

  * Little Bighorn River.

  Chapter 34

  25 November 1876

  “Sweet Mither of God,” Seamus mumbled under his breath as he, the North brothers, and Frank Grouard recrossed the far eastern end of the snowy valley and entered the village after driving the Cheyenne snipers from the rocks.

  More times than he cared to count he had set his feet down upon one battlefield or another, through all those battles serving with the Army of the Potomac and then Sheridan’s Army of the Shenandoah, through ten long years of war between white and red, enduring this struggle between all that was wild and those who sought to tame all that was less than civilized.

  Here at the opening of the lodge circle’s horns, here at the eastern fringe of the village it was plain to see the Cheyenne had no chance to flee before the soldiers’ scouts were upon them. Here most of the casualties fell beneath the hooves and the bullets of Mackenzie’s onslaught. Here among their homes, their possessions, their families.

  By the time Donegan reached the village after driving off the snipers, a handful of the canvas agency lodges had already been set afire by the Pawnee. The thick hide lodge covers would have to wait till the fires grew hotter. But for now, no more than a half-dozen agency lodges smoldered, their canvas hanging in blackened tatters to the charred spires of peeled lodgepole straining at the sky in a graceful spiral, oily smudges of destruction giving stench on the downwind.

  The stiff wind was cruel that day. Despite the bright, bright sun. Seamus gathered the ends of his tall collar in one fist and held it over his nose and mouth as he rode slowly through the devastation, past the bodies of men and women already stripped and scalped by the scouts. Everything still too fresh, and the air far too cold for any decay.

  Yet the stench of death clung to this place.

  Dead cavalry horses and Indian ponies lay here and there, perhaps bunched near a spot where some fierce fighting took a great toll—those dark, stiff-legged lumps frozen on the hoof-churned snow. Some time ago the uninjured animals on both sides had been withdrawn, now protected back in the ravines, behind the snow-laced red ridges where the enemy’s bullets could not find them.

  “You there!”

  His attention snagged, Seamus turned slightly, finding a young soldier hollering at a handful of Pawnee loosely surrounding the body of an old Cheyenne woman.

  “Shit,” Donegan grumbled, and reined his bay in the group’s direction.

  “I told you sonsabitches to leave the woman alone!” the frustrated picket cried out more in desperation and disgust than in anger.

  The Pawnee held their rifles pointed at the ground for the most part, but they smiled at the soldier as if they could shoot him just as quickly and guiltlessly as they had the woman if he nettled them any further. Not a one of them spoke.

  Donegan shouted, flinging his voice over his shoulder. “Frank! Major North!”

  The older of the brothers signaled Grouard and Luther to follow Donegan.

  Seamus came to a halt, crossed his wrists over the saddle horn, leaning forward so his right hand lay near his pistol. “Frank, you think you can get your boys to leave off the women and the old ones?”

  Frank North bristled. “With my own eyes I’ve seen how the Pawnee have suffered at the hands of these people—”

  “They ain’t suffered a goddamned thing from that old woman!” Donegan snapped, about ready to pull the gun on those grinning Pawnee scouts.

  The major’s eyes glared a moment, then softened, and he turned away from the Irishman, saying something in Pawnee as he shooed them away with his arm. The scouts shot the young soldier and Donegan one last look of derision before they moved off among the plundered lodges.

  “I told ’em,” the soldier grumbled morosely, stepping up to the body sprawled on the bloody snow. “Told ’em I found her—in that lodge right there.”

  Seamus asked, “What’s your name, son?”

  “Private Butler,” he answered, staring down at the woman’s body. Between the bullet hole at close range and the crude scalping, there wasn’t much humanly recognizable about the head. His hands shook as they squeezed his carbine. “S-second Cavalry. I told ’em to leave her be. Said I was coming back with something to tie ’er up with so’s I could take ’er somewheres the general could talk to ’er a bit.”

  “I suppose she was armed?” Luther North asked.

  Butler looked up at the younger brother. “If you’re asking because you figure that’s why your Pawnee killed her—the answer’s no. The old woman wasn’t armed when I found her hiding under a blanket and some robes. Shaking like a autumn leaf. She could barely walk when I dragged her to her feet.”

  “Yeah, lookit that legs of hers,” Grouard replied, kneeling beside the corpse. “She’s had trouble healing that old wound.”

  “Likely she got herself left behind,” Frank North surmised.

  “And shot before we could take her prisoner,” the soldier growled.

  “The army don’t often take prisoners in a fight like this,” Luther North boasted.

  “That’s plain as the nose on my face!” Butler snapped. “Look around you! Ain’t a prisoner left in this hull goddamned village, is there?”

  The elder North swiped the back of his glove across his cracked lips and said, “I suppose there isn’t, soldier,” then quickly nudged his horse in the ribs and moved past the private and the old woman’s bloodied body. “C’mon, Grouard. Mackenzie wants you and me to put a count to these lodges before we start torching any more of ’em.”

  “You going with us?”
Luther North asked Donegan.

  “Naw. I’ll stay around here for a while,” Seamus replied, easing out of the saddle. For a moment he watched the three civilians inch through camp, counting aloud; then he walked the bay over to some willow, tying off the horse.

  Turning, he stepped over to the back of a lodge where the canvas cover had been slashed open at the moment of attack. Parting the fold with his two hands, Seamus peered inside, his eyes adjusting to the dim light. An interior liner of undressed hides hung from a rope strung around the circumference of the lodge from pole to pole to provide more of a wind buffer and insulator. It too had been hacked through at the moment of escape. By the fire pit sat kettles of water and a skillet filled with dried meat. Rawhide parfleches and boxes hung from the liner rope or sat here and there against the liner itself atop the beds. Everything, including the rumpled blankets and buffalo robes, appeared as if the inhabitants might return at any moment.

  Here one moment. Driven into the teeth of winter the next.

  When he pulled his head from the slit and his eyes had adjusted to the startling sunlight, Donegan watched more of the Pawnee dragging plunder from nearby lodges. Piles of clothing, knives and axes, kitchenware, craftwork, and a few weapons were already being deposited on separate piles destined to be loaded upon the captured ponies and driven home to make a good many Pawnee wives very happy that they had allowed their husbands to go riding off to make war on the Cheyenne.

  A high-pitched sudden scream rang out across the camp near the stream—louder and more grating on his soul than the intermittent din of battle. Then a pistol shot. And all fell quiet—except for the rattle of a far-off, long-range gun battle.

  As he moved around the side of the lodge, Seamus saw a seventh pile of plunder the Pawnee were collecting. By far the smallest in size, it would nonetheless prove to be the most jarring of the spoils.

  Stopping at the edge of the small mound, the Irishman knelt down, picking up the fringed sleeve of a buckskin jacket. He dragged it on out into the light; finding a small, bloody bullet hole in the back. Beneath the coat lay the bright red, white, and blue of a few of the Seventh Cavalry’s regimental guidons. A motley collection of leather gloves and gauntlets, some clean, most greasy, dirty, and stained with blood. Soldiers’ blouses and officers’ coats—gold chevrons and bars and hash marks sewn up the cuff. Here and there a smashed felt or straw hat, even a few old kepis, all having seen their better day.

  Besides, there were saddles and currycombs, memorandum books and tiny bundles of letters tied with twine or faded hair ribbons, numerous canteens and wallets still containing a few of the green-and-yellow army scrip the victorious warriors had no use for.

  “Hey, mister—it’s time to eat!” a soldier called out from a nearby lodge. “Pack train’s set up camp over yonder near the willows. By the butte where the wounded get took.”

  Seamus waved in thanks, then looked back down at the pile at his feet.

  Something shiny in the reflected light caught his eye. Plunging his thick glove down into the pile, he pulled out a tarnished pocket watch with vest chain attached. Pressing the release, he opened the watch to find inside the cover a faded brown chromograph of an attractive older woman cracked and wrinkled with age. A cold drop of sweat tumbled down his spine.

  Feeling the ghosts of Custer’s dead at his shoulder.

  Quickly snapping the watch shut, he stuffed it at the bottom of the pile once more and covered it up with those shirts once worn by the living. How strange he felt—here in this place of the dead Cheyenne, going through the effects left behind on this mortal plane by Custer’s dead.

  Seamus stood, disgusted with himself, ashamed. Like a damned grave robber. Like these goddamned Cheyenne. Just like those Lakota they had bumped into at the Slim Buttes.* All these souvenirs stripped from the soldier bodies left on that hill beside the Little Bighorn.

  “Goddamned grave robbers!” he cursed under his breath, thinking about that watch and that woman. About the man who loved her and rode off with an army far, far from home.

  Then that thought of the watch made him wonder what time of the day it was—thinking on what Sam and the boy were doing right then.

  From the hang of the sun, it was likely past noon. Perhaps as much as two hours past. And in that moment he remembered how hungry he was.

  He untied the bay and walked it east toward the commotion: men hollering and snapping like starved, gaunt dogs around that pack train. None of the drooping mules had been unloaded nor none of the escort’s bone-weary horses unsaddled for almost twenty-four hours.

  “Irishman! Over here!” Frank Grouard called out.

  As he came up to the headquarters group, Seamus saw that Mackenzie had turned his complete attention to the swarthy half-breed and place a folded sheaf of paper in Grouard’s glove.

  Frank promptly loosened a button, shoved the papers inside his coat and wool blouse, then rebuttoned his buffalo-hide coat as the North brothers turned away and the Irishman came to a stop. “Donegan! I’ll be carrying word to General Crook to bring up the infantry.”

  “Good for you, Frank. If you can carry word from the Black Hills to Laramie for Crook, I figure you’re the best man we got for this job. Good luck, you ugly child.”

  Mackenzie turned as Donegan held out his hand and shook with Grouard. The colonel seemed to size Seamus up and down a moment, then said, “How would you like to give me a hand yourself, Mr. Donegan?”

  “This about them words we had earlier?”

  “That? Hell, no—that’s all forgotten.”

  Donegan asked, “What you have planned?”

  “I figured you’d like to help me see if we can put an end to this long-range sniping and get ourselves a truce worked out with the warriors in the hills.”

  “Yeah,” he quickly answered. “I’d like to have the chance to do that. What’s your thinking, General?”

  “Go round up Rowland for me—that squaw man who can talk the enemy’s language,” Mackenzie said. “I first thought of using one of the scouts—but I’d always wonder if I was being told the white man’s truth. So go fetch Rowland for me. Bring him here. I want the two of you to see about quieting things down and getting these folks to surrender before night falls.”

  Seamus glanced at the sun keeling over into the western quadrant. “We don’t have all that much time, General.”

  “That’s why I’m in the hurry I am, Mr. Donegan. If the warriors aren’t going to surrender soon, then I want the infantry getting here on the double to force ’em out of the rocks tomorrow.”

  “And?”

  “And,” Mackenzie replied thoughtfully, “if the warriors will at least surrender their women and children to me for the night—then not one of the noncombatants needs to die from this inhuman cold.”

  From all that Young Two Moon could see, there were only five left on top of that rocky knoll. Before, there had been many, many more. But now so many had retreated as the soldiers had punched through the village and scattered the warriors in the rocks along the northern wall of the valley.

  So only five remained. Cut off. And the soldiers were moving in.

  Two, three, then four times the Cheyenne made futile attempts to reach the five courageous warriors who continued to make things hot on the soldiers and scouts scampering around in the upper end of the village.

  “Do not worry about us!” they shouted down to their friends far away. “We sing our death songs and will take many of the enemy with us this day!”

  It was clear they had given up. Almost like the suicide boys whom the elders had paraded through camp the night before the soldiers had attacked that great village nestled alongside the Little Sheep River. But these five were not suicide boys. These were seasoned, veteran warriors who had likely calculated the gamble of being caught where they were when they first went to the top of that hill. From there they would have had themselves a perfect view of the destruction of the gray-horse soldiers by the warriors in the ravine. On the
brow of the hill he recognized White Horse, Long Jaw, and Little Horse. Young Two Moon did not know the others.

  “Look!” a voice called out behind Young Two Moon. “See who is coming to fight!”

  “Yellow Nose!” the cry went up among the warriors at the side of the slope leading up to the breastworks.

  “Yellow Nose has come!” the women screamed above them, trilling their tongues and shrieking with renewed passion.

  Yes, Yellow Nose—one of the most daring in the fight against the ve-ho-e soldiers at the Little Sheep River. Captured from the Black People* as a child, Yellow Nose had grown to become one of the most courageous warriors among the Ohmeseheso.

  Somehow this morning he had rescued his feathered warbonnet, or perhaps he wore that of another man. It did not matter. How magnificent he looked atop the bare back of that pony, wearing only leggings and breechclot. No shirt nor moccasins as he moved the horse slowly through the crowd that clamored about him, touching his leg, calling out his name.

  “Who will go with me?” he asked in a booming voice.

  Immediately many hands shot into the air, their courage electrifying everyone within hearing.

  “Bring your weapons and come with me!” Yellow Nose cried out, pointing the muzzle of his Winchester repeater at the knoll. “Some of my friends are in trouble and I must help them!”

  By the time they were streaming across the rugged ground for that slope, Young Two Moon figured there must have been at least three-times-ten streaming out like a flight of geese from Yellow Nose, just as the rest of the long-necked flock veed from the point goose while they winged overhead in the first cold days before winter. Many of them wore bonnets and feathers, skins of wolf and badger and skunk—everyone shouting, raising his hoarse voice into the cold air to frighten the soldiers and give their hearts daring for this charge.

  One, then two and three at a time … the guns began to fire around Young Two Moon and the rest. The five warriors on the hill looked over their shoulders and saw their friends coming. Three of them climbed to their knees, waving their rescuers on enthusiastically, whooping and pounding their chests with fists, others shaking their fists at the enemy scouts who yelped and howled in dismay when the five quickly retreated from the hilltop while their rescuers held the soldiers at bay.