A Cold Day in Hell

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Fix this man some breakfast,” Crook ordered the men around the fire, grinning from ear to ear and waving his arms like a man possessed, getting all of his orderlies and dog-robbers moving at once. “And pour me a cup of the strongest coffee you’ve got. Wait right here, Frank—I’m going to grab my coat and hat … then go roust Dodge. When we’re back, you’re going to tell us all about Mackenzie’s fight.”

  The commanding general of the Department of the Platte awakened Colonel Richard I. Dodge that cold dawn of the twenty-sixth, literally pulling the infantry commander from his trestle bed.

  “Mackenzie sent back for your boys and their guns! He’s got the whole lot of ’em on the run!”

  “M-my guns?” Dodge said, shuddering as he pulled on his tall boots, blinking his eyes.

  “Damn. Tucked away up there in the rocks, one of those blasted warriors is worth ten of my troopers,” Crook growled, grinding his gloves together thoughtfully. “But your riflemen should more than even the odds for General Mackenzie.”

  Dodge stood, buttoning his long caped coat. “When shall we embark?”

  “As soon as you’ve drawn two days’ rations and issued every man one hundred rounds of ammunition.”

  The infantry commander stabbed his way out from the flaps of his canvas tent. “I’ll return shortly, General—to report to you when we’re ready to depart.”

  “Perhaps you misunderstood, General,” Crook said to Dodge, watching the colonel freeze in the middle of his salute. “I am accompanying you on this forced march.”

  “Of … of course, General,” Dodge finally replied with studied disappointment, and finished his salute.

  It wasn’t until close to noon that Dodge had his men dressed, fed, outfitted, and mustered into columns. By then the sky had lowered and the tops of the nearby Bighorns had once again disappeared among the gray, heavy clouds. Three inches of new snow had fallen atop the eight inches already on the ground from last night. And even more was dropping as the column of foot soldiers set out at a trudge, their faces pointed into a harsh west wind.

  The snow eventually began to let up near sundown and the sky turned patchy overhead as the infantry pushed on into the coming of that winter night without halting. All afternoon they had repeatedly found Mackenzie’s trail to be wide enough to accommodate only one foot soldier at a time, forcing their march to slow as it proceeded in single file up and down steep slopes, across slick-sided ravines and fording icy creeks.

  As the darkness swelled around them, Crook hurried ahead with Grouard, thankful the new moon was some ten days old that night. From time to time it splayed the forbidding canyons of the Bighorns with a silvery light reflected off the brilliant tableau of the rugged landscape. Theirs became a two-color night as the black of scrub timber and huge stands of pine and fir contrasted sharply against the shimmering monotony of a whitewashed world.

  Near eleven that night the general and the half-breed reached the valley of Willow Creek, a small tributary of the Powder River.

  “How much farther, Frank?”

  Grouard considered a moment, then answered, “A few hours. Not many. We’re mighty close.

  He sighed in disappointment. “Let’s wait for the rest to come up.” Crook said as he stepped down from the saddle.

  “Hoping you were going to say some such, General.”

  “Get us a small fire going, will you, Frank?” Crook suggested. “I feel like making us some coffee.”

  “You’re going to call a halt here?”

  Crook stared back down the trail, then up toward the Bighorns. He had to resign himself to it. “We’ll stay the night.”

  When Colonel Dodge’s infantry came up, they were ordered to fall out by companies. Some built small fires, where they boiled coffee and ate their supper of cold bacon and frozen hard bread, while others simply collapsed where they were in the snowdrifts and sank into a sound, sound sleep without ceremony or any coaxing.

  Oblivious to the cold.

  At dawn on Monday, the twenty-seventh of November, after a restless night, Mackenzie’s men were no less skittish about a possible hit-and-run attack by the Cheyenne than they had been the day before. The cruel, slashing mountain wind finally died and it again began to snow heavily.

  Seamus ached to the marrow with the cold, thinking again on how warm he could be within the shelter of Samantha’s arms.

  Even before the column moved out at midmorning, some of the Indian scouts rode in from their dawn search of the country, reporting the presence of another large village of hostiles off to the west of Mackenzie’s position. Strung out in single file and scattered as they were forced to cross that rugged piece of country, Donegan grew every bit as concerned as the soldiers: should the enemy jump them in the narrow canyons or crossing these deep ravines, Mackenzie’s command would be in sad shape to withstand such an attack without suffering terrible casualties.

  The new snow of the past two days made the narrow trail all the more slippery, forcing the horses to work all the harder for their footing. That day some of the weakest, poorly fed mounts gave out, were shot, and their carcasses abandoned along the banks of the eastbound Willow Creek. By late afternoon they had put no more than fourteen miles behind them when Mackenzie ordered the column to halt for the night on that feeder of the Powder River as the sky continued to snow.

  At this time of the year, a few hours of daylight became all the more precious to an army on the march, Seamus ruminated. Then he brooded on Samantha, wondering if it was snowing down at Laramie. If she was warm. How it must feel to hold the boy.

  From dawn till dusk that day, Mackenzie kept his Indian scouts ranging on all sides of their line of march, determined not to be surprised by the Cheyenne. In addition, for that night he ordered a double running guard posted around the camp and the herd as the sun sank beyond the white-draped mountains lit with a rosy spray of dying light. Up and down the banks of the creek tiny fires began to glow like red and yellow eyes in the black face of winter night as evening came down, men heating their coffee and salt pork, soaking their hardtack in the thick, sizzling grease that popped and crackled in the small skillets.

  “Crook’s camp can’t be that far off,” John Bourke commented as he flung his saddle down near Donegan’s fire and settled atop it to hand over his empty tin cup. “Fill me, would you?”

  “The infantry coming, are they?”

  John nodded. “Mackenzie just got word from one of the Sioux scouts that they ran into the general and Dodge’s boys going into camp a few miles east of us.”

  “We going to rendezvous tomorrow morning, I take it.”

  Bourke watched the black, steaming coffee hiss into his cup from the battered pot and shook his head. “No. Crook sent word back to Mackenzie that since our column has disengaged and doesn’t need Dodge’s outfit, since we’re on the return march, he’ll take those foot soldiers back to the Crazy Woman and await us at the supply camp.”

  “That must have been some forced march they made,” Seamus replied.

  “Thirty-five miles of it,” Bourke declared, staring at the flames. “Crook wrote Mackenzie a letter saying the rugged hike took its toll on Dodge’s boys: many of them are crippled with cold and lack of sleep.”

  For the most part it was a quiet, subdued camp that night while the anxious soldiers continued to argue over the possibility that they could be attacked. It was the general consensus that with that morning’s sighting of an enemy camp to the west, the Cheyenne had followed the cavalry’s trail that afternoon and would likely jump the bivouac sometime before dawn.

  Quiet too were Cosgrove’s scouts. After two full nights of grieving and celebrating, even the subdued Shoshone did not wail and sing. By the time most of the weary troopers were crawling into their cold blankets, their feet toward the greasewood fires they struggled to keep going for want of fuel, the valley of Willow Creek lay somber and quiet beneath the lifting clouds that played tag with a mercurial three-quarter moon.

  Seamus had
banked the fire for the first hour of fitful sleep and dragged his saddle blanket over him and John Bourke, releasing a long sigh as he tugged his collar up and the coyote-fur cap down over his ears … when the wild, screeching shouts yanked him to his feet about the time the first volleys of gunfire cracked the serenity of the night.

  “Goddamn!” Bourke shouted, rolling out and looking toward the head of the column’s bivouac.

  “I know, Johnny!” Donegan snapped as he snatched up his rifle. “I figured the h’athens would hit us from the rear!”

  Bourke tugged down on his floppy slouch hat, saying, “Looks like they circled round to strike our front!”

  While noncoms barked orders and officers dashed about to form up their units in the dark, every man kicking snow into the fire pits, the wounded cried out not to be abandoned, helpless and tied to their travois now that they were under attack. Many of the horses yanked and pitched against their picket pins driven into the frozen ground near every fire, or fought against the short length of rope that sidelined each mount.

  More gunshots snapped the frigid blackness like cracks in the back of a mirror. Screams and bloodcurdling battle cries floated in from the Indian scouts’ camp on downstream at the head of the march.

  Bounding over the sage and zigzagging through the confused, frightened companies sprinted Donegan and Bourke, racing for the scene of the attack. By the time they reached the outskirts of the scouts’ bivouac, Cosgrove, Eckles, and Lieutenant Delaney were seizing control of the situation.

  Donegan skidded to a halt in his tracks, shaking his head. “A god-blamed buffalo shoot!”

  “Mr. Cosgrove!” Bourke hollered in dismay.

  “Yes, Lieutenant?” the civilian came trudging over at double time.

  “What the hell’s the meaning of your men shooting at buffalo at a time like this?”

  Cosgrove glanced at Donegan first, saying, “Well, Lieutenant—”

  Bourke interrupted angrily. “Don’t you realize how downright skittish those soldiers are back there?”

  “You don’t under—”

  “And you’ve gone and allowed your scouts to fire their weapons?”

  “Hold on, Johnny,” Seamus soothed. “What’s going on, Tom?”

  With a great shrug Cosgrove replied, “Them buffalo just moseyed on into our camp all on their own.”

  “Didn’t know they grazed at night,” Bourke commented. “I’m … I’m sorry I jumped on you—”

  “No problem, Lieutenant,” Cosgrove replied. “If you fellas will excuse me—I’ve got to help get things settled back down.”

  “You do that, Tom,” Donegan declared with a joyous roar. “And when you have all this noisy spill stuffed back into the bottle, what say you bring around a nice big buffalo-hump roast for me and my nervous lieutenant friend here?”

  Bourke nodded and agreed, “I could do with some buffalo to eat, Tom. Doesn’t look like we’ll be going back to sleep anytime soon!”

  Chapter 41

  Big Freezing Moon 1876

  THE INDIANS

  Late News from Crook’s Command—All Well.

  CHEYENNE, November 27.—General Crook’s command reached Fort Reno November 14, in good condition, and was paid off by Major Stanton. The weather is severe but the troops are well prepared for a winter campaign. One hundred Snake and Shoshone Indians joined the command there, making nearly 400 Indian allies in all, and the total strength of the command 2,000. The hostile Indians, according to the best information, are scattered on both sides of the Big Horn mountains, and a campaign on each side may be necessary before completing the work. Meantime Crazy Horse, with about 4,000 lodges, is on the Rosebud, near the scene of the June fight, for which point a cavalry command left under General McKenzie, and would have to march about six days before reaching it. The cavalry are in excellent condition, and if this movement is successful the heaviest work of the winter would have been accomplished.

  Oh, Father of All Things! You see into the heart of all men. We thank you for sparing so many of us that we may flee to rebuild our people. Watch over all who you have chosen to carry on. Keep our feet on the road you would have us walk.

  And help us to see that in death, there is also rebirth.

  Little Wolf opened his eyes to the rising sun as it came up far, far away across the frozen white plains.

  He stared, his arms outstretched, clad only in his leggings and breechclout, crude and stiffened pieces of green horsehide tied around his feet in place of the beautiful war moccasins he had lost in the fires that had destroyed nearly everything his family owned. Bare-chested, shivering with the fierce cold of that dawn, fighting down the pain in each of his six wounds, the Sweet Medicine Chief breathed his silent prayers, then knelt to fill the small pipe he took from the bag he snatched up in his lodge the morning of the attack.

  Slow to move in the cold, slow to move with those wounds he had suffered from soldier bullets, perhaps wounds caused him by the Tse-Tsehese scouts who had come with the soldiers, Little Wolf lit the pipe from a smoldering coal he had laid among the white sage at his feet in the center of a patch of bare ground he had kicked free of the drifted snow moments ago.

  To the four winds and to the spirits that watched from both earth and sky, he gave thanks for the deliverance of the People.

  Then Little Wolf thanked the Everywhere Spirit for the deliverance of the People’s greatest treasures: Maahotse was safely on their way south with Black Hairy Dog and a small escort of warriors; Esevone hung in a bundle strapped on the back of Coal Bear’s woman back in the shadows and the ravines of the mountainside where Lodgepole Creek* issued from its canyon, rushing onto the rugged plain.

  Standing in silence some twenty feet behind the Sweet Medicine Chief, the old, blind prophet, Box Elder, turned his own wrinkled face toward the warmth of the coming sun. It made Little Wolf’s tears fall and freeze in tracks on his bronzed cheeks when he turned to look a moment at the ancient one. Standing so stoic, brave, steadfast there … sightlessly standing guard over Little Wolf with his veiny, deformed hands gripping tightly the tall staff from which hung the Sacred Wheel Lance. Behind the old man another ten feet stood Medicine Bear, the young apprentice who held the Turner, its buffalo tails dancing upon each gust of wind.

  With the power of those objects, the two men protected Little Wolf as the Sweet Medicine Chief said his prayers for the People. Asking the Everywhere Spirit to protect His people one more day as they moved out of the fastness of the mountains, trudging northeast toward the plains where they hoped to find the Crazy Horse people.

  He prayed no more infants would be asked to die of the endless, horrid cold. The first night nine had given over their spirits. Then three more last night.

  This morning there were faces missing from the fires built along the spine of these White Mountains. Old, wrinkled faces—ones who had seen so much greatness, now witness to so much devastation. Few of the old ones had the strength to last out this grueling march, most preferring to step aside and let the others pass, there to find a place where they could sit among the rocks, beneath the branches of the great sheltering trees.

  And there to wait for death to come on the wings of Winter Man’s hoary cold.

  Today, just as they had done from that first night of flight, the able-bodied warriors would go ahead of the march until they were almost out of sight. There the young men would gather wood and kindle a new fire with a coal carried from one of the old fires where the People sat waiting, trying to warm themselves. When that new fire blazed, sending its shimmering waves of heat into the cold of that vast mountain wilderness, a lone warrior would ride back to signal the others to come ahead. The many would reluctantly rise, setting off toward the distant blaze, where they would again sit and rest while a new fire was kindled farther down the trail toward the Hunkpatila of Crazy Horse.

  They were leaving a trail chopped with the footprints of the old and the small ones, footprints spotted with blood. As well as a trail of pony car
casses. A few times each day a horse would be slaughtered for food to feed the many cold, empty bellies. As the warm green hide was stripped off to be wrapped around cold children, or cut into crude boots to protect frozen feet, some of the half-dead old ones stumbled over to stuff their own hands and feet into the warm gut piles steaming in the terrible cold. Just enough warmth to allow them to trudge on, on through the wilderness to find the Oglalla wintering on the Tongue.

  One of his old friends, White Frog, had been wounded four times in the battle as he drew bullets to himself protecting the women and children. Although he stumbled with the agony of his wounds and oftentimes fell in the snow, White Frog nonetheless struggled to be one of the first who led the others from fire to fire, cheering them on.

  Behind White Frog proudly walked Comes Together, White Frog’s woman, clutching their infant son beneath her hide dress, sharing what warmth she had with the tiny, sick child.*

  “Ma-heo-o!” Little Wolf called out as loudly as he could with a hoarse throat. “Hear your people! We belong only to you! When you remain steadfast to us—not even the power of the ve-ho-e can ever destroy us!”

  A generous portion of the meat butchered from those buffalo killed during last night’s folly was distributed among the wounded that Homer Wheeler was escorting back to the wagon camp on the Crazy Woman. Those soldiers who could eat found themselves strengthened for the arduous journey that Tuesday, 28 November—their third day struggling through a mix of sand and deep snow icing the hilly country.

  Well after sunrise the lieutenant’s detail loaded the frozen dead onto the backs of the restive mules once more, preparing to move out with their ghoulish cargo. Then the travois were attached to the mules, each set of poles strapped to their aparejos pair by pair. The wounded had not been moved since sundown the day before, placed at that time in two rows, their feet to glowing fires, their travois pitched at an incline upon pack saddles for their comfort.

  “Sir?”

  Wheeler turned, finding one of his men coming up. “What is it, soldier? We’re preparing to move out.”