A Cold Day in Hell

by Terry C. Johnston

  “I know, Lieutenant,” the private answered, grave worry carved on his face. “It’s … it’s private McFarland, sir. He’s … well—he’s gone out of his mind.”

  “Out of his mind?”

  “I don’t think he’ll make it through the day,” the soldier replied. “He’s in a real bad way.”

  Sighing, Wheeler said, “All right. See that you make him as comfortable and warm as you can. Then get him hitched up with the others. There’s nothing we can do that the surgeons haven’t already done for him.”

  “You mean … them surgeons say he’s gonna die anyway?”

  “That’s no concern of yours,” Wheeler snapped impatiently. “You have a job to do for Private McFarland while he’s still alive. So you go do it.”

  “Yes, sir.” He saluted and turned away.

  Already Homer could hear the chanting as the Indian scouts were the first to pull away from last night’s bivouac. Throughout most of the last two days’ march they sang over the few scalps Mackenzie had allowed them to take from the Cheyenne, holding the hair aloft at the end of long wands where the bloody trophies tossed in the fitful, icy wind.

  Not long after they set off that morning, Wheeler spotted three Shoshone horsemen sitting motionless atop their ponies at the side of the trail. As he drew closer, the lieutenant recognized the greasy blanket coat the middle warrior wore. Homer halted before them. “Anzi,” he said, not surprised to see the pain written across the Indian’s face.

  “Melican medicine man,” the wounded warrior said, the mere sound of his words echoing the agony of his wound as he stoically remained hunched over in the saddle.

  “Want to ride,” said one of the other two riders in his broken English. He and his companion supported a wobbly Anzi between them.

  “Ride?”

  “There, Melican medicine man.” Anzi pointed at the travois just then going past them.

  “On one of the litters?” Wheeler asked in consternation. “You want to lay down in a travois?”

  “Yes, yes, medicine man,” Anzi gasped, seized with pain. “No whiskey—Anzi do no good.”

  “No whiskey, Anzi,” Wheeler replied sourly. “And I’m afraid I don’t have a litter for you either.”

  “No?” asked one of Anzi’s companions.

  “No,” Wheeler repeated. “The one you got out of two days back is now carrying a sick soldier.”

  “Soldier sick as me?”

  “No,” the lieutenant admitted. “But you gave up your travois when you found out we had no more whiskey.”

  “Yes, whiskey. Whiskey good for Anzi.”

  “No travois, Anzi,” Wheeler replied, beginning to feel his patience draining. “You’ll make it.”

  “To Cluke wagon camp?”

  “Yes. Hang on. You’ll make it there. And—you’ll find more whiskey there too.”

  “Whiskey. Anzi not die he got whiskey in belly with bullet.”

  With the remnants of a grin, Wheeler reined away and rejoined his hospital group as they plodded east away from the mountains.

  An occasional snowflake lanced down from the intermittent clouds rolling off the Bighorns and onto the plains as Wheeler’s men and mules plodded on in a ragged column, surrounded by their escort of two troops of cavalry. It wasn’t long before they heard the dim reports echo back along the trail as soldiers began to shoot their played-out horses—daring not to leave them for the Cheyenne to capture. While the country was nowhere near as rugged as the mountain trail had been, that day’s journey nonetheless required the skill and hard work of Wheeler’s crew in crossing every steep-sided ravine and ice-banked stream, easing their way down and back up every snowy slope.

  “Lieutenant Wheeler, sir!”

  Homer turned in the saddle, recognizing the young soldier riding up from that morning. The lieutenant halted and reined about, awaiting the man.

  “Sir, it’s McFarland,” he said as he came to a stop before Wheeler.

  “Is he dead?”

  “All but, Lieutenant.”

  “C’mon,” Wheeler said as he put heels to his weary, ill-fed horse, moving back along the column.

  Private Alexander McFarland’s attendants had pulled their patient, mule, and travois out of column and halted. Two of them had even removed their hats, holding them clutched at their chest as they stood over the soldier’s body suspended in its blankets. The wind repeatedly tousled their hair into their red-rimmed eyes that bespoke of grief silently endured.

  Leaping down from his saddle, Wheeler bent over the private, placing his ear over McFarland’s nose and mouth. He heard nothing at first, but waited for something, anything. Then came a long, low death rattle deep within the dying man’s chest.

  “Sir?”

  Without looking up at the soldier near his shoulder, Wheeler kept his ear over McFarland’s face a moment more, then straightened. “We’ll wait here a little longer, men.”

  “He ain’t dead yet, sir?”

  “Not … just yet.”

  It wasn’t long before McFarland’s heart finally beat its last. No breath wisping from his nostrils.

  “All right,” Wheeler said with resignation as he straightened his fur cap on his head. “Let’s get the private wrapped up in a blanket and lashed with rope like the other dead men.”

  “Beg pardon, Lieutenant,” grumped one of the escort, who stepped up to rest a gloved hand on the dead soldier’s body. “Alexander … Private McFarland, he was a friend of mine, sir. What you got in mind for him, you go tying him up in a blanket like the other dead, sir?”

  “Why, I’m fixing to put him on one of the mules,” Wheeler explained, growing annoyed after so many days bare of sleep and warm food, filled only with bone-numbing work and spirit-robbing cold. “Like those others—”

  “I beg you, Lieutenant,” a second attendant pleaded as he came up. “McFarland don’t deserve to be hunched over no goddamned mule’s back to freeze like a croquet hoop, sir! Let us leave him be on the litter till we get back to—”

  “But I need that litter, Private.”

  “Who you need it for?” demanded the first soldier suspiciously.

  “For one of the scouts.”

  The second soldier prodded, “You mean one of the civilians was wounded?”

  “No,” Wheeler explained, growing more nettled as more and more of the column inched past them in the snow. “I mean one of the Shoshone.”

  “Take his litter away for a goddamned Injun?” a soldier cried.

  Another shrieked, “Not even no white man?”

  “As you were, soldiers!” Wheeler ordered. “I’ve made my decision. While I understand your friendship for McFarland, we also owe what we can to the scouts who put their lives on the line too.”

  “But you can’t put my bunkie on no god-blamed mule!”

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause he’s … he’s dead, sir!”

  “Exactly, Private,” Wheeler answered. “Don’t take this wrong, but McFarland doesn’t know the difference any longer. And I’ll damn well do what I can to make one of our allies comfortable.”

  How he hated feeling their eyes between his shoulder blades as he turned, waving one of his noncoms over. “Sergeant, go up to the Shoshone detachment and locate the one called Anzi.”

  “Anzi, sir?”

  “You’ll remember him,” Wheeler sighed. “He was the one drank most of the whiskey we had us the night after the battle.”

  “Yes, sir. I remember that one. For sure I do.”

  As the sergeant reined off into a lope, it started to snow again right overhead. Wheeler looked to the east where the sky was a patchwork of clouds and sunlight, blue and gray. But above the column it was beginning to snow again to beat the band. Big, thick, soft flakes that seemed to hiss through the brittle air as they tumbled from the lowering sky.

  Behind Wheeler a voice grumbled, “That son of a bitch—”

  Turning, throwing his shoulders back wearily, so tired he did not want a fight
, the lieutenant declared, “I hope whoever spoke out of turn will be a man and own up to calling his superior a son of a bitch behind his back.”

  The eyes shot here and there until an older private admitted, “It was me, sir.”

  “You?”

  “B-but I didn’t mean you, Lieutenant,” the older man apologized. “I was saying that Shoshone scout you call Anzi is the red-bellied son of a bitch. Him, sir: for taking McFarland’s—”

  “I see,” Wheeler interrupted with a sigh, telling himself to be patient with these weary, half-frozen men. “Well, now—we all know that red-bellied Shoshone son of a bitch has lasted two days longer than our army surgeons said he would. So if he’s what you say he is, soldier … at least he’s one goddamned tough red-bellied son of a bitch.”

  George Crook had pushed Colonel Richard I. Dodge’s doughboys to their limit, driving them some thirty-six miles in twelve hours that first day—a march of astonishing speed and endurance considering the temperature, the wind-driven snow, and the difficult terrain.

  Just before ten A.M. yesterday, 27 November, five Indian couriers had reached Crook’s bivouac as the infantry was preparing to continue its march west. From the scouts the general learned that Mackenzie had departed the battlefield and was headed his way, bearing his dead and wounded out of the mountains.

  “It appears General Mackenzie no longer requires your services,” Crook informed Dodge.

  The glum infantry commander asked, “What now, General?”

  Crook regarded the fuss-budget Dodge a moment longer, then replied, “Why, we countermarch to our wagons.”

  “Do you plan on reaching the crossing tonight, sir?”

  “I most certainly do, Colonel. I most certainly do.”

  Late that Tuesday morning, the twenty-eighth, another trio of couriers rode into the Crazy Woman camp. They bore Mackenzie’s official written report of the engagement. Barely able to contain his excitement, George Crook read and reread the first word the outside world knew of that dramatic and tragic confrontation in the valley of the Red Fork:

  Sir: I have the honor to report that at about twelve o’clock AM, on the twenty fourth (24th) inst. while marching in a south westerly direction towards the Sioux Pass of the Big Horn Mountains I was met by five (5) of the seven (7) indian scouts who had been sent out the evening before who reported that they had discovered the main camp of the Cheyennes at a point in the mountains, about fifteen or twenty miles distant. Two of the seven (7) indians remaining to watch their camp, the command was halted near sunset and then moved toward the village intending to reach it at or before daylight, owing to the nature of the country, which was very rough and in some places difficult to pass with Cavalry. The command did not reach the village until about half an hour after daylight. The surprise was, however, almost complete. The approach to the village, the only practicable one, entered the lower end and the indians taking alarm took refuge in a network of very difficult ravines, beyond the upper end of the village, leaving it on foot and taking nothing but their arms with them. A brisk fight for about an hour ensued after which shooting was kept up until night. The village consisting of one hundred and seventy three (173) lodges and their entire contents were destroyed. About five hundred (500) ponies were taken & twenty-five (25) indians killed whose bodies fell into our hands. And from reports which I have no reason to doubt, I believe a much larger number were killed. Our loss was one (1) officer and five (5) men killed & twenty five (25) soldiers & one (1) Shoshone indian wounded. Fifteen (15) cavalry horses and four horses belonging to the indian scouts were killed. The command remained in the village during the night and moved on to this point today. Lieut. McKinney, Fourth (4th) Cavalry who was killed in this affair was one of the most gallant officers and honorable men that I have ever known.

  (signed) R.S. Mackenzie

  Colonel, commanding

  Fourth U.S. Cavalry

  Immediately calling for Dodge, Crook showed the colonel Mackenzie’s report.

  “He’s done all that you asked of him, General,” Dodge replied, returning the dispatch to Crook.

  “Yes,” the general said. “From the sounds of things, I think the fighting is finally over.”

  “I certainly hope so, General.”

  Crook nodded, peering down at the maps littering his field desk. “Perhaps now Crazy Horse will either surrender, or decamp and go off to hide himself in the badlands.”

  “You seem much pleased with your success.”

  Crook’s eyes narrowed as he regarded the prim Dodge, as if the colonel were passing judgment on him. “I have every reason to be pleased. I have marched hundreds of miles and fired hundreds of thousands of rounds, killing and wounding soldiers as well as wasting an entire regiment of horses … to be able to stand here today—finally able to state that we have had a success!”

  “Then, here’s to Mackenzie, General!”

  “By all means,” Crook responded with gusto. “Here’s to Mackenzie!”

  * Present-day Clear Creek.

  * Little Coyote—one day himself to become the Keeper of the Sacred Medicine Hat, Esevone.

  Chapter 42

  28–30 November 1876

  THE INDIANS

  Crook Has Another Fight.

  CHICAGO, November 27.—General Crook, under date of Camp Crazy Woman’s Fork, November 18th, reports that Colonel Mackenzie of the Fourth cavalry, attacked the Cheyenne camp consisting of a hundred lodges, on the west fork of the Powder river, on the 15th instant, capturing villages and the greater portion of the Indian herd. The loss on both sides was thought to be considerable, but was indefinitely ascertained when the courier left. Lieutenant McKenny, of the Fourth Cavalry, was killed. The weather is represented as being very severe.

  Near noon that Tuesday, the twenty-eighth, it began to snow again, whipped out of the north on a cruel and cutting wind as Mackenzie’s column struggled east. By the time the command went into bivouac for the night after ten tortuous miles, the snow lay two feet deep on the level and the wind was consumed in laying up immense drifts.

  As his troops were going into camp and dismounting, Mackenzie rode over to pay a call on his Indian allies. There among the scouts, Donegan watched the colonel tell of his gratitude for their service against Dull Knife’s Cheyenne. For each of the two Sioux and two Arapaho scouts who were credited with discovering the enemy camp, Mackenzie declared that he was giving them four of the captured ponies of their choice. To the North brothers’ battalion of forty-eight Pawnee scouts, he gave sixty ponies. For any acts of individual bravery under fire, Mackenzie donated an extra animal. And for all the rest, Mackenzie stated they would be allowed to choose one horse for themselves before they departed for their agencies.

  Theirs was a shabby bivouac: hardly any wood to speak of for their supper fires, fires meant to keep at bay the marrow-robbing cold as the sun dropped out of sight and the temperature fell beyond human endurance. Because of their struggle for footing on the crusty snow, the trail-weary animals had little strength left to fight down through the icy drifts for what meager grass might be found. As the stars came out in those few patches of clear sky overhead, it was a quiet, melancholy camp of many men crowding around what few fires were kindled—surrounded by their herds of morose cavalry mounts, pack mules, and captured Cheyenne ponies.

  For the past few days Seamus had become gravely concerned for the bay. Already its ribs were flung up beneath its heavy winter coat the way a brass head rail might poke its spindles beneath a bedsheet. If these big American horses did not get grain, and soon, the soldiers might just be limping back to the wagon camp afoot. He shuddered, remembering the horrors endured in their horse-meat march last September;* then recalled how he had struck a bargain with another horse during that ordeal—vowing that he would do everything he could not to allow it to go down, unable to get back up.

  Man and animal alike hung their heads that night, all God’s creatures struggling to keep from freezing during that tortured, slee
pless night until dawn finally arrived. They had no wood left for breakfast fires. No coffee to boil anyway. Only hardtack and cold bacon, and what good water they might find in their canteens.

  Still, every man knew they would reach Crook’s wagon camp before nightfall. And that hope was enough to get these frontier warriors to their feet and pushing on at daylight. Another ten miles brought them into sight of the pickets Dodge had thrown out on the surrounding heights. The forward cavalry command hailed the infantry, and the word instantly shot back through the column like a bolt of summer lightning.

  “I see ’em!” one man yelled at the head of that first troop. “The tents! The tents!”

  Cheers and huzzahs went up as the weary, frozen men straightened in their saddles and joyfully slapped the trooper riding stirrup to stirrup beside them on the back. The warmth of those tents drew on them like iron filings to a lodestone as the hundreds of infantry fell out to watch the return of Mackenzie’s victorious horse soldiers. Dodge’s men cried out their congratulations, cheered, and tossed their hats in the air as the long column snaked over the hills and down to the banks of the Crazy Woman.

  There was a lot to be thankful for. Many of the cavalry received mail that day, news of home and loved ones. There were even two letters from Samantha for him. More than hot food or a chance to get out of the wind beneath some heavy army canvas—simply to read her words, to touch those pages she had held in her hands days ago, to smell of those letters for the faintest breath of her fragrance … all of it warmed the Irishman as twilight fell.

  That evening by the light of a fire kindled right outside a tent he shared with Frank Grouard and two others, Seamus sharpened his stub of a pencil with his folding knife and put it to paper. The weather was far too cold for him to dare writing her in ink, he told Sam, praying she would forgive him the inelegance of the lead pencil.

  But after no more than the first three sentences, Donegan fell fast asleep over the borrowed field desk. And did not awaken until he caught himself shivering in the gray, seepy cold of dawn.