A Cold Day in Hell: The Dull Knife Battle, 1876

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 Donegan. “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?”