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

When he did look, Donegan saw the oily spires of black smoke curling into that pitifully cold blue sky across the white valley beyond the leafless timber bordering the stream. And with that sight, so much hope went out of him too.

“They can see it … can’t they?” Seamus asked.

“They seen it all along,” Rowland stated. “Likely ever since we been talking.”

Swallowing hard, Donegan said, “Ain’t no wonder Morning Star can’t talk ’em into surrendering. Not with their women and children, the old and sick ones, all of ’em watching their homes—everything—go up in smoke like that.” The wind gusted cruelly where he knelt in the thick brush. He sniffled, dragged a glove beneath one eye as he turned back to gaze at Rowland. “I suppose there’s nothing any of us can do now.”

The frontiersman nodded once. “I figger there’s nothing more for us to talk about.”

Rowland tapped his young Cheyenne companion on the shoulder, and they were both beginning to scoot backward toward the protection of some rocks when Little Wolf stepped in front of Morning Star and called out to Rowland again.

Donegan whispered, “What’s he say?”

The frontiersman listened until Little Wolf turned and disappeared. Morning Star slowly turning away into the rocks without another word, his shoulders sagging with a great weight.

“Little Wolf … he says some of his warriors—they gone for help. Gone for some Lakota up north. Big village, not far from here. Gone there for help.”

“So they mean to keep on fighting?” Seamus asked. “Even if the coming night don’t kill ’em?”

“Yeah,” Rowland said as he came alongside the Irishman. “Little Wolf said they was gonna bring them Lakota back here and clean us out.”

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

† The Blood Song, Vol. 8, The Plainsmen Series.

Chapter 36

Big Freezing Moon 1876

Two of Morning Star’s sons were dead. The other could not be found.

Four of his grandchildren lay dead.

In all his sixty-eight winters, he had never seen such devastation and despair visited upon the Ohmeseheso.

Perhaps there was hope for that third son. Morning Star wanted so to hope, because at the moment of attack one of his friends, Black White Man, had managed to save his son, Working Man.

In the recent fight with the Shoshone, Working Man had been badly wounded: a rifle ball striking him in the buttock and exiting from the meat of his right thigh. His father and others had constructed a travois to haul the young warrior back to the village of his people after wiping out the enemy.

So it was that Working Man lay helpless in their lodge earlier that morning when the soldiers attacked. Black White Man had herded his wife from their lodge, thrusting her atop his war pony he kept picketed by the door.

“Wait for me here!” he ordered as he ducked into their lodge.

Then, as the bullets fell about the village like hailstones upon the canvas-and-hide covers, the father returned for his son. After slashing a tall opening in the back of their lodge, Black White Man lifted the young warrior into his arms and carried him to the pony, hoisting him behind his mother.

“Ride to the breastworks!” he was shouting when Morning Star ran through camp on his old legs—driving all the people before him. He told his wife and son, “Go before the bullets find you!”

“You are not coming?” his wife shrieked.

“No. I stay to fight. Take our son to safety, now!”

Then Morning Star watched as Black White Man turned away to join first one group, then another, fiercely protecting the flight of all women and children.

A little later Morning Star caught sight of his friend again. This time Black White Man had been joined by Elk River and others who were on their way down a shallow ravine, on their way to recapture some of the ponies run off by the soldiers’ Indian scouts. From time to time they disappeared from view among the winter-bare brush clogging the brow of the coulee … so Morning Star had turned away to help others escape the village.

When his attention was yanked back with the great noise: the shouting of the angry soldiers, the thunder of the hooves on the cold, solid ground, and the yelling of the brave warriors who had leaped atop the bare backs and were escaping with some of their prized animals. An enemy bullet struck one of the boys with Black White Man in the neck, and he nearly fell. But almost as soon as the blood began to stream down the boy’s chest, another warrior was there beside him so that he would not fall.

As the sun rose high that day, in that final desperate struggle before they lost their village to the enemy’s scouts, Morning Star watched with Black White Man from the low ridge where together they saw the Wolf People scouts fight their way through the scattered cluster of lodges.

“There,” Black White Man had said, gesturing to the side of the hill. “Those are some of my ponies the enemy will steal! I must get them!”