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

“Look here,” Frank White said as he strode into the firelight. Behind him stood the eleven others, each one clutching the reins to his horse. Then the scout dramatically threw down a saddle at the feet of the North brothers, its cinch and straps freshly cut.

“What the devil is this?” Frank demanded, dragging over the saddle to inspect the butchered cinch.

“All like that,” Peter Headman came up to explain. “All.”

“They’ve been cut, Frank!” Luther screamed. “Those sons of bitches wanted that horse of yours so bad—now them goddamned Sioux gone and done this to our boys!”

“Hold on! Hold on a minute here,” the elder North said, gripping Luther by the arm. “We don’t rightly know who did this.”

“Who had the chance?” Donegan wondered.

“Who?” Luther squealed with indignation. “We all know the Sioux and Cheyenne were behind us in the charge!”

Frank’s eyes narrowed. “Ho-hold on, Luther, I know it looks like Three Bears and his bunch skulked back and done this … but, dammit—I don’t want to go blazing away half-cocked like that.”

“You better get yourself ready for a row, big brother,” Luther snapped, wrenching his arm away from Frank. “I’m going to report this crime to Mackenzie. By God—he’ll have the Sioux replace these saddles for our men, or this is the last time our battalion will ever march on campaign!”

Seamus hung close to the fire to finish his pipe, then set out for the hospital about the time it began to snow again, lightly at first. He meandered northeast through the scattering of bonfires as the destruction continued, picking his way through the many cooking fires and smoldering heaps of ash still aglow with crimson coals.

From the groans and cries of those men in restless agony, it became all the easier to make out where the surgeons had set up their bloody business. There, some three hundred yards east of the ravine where the warriors had ambushed Lieutenant McKinney’s troop, lay the bodies of the dead and the wounded. For a moment he stood planted in place, peering at the doctors and their stewards hunched over their work in the light of blazing fires and a pair of lamps one doctor had his assistants holding close above his work as he probed a deep back wound while the dying soldier was held down by three of his companions, groaning through teeth clamped on a bit of bloody rag.

Off to Donegan’s left two soldiers suddenly appeared whole from the northwest out of the black of that night, stepping into the snowy firelight and coming to a halt by another surgeon at work retying a bloody bandage.

“Is our lieutenant here?” one of the pair asked.

The doctor said nothing, only pointing before he continued with knotting the cloth on the struggling soldier beneath him.

However, one of the stewards helping that physician asked, “You in the lieutenant’s troop?”

“We are.”

The steward shook his head. “He’s dead.”

“D-dead? We didn’t know.”

Now the doctor looked up. “Didn’t know he was dead? I thought you said you were in his troop.”

“We are … w-were,” the soldier answered. “Got separated when the red-bellies pitched into us.”

“He was killed and a bunch more wounded” the steward explained. “How come you didn’t know they was all taken off the battlefield? You didn’t run, did you?”

The two young soldiers looked at one another; then the first tried to explain. “No. We ain’t no cowards. Got separated from the rest and had to hide when things got hot.”

“Hide?” asked the doctor.

“All day,” he replied. “Been waiting for it to get full dark afore we could come in. Up in them rocks we didn’t know how bad it got for any of the rest of the boys. But we did know the lieutenant and the sergeant got hit afore we took cover up the side of that ravine.”

Donegan wagged his head—remembering the fear he had swallowed down time and time again as a young soldier faced with those moments before making a charge, those terrifying heartbeats as the fighting, the scuffling, the cannonade began all around them. Perhaps the difference between a private and a sergeant had always been that the private was supposed to be scared. And in this army the sergeant was never allowed the luxury of fear.

“Irish … Irishman.”

Seamus turned at the sound of the soft, croaking call. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. The voice called again, “Over here.”

He started toward the sound, in a few steps reaching the feet of McKinney’s sergeant.

“Forsyth?”

“Yes.”

“It is you,” Seamus said as he squatted beside the wounded soldier and nodded to the young private who sat at the sergeant’s head, holding a wool blanket over them both as the flakes came down.

Forsyth said, “Started to snow again, dammit.”

For a moment he laid his wool glove on the sergeant’s arm. “You’re warm enough?”

“I’ll be fine on that account. Others worse off.”

“I seen they brought you in with the rest,” Donegan said.

“Was pretty well et up with the pain by then,” Forsyth replied. “Then the doc give me some laudanum and he went to work.”