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

Besides that drumming and the triumphant singing of the Shoshone scouts in the valley below, all around the chiefs women were keening softly, crying out with shrill and angry voices, mourning the dead, singing over the wounded as the old shamans shook their rattles, blew their prayers into each bloody, frozen bullet hole with four long puffs of air.

Brave, heroic men like Yellow Nose suffered in silence for the most part, asking only for sips of melted snow as they lay curled close to the small fires.

For all the pain they had caused his people, Little Wolf still would gladly take Old Crow’s gift of soldier bullets—those boxes of the shiny cartridges left behind in the rocks below Morning Star and the others. Yes, Little Wolf was never so proud he did not use the white man’s bullets to defend his people.

He wondered now how Old Crow slept, wondering if he slept at all—having turned against the Ohmeseheso even though he too was one of the Council of Forty-four. Perhaps the power of the Maahotse would indeed kill all those who had turned their backs on their own people.

For a long time that afternoon Black Hairy Dog had prayed over the Sacred Arrows he pulled from their fox-skin quiver. Many warriors and women eventually gathered around the priest, all joining in to stamp their feet and sing the songs that would put a curse on every one of those who fought on the side of the white man against their own people.

Then, slowly, with much respect, the Sacred Arrow Priest lifted the Arrows one by one from the white-sage bed he had made for them to overlook the valley, replacing them in the quiver. Then just past twilight Little Wolf sadly watched Black Hairy Dog place the Maahotse on his wife’s back, and together with an escort of some eighteen families they began their retreat to the south. Big Horse, White Buffalo, Young Turkey Leg, and others were, after all, Southern People like Black Hairy Dog.

“We will stay east of the mountains as we go south,” they told Little Wolf and the rest at their last council just before departing. “When we reach the foot of Hammer Mountain* we can then turn our faces south by east back to our agency.† Only then will I be sure the Maahotse are safe.”

Esevone was safe as well. Some time ago Coal Bear and his woman had fled up the mountain with the Medicine Hat as men like Box Elder, with his Sacred Wheel Lance; Long Jaw, with his bullet-riddled red blanket cloak; and Medicine Bear, with the magic of the Turner, first used their powers to cloak the old couple with invisibility, then diverted the enemy’s bullets. By sundown there were many who had poked their fingers through the countless holes shot in Long Jaw’s cape, whispering in amazement that not one ve-ho-e bullet had penetrated his body.

Truly, the Everywhere Spirit had watched over His people this day. But they still faced the winter, and the wilderness, and the search for the Hunkpatila of Crazy Horse.

Little Wolf winced with the pain in his six wounds as he turned to look up the slope into the darkness at the faint points of red light glowing here and there. Beside one of those fires rested the Hat Bundle. With its power secure, the People just might survive the coming ordeal.

But at a terrible cost.

Then he shuddered to think how many were sure to die in the coming ordeal.

During his short nap in the midst of the long-range battle yesterday afternoon, William Earl Smith’s leg had gone to sleep and a deep cold had seeped into the muscles. As the night wore on, the leg continued to hurt all the more, making any attempt he made at sleep fitful and sporadic. Between the leg and the cries of the wounded in the nearby field hospital, Smith didn’t figure he had slept for more than an hour at a time all night long.

Each time he awoke, he came to with a start, slowly realizing where he was, listening to the groans of those in pain and the voices of those men on picket duty, or what soldiers were unable to sleep. And each time he came awake, the private always found Mackenzie pacing back and forth. At first he figured the colonel was attending to one matter or another, but Smith soon came to realize Mackenzie had instead slipped into some kind of deep depression.

William Earl liked the man, and it bothered him to find Mackenzie so sorely troubled. It even shook the young private to the core to have seen the colonel openly cry when he learned Lieutenant McKinney had been killed at the ravine.

The following morning Smith scribbled in his journal:

I don’t believe he slept at all that nite. His mind must of been troubled about some thing. I don’t know what, for he is the bravest man I ever saw. He don’t seem to think any more about bullets flying than I would about snowballs.