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

The snow eventually began to let up near sundown and the sky turned patchy overhead as the infantry pushed on into the coming of that winter night without halting. All afternoon they had repeatedly found Mackenzie’s trail to be wide enough to accommodate only one foot soldier at a time, forcing their march to slow as it proceeded in single file up and down steep slopes, across slick-sided ravines and fording icy creeks.

As the darkness swelled around them, Crook hurried ahead with Grouard, thankful the new moon was some ten days old that night. From time to time it splayed the forbidding canyons of the Bighorns with a silvery light reflected off the brilliant tableau of the rugged landscape. Theirs became a two-color night as the black of scrub timber and huge stands of pine and fir contrasted sharply against the shimmering monotony of a whitewashed world.

Near eleven that night the general and the half-breed reached the valley of Willow Creek, a small tributary of the Powder River.

“How much farther, Frank?”

Grouard considered a moment, then answered, “A few hours. Not many. We’re mighty close.

He sighed in disappointment. “Let’s wait for the rest to come up.” Crook said as he stepped down from the saddle.

“Hoping you were going to say some such, General.”

“Get us a small fire going, will you, Frank?” Crook suggested. “I feel like making us some coffee.”

“You’re going to call a halt here?”

Crook stared back down the trail, then up toward the Bighorns. He had to resign himself to it. “We’ll stay the night.”

When Colonel Dodge’s infantry came up, they were ordered to fall out by companies. Some built small fires, where they boiled coffee and ate their supper of cold bacon and frozen hard bread, while others simply collapsed where they were in the snowdrifts and sank into a sound, sound sleep without ceremony or any coaxing.

Oblivious to the cold.

At dawn on Monday, the twenty-seventh of November, after a restless night, Mackenzie’s men were no less skittish about a possible hit-and-run attack by the Cheyenne than they had been the day before. The cruel, slashing mountain wind finally died and it again began to snow heavily.

Seamus ached to the marrow with the cold, thinking again on how warm he could be within the shelter of Samantha’s arms.

Even before the column moved out at midmorning, some of the Indian scouts rode in from their dawn search of the country, reporting the presence of another large village of hostiles off to the west of Mackenzie’s position. Strung out in single file and scattered as they were forced to cross that rugged piece of country, Donegan grew every bit as concerned as the soldiers: should the enemy jump them in the narrow canyons or crossing these deep ravines, Mackenzie’s command would be in sad shape to withstand such an attack without suffering terrible casualties.

The new snow of the past two days made the narrow trail all the more slippery, forcing the horses to work all the harder for their footing. That day some of the weakest, poorly fed mounts gave out, were shot, and their carcasses abandoned along the banks of the eastbound Willow Creek. By late afternoon they had put no more than fourteen miles behind them when Mackenzie ordered the column to halt for the night on that feeder of the Powder River as the sky continued to snow.

At this time of the year, a few hours of daylight became all the more precious to an army on the march, Seamus ruminated. Then he brooded on Samantha, wondering if it was snowing down at Laramie. If she was warm. How it must feel to hold the boy.

From dawn till dusk that day, Mackenzie kept his Indian scouts ranging on all sides of their line of march, determined not to be surprised by the Cheyenne. In addition, for that night he ordered a double running guard posted around the camp and the herd as the sun sank beyond the white-draped mountains lit with a rosy spray of dying light. Up and down the banks of the creek tiny fires began to glow like red and yellow eyes in the black face of winter night as evening came down, men heating their coffee and salt pork, soaking their hardtack in the thick, sizzling grease that popped and crackled in the small skillets.

“Crook’s camp can’t be that far off,” John Bourke commented as he flung his saddle down near Donegan’s fire and settled atop it to hand over his empty tin cup. “Fill me, would you?”

“The infantry coming, are they?”

John nodded. “Mackenzie just got word from one of the Sioux scouts that they ran into the general and Dodge’s boys going into camp a few miles east of us.”

“We going to rendezvous tomorrow morning, I take it.”

Bourke watched the black, steaming coffee hiss into his cup from the battered pot and shook his head. “No. Crook sent word back to Mackenzie that since our column has disengaged and doesn’t need Dodge’s outfit, since we’re on the return march, he’ll take those foot soldiers back to the Crazy Woman and await us at the supply camp.”

“That must have been some forced march they made,” Seamus replied.