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

Oh, Father of All Things! You see into the heart of all men. We thank you for sparing so many of us that we may flee to rebuild our people. Watch over all who you have chosen to carry on. Keep our feet on the road you would have us walk.

And help us to see that in death, there is also rebirth.

Little Wolf opened his eyes to the rising sun as it came up far, far away across the frozen white plains.

He stared, his arms outstretched, clad only in his leggings and breechclout, crude and stiffened pieces of green horsehide tied around his feet in place of the beautiful war moccasins he had lost in the fires that had destroyed nearly everything his family owned. Bare-chested, shivering with the fierce cold of that dawn, fighting down the pain in each of his six wounds, the Sweet Medicine Chief breathed his silent prayers, then knelt to fill the small pipe he took from the bag he snatched up in his lodge the morning of the attack.

Slow to move in the cold, slow to move with those wounds he had suffered from soldier bullets, perhaps wounds caused him by the Tse-Tsehese scouts who had come with the soldiers, Little Wolf lit the pipe from a smoldering coal he had laid among the white sage at his feet in the center of a patch of bare ground he had kicked free of the drifted snow moments ago.

To the four winds and to the spirits that watched from both earth and sky, he gave thanks for the deliverance of the People.

Then Little Wolf thanked the Everywhere Spirit for the deliverance of the People’s greatest treasures: Maahotse was safely on their way south with Black Hairy Dog and a small escort of warriors; Esevone hung in a bundle strapped on the back of Coal Bear’s woman back in the shadows and the ravines of the mountainside where Lodgepole Creek* issued from its canyon, rushing onto the rugged plain.

Standing in silence some twenty feet behind the Sweet Medicine Chief, the old, blind prophet, Box Elder, turned his own wrinkled face toward the warmth of the coming sun. It made Little Wolf’s tears fall and freeze in tracks on his bronzed cheeks when he turned to look a moment at the ancient one. Standing so stoic, brave, steadfast there … sightlessly standing guard over Little Wolf with his veiny, deformed hands gripping tightly the tall staff from which hung the Sacred Wheel Lance. Behind the old man another ten feet stood Medicine Bear, the young apprentice who held the Turner, its buffalo tails dancing upon each gust of wind.

With the power of those objects, the two men protected Little Wolf as the Sweet Medicine Chief said his prayers for the People. Asking the Everywhere Spirit to protect His people one more day as they moved out of the fastness of the mountains, trudging northeast toward the plains where they hoped to find the Crazy Horse people.

He prayed no more infants would be asked to die of the endless, horrid cold. The first night nine had given over their spirits. Then three more last night.

This morning there were faces missing from the fires built along the spine of these White Mountains. Old, wrinkled faces—ones who had seen so much greatness, now witness to so much devastation. Few of the old ones had the strength to last out this grueling march, most preferring to step aside and let the others pass, there to find a place where they could sit among the rocks, beneath the branches of the great sheltering trees.

And there to wait for death to come on the wings of Winter Man’s hoary cold.

Today, just as they had done from that first night of flight, the able-bodied warriors would go ahead of the march until they were almost out of sight. There the young men would gather wood and kindle a new fire with a coal carried from one of the old fires where the People sat waiting, trying to warm themselves. When that new fire blazed, sending its shimmering waves of heat into the cold of that vast mountain wilderness, a lone warrior would ride back to signal the others to come ahead. The many would reluctantly rise, setting off toward the distant blaze, where they would again sit and rest while a new fire was kindled farther down the trail toward the Hunkpatila of Crazy Horse.