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

With the remnants of a grin, Wheeler reined away and rejoined his hospital group as they plodded east away from the mountains.

An occasional snowflake lanced down from the intermittent clouds rolling off the Bighorns and onto the plains as Wheeler’s men and mules plodded on in a ragged column, surrounded by their escort of two troops of cavalry. It wasn’t long before they heard the dim reports echo back along the trail as soldiers began to shoot their played-out horses—daring not to leave them for the Cheyenne to capture. While the country was nowhere near as rugged as the mountain trail had been, that day’s journey nonetheless required the skill and hard work of Wheeler’s crew in crossing every steep-sided ravine and ice-banked stream, easing their way down and back up every snowy slope.

“Lieutenant Wheeler, sir!”

Homer turned in the saddle, recognizing the young soldier riding up from that morning. The lieutenant halted and reined about, awaiting the man.

“Sir, it’s McFarland,” he said as he came to a stop before Wheeler.

“Is he dead?”

“All but, Lieutenant.”

“C’mon,” Wheeler said as he put heels to his weary, ill-fed horse, moving back along the column.

Private Alexander McFarland’s attendants had pulled their patient, mule, and travois out of column and halted. Two of them had even removed their hats, holding them clutched at their chest as they stood over the soldier’s body suspended in its blankets. The wind repeatedly tousled their hair into their red-rimmed eyes that bespoke of grief silently endured.

Leaping down from his saddle, Wheeler bent over the private, placing his ear over McFarland’s nose and mouth. He heard nothing at first, but waited for something, anything. Then came a long, low death rattle deep within the dying man’s chest.

“Sir?”

Without looking up at the soldier near his shoulder, Wheeler kept his ear over McFarland’s face a moment more, then straightened. “We’ll wait here a little longer, men.”

“He ain’t dead yet, sir?”

“Not … just yet.”

It wasn’t long before McFarland’s heart finally beat its last. No breath wisping from his nostrils.

“All right,” Wheeler said with resignation as he straightened his fur cap on his head. “Let’s get the private wrapped up in a blanket and lashed with rope like the other dead men.”

“Beg pardon, Lieutenant,” grumped one of the escort, who stepped up to rest a gloved hand on the dead soldier’s body. “Alexander … Private McFarland, he was a friend of mine, sir. What you got in mind for him, you go tying him up in a blanket like the other dead, sir?”

“Why, I’m fixing to put him on one of the mules,” Wheeler explained, growing annoyed after so many days bare of sleep and warm food, filled only with bone-numbing work and spirit-robbing cold. “Like those others—”

“I beg you, Lieutenant,” a second attendant pleaded as he came up. “McFarland don’t deserve to be hunched over no goddamned mule’s back to freeze like a croquet hoop, sir! Let us leave him be on the litter till we get back to—”

“But I need that litter, Private.”

“Who you need it for?” demanded the first soldier suspiciously.

“For one of the scouts.”

The second soldier prodded, “You mean one of the civilians was wounded?”

“No,” Wheeler explained, growing more nettled as more and more of the column inched past them in the snow. “I mean one of the Shoshone.”

“Take his litter away for a goddamned Injun?” a soldier cried.

Another shrieked, “Not even no white man?”

“As you were, soldiers!” Wheeler ordered. “I’ve made my decision. While I understand your friendship for McFarland, we also owe what we can to the scouts who put their lives on the line too.”

“But you can’t put my bunkie on no god-blamed mule!”

“Why not?”

“’Cause he’s … he’s dead, sir!”

“Exactly, Private,” Wheeler answered. “Don’t take this wrong, but McFarland doesn’t know the difference any longer. And I’ll damn well do what I can to make one of our allies comfortable.”

How he hated feeling their eyes between his shoulder blades as he turned, waving one of his noncoms over. “Sergeant, go up to the Shoshone detachment and locate the one called Anzi.”

“Anzi, sir?”

“You’ll remember him,” Wheeler sighed. “He was the one drank most of the whiskey we had us the night after the battle.”

“Yes, sir. I remember that one. For sure I do.”

As the sergeant reined off into a lope, it started to snow again right overhead. Wheeler looked to the east where the sky was a patchwork of clouds and sunlight, blue and gray. But above the column it was beginning to snow again to beat the band. Big, thick, soft flakes that seemed to hiss through the brittle air as they tumbled from the lowering sky.

Behind Wheeler a voice grumbled, “That son of a bitch—”

Turning, throwing his shoulders back wearily, so tired he did not want a fight, the lieutenant declared, “I hope whoever spoke out of turn will be a man and own up to calling his superior a son of a bitch behind his back.”

The eyes shot here and there until an older private admitted, “It was me, sir.”

“You?”