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

CHICAGO, November 27.—General Crook, under date of Camp Crazy Woman’s Fork, November 18th, reports that Colonel Mackenzie of the Fourth cavalry, attacked the Cheyenne camp consisting of a hundred lodges, on the west fork of the Powder river, on the 15th instant, capturing villages and the greater portion of the Indian herd. The loss on both sides was thought to be considerable, but was indefinitely ascertained when the courier left. Lieutenant McKenny, of the Fourth Cavalry, was killed. The weather is represented as being very severe.

Near noon that Tuesday, the twenty-eighth, it began to snow again, whipped out of the north on a cruel and cutting wind as Mackenzie’s column struggled east. By the time the command went into bivouac for the night after ten tortuous miles, the snow lay two feet deep on the level and the wind was consumed in laying up immense drifts.

As his troops were going into camp and dismounting, Mackenzie rode over to pay a call on his Indian allies. There among the scouts, Donegan watched the colonel tell of his gratitude for their service against Dull Knife’s Cheyenne. For each of the two Sioux and two Arapaho scouts who were credited with discovering the enemy camp, Mackenzie declared that he was giving them four of the captured ponies of their choice. To the North brothers’ battalion of forty-eight Pawnee scouts, he gave sixty ponies. For any acts of individual bravery under fire, Mackenzie donated an extra animal. And for all the rest, Mackenzie stated they would be allowed to choose one horse for themselves before they departed for their agencies.

Theirs was a shabby bivouac: hardly any wood to speak of for their supper fires, fires meant to keep at bay the marrow-robbing cold as the sun dropped out of sight and the temperature fell beyond human endurance. Because of their struggle for footing on the crusty snow, the trail-weary animals had little strength left to fight down through the icy drifts for what meager grass might be found. As the stars came out in those few patches of clear sky overhead, it was a quiet, melancholy camp of many men crowding around what few fires were kindled—surrounded by their herds of morose cavalry mounts, pack mules, and captured Cheyenne ponies.

For the past few days Seamus had become gravely concerned for the bay. Already its ribs were flung up beneath its heavy winter coat the way a brass head rail might poke its spindles beneath a bedsheet. If these big American horses did not get grain, and soon, the soldiers might just be limping back to the wagon camp afoot. He shuddered, remembering the horrors endured in their horse-meat march last September;* then recalled how he had struck a bargain with another horse during that ordeal—vowing that he would do everything he could not to allow it to go down, unable to get back up.

Man and animal alike hung their heads that night, all God’s creatures struggling to keep from freezing during that tortured, sleepless night until dawn finally arrived. They had no wood left for breakfast fires. No coffee to boil anyway. Only hardtack and cold bacon, and what good water they might find in their canteens.

Still, every man knew they would reach Crook’s wagon camp before nightfall. And that hope was enough to get these frontier warriors to their feet and pushing on at daylight. Another ten miles brought them into sight of the pickets Dodge had thrown out on the surrounding heights. The forward cavalry command hailed the infantry, and the word instantly shot back through the column like a bolt of summer lightning.

“I see ’em!” one man yelled at the head of that first troop. “The tents! The tents!”

Cheers and huzzahs went up as the weary, frozen men straightened in their saddles and joyfully slapped the trooper riding stirrup to stirrup beside them on the back. The warmth of those tents drew on them like iron filings to a lodestone as the hundreds of infantry fell out to watch the return of Mackenzie’s victorious horse soldiers. Dodge’s men cried out their congratulations, cheered, and tossed their hats in the air as the long column snaked over the hills and down to the banks of the Crazy Woman.

There was a lot to be thankful for. Many of the cavalry received mail that day, news of home and loved ones. There were even two letters from Samantha for him. More than hot food or a chance to get out of the wind beneath some heavy army canvas—simply to read her words, to touch those pages she had held in her hands days ago, to smell of those letters for the faintest breath of her fragrance … all of it warmed the Irishman as twilight fell.

That evening by the light of a fire kindled right outside a tent he shared with Frank Grouard and two others, Seamus sharpened his stub of a pencil with his folding knife and put it to paper. The weather was far too cold for him to dare writing her in ink, he told Sam, praying she would forgive him the inelegance of the lead pencil.