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

But after no more than the first three sentences, Donegan fell fast asleep over the borrowed field desk. And did not awaken until he caught himself shivering in the gray, seepy cold of dawn.

Finding himself among the raspy, throaty snores of rough and unlettered men, long-haired, bearded, and caked with the stench of horses … instead of awakening within the warm bosom of his little family.

For Young Two Moon there was nothing warm about the last two mornings. As they moved out of the mountains into the foothills, it snowed off and on throughout the day, and each night it grew so cold even he found it hard to move come the dawn.

Yet some of the young warriors had managed to locate some game. This, like the horse meat that had sustained them, the women would throw onto the glowing red bed of coals in the fires, as they had no cooking utensils. Using their belt knives, the men occasionally would turn over the strips and slabs of meat until they were properly roasted. The old folks and the little ones were always fed first. And with what was left, the women and warriors finally ate at every stop. Never was there anything left but hoof and hide.

Joining Yellow Eagle, Turtle Road, Beaver Heart and a few others, Young Two Moon had mounted some of the stronger ponies and left the main group behind as they skirted the foothills to the south. These young men intended to see once more where the soldiers were going, and possibly steal back some of their captured herd from the Indian scouts.

Early in the evening the warriors caught up with the soldier column after it had settled in for the winter night—fires glowing, men talking, many of the ve-ho-e attempting sleep beneath their blankets. Some distance beyond the head of the soldier march the warriors discovered the pony herd, this night watched over by the Tse-Tsehese men who were scouting for the soldiers.

On that subfreezing night, those guards had little idea they were watched by the ten warriors as the herders went to the mouth of a draw where they would be protected from the wind and built themselves a shelter from dried brush, bark, and grass. Inside, the herd guards built a fire. It was not long before Young Two Moon and the others—waiting silently in the snow and the cold—heard the snoring of the guards.

“Those ponies will remember our smell?” Yellow Eagle asked in a whisper.

“It does not matter. We move among them slowly,” Young Two Moon asserted, “they will come to know our smell.”

“Then we can take them home to our people,” Turtle Road declared.

It was as Young Two Moon had said it would be. They went among the unguarded herd, stroking the ponies, breathing in the nostrils of some of the mares, then slipped horsehair ropes around the necks of ten ponies. These few the young warriors led up the long slope to the north. In the dark, silvery silence of that winter night, many of the herd followed obediently.

And once beyond the hilltop, Young Two Moon signaled the others.

“Now we ride!”

With quiet yips of excitement, the warriors leaped to the backs of the ponies they had brought to this place from the Peopic’s march and quickly got the herd of eight-times-ten moving into the snowy night.

“It is a blessing upon us!” Little Wolf cried out as the ten warriors returned just before dawn with the horses. “Now more of the old ones and the ones crippled with cold can ride.”

They continued that day down Lodgepole Creek* all the way until the People reached the “Big Lake”† before following their scouts over the divide to the head of Crow Standing Creek,† where darkness caught them for a third cold night, forced to huddle out of the wind and snow, taking shelter down in the coulees and draws near the frozen streambank.

It was to this camp early in the morning that Big Head and Walks Last returned from their ride with five others back to the burned village in the Red Valley. They had gone back to search for any ponies that might have run off into the hills then wandered back to the People’s camp once the soldiers deserted the canyon. None of the seven warriors brought in any horses.

The white man had taken them all.

THE INDIANS

Gen. Mackenzie’s Fight—List of Casualties.