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

Indeed, for much of last night and into today, Dodge found Mackenzie consumed with chastising himself for not pressing the warriors once the Cheyenne encapsulated themselves in the rocks. While both Crook and especially Dodge offered their words of encouragement, the cavalry commander nonetheless appeared to be snared in a deepening well of despair, delusion, and melancholia.

Dodge went on to pen in his diary:

We found [Mackenzie] very downcast—bitterly reproaching himself for what he called his failure. He talked more like a crazy man than the sane commander of a splendid body of Cavalry. He said to an officer that if he had courage enough he would blow his brains out. [The other officers present] went out soon, and Mac opened his heart to me. He is excessively sensitive. He said he had often done better with a third of the force at his command here—that he believed he degenerated as a soldier as he got older—that he regarded the whole thing as an utter failure. He even stated that he was sensitive lest someone might attribute cowardice to him—and much more of the same kind.

He was so worked up that he could hardly talk and had often to stop and collect himself. I bullied him and encouraged him all I could—told him that he was foolish and absurd to talk so, that we all regarded the affair as a grand success and that his record was too well known for anyone to attribute cowardice to him. I left him feeling much better, but he was in such a state that I thought it right to tell General Crook about it. The General was greatly worried and soon left my tent, I think to send for Mac and get him to play whist or something.

Those bitterly cold days in the wake of his fight on the Red Fork of the Powder River would mark the last campaign of Ranald Slidell Mackenzie … as well as the beginning of his slow and agonizing mental disintegration.

* Trumpet on the Land, Vol. 10, The Plainsmen Series.

* What the white man today calls Clear Creek.

† Lake DeSmet.

† Present-day Prairie Dog Creek.

Chapter 43

Big Freezing Moon 1876

For many days now, more than two-times-ten by the count of notches on the stick in his belt pouch, Wooden Leg had been out hunting with a small party of other young warriors. The last they had seen of Morning Star’s village, it was moving south slowly toward the Red Canyon of the White Mountains.* There Wooden Leg and the others expected to find their people camped a few days from now as the young men began turning about, slowly working their way back to their village.

That morning as the sun rose pale and heatless in a cold blue sky, Wooden Leg’s party was moving upriver along the western bank of the Tongue River, slowly working the game trails before them as they eased along.

“Look!” one of those in front called out.

Quickly they all halted—putting hands to their brows, frost curling from their faces as they squinted into the distance.

“They are walking,” Wooden Leg declared.

“A few ride,” said Stops in a Hurry. “Why do they have only a few horses?”

“Yes. Who are these people?” Wooden Leg wondered aloud. “Why would they be so poor that they are not riding?”

“Indeed, they are very poor,” commented Fox, another of their warriors. “You see they have few robes and no blankets to speak of.”

“Let us go closer and take a good look,” Wooden Leg suggested. “Then we might know if these are friends of the Ohmeseheso or if these are our enemies.”

Quickly retreating down the slope into the long, wide ravine, the young hunters hurried their pack animals south by east in the direction of the strangers. Then, upon leaving their horses in a coulee, some of them went to the brow of a snowy hill to have themselves a closer look at the slow procession inching its way below like a dark worm wriggling against a white world.

The more he studied the people, the more confused he became. Few wore moccasins. Most had stiff, frozen pieces of raw hides lashed crudely around their feet. Some helped old women and men hobbling along between them. Small children rode in the arms of the women, or on the shoulders of the men. There were no travois. These strangers had nothing to carry from place to place!

“These …” Wooden Leg gulped in shame, feeling the burn of sadness sting his heart, “these are the poorest people I have ever known.”

“Perhaps we should take them to our village,” Fox suggested. “We are prosperous and we can share all we have with those who have nothing.”

Then both of them heard the breath catch in the throat of Stops in a Hurry. He had the far-seeing eyes. And with them he stared at the strangers in shock.

Wooden Leg demanded, “What do you see?”

Painfully, Stops in a Hurry turned, his face gone pale with horror. “These are … are our people.”

“Our p-people?”

“Tse-Tsehese?” asked Fox. “Ohmeseheso?”