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

Captain Miner’s wagon train limped back to the Glendive supply depot after nine P.M. on the evening of 11 October, having hacked their way through the massing warriors, fighting for nearly every foot until the Sioux were certain the train was retreating to the east along Clear Creek. The warriors broke off their attack as the soldiers rumbled along a trail crossing higher ground, thereby giving the soldiers a commanding view of the surrounding countryside as darkness approached.

After allowing the mules and those four infantry companies two days to recoup their strength, Lieutenant Colonel Elwell S. Otis of the Twenty-second Infantry determined this time to set out himself to deliver those much-needed supplies to the Tongue River cantonment. On the afternoon of the thirteenth he informed his troops that with the addition of one more company to bolster their strength, they would be moving out come morning—at which point forty-one of the civilian teamsters buckled under and stated flatly that they were not about to ride back into the breech.

Like many of the other officers, Second Lieutenant Alfred C. Sharpe figured Otis’s soldiers would be all the better for not having those mule-whackers along.

“So be it,” Otis declared, nonplussed, when the civilians bowed their backs and refused to go. “We’ll do with what we have for teamsters and fill the rest of the wagon seats with soldiers. I’m determined to go through to Tongue River this time … even if fighting takes us there.”

Not only did they have the addition of G Company, Seventeenth Infantry, under Major Louis H. Sanger, this time they would haul three Gatling guns along with the wagon train.

That afternoon Otis dispatched a courier to ride off with news of the attack on Miner’s train as well as the renewed attempt to reach Tongue River, that report bound for Colonel William B. Hazen, commanding the Sixth U.S. Infantry at Fort Buford.

At midmorning on the fourteenth Otis’s eleven officers and 185 men departed Glendive cantonment, putting a scant ten miles behind them before going into bivouac for the night. Dusk had deepened, and many of the soldiers were preparing to turn in, when just past eight P.M. a shot was fired from one of the pickets, alarming the camp.

“I’ll lay you odds we had a man blast away at another Injun ghost,” growled Lieutenant Oskaloosa Smith as he trotted up beside Sharpe as they headed toward the disturbance.

“Like it was on your trip out, eh?” Sharpe replied.

Damn near a repeat, it turned out to be. Except for the fact that this time the picket reported spotting two horsemen when he offered his challenge—swearing to the officers on his mother’s grave he had hit one of them—although a hastily formed search party found nothing in the dark. Camp settled down and the rest of the night passed uneventfully. It wasn’t until first light when one of the outlying pickets brought within the lines a crippled pony he had spotted hobbling among some stunted cedar along the creek bottom.

“Injun pony,” Alfred Sharpe observed as the officers looked the wounded animal over.

A pad saddle was lashed around its middle with a single surcingle. Several blankets were tied behind the saddle. It wore a single rawhide rein, as well as a picket rope trailing behind the animal.

“I’ll bet that pony threw off the bloody savage and he had to fetch himself a ride with the other red bastard,” one of the men surmised.

Otis pulled on his gloves and looked into the sky at the emerging sun. “Time we got under way, gentlemen. Mr. Smith, see that this animal is put out of its misery.”

Just before seven A.M. on that bright, clear Sunday morning, the fifteenth of October, they resumed their journey. The drivers formed up the wagons into four long lines to make their way across the rolling, broken ground as the soldiers went into position to form a square surrounding the train. In the rotation of the march, Lieutenant Sharpe’s company that day drew duty as the advance guard for the column. When his foot soldiers stepped out in lively fashion, making good time just in front of the first wagon and the rest of the escort, the lieutenant began to recall Sunday mornings he had enjoyed back east.

Peaceful Sabbath, he ruminated as the frosty air began to warm, sensing some contentment flood over him with those fond memories. How pleasant it would be back in the States today, he thought: to hear the church bells ringing and to see the good people coming into church. He almost imagined he could hear the sweet tones of the organ, the choir raising their voices in song with the old hymns, and that oft-repeated proscription of the preacher from Sharpe’s youth, “The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him—”