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

ST. PAUL, October 16.—A Pioneer Press special from Bismarck says the Indians at Standing Rock signed the treaty relinquishing the Black Hills on Wednesday. The treaty was so far modified as not to insist on their removal to the Indian Territory. The troops intended for the expedition to go in camp tomorrow, and will probably leave about Wednesday. General Sturgis is en route to join his regiment and will probably command the expedition, unless Terry goes in person.

With the half-breed tracker riding at his side, Luther Sage Kelly probed east across Sunday Creek north of the Yellowstone, the river that had given him his nickname. Out of the eight-foot-high willows and icy bogs where the horses had slow going, yanking one hoof after another out of the sucking mud, they slowly clambered to higher ground. In that moonless darkness, Kelly knew the soldiers would be crossing farther upstream: where the banks were corduroyed for supply wagons from Glendive and the bottom wasn’t such a maze of sinkholes as it was here.

Miles’s infantry could afford to take the time to stay with the Tongue River Road right now—but Yellowstone Kelly could not. He had the colonel’s orders to feel ahead of the column: to see if the Indians might have made their crossing of the river; and, perhaps even more important, to find out just what the hell had happened to that supply train long overdue from Glendive Cantonment.

Otis’s wagons were long overdue. With rumors that the Sioux were closing on the south bank of the Yellowstone, in all likelihood intent on crossing to the north, it did not bode well for any supply train that might happen upon a massed war party. Luther, along with fellow scouts Victor Smith, an old friend, and half-breed Billy Cross, had accompanied Lieutenant Frank S. Hinkle and six soldiers on a dangerous scout to the upper reaches of the Tongue and Mizpah Creek, hoping to find the Indian encampment rumored to be in the area. They found nothing. Which could only mean the Sioux had to be farther to the east.

All the more worrisome, the party of Arikara trackers Kelly had sent out with William Jackson more than two days back hadn’t returned. Miles feared they had been discovered by a hostile war party and rubbed out.

So at two-thirty this cold Tuesday morning Miles had the entire Tongue River encampment up to receive fourteen days’ rations. Leaving behind two companies of the Twenty-second U.S. Infantry to protect their cantonment, in that first inky seep of dawn the colonel was ferrying his ordinance rifle and ten full companies of his Fifth Infantry to the north side of the Yellowstone. By eleven-thirty A.M. the other 10 scouts, 15 officers, and 434 soldiers formed up and moved into the cold gray light beneath the low clouds scudding along the Glendive Road.

“Not since the government’s operations against the Mormons in fifty-seven has the Fifth marched as a regiment,” Miles had said with undisguised pride earlier that morning as he’d stood on the north bank of the Yellowstone with Kelly, watching his men ferry over twelve at a time. Then the officer sighed, saying, “There’s trouble out there, and Otis is right in the thick of it. I can smell it.”

“We’ll find out soon enough, General,” Luther replied, slipping his boot into a stirrup. “We’ll be back when I’ve got something to report.”

This was to be Kelly’s twenty-eighth winter—born in the village of Geneva, right in the heart of the Finger Lake region of central New York State, long before made famous by the notorious Red Jacket of the Iroquois Confederation. Many were the times over the years that Luther would claim as an ancestor none other than Hannah Dustin, the courageous backwoods woman who’d been captured by hostiles and conveyed north through the formidable wilderness, eventually making her miraculous and daring escape during the French and Indian War.

He pulled his hat down now, nodding to Miles, and reined his horse around to the east, kicking it in the flanks.

A hell of a lot of water had passed beneath his boots since that day long ago when he had stood gape-mouthed, watching the line of young drummer boys—every last one of them decked out in patriotic bunting festooned with rosettes made from red, white, and blue cloth—marching at the vanguard of the column of volunteers who were stepping off to make war on the rebellious South. Because he was only fifteen when his mother finally consented to his enlistment near the end of the war, Luther had to lie to recruiters about his age. And, in his youthful ignorance as well as exuberant zeal, promptly made the mistake of joining the regular army instead of the New York volunteers.

Before he knew it, he had taken his oath to the Tenth U.S. Infantry for a three-year hitch.