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

After some duty guarding Confederate prisoners, Kelly’s unit was finally ordered to Fort Ripley on the upper reaches of the Mississippi River. After a few months his company was sent on to Fort Wadsworth, near Big Stone Lake in the Dakota Territory. By the spring of sixty-seven Kelly’s company was ordered to establish Fort Ransome—a small station at the forks of the Cheyenne River, near Bear’s Den Hill, far to the north near the Canadian line. It was the first time Luther had ever seen a buffalo.

“How ’bout it, Kelly?” his sergeant prodded him one of those last nights before his hitch would draw to a close. “You game to sign up for another?”

The handsome Luther smiled, showing his big, bright teeth. “No, sir, Sergeant. Now, don’t misunderstand me, sir: there’s nothing finer for a young fellow than a three-year term in the United States Army, for it teaches him method, manliness, physical welfare, and obedience to authority. But, in all truthfulness, Sergeant—one enlistment is quite enough—”

“Quite enough?” roared the old file.

“Yes, sir,” Kelly replied steadfastly, “unless that man has decided to make soldiering his profession.”

The sergeant looked upon the young man gravely. “And you won’t?”

With a gesture Luther had waved an arm out there to the prairies and the mountains that fine spring day in 1868. “No, sir—I’ll be saying good-bye to soldier life. There’s too damn much I want to see right out there as a free man.”

Back in St. Paul briefly to cash his last pay voucher, Luther quickly turned his face once more to the west, pointing his nose for the Canadian settlement of Fort Garry on his way toward the wild, open country that lay at the headwaters of the Missouri River. By the time he’d reached the Canadian settlements along the Red River, Kelly had run onto several miners escaping north out of Montana. Despite their warnings about roaming war parties on the American side of the line, Luther journeyed on—youth’s bravado running hot in his veins.

At the crossing of the Assiniboine River he ran into some métis with their Red River carts, making their way to the buffalo country. He accepted their invitation to throw in with them. It wasn’t long before he adopted much of their colorful dress, including the hooded capote constructed from a thick blue Hudson’s Bay blanket. With a red sash to hold it closed about him, Kelly felt all the more the part of a high prairie prince.

While moseying south and west with the half-breed traders, he had a chance meeting with a band of Hunkpapa warriors led by Sitting Bull. When the haughty Lakota inquired who the lone white man was among them, the métis said he was their American friend—therefore under their protection. Although they stomped about a bit and made a fierce show of it, Sitting Bull and his Hunkpapa soon departed.

In those weeks before he parted ways with the half-breed métis, Luther hunted buffalo, helping the men shoot and skin their kills, watching the women dry strips of the meat, which they eventually put up into rawhide sacks as pemmican they would use in trade at the many wilderness posts dotting that formidable land. Then came the day the old man led him to a nearby rise and pointed into the beckoning distance.

“This is where your adventure continues,” the wrinkled métis said, pointing.

“That means we are to part” Kelly replied sadly.

“There lies the country you seek. Look out for the Sioux, boy.”

Moving south, Kelly reached Fort Berthold, where he met the Gerard brothers who were the post traders. The story went that the Gerards had acquired their initial capital after a party of Montana miners, descending the river in a small bateau with their gold, was attacked by a war party and killed. Having no knowledge of gold, the Indians had emptied the sacks into the boat, which they set adrift, later to be discovered downstream by the fortunate brothers. From Fred Gerard, Lather had purchased a Henry carbine and a supply of cartridges. Just this past summer Fred had been employed as an interpreter and tracker with Custer’s column, assigned to Reno’s battalion when the Lakota had badly mauled the Seventh Cavalry.

From Berthold, Luther trekked upriver on foot, hungry for adventure. Along the way he bumped into a party of wandering Mandan, out to hunt buffalo. From them he learned how to prepare boudins, chopped meat and marrow fat cooked within a casing of a buffalo’s intestine. Later, when he found a little steady employment as a mail carrier between Forts Berthold and Stevenson—journeys on which he would take volumes of Poe, Shakespeare, Scott, and other classical authors into the wilderness for his own entertainment—Kelly met the noted Arikara tracker, Bloody Knife.