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

By the time Luther’s hair had grown to his shoulders and his mustache had become all the shaggier, he had killed his first Lakota: two warriors intent on lifting his white scalp and robbing him of his Henry. Around Fort Peck, indeed all along the Upper Missouri, the story of that fateful encounter was told and retold by his friend Bloody Knife and other Arikara scouts who found work from time to time for the army.

It was while Kelly made some occasional money as a woodhawk, supplying the few upriver steamboats with fuel, that he was asked to guide for Colonel George A. Forsyth, come to map and explore the Yellowstone as a member of General Sheridan’s Chicago staff on Captain Grant Marsh’s Far West From Fort Buford at the mouth of the Yellowstone, the party pushed past Glendive Creek and on to the mouth of the Powder before turning back. Back at Buford, Luther bid the soldiers farewell, then turned back into the country of the Milk, the Judith, and particularly the hunters’ paradise of the Musselshell River, where he cut wood, trapped occasionally, and hunted wolf pelts until late this past spring when it seemed that wandering Sioux war parties became even more troublesome than normal.

In the Judith basin he had been following wolf sign among the tracks of a small migrating buffalo herd, for those winter-thick pelts brought five dollars American at the nearby posts. From there Luther moseyed farther south toward the Yellowstone that summer, picking the wild strawberries as they came into season until he reached the country near Pompey’s Pillar. Upon those spectacular heights he looked down into the far river valley and caught sight of the white tents of an army camp lining a green bottomland near a bend in the sparkling river. From there to the mouth of the Bighorn, Kelly was rarely ever out of sight of soldiers or supply trains as General Terry prepared to pursue Sitting Bull and General Crook made ready to pursue Crazy Horse into the Black Hills.

Too many folks, Luther had groaned. Seemed the army was destined to stir up more trouble for itself. Kelly turned away to make his way up the river when he soon ran onto some Montana miners who were easing down the Yellowstone, having heard of the army’s preparations to pursue the Indians who had massacred Custer. It was the following day when he was out hunting that he found himself confronted by a large cinnamon bear he dropped with his needle gun. Because the hide was very poor at that late-summer season, Kelly took only some back fat to use as gun oil, along with one of the big forepaws and all the claws.

On down the north bank of the Yellowstone, Kelly tramped with the mining party until they reached a sprawling military camp erected about a mile above the mouth of the Tongue River. There they crossed to the south side on a crude ferry the soldiers operated, finding the camp nearly deserted. Quartermaster Randall explained that most of the men were either out working the timber in the hills for their huts, or they were out on routine patrols of the nearby country.

“By the Land of Goshen!” Randall gushed as his eyes suddenly locked on that dark object suspended from the horn of Kelly’s saddle and stepped forward to have himself a better look. “What in God’s name is that?”

Luther untied the rawhide whangs from the saddle horn and handed it over to the captain. “Just the paw of a cinnamon I killed the other day.”

“Never have I seen anything so huge!” Randall said admiringly of the paw over a foot long without the claws. “You shot this by yourself?”

“I did,” Kelly replied. “But it wasn’t my first. I’ve been out here for nearly eight years already—”

Randall interrupted eagerly, “You know this country, do you?”

“A good deal of it, yes.”

The captain hefted the heavy bear’s paw and declared, “The general will want to see you.”

“The general?” Kelly asked. “Who’s the general?”

“Why, Nelson A. Miles. He’s curious to learn all that he can about this country.”

At that moment the mischievous thought had struck Luther. He instructed the quartermaster, “There, Captain—take that paw to General Miles for me. Tell him it is my calling card.”

In the next few moments Randall had the paw in the hands of his own orderly, on its way to the tent of Colonel Nelson A. Miles, commander of the Fifth U.S. Infantry, whose job it was to erect winter quarters there at the Tongue River, as well as patrol the Yellowstone and prevent Sitting Bull’s Sioux from crossing north of the river, fleeing on to Canada.

Late that afternoon and into the evening, the intrigued Miles questioned Kelly in great detail about the country north of the river, indeed, all the way to the British line; seeking knowledge of it for a field of operations against the hostiles. During their talk Kelly told the colonel about his three-year hitch in the regular army, having seen some of his service in the Dakota Territory.