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

“They hold their guns in plain view, openly,” Sitting Bull protested. “Is this not honorable of a man? It is not an honorable thing to sneak a gun under one’s coat as these soldiers have done. Maybe I should kill this Bear Coat who is not so honorable a man. Do you think I should kill him now, Big Leggings?”

Bruguier gulped, his face turning to Miles. He said, “Soldier chief—”

“You tell Sitting Bull that I am Colonel Nelson A. Miles, Fifth U.S.—”

“Shuddup and listen,” Johnny interrupted. “Sitting Bull just asked me if I figured he ought to kill you his own self.”

The soldier chief’s eyes narrowed into slits. “S-sitting Bull said … said he ought to kill me?”

Johnny tried hard to overhear the whispers of those old men who huddled their heads close to Sitting Bull, snarling angry advice to the chief, whispering their denunciations of the chief’s talk about killing the Bear Coat.

Bruguier started, “He asked me that—”

Miles interrupted, “Get those goddamned warriors back! Now!”

“Sitting Bull asked me if I thought he should kill you, but the others … they talked him out of killing you today.”

“Tell those horsemen to get back, or by Jupiter there will be blood on this ground today!” Miles snapped.

Johnny translated for Sitting Bull, and at long last the chief turned to wave the horsemen back to where they had been waiting when the conference began.

“See there?” Bruguier asked nervously, hoping the fuse had been taken out of the powder keg. “There is no danger now.”

“You tell Sitting Bull that even I entertained the idea of killing him by my own hand here today too. But I—Nelson A. Miles—knew it was not an honorable thing to do under a flag of truce. You tell him that. That I am an honorable man. Had I killed him here, and my men shot the rest of you—the whole civilized world would have denounced the act as barbaric.”

“Sitting Bull does not think the white man truly wants peace with the Hunkpapa,” Johnny said on behalf of the chief.

“I told you: I am an honorable man.”

“But do you want peace with Sitting Bull?”

“Yes,” Miles answered. “But to have peace, I want Sitting Bull and his people to go to the agency where they can live in peace with the white man.”

“You are a soldier,” Johnny translated. “Like Sitting Bull’s warriors. He does not believe you are a man of peace. You have come to make war on his villages, on his women and his children.”

“No,” the soldier chief said quietly. “I want peace as much as Sitting Bull wants peace.”

More whispering hissed among the Lakota warriors at Johnny’s knee. As he watched and listened, he could see Sitting Bull stiffen with resolve. As much as the others might be trying their best to talk him into making some peaceful arrangement with the soldier chief, the Hunkpapa leader once more became resistant. His eyes went cold and his face became impassive for a long time as he listened and considered the words of the others. At long last he held up his hand, signaling the others that now he wished to speak.

“Big Leggings,” he said, his eyes boring into the half-breed’s, “tell the Bear Coat that my people do not intend to surrender. We will never go to the agency. I am born a free Indian and will die a free Indian. The soldiers will never change that. I will use my last breath to see that my people continue hunting buffalo and antelope in this country. You tell this soldier chief that we will continue to trade at the forts when we want to trade with the white man. Otherwise, the Hunkpapa want nothing to do with the white people. And you tell this soldier that we want his word of honor that he will take all the soldiers from our country—never to return!”

Licking his lips nervously, Bruguier began his translation, seeking the words that would show the fire of Sitting Bull’s oration, but not so much heat that it would be like slap across the soldier chief’s face. Even though the Hunkpapa chief might want that, there still existed a very real chance for tragedy and treachery in this small council held in the middle of this great buffalo prairie.

In the end Johnny translated as best he could the full force of Sitting Bull’s declaration, the full impact of Sitting Bull’s deadly warning.

Miles stiffened only slightly with the rebuke, his face becoming set like stone as he listened to Johnny haltingly translate all the thoughts in the chief’s stern oration. Then the colonel considered his reply a few minutes before saying, “If Sitting Bull wants to continue hunting for this final season—to put meat up for this last winter his people are to hunt buffalo—I can understand. But in return for my allowing the Hunkpapa to continue their last hunt, Sitting Bull must leave these three men with me as hostages.”

“H-hostages?” Johnny repeated, scrambling to figure out what he was going to say to the chiefs as a lone warrior dismounted behind the council, shifted his blanket tightly about himself, and moved toward the ring of men squatted on the prairie.