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

That morning Mackenzie grew bitterly disgusted with the glee shown by those soldiers who were to be left behind at the Crazy Woman.

At the same time, he was clearly worried. Like the general, Ranald Mackenzie feared most that the enemy would surrender without a fight. As John Bourke had put it during last night’s officers’ meeting, “A fight is desirable to atone and compensate for our trials, hardships, and dangers for more than eight months.”

By midafternoon that Thursday, the spearhead of Crook’s winter campaign was ready.

“Stand to horse!”

In the cold blue air lying low in the valley of the Crazy Woman, officers called out the order to the anxious troopers. Company noncoms had made sure every man had two blankets, one of which he draped over the back of his horse to protect the animal from the intense cold. The other was to be rolled behind the saddle.

“Prepare to mount!”

Sergeants echoed the command up and down the company rows of tents and picket lines.

“Mount!”

Those horse soldiers settling down upon those God-uncomfortable McClellan saddles would not be taking their tents and Sibley stoves along from here on out. Only those two thin blankets, along with a shelter half or the protection of each man’s heavy wool coat, would have to do until they rejoined the wagon train. To dispense with some of the other baggage, Mackenzie ordered his officers to mess with their companies.

Eleven hundred men—as many as a third of which were Indian scouts—trudged away into the growing gloom of that winter afternoon carrying three days’ rations in their packs and another seven on the mules bringing up the rear. Each man had on his person twenty-four rounds of pistol ammunition and in his saddle packs one hundred rounds for his seven-pound, forty-one inch, .45/70 Springfield carbine.

Mackenzie loped to the lead and set the pace himself out in front of the guidons and his colorful regimental standard, the top of the pole bearing the battle ribbons his own Fourth Cavalry had won in a legion of contests against the Kickapoo, Lipan, Kiowa, and Comanche across the southern plains.

Here at the age of thirty-six, Ranald Slidell would at last pit himself against the best of the northern tribes.

It was to be Three Finger Kenzie’s last Indian fight.

The village migrated while Young Two Moon and the other wolves had been out discovering what all those tracks on Powder River meant.

By the time the four returned, the People had moved to a beautiful canyon at the southern end of the Big Horn Mountains, rimmed with high, striated red-rock walls, through the heart of which flowed a branch of the Powder River itself. The Ohmeseheso

had entered the valley by the southern trail, one of only three or four narrow entrances to this canyon that afforded good protection from the cold arctic blasts known to batter the plains at this season. In addition, a small spring near the southern end of the canyon by and large kept the stream free of ice even at the coldest of temperatures. For the most part the valley lay flat, but near the southwest corner the floor became snarled by rounded knolls, upvaulted escarpments of brick-red rock, scarred by deep ravines, hidden cutbanks, and jagged cliffs. On either side of the stream grew a profusion of willow and box elder, and only a scattering of the sheltering, leafless cottonwood. It was here along the Red Fork of the Powder that the People raised their lodges, each spiral of poles lifting a gray streamer of smoke to the cold heavens of that morning as the four scouts gazed down upon the valley from the heights.

“We have time to save our village,” Crow Necklace gasped in the cold air, relieved to find all still peaceful.

“Let’s hurry down to give the warning!” High Wolf said, then wheeled his pony about and led the other scouts down the narrow game trail toward the end of the valley.

The four howled like wolves as they approached the camp. Instantly men, women, and children burst from the lodges, quietly murmuring as the scouts slowly led them through the long, narrow campsite to the lodges of the Sacred Powers. There the four Old-Man Chiefs awaited their return, standing silently as the sun finally made its way over the eastern rim of the high valley.

“You have discovered what the tracks mean?” Morning Star asked as the crowd hushed.

“Soldiers,” Young Two Moon answered.

The talk around them grew louder, like a rumble of a mighty river beneath a thick layer of ice.

“What of these soldiers?” Little Wolf asked. “Where are they going?”

“They could be going anywhere!” Last Bull interrupted. “They could be searching for Crazy Horse! They cannot know we are hidden here inside these mountains!”

“Perhaps you are right,” Morning Star said, his face grave, as if he wanted to believe.

“No,” young Crow Necklace said recklessly, challenging his elders, stunning the crowd by his disagreement with the powerful war chief of the Kit Fox Society, Last Bull. “They will be coming here.”