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

So tightly strung were every man’s nerves that when one of the pickets thrown out during the afternoon stop came loping back across the sage, hollering out his warning, everyone went into position to meet the enemy attack.

“They’re coming! The Injuns is coming!”

But almost as quickly the older hands at the front of the column realized the danger was minimal from that handful of Indian scouts who backtracked at near a gallop to rejoin Mackenzie’s cavalry. The five brought the exciting news that they had located the village. Two of the seven, they explained—Red Shirt and Jackass—had volunteered to remain behind in the icy rocks above the village through the cold of the coming night, watching the Cheyenne camp while their companions returned to hurry the soldiers along the trail. Already the temperature was continuing to plummet.

“How many lodges?” Mackenzie wanted to know from his translators as soon as one of his aides was sent down the column to explain that they were not under attack.

“Not sure. Say there’s heap ponies, though. I figure from all they tell me about the size of the herd—maybe two hundred lodges at the outside.”

Seamus watched the Indian fighter’s eyes narrow in that way Mackenzie appeared to calculate the odds.

“With at least three warriors of fighting age for every lodge,” the colonel replied, “I’ve got them right where I want them.” He pointed west, toward the brow of a wide ridge. “We’ll go into hiding there, beneath that overhanging ledge of rocks where the men and animals can rest … then push on as soon as the sun has fallen—as soon as we can be assured no spies know we’re coming. Tell the troop commanders to use that time to fix up their companies for the night march we’re going to make of this. I plan on attacking at dawn.”

   “We must break camp at once!” Black Hairy Dog had cried when the four young scouts brought their report of soldiers marching in their direction.

While the Keeper of Maahotse

spoke of his fear, everyone remained quiet, respectful, reverent—for he was Sweet Medicine’s successor. As the chosen protector of the Sacred Arrows, Black Hairy Dog was one of the two men who owned the People, who held the People in the palm of his right hand.

Morning Star thought, if any man here has the right to speak for all of us at a crucial time such as this, it is Black Hairy Dog.

There arose murmuring assent among Coal Bear, Keeper of the Sacred Buffalo Hat, Morning Star, and the other Old-Man Chiefs. It looked as if all four would agree to put the village on the move out of this valley before the soldiers and their Indian scouts could find them there.

Since it was a meeting of the chiefs of the Council of Forty-four, no warrior-society headmen were allowed to speak. Only during the grave emergency during the Fat Horse Moon, when the soldiers marched down upon the great Lakota encampment beside the Greasy Grass, had the war chiefs been permitted to speak among the council chiefs. Unless the Old-Man Chiefs again gave such permission, the warrior-society headmen were to obey protocol and keep their opinions to themselves.

But instead—

“No!” Last Bull shouted, shoving some of the older warriors aside to thrust his heavy body into the small ring of those six older men who were deciding upon the fate of the village.

Many of those men and all of the women who had gathered that afternoon to hear these important deliberations clapped their hands over their mouths in astonishment.

Last Bull, leader of the Kit Fox Warrior Society, stomped about haughtily, his red face a chiseled portrait of anger. “We will stay here and fight!”

The Sacred Arrow Priest said, “You have no right to speak—”

The war chief whirled on Black Hairy Dog, his fury barely contained. The older Keeper of the Arrows inched back a step, cowed by the bulk, the fury, of Last Bull.

“These soldiers have chased the People since last winter!”

From the fringes of the crowd arose the first excited response from the chief’s warrior society—yipping like kit foxes with the smell of prey in their nostrils. That approval brought a smile of immense satisfaction to the war chief’s face as he continued.

“Fighting alongside the Lakota, we have defeated the ve-ho-e soldiers once,” Last Bull continued haranguing the crowd now, ignoring the six older chiefs who sat around the small circle where he stood, gesturing wildly. “Despite that defeat—the white man has proved how stupid he is in continuing to haunt the backtrail of our village, to harass and harry our people!”

As Morning Star watched the edges of the crowd, it seemed more and more of the Kit Foxes stepped to the fore, made bold by the strong words of their leader.

Last Bull growled, “We must not allow the white soldiers to chase us from place to place to place! No more!”

Now the young warriors were becoming worked up. Some were humming their war songs, some chanting rhythmically, others outwardly shrieking like snarling wolves in battle.