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

“Aye, Colonel! Hep-haw!” And they were all off like the rush of a wave crashing upon the shore, him and his bay carried away at the front of those Indians, who suddenly freed their wildest screams and screeches all around him.

He was part of it, this rising of his gorge, this swelling of the animal within him. And then Seamus was bellowing along with the Indians, his throat raw with the cold, the muscles in his neck bulging as his horse tore down into the willow with the rest thundering all about him.

The cold along his cheeks stung every bit as much as the whiplash of those eight-foot-tall bare willow branches slapping, clawing, snatching at him and the others as they threaded their way across a little feeder stream, up the other side, the horses slipping on the icy ground, slashing the far bank with their hooves, a few of the ponies going down—the cries of their riders swallowed over with the rest of the clamor. Men left to climb back out of the frozen mud and boggy marsh, to remount and follow in the wake of those who clung to their wide-eyed, frost-snorting mounts like hellions thrust right out of the maw of Hades and flung headlong into this new dawn.

Right through the narrowing neck of the canyon where the riders could race four abreast now and on into the widening valley where the lieutenants shouted and Cosgrove bellowed—leading their Shoshone to the left, their ponies scratching for a hold on the red-rocked side of the slope they began to ascend, one horse at a time, climbing, climbing to reach that high ground where they could seize a commanding field of fire over the village.

Now the Pawnee were beginning to cross to the far side of the creek to the south of the canyon. Slowed, their ponies cautious, as they slipped and fought for footing again on the ice-rimed banks, most of the animals hurtling into the water—legs flailing in the air as they came down into the shockingly cold creek—rising with a struggle to leap across the stream with their riders and vault to the far side, sprays like cock’s combs roostering into the gray light of that bloody dawn, the first crimson light of day smeared recklessly on the tops of the high red bluffs above them all. The Pawnee screeched and cried out, exhorting one another, brandishing their carbines, many of them clamping the reins in their teeth as they splashed one another in that mad race to be the first in among the lodges … to be the first in to claim the finest of those Cheyenne ponies.

Among them one lone Pawnee shaman blew on a wooden pipe, its high-pitched notes rising with a waver above the hammer of hooves and the grunts of the horses, the cracking of ice and the snapping of bare willow limbs against legs and saddles and muscled pony flanks. A sound not unlike the wet, steamy whistle of the boats in Boston Towne’s harbor, these notes the man blew as they raced along—a strange, eerie war song that lifted the guard hairs on the back of the Irishman’s neck. Made that huge scar across the great width of his back tingle once more with alarm.

He had been swept up in half a hundred charges during the Civil War, riding stirrup to stirrup with brave men only heartbeats away from death, their bodies shredded by grapeshot and canister erupting in their midst. Seamus had been wounded before—hit not by shrapnel from Johnny Reb cannons, but hit instead by bone from the comrade riding to the left or right as their gallant troop set out behind the colors and banners and battle streamers for the enemy lines.

But nothing had ever stirred in him the feeling of being so carried away, of being so ultimately helpless against the powerful thrust of this moment in time, the way this charge reached down inside him and yanked him up by the balls. His heart rose to his throat, raw as it was—then he realized he was screaming at the top of his lungs with the rest of the copper-skinned scouts.

It surprised him when the first shots cracked the cold, brittle blue air of that valley morning yet to be touched by the faintest intrusion of the winter sun.

“Bet that’s one of them sonsabitches shooting off his gun at a herder boy!” Grouard growled beside him. “Get ’em some Cheyenne ponies!”

“Don’t make me no never-mind, Frank,” Seamus said. “The bleeming ball’s been opened, which means you and me are up for the first dance!”

Maybe it was one of the Cheyenne in the village who heard the first thunder of the hooves, Donegan thought as the big bay surged beneath him, all muscle and foaming fear … perhaps a warrior snatching up his weapon and bursting into that frozen morning, standing naked to confront that trio of Sioux scouts.

No matter now: the whole bloody village was brought to life with battle cries and thunderous echoes from each side of the canyon—up ahead children screaming and women crying out, the old wailing as they stumbled into the gray light of that terrible morn.

This dawning of a cold day in hell.