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

In the middistance the flashes of the enemy guns became a steady, pulsing light as the Cheyenne warriors fired, retreated to another lodge, turned and fired once more as they sought to stem the overwhelming tide … then hoped for nothing more than to protect the retreat of their families.

To his right Seamus could see that down the northern edge of the elongated valley ran a low plateau for something on the order of a mile. Ahead beyond the village the canyon itself disintegrated into a series of upvaults and deep ravines, flat-topped hills and snakelike gulleys where he could barely make out the black flit of bodies against the growing light of that cold day. Swarming into every recess in that rocky red sandstone maze—the Cheyenne were making good their escape among those rugged slopes that tumbled one upon another into the high white mountainsides just now touched with the rose of the sun’s rising this cold, cold day.

It reminded Seamus of the color of blood daubed, spilled, smeared upon the snow.

The way the warriors had fled to the steep sides of the canyon, there likely to take cover and train their fire down upon the village, Donegan realized Mackenzie’s dawn attack already had the makings of one damned cold day in hell.

* Black Sun, Vol. 4, The Plainsmen Series.

Chapter 26

Big Freezing Moon 1876

He could not see if it was light yet, for he had been many, many winters without the power of sight. But behind his eyes where the sun never shined, Box Elder nonetheless knew. In his mind he could see what was about to happen as clearly as he had seen with his eyes as a young man.

In his dream he heard the thunder of the hooves before he heard it with his ears. Beneath him he felt them coming.

And he sat up.

“Bring me the Sacred Wheel Lance!” he cried, his voice thin and reedy with so much singing and praying among the rocks in the hills last night as the celebration had gone on at Last Bull’s big fire.

Now his throat was sore, and it hurt so to use it.

His young nephew, the son of a son of a friend who wanted the boy to apprentice to the great shaman of the Ohmeseheso, quickly snatched up the ten-foot-long lance at the end of which hung the round rawhide-braided wheel that was Box Elder’s special medicine—given him by the earth spirits so many, many summers ago when he had first begun to use his powerful gifts.

One of those gifts he had used time and again was the power to see what was to happen in some time yet to come.

He had seen the soldiers and their friendly Indians coming.

And now they were here!

Young Medicine Bear helped the frail old man throw back his blankets and the heavy robes and get to his feet.

“Put the long shirt over my head—hurry!”

The youth dropped the long, fire-smoked elk-hide shirt over the gray head, the four long legs of the animal almost brushing the floor of the shaman’s lodge. Besides that heavy shirt, Box Elder wore no more than a breechclout.

“My buffalo moccasins. Hurry—we must go!”

One at a time Medicine Bear shoved them on the old man’s bony, veiny feet, then rose to help Box Elder shuffle to the door and step out into the bitter cold.

“The sun is not at the top of the ridge?” the old one asked, unable to feel its warmth on his face as he emerged from the cold lodge.

“No—”

“Box Elder!”

He turned at the sound of the voice crying out his name. Already screams floated like shards of ice from the lower end of the camp. “Curly? Is it you?”

Then the warrior grabbed Box Elder’s thin arm. “It is I, old friend. Come—we must hurry into the hills with your Sacred Wheel Lance.”

“What of Coal Bear?” Box Elder asked, his voice high and filled with dread.

“He already has Esevone

* wrapped in its bundle, and I see they are coming this way,” Curly explained.

“Box Elder!” he heard Coal Bear, the Keeper of the Sacred Hat, call out to him.

“You have Esevone?” the old man asked, wishing his eyes could see, for his ears were already telling him of many guns beginning to explode at the far end of the valley.

“It is on my wife’s back.”

“She is with you? And you have Nimhoyoh?”†

“I do, in my hands—here, feel it now, for we must go quickly!”

Box Elder reached for Coal Bear’s wrist, his fingers working down to the hand that held the round cherrywood stick about the length of a man’s arm. Suspended from the stick was a crude rectangle of buffalo rawhide, the edges of which were perforated, then braided with a long strand of rawhide. From the three sides of Nimhoyoh hung many long buffalo tails, tied to the rawhide shield like scalp locks.

“Hurry, old friend!” Coal Bear repeated.

Laying a hand on Coal Bear’s arm, Box Elder started to move off. “All of us go together. I will flee with you and Esevone! Give the Turner to Medicine Bear so that he might carry it above him on his pony to turn away the soldier bullets!”