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

To Donegan’s left Frank and Luther North led their Pawnee among the first lodges, which were pitched at the end of the camp near the mouth of a dry creek clogged with leafless underbrush and stunted alder. From their left, near the opening of that ravine, a blanketed form sprang up directly in front of Lute North, who whirled his carbine down at the target and fired at almost the same instant that Frank pulled the trigger on his carbine. The shock of both bullets at that range catapulted the Cheyenne warrior off his feet, back into the brush as the horsemen raced on by.

Behind them the Pawnee yelped their approval and praise for making that first kill, “Ki-de-de-de! Ki-de-de-de!”

Singing out, the coatless battalion pushed on for the village, hoping for plunder, ready to fight hand to hand for enemy scalps as they plunged through the camp, intending to meet Mackenzie’s soldiers on the far side and thereby seal off all chance for the Cheyenne to escape. But the delay caused by their recrossing the creek to join Mackenzie minutes before now doomed the colonel’s plan of attack to frustration, if not ultimately to failure.

Already Donegan could make out the dark forms of the Cheyenne spilling from the west end of village far ahead, making for the high ground like coveys of quail flushed from the protective undergrowth.

“Dammit,” he muttered, realizing that with the Cheyennes’ flight, this was bound to turn into a long struggle of it. The warriors would quit fighting only if Mackenzie’s men were able to capture the women and children.

As Seamus reined up at the downstream fringe of the lodge circle, he turned the bay around, then wheeled the horse around again, searching out a target for the long-barreled .45-caliber Colt’s revolver. North of him across the flat ground he saw Mackenzie and those outfits at the head of the charge slow—

A bullet hissed by.

Then a second snarled past his left ear, splitting it painfully.

“God-damn!” he bellowed between clenched teeth. As many times as he had been seriously wounded, still, nothing he had experienced had ever hurt with so much raw-edged torment as that wound to his ear as the cold breeze made every nerve come alive in the ragged laceration.

Jamming his pistol back into its holster over his left hip, Seamus tore off his gloves and yanked at the knot in the greasy bandanna tied at his neck. Ripping off his hat, Donegan quickly whirled the bandanna around several times to make a long bandage he quickly lashed around his head. When it was tied, he pulled on his hat and again hauled out the pistol just as his horse snorted and sidestepped.

Losing his balance with the animal’s sudden move, Donegan spotted the approaching warrior from the corner of his eye as he was pitched from the saddle into the snow.

The lone Cheyenne skidded to a stop, kicking up a slow-rising rooster tail of fine snow with his feet as he brought a repeating carbine to his bare shoulder.

Rolling onto his belly as he landed with a cascade of snow, Seamus stretched out his arm, turned on his side, and squeezed the trigger. Sensing the jolt of the pistol in his paw, he continued his tumble sideways while drawing the hammer back with his thumb a second time.

He felt a bullet whine past him. Too damn close.

Rolling up onto his knees, Seamus brought the pistol’s front blade to that spot where his instinct told him Indian had been … and pulled the trigger again. He watched the slug slam into the warrior’s chest, knocking the Cheyenne off his feet. Spilling backward into the half foot of trampled snow, he skidded on his back a few feet before coming to a stop, arms and legs crooked and unmoving.

The amphitheater around Seamus thundered with the deafening rattle of hooves, shouts of men close at hand, and distant screams of the women bursting out of the far end of the village.

He dragged his legs under him and rose to his feet, dusted some of the snow off his front with that seven-and-a-half-inch pistol barrel, then turned at the hammer of hoofbeats bearing down upon him.

Past him on both sides burst more of the Sioux and Cheyenne scouts, led by Three Bears, streaming into the heart of the village.

Turning, Donegan whistled to the bay, then swept his hat out of snow, shoving it down so hard on the bandanna and flesh wound that it made him wince. Snagging the saddle horn in both gloved hands with the pistol between them, he vaulted atop the horse without using the stirrup and slammed the small rowels of his spurs into the animal’s muscular flanks, it bolted off, straining to catch the scouts plunging into the mass of hide-and-canvas lodges.

Ahead of him the Sioux and Cheyenne advance was slowing, some men dismounting in a noisy, shouting whirl as the fighting became hotter. Less than a hundred yards away Cheyenne warriors were retreating one lodge at a time, fighting hard even in the face of the enemy horsemen.