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

It brought a mist to Morning Star’s eyes as he looked upon Little Wolf, his old friend of many, many winters—standing there beneath the onslaught of the weapons fired by those Wolf People scouts penetrating the lower end of the village, standing his ground while the bullets fell about him, putting his flesh between those soldier guns and the lives of the People.

A chief’s first responsibility.

Once the children and wrinkled ones were out of the village and on their way out of that network of ravines at the upper end of camp and into the deep and narrow canyon where the soldier bullets could not reach them, many of the women made their climb up the wall of that deep ravine and began to gather rocks at the lip of the canyon, erecting breastworks where they and their men would defend themselves to the death. For now the women sang their strong-heart songs as they worked, their voices rising like a prayer to give its power to their husbands and fathers, their brothers and uncles.

With their families out of camp, most of the warriors turned back to take up positions across the hillsides or at the crest of the knolls, where they flopped to their bellies on the snow and frozen ground, to fire down upon the advancing pony soldiers.

While none of the warriors at the lower end of the village had time to snatch up anything but their weapons as they urged their families to flee—some of those men choosing to make their stand there and then, dying on the bloodstained snow among the lodges—the men on the upper end of camp had enough frantic moments to catch up their horses, perhaps load a blanket or robe aboard them, and drive those ponies into the hills among that broken ground west of the village.

A few even whirled their ponies around and galloped back across the stream, singing out their war songs and exhorting one another to have courage once they spotted the first white soldiers approaching from the east at the foot of the hills along the north side of the valley. Although they had no hope of stemming the blue tide with their small numbers, nonetheless these young warriors raced toward those attackers, screaming and firing their weapons—if only to give the families a few more heartbeats to flee by laying down their own lives.

Some—rather than charging with the others—even dismounted and slapped their ponies on the rear to drive them off, each young warrior disappearing among the thick brush and undergrowth, from there to snipe at the white men as they came hurtling into the valley.

Morning Star’s chest went cold as river ice with terror. He felt as if his heart had stopped—suddenly realizing one of his sons had pitched his family’s lodge at the lower end of camp, where the enemy was thickest.

In the murky, misty darkness of that dawn, all Morning Star could see among the lodges and the trees were the startlingly bright muzzle flashes of the guns, hear only the crack-crack-crack of the weapons. A fierce fight was taking place … and the old chief knew, as any father would, that his child was offering up his life so that others might live another day.

The gunfire grew deafening on the far side of the village now. Bullets slapped the frozen lodge skins like hailstones, splintering the lodgepoles above his head. Morning Star’s stomach rose into his throat: soldier scouts, Wolf People, were among the lodges on the south, seizing control of the village!

While those first soldiers appeared out of the north along the low plateau across the stream from the village, more than three-times-ten half-dressed warriors hurried on foot into the mouth of the deep ravine, all of them sprinting north at the bottom of the wide scar where the warriors would lie in wait to ambush some of the mounted soldiers if they came to attack the hills where the families fled for safety. At the same time a handful of warriors turned aside, dashing directly north across the open, rolling ground toward one of the pony herds.

The white man must not capture those horses!

The ponies were their wealth—what made waging war possible! What would allow the People to escape, to rebuild, to fight on!

Morning Star realized they must counterattack … about the time a group of soldiers against the north hills kicked their gray horses into a gallop and made a charge toward the low hill where Yellow Nose, who as a boy had been captured from the Black People,* commanded the many others who lay on their bellies firing their weapons at the Indian attackers pushing into the village.