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

A bullet whisked over the top of his shoulder—opening a painful furrow in the muscle atop his arm that hurt in the extreme cold, bloodying the shirt he wore.

“This is not our day to die, my friends!” he sang out, turning his back to the white men and their dogs who led the soldiers to this camp. “See me dance in the midst of their bullets!”

Others with him cried out with exultation, exposing themselves here and there, jumping out to take a shot, then falling back to reload and appear on the other side of the tree or rock or brush—their strategy causing the front rows of that massed assault to begin losing its stomach for fighting such daring warriors.

At times one or more of them were hit and bleeding, yet—like Little Wolf—they too suffered only minor wounds. At the mouth of the ravine they rallied around their chief, standing their ground to protect the ones who could not protect themselves.

After all, a man’s blood coagulated very quickly in the cold of such a terrible day.

Donegan watched as Lieutenant McKinney clutched the front of the surgeon’s coat with one of his bloody hands pale as the crusty snow beneath him—hoisting himself up slightly with the last shred of heroic strength that remained in his riddled body.

At least six bullets had struck the officer at the moment the Cheyenne rose out of that ravine and fired point-blank into the front of McKinney’s charge.

“Dr. La … LaGarde,” the dying soldier gurgled, blood bubbling at his lips. “See that … see my mother gets my … my—”

Then McKinney went rigid for a moment and fell backward onto the blanket where the survivors of his company had laid him only minutes before.

The lieutenant and the others who fell at the edge of that bloody ravine had been hurried behind this low red butte, where the surgeons were establishing their temporary field hospital. There was far less danger of any more Cheyenne bullets falling among these men here at the base of this gentle slope among the brush as the sun continued to climb in that dazzling blue sky above.

“Is he … is he dead?” one of the soldiers asked, snatching hold of the surgeon’s coat sleeve.

LaGarde shrugged off the man’s grip as he laid his head down on the bloodied chest. He listened intently, his eyes closed—then opened them to look up at the expectant faces closing in about him.

As. the surgeon used two fingers to ease down McKinney’s eyelids, he said, “The lieutenant’s dead. From every one of these wounds … hell, any one of which could have killed him on the spot, and all the goddamned loss of blood … why—it’s nothing short of a miracle that he lasted until you got him here.”

A big soldier grabbed hold of LaGarde, dragging the surgeon to his feet there beside the body. “But you couldn’t do a damned thing for him, could you?”

Donegan stepped in, putting his left hand on the soldier’s thick arm. “Leave it go, Cawpril.”

The man’s eyes shot to Donegan’s, filled with hurt as much as they were filled with rage. For a moment Seamus inched his right hand nearer to the butt of the pistol riding over his left hip.

Then the soldier sagged and looked back at LaGarde. “G’won now, damn you!” he snarled between his teeth as if he were trying his best to control his rage. “See what you and the rest of your cloth can do for the others.”

Without a word, only the gesture of tugging down his coat to straighten it, LaGarde turned away and stepped over McKinney’s body, ready to kneel beside one of the five other surgeons at work on the rest of the lieutenant’s wounded.

“How ’bout looking at this one, Doc?” Frank Grouard asked, tapping on LaGarde’s shoulder.

“What one?”

The half-breed pointed at Donegan.

“You’re bleeding?” the surgeon asked, turning to the Irishman.

“No. Just my shoulder.”

“You fall?” And LaGarde took hold of the Irishman’s left arm in both hands, beginning to raise it gently.

“No—easy there!”

“What happened?”

“A war club.”

“Back here across the shoulder blade?”

“I s’pose,” Seamus replied, beginning to wince in pain as the arm came up even more under the surgeon’s urging. “I don’t know for sure: I wasn’t really watching what was going on behind me—hold it! God-bleeming-damn!”

Releasing the arm slowly, LaGarde asked, “How far can you raise it on your own.”

“Don’t wanna raise it very far a’t’all.”

“Show me.”

“’Bout there,” Donegan declared.

“Don’t you think you ought’n keep him outta the fighting, Doc?” Grouard asked. “Just to keep a eye on it?”

“No way a few bruises gonna keep me outta this fight, you bloody half-breed!”

LaGarde shrugged. “You can see I’ve got lots of bleeding men here. Some of them gonna die soon too. So the two of you can go argue somewhere else for all I care.”

“But what about his arm and shoulder?” Frank demanded.

“It isn’t broken—if that’s what you’re asking,” the surgeon replied and turned away.

Grouard quickly stepped in front of the retreating doctor. “But don’t you think he should do something about it?”