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

Just then Young Two Moon had heard the staccato call of the soldier bugle—cold and brassy on the dawn air. He wheeled about and headed north—toward the bugle call, knowing there would be soldiers where he heard such a brassy horn play its fighting song. He leaped his horse down the bank into the creek, then up and onto the rolling plain just in time to see the gray horse troop charging forward across the flat ground. Another group of soldiers rode off to their right toward the head of a faraway ravine. And an even larger bunch of the pony soldiers spread out and came galloping toward him, toward the creek and the village standing on the far side of the narrow stream.

Skidding to a halt, Young Two Moon yanked savagely on the single buffalo-hair rein, spinning the horse around and turning his back to the oncoming enemy. He could hear the bullets pass him more than he could actually feel the air they split in their passing. Back across the stream he raced the pony, into the heart of the village, heading for the south side of camp—where the fighting had already grown intense.

“Young Two Moon!” Crow Necklace hollered, still atop his pinto, as he saw his friend emerge out of the rolling, frosty mist hugging the frozen ground.

Then, as Young Two Moon watched, his friend was slung sideways off his pony, blood smearing his belly.

Racing to Crow Necklace’s side, Young Two Moon leaped to the ground, grabbing the young warrior’s arm to wrap around his neck. Bullets sang around them like angry hornets. Young Two Moon struggled to rise with Crow Necklace, murmuring all the time to calm his friend and the pony until he succeeded in hoisting Crow Necklace over the back of the pinto. Then, scooping up the pinto’s rein, Young Two Moon climbed atop his own horse and kicked it into motion—fleeing that furious close-quarters fighting with the Wolf People.

He sped with the body of his friend into the mouth of the narrow canyon where the women and children had gone, hoping to find someone to help him. Ahead of him a short distance ran five barefoot women, both young and old. He called out to them.

“Come back!”

After they stopped and finally seemed resigned to return to the young warrior, he told them, “My friend is hurt. Will you help him?”

“Is he a relative?” a woman asked, her eyes as frightened as the others.

“No. He is my friend.”

A second woman spoke up as she looked into Crow Necklace’s face. “This man is one of the scouts who found out that the soldiers were coming. Are you one too?”

“Yes, together we saw the soldiers and their scouts coming from the Powder.”

“We will take him,” the first woman said as she stepped forward and slipped the pinto’s rein from Young Two Moon’s hand. “If your friend is meant to live, he will live. You go and fight now.”

The power of the People brought tears to Coal Bear’s old eyes that bitterly cold morning. Not only did they have the strength of Esevone—the Sacred Buffalo Hat protecting them. Not only did they have the power of Nimhoyoh, which Medicine Bear continued to wave from side to side up there atop the breastworks. Not only did the Tse-Tsehese have the strange magic of Box Elder’s Sacred Wheel Lance to make them invisible.

They had men like Long Jaw drawing the soldier and scout bullets away from Coal Bear and his woman as they hurried Esevone through the shallow ravine and onto another ridge. While they scrambled as quickly as their old legs would allow them, they again attracted the attention of soldier bullets. But as quickly as the snarling wasps began to strike the ground around them, up raced the boy called Medicine Bear on his pony, waving the Sacred Turner on the wand at the end of his arm with its sacred power to turn aside all harm from the old couple.

It was only in this way—from ridge to gully, from gully to bluff, and on to the next ravine—that Coal Bear and his woman finally made it to the deep canyon where the others had fled, where the women old and young clutched their children against them and together sang the songs their warriors needed to hear as they plunged into battle.

Foot by foot the old man climbed, stopping often to turn and reach down a hand to his woman, who would pass up the Buffalo Hat; then she would climb on around him, and he would pass the Sacred Hat up to her. Leapfrogging their way up the steep side of that cliff, they made it to the top of the breastworks where the others had gathered.

Many of the women trilled their tongues when they recognized it was Coal Bear—keeper of the Northern People’s power.

There in the cruel wind that kicked up frozen, icy snow off the ground around him, the old chief raised the sacred bundle over his head, looked into the rising sun, and began singing.

His eyes closed, tears streaming down his cheeks.

“Hear me, Ma-heo-o! Save my people! If you must take someone—take me, I pray you! But save my people!”