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

Grouard shaved off a sliver of army chaw and slipped it inside his cheek on the tip of his knife’s blade, asking, “What if the damned gold’s already dug up and took out of them Montana mountains by the time you get around to it?”

“S’pose the only thing to do then is to become a gentleman horse breeder.”

“You don’t say,” Pourier marveled.

“If there’s no wars to fight. And no gold to dig up neither,” Seamus said with a casual shrug. “What else you ’spect a fella with my talents to find himself to d—”

“Well, I’ll be gol-danged,” Grouard suddenly grumbled, rolling onto his belly and jerking the field glasses to his eyes.

“Look at that, will you?” Donegan gazed onto the open plain with the rest, seeing the big warrior come prancing out of hiding atop the pretty gray horse.

For a moment something sour caught in his throat, just with that remembrance of the General—the beautiful animal he had taken from a Confederate officer in the Shenandoah Valley during those last battles of the war, the very same horse he brought west to Fort Phil Kearny in sixty-six, then made their last ride together on the plains of eastern Colorado in that scorching September of sixty-eight. Remembering now with a cold clutch at his heart how that big, gallant horse carried him to the sandy island in the middle of a nameless river with fifty other white scouts as more than seven hundred Cheyenne Dog Soldiers came charging down on them at dawn.*

Except for the black blaze on that war pony’s face and a pair of white front stockings, this horse looked mighty similar.

“What you figure he’s fixing to do?” a soldier hollered nearby.

“He’s come to ask you to dance,” Seamus answered even more loudly.

More than two dozen scouts and soldiers laughed. A few went about adjusting sights, screwing elbows down into the snow for a firmer rest, lying there over their rifle barrels calculating distance and wind and just how much lead to give that daring rider.

“You don’t reckon he’s fixing to lead the rest of ’em on a charge, do you?”

Donegan turned to the young soldier who had asked the question, saying, “No. That one’s on his own. My money says he’s out to prove he’s got balls all by hisself.”

“Five dollars to the man who empties that saddle!” a lieutenant yelled to the Irishman’s left.

“Five dollars!” several men echoed in unison.

“And I’ll put up another five dollars!” piped in another officer on the right.

“Ten dollars, boys!”

“Did you hear that? Ten do—”

The rest of the chatter was drowned out as the whole line unloaded with a deafening racket, boom and whistle. In amazement Seamus watched the contest lying there between Grouard and Pourier as army bullets sailed across the flat, kicking up spouts of snow around and beyond the horse’s hooves. Despite the closeness of the rounds, the warrior kept his animal under control as it pranced first to one side, then back to the other. In the wind the Cheyenne’s buffalo-horned warbonnet danced, each feather fluttering all the way down the long trailer that draped along one of his bare legs, ending just past his moccasins.

At his right elbow the warrior had strapped a large war shield painted with a starburst and adorned with scalp locks. In his left hand he clutched some sort of a club, at the end of which were two long elk-antler tines which he held over his head, waving the weapon as he yelled out to his enemy.

“You figure he’s calling out a challenge—have one of us come out and fight him?” Donegan asked.

“If he’s fool enough,” Big Bat replied.

“Damn, but he’s pretty,” Seamus replied, enjoying the sheer spectacle of it—

—and in the next heartbeat watched the buffalo-horn headdress tip forward as the warrior pitched backward onto the flanks of the big horse. No longer under strict control, the animal suddenly reared and the warrior tumbled off, the club and shield still in his grip as he spilled into the snow.

Off tore the horse, making for the safety of the hill—its single rein flapping in the cold wind. The long, thick buffalo-hair lariat knotted around its neck played out in spastic jerks across the icy ground yard by yard until the warrior’s body suddenly tumbled sideways, quickly straightened out, yanked across the ground as the pony dragged its owner bouncing back behind the Cheyenne lines.

“Shoot the horse!” an officer cried. “Shoot that goddamned sonofabitching horse!”

The entire line unloaded again almost as one, a great, ear-shattering volley. A few more considered shots followed.

No matter. The pony completed this last mission for its master. Horse and warrior gone from sight.

“I’m almost glad that horse got away with that Injin,” Seamus said with no little admiration.

Nearby some of the soldiers turned and gave him the hardest looks before they went back to reloading.

“Looks to me there can’t be no more real fighting,” Grouard stated. “Not up close, no ways.”

“That’s right,” Big Bat agreed. “Scary thing now is them warriors that’s left are gonna do all they can to prove their bravery one way or t’other.”