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

Despite that one soldier’s fate, a particularly obnoxious trooper from the Fifth Cavalry had begun to boast that no Cheyenne bullet would find him.

“Ain’t a red-belly can hit me!” he bragged.

Goaded by his more cautious fellows, the soldier began to expose more and more of himself to the distant enemy as his bravado became all the heartier … until a bullet finally found him.

A stunned silence fell upon the soldiers as the wounded trooper collapsed.

“Yes … they can too, Cap’n,” the trooper cried out in shock and pain as he stared down at his own blood. “Give ’em hell for me!”

As it turned out, his wound was but a slight one, and the soldier was soon back with his company at the skirmish line—this time showing a more healthy respect for the abilities of the enemy.

Throughout the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, the man’s comrades good-naturedly gave the soldier no mercy as they continued to roar with laughter, lightening everyone’s spirits as they repeatedly called out to one another in the midst of that terrible battle, “Yes, they can too!”

“Yes, they can too!”

* The Stalkers, Vol. 3, The Plainsmen Series.

* Little Bighorn River.

Chapter 33

Big Freezing Moon 1876

After leaving his wife with the other women near the breastworks, Black Hairy Dog plunged into the dangerous and rugged landscape at the northwest rim of the valley. Together with a handful of other warriors, the Keeper of the Sacred Arrows climbed over and around rocks, slid down the steep sides of ravines, and then clambered back up the far side, again and again through every one of those thickly timbered wrinkles until he found the spot he knew Ma-heo-o had guided him to.

A level thumb of ground jutted out into the valley ever so slightly. Here Black Hairy Dog would bring the power of the Maahotse into the light of day and thereby save the People.

“Quickly!” he told those who had followed him. “Gather up the white ‘man’ sage for me.”

Without a word of question or protest the others bent in search of not just any sage, but that pale variety considered both male and sacred by the Tse-Tsehese. As the warriors brought back their harvest, Black Hairy Dog had them spread the branches upon the ground at the very lip of that height of land extending out over the valley floor. Only then did he kneel beside that bed of white sage and reverently begin to open the bundle.

First he released the thick sheet of buffalo rawhide and set it aside. Next he untied the top of the kit-fox-skin quiver, reached inside, and pulled forth the first Arrow.

Some of the warriors gasped quietly, taking a step back, while two leaned in closer for a better look at this powerfully sacred object the Keeper laid upon the bed of sage—arrow point facing the enemy.

Black Hairy Dog reached in and pulled out a second Arrow he laid so that the fletching of the arrows touched, and its stone tip pointed toward the enemy, lying a few inches from the first point.

A third came into the light of day, then the fourth, until he had them all arrayed upon the bed of sacred sage, the power emanating from their points streaming across the entire valley where soldiers and their scouts battled the People from long distance.

“All of you,” he told the others as he got to his feet. “Come here and stand on either side of me.”

The warriors lined up to his left and right, facing the village the enemy had captured from them.

“Each of you do as I do—for we must release the power of these Arrows upon those who would do us harm, those who would take away our buffalo and our way of life.”

Black Hairy Dog stamped the earth four times. The others did the same. Then he pawed the snowy ground with one foot, like a buffalo bull in the rut. The others copied him, each of them growling as he continued to bellow in challenge.

“Now, take your bows and pull on the strings—pointing your weapons at our enemies in our village.”

Each of the warriors took their bows from the quivers at their backs and held them at arm’s length, pulling the strings back and twanging them as if shooting invisible arrows into what had been the People’s camp. Those who carried only rifles pointed the weapons at the village and pretended to shoot their firearms at the enemies.

Below that high point Black Hairy Dog could see some of the other warriors turn where they had been fighting—each of them drawn to the buffalo sounds and the magnetic pull of the shaman’s powerful magic. They spotted the Arrow Keeper and the handful of helpers above them—and they realized the significance of this powerful ceremony.

His prayers to Ma-heo-o gave the warriors in the nearby ravines and on the faraway knoll a strong heart, renewing the resolve among those who were helping the last of the old and the sick to climb the steep sides of the rocky hills to reach the breastworks.