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

“I know,” she got the two words out, realizing she would free nothing more because of the stinging ball suddenly clogging her throat.

“I was here to see our son born, Sam,” he reminded softly as he leaned forward, laying his lips barely against hers with a brush of his breath behind the words. Then he moved his mouth slightly, pressing it against her ear to whisper.

“And I’ll be back to name him—before a week is out.”

The soldiers were facing at least two-to-one odds. No one could figure for sure just how many fighting men there were in that village being dismantled below. There were too many of them, swirling about like an anthill you’d kick with your boot toe just to see them swarming.

Again and again Kelly’s mind kept returning to one fact: they were preparing to fight the warriors of Sitting Bull. And Gall. Crow King and the others. The ones who had crushed Custer’s Seventh.

Yellowstone Kelly hoped Miles had some plan to strike first, to strike hard—before those Lakota swept up this rising ground as they had at the Greasy Grass. But Miles did nothing of the kind. Instead, for the quarter of an hour he had given Sitting Bull, the colonel steadfastly held his men in readiness, every soldier watching the frantic village below as the lodge covers came down, the travois were packed. All the while along the high ridge to their left more and more horsemen gathered, milling about and in turn watching the motionless soldiers. On the far side of the ravine on their right more warriors came and went noisily, whipping their ponies for their second wind.

“Gentlemen!” Miles’s voice rang out, catching nearly everyone by surprise as he stuffed his turnip watch back into the pocket of his buffalo-hide coat. “Something more than talk is now required of us! The time has come to fight: battle front—forward!”

Half a hundred other voices were suddenly raised in staccato as the companies were ordered to quickly disperse into battle array across a wide front. As the colonel himself moved toward that clear, open ground, he ordered some of his units to the left, intent on gaining those treeless ridges and knolls—determined to refuse the enemy their advantage. To the right he threw out another company as his men in the center moved warily into the breech. Yard by yard. Now two hundred. Then five hundred. Up one gentle slope and down another. A thousand yards now as the warriors screamed and beckoned, whipping their horses around in wild circles, stirring dust into the chilling air.

“General!” Luther cried out, reining his horse up beside the officer in a tight crescent. “Near as I can figure, they’re drawing your men on and on.”

“For what purpose, Kelly?”

“Only thing I can think of is to get your boys down in them ravines yonder while they hold the high ground,” Kelly replied. “Maybe to tie your outfits up—”

“And make another massacre of it,” Miles interrupted grimly, regarding the distance. “Like they butchered Custer at the Little Bighorn.”

“Bailey!” The colonel waved over a courier and gave the soldier orders he wanted delivered to the units on each flank—to keep in sight of their center and immediately withdraw toward the rest of the command if threatened with overwhelming numbers—before it was too late.

“What do you suppose that half-blood son of a bitch wants?” John Johnston growled inside his graying red beard. He shifted the old Sharps across the horn of his saddle and pointed as the other scouts and some of the officers turned to watch that swale below the crest of the nearby knoll.

Down on the bottom ground loped Johnny Bruguier and two warriors, one of them carrying that dirty, tattered towel tormented in the cruel wind as they approached the soldier lines.

“Bear Coat Chief,” Bruguier shouted as he raised his right hand and came to a halt some yards from Miles. His eyes were nervous. “Sitting Bull wants to know why your soldiers are following his women and children.”

Miles tugged his heavy coat beneath his thighs as the wind carne up, then replied, “Since it doesn’t look as if the chief is going to accept my offer for terms of surrender—I must consider his fleeing to be an act of hostility.”

“General!”

They all turned to find an officer pointing.

“They’re massing on the ridge, General!” another officer cried out, pointing as well to the north.

“Clear the bastards off the brow of that ridge!” Miles shouted. “Give Major Casey’s A Company the order to clear it now!”

As they watched Casey’s soldiers trot off from the left flank at double time, shouts erupted from the right flank. Kelly turned with the rest, spotting the sixty to seventy warriors bristling along the high ground as if they had appeared out of nowhere.

“Send K Company to move those horsemen off our front!” Miles bellowed. “Mr. Carter will see to driving them away.”