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

The fast response of Lieutenant Mason Carter’s foot soldiers succeeded in preventing the warriors from sweeping around the flanks of the column now dressed left and right in battle-front and moving forward at a steady crawl. While horsemen remained on both left and right ends of Miles’s line, it was the center that most concerned Kelly. That’s where most of the warriors stood waiting—as if in anticipation of their comrades sweeping around the sides of the soldier formation, drawing the soldiers’ attention, when those in the center would plunge like a huge dagger right into the heart of the Bear Coat’s troops.

“How far can your gun reach, General?” Kelly asked, gesturing toward Captain Snyder’s company surrounding the knoll where the Rodman gun—an 1861 model artillery ordnance rifle—had been rolled into position and unlimbered for action.

“Not nearly the distance to the village,” Miles replied. “But we’ll scare hell out of ’em anyway once we unload on those horsemen covering the retreat.”

Down into the first ravine Miles followed his forward troops as the warriors boiled along their flanks and in their front, shouting, singing, brandishing their weapons. But as yet no shot had been fired.

The smell of something out of place on the cold wind caught Luther’s attention. There, at the far ends of the ravine, some warriors had slipped in among the treeless brush and were busy igniting it with firebrands.

He yelled, waving at Miles. “General!”

“I see ’em, goddammit!” Miles hollered, then cried out his orders for a detail from the center to break off, to clear the ends of the ravine where the Hunkpapa sought to fire the grass and brush—all the better to obscure their escape, but even more frightening, perhaps veiling the very real possibility of a counterattack.

As the Fifth Infantry pressed on to the east, slowly, yard by yard, the warriors in the center thinned out, most of them flowing left and right, bolstering the horsemen troubling the soldiers on either flank. Those left in the center pranced their ponies in tight circles, yelling and brandishing their weapons, some of the warriors dropping off this side or that of their mounts. A few turning to slap their bare rumps at the white men.

“What you make of it, Kelly?” Miles asked anxiously as the wind cut up the draw onto the high ground, blowing dust against their cold faces with a gritty anger.

“Those who aren’t busy saying we’re women are giving those ponies their second wind. Looks to me they’re going to make a fight of it.”

The colonel gestured his arm across three points of the compass, asking, “How many you figure we’re facing?”

“As many as a thousand, General,” Kelly replied. “Depending on who they leave behind to fight with that village moving off. But it ain’t just the men. Some of the women every bit as bad as the warriors.”

“What’s the best you make of it?” Miles hissed.

“Eight hundred,” Kelly confessed.

Miles’s eyes narrowed into a furrow of concern. “At least two to one.”

Luther warned, “Just be mindful they don’t flank us, one side or the other.”

“Two to one, is it? Sounds like it’s time to even up the odds,” Miles said. He turned on his heel and stomped away, sending a courier up to Snyder on the high knoll. In a matter of seconds the captain’s men set off the first round, both the belch of the Rodman and its booming impact on the far slope echoing and reechoing across the narrow valley.

From all sides the soldiers cheered that small volcanic spurt of dust raised in the distance. Now they were going to get in their licks! No more would they take what the Hunkpapa were dishing out without returning blow for blow.

On the right flank three dozen or more horsemen kicked their ponies into action as the Rodman spewed a second shell whistling through the icy blue air. Racing around the far right end of the line, the warriors were clearly intent on circling back of the knoll, where they could surprise Snyder’s men and put the big two-shoot gun out of commission.

“Damn them anyway,” Miles grumbled, seeing the horsemen start their flanking maneuver. He grabbed his aide’s arm, ordering, “Bailey—get Pope’s E Company over there on the double and keep those bastards turned in. Make sure he understands he can’t let those Sioux flank the end of our line—whatever Pope does!”

“Pope’s a good man?” Kelly asked.

Miles nodded. “Came west in sixty-nine. Made a fine marker of himself in our seventy-four, seventy-five campaign on the southern plains. He’s the man for this job, I tell you.”

Second Lieutenant David Q. Rousseau trotted up, breathless. He saluted. “General, sir—request permission to assist Major Casey in clearing that ridge for good.” He pointed to the far left flank, where ever more warriors boiled, shouting, firing down on Casey’s position.

“If you do gain that high ground,” Miles responded, his eyes afire, “you’ll have the key to the battle.”

“Exactly, sir.”