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

By midafternoon the rising wind gave such muscle to the smoldering prairie fires on both flanks of his march that Miles ordered a halt as the men choked and sputtered helplessly, a wall of flame advancing right for them. Into the fury of that blanket of smoke and ash the colonel sent out two companies to start backfires before the entire command was finally able to continue its wearying pursuit.

It wasn’t long before the warriors figured out the soldiers had countered their strategy. More than three hundred horsemen suddenly bristled from the hilltops, spilling over the crests in a shouting, screaming, boiling mass, aiming straight for the plodding foot soldiers.

Platoon by platoon was ordered to strengthen both flanks as sergeants bellowed out their orders for the men to drop to their knees, aim, and fire before the next squad was brought up into position while the first reloaded. Above the steady, deep booming of those big Springfields, Miles made out the discordant rattle of the smaller weapons and the old muskets the Sioux were using to harass their march. A long-distance battle, and a slow crawl they made of it, throughout the agonizing hours that Sunday afternoon.

Marching in a hollow square, with four companies of skirmishers thrown out in front spaced five paces apart, two companies on each side and two at the rear, and with one final company bringing up the rear of the supply train and another supporting the Rodman gun, they made eighteen miles before the sun sank out of the clear, cold sky and the warriors disappeared.

The land breathed a sigh of relief as the men made their bivouac and lit their fires. Stars winked into sight. The night grew colder than any gone before.

Come the morning of the twenty-third, Miles put them to the march in that same magnificent formation, up and down the broken country in a hollow square. But this day they saw no Sioux, reaching the Yellowstone late in the afternoon nearly opposite the mouth of Cabin Creek. His exhausted men had put another twenty-eight miles under the soles of their boots that day—more than forty-two miles from their initial engagement with the Sioux at Cedar Creek.

Nelson stood watching Kelly and four other scouts head back his way, urging their mounts back to the north bank of the river. Miles had ordered the five of them to cross the Yellowstone to determine the depth of the ford. In midriver Luther Kelly eased out of the saddle and settled his boots into the river that had christened him for life. While he stomped around in the coming dusk, checking out the sands of the shifting bottom, Vic Smith probed on over toward the south bank. In the distance smoke hung in the air from the enemy’s fires.

How Miles wanted to cross now as the Sioux were making camp there on the south side of the Yellowstone. If only to be sure Sitting Bull was really settling in for the night, praying the chief would not pull a rabbit on him and suddenly turn back north, recross the Yellowstone, and make a dash for Canada. That was Nelson’s deepest, most unspoken fear as Luther Kelly splashed up the bank, into the cottonwoods, and dismounted near him.

“They’re across, by God,” the scout said, dripping from his waist down, shuddering with cold as the wind came up at twilight.

“And still moving south?”

Kelly looked over at Smith, who nodded; then Kelly said, “By all accounts, General.”

“How deep is it?”

Kelly gazed down at his britches. “I’m wet to the waist. No deeper than that. Your men can make it in fine order.”

‘You don’t think those Sioux will try to shake us and recross tonight?”

With that easy shrug of his, the mild-mannered Kelly regarded the south bank a bit, sniffled, then looked back at Nelson to say, “They’re every bit as tired as your men are, General Miles. Maybe even more tired. I can’t see ’em doing anything but stopping for a few hours—stopping to feed their children, bandage their wounded, and shiver out this goddamned cold night until they can start running again.”

Miles felt himself bristle with resentment. “Sounds to me like you don’t agree with my giving, chase?”

There was the scout’s quick, disarming smile, and Kelly said, “Nothing of the kind, General. Not many men would have the bottom you and this outfit have to herd those Sioux the way we’ve done. Pushed ’em real hard.”

“Because of it, I just might succeed in forcing their surrender,” Miles replied, finding himself becoming a bit testy not only by the extended chase, which had so far netted him nothing more than track soup, but by the scout’s easygoing attitude as well.

“I don’t doubt you’ll get someone to surrender before this is done,” Kelly said. “If it ain’t the Sioux, it may damn well be your own men.”

For a moment he stared at the scout’s face; then Kelly cracked a smile, his eyes crow-footing at their corners.

Finally Miles smiled along with him “Damn you, Kelly,” he said. “A laugh or two’s good for the soul when a man’s done himself proud.”