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

“What … what are you called?” Red Cloud demanded in a loud, clear voice that hung in the sharp, cold air above them all, halos formed with every syllable from his lips.

“Me?” asked the half-blood. “I am called Grabber by your people.”

“Yes. I thought so,” Red Cloud said sadly as he bowed his head and closed his eyes to more than the sting of the cold.

“Then you know of me, old-woman chief?”

Red Cloud opened his eyes and said with what strength there remained in his tired body, “You are the one who turned your back on Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. And now you bring these soldiers here to take what little my people have left.”

To Donegan’s way of thinking, Red Cloud sure had picked one hell of a bad time to assert his independence, even if all the old chief had sought to accomplish was to move his people away from the agency to avoid what he could of the hostilities clearly looming on the horizon.

Once he had the Oglalla men under the muzzles of his guns, Mackenzie ordered the women in camp to be about taking down their lodges and packing up their few earthly goods for the trip back to the agency. But no matter that Frank Grouard translated the soldier chief’s order into their Lakota tongue, the women in that village refused to obey.

“Goddammit!” Mackenzie roared. “If they don’t comply, you tell them I’ll put this whole place to the torch. Then they won’t have a thing to drag back to the agency!”

Clutching the cold brass receiver of the new Winchester, Donegan watched as Grouard’s words fell here and there among the sad-eyed, motionless women like slaps with a braided rawhide quirt. Still, they stoically stared at the soldier chief, refusing to budge.

“Are they daring me, Grouard?” demanded Mackenzie, his face flushing with anger.

“Can’t say, General,” Frank replied, scratching in his beard and extracting a louse he cracked between two fingernails and pitched aside.

“Tell them they have five minutes to begin complying or I’ll start burning.”

“I’ll tell ’em if you want me to,” Grouard said. “But these are people who don’t have no idea of what a minute is, five minutes, or a hull goddamned day.”

“Jesus Christ!” snapped the exasperated officer all but under his breath. “Mr. Dorst,” he called his adjutant forward. “Call up Captain Lee’s men. Tell him to start with that lodge … right over there.”

“Yes, sir, General!” cried Second Lieutenant Joseph H. Dorst.

D Troop came forward from that circle surrounding Red Cloud’s camp beside Chadron Creek. For a moment things grew very tense as the warriors grumbled angrily when a trio of the soldiers pulled back door coverings and invaded their homes, re-emerging with firebrands they held aloft, flames sputtering, crackling in the dim gray light of an icy dawn. As the warriors shuffled and stirred over the weapons lying at their feet, the rest of Lee’s company held their carbines on the anxious Oglalla, who glared back at the soldiers with deadly hate.

Captain John Lee barked, repeating his order. The trio turned to the three nearest lodges and went about attempting to set the frozen buffalo hides and frosted canvas on fire.

Women shrieked, their tongues trilling in a call to their men. Weary and weakened old men began to keen death songs and stamp around on arthritic legs in tiny circles. Here, then there, a young man began singing his war song—strong and clear, faces turned in prayer toward the morning sky.

The hair rose on Seamus’s neck to hear the men call for the mysteries to intervene, to hear so many women crying pitiably, to feel the babbling squall of frightened children and babies scrape down his backbone—reminding him he too was now a father.

Mackenzie’s men sat atop their mounts like stone griffins, watching as a lone woman rushed forward, with her bare hands attempting to beat out the first flames licking up the side of her lodge. Two of the soldiers lunged over her, pulling the screaming woman back with great effort, dragging her legs through the snow as she collapsed, sobbing and wailing, tearing at her hair.

Here and there among the camp one of North’s Pawnee burst from a lodge with a great and gleeful gush of chatter, holding a captured trophy aloft for all his comrades to see.

The flinty eyes of the Oglalla chief registered only hate. Never before in Red Cloud’s life had he been talked to by a white man in the stern matter in which Mackenzie had addressed him. He was, after all, the chief who had brought the army to its knees in the two years preceding 1868 when the government finally cried uncle and gave up the Bozeman Road. Up until the dawning of this day, the white soldiers and treaty-talkers had all negotiated with Red Cloud.

But dealing with this Bad Hand Kenzie was something altogether different, Seamus brooded. Instead of any pretense at diplomacy, the colonel told Red Cloud the way things would be, and that was that. Never before had the infamous Oglalla chief been made to feel he was in the presence of his superiors—until now.