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

Back at Laramie they had taken on their heavy underclothing, fur caps, wool gloves—since Crook was most unsatisfied with the poor quality of the horsehide gauntlets used on the March campaign—in addition to the normal issue of wool leggings, arctic overshoes or felt liners for their boots, along with two blankets apiece. That winter equipage would get a true test, for in the last two days the temperature had not once risen above zero.

There was an A-tent assigned to every four men. The soldiers pitched these so that two tents faced each other, a lightweight Sibley stove then placed in the narrow opening and the flaps of the two tents then pinned together to seal in the modest warmth. Outside each tent stood piles of sagebrush and grease-wood stacked taller than the tents themselves. Some of the officers sported sealskin hats and long underwear made from perforated buckskin, pulling over it all a heavy overcoat with fur collars and cuffs.

Personal belongings were crated, marked, and left in the custody of the post quartermaster. Mackenzie had them down to fighting trim, ready to be off in as light a marching order as Crook could afford as they stared into the teeth of a brutal winter storm already working on its second wind. Each cavalry company would carry two hundred rounds of ammunition for each man, while in the wagons were freighted an additional three hundred more per soldier.

Last night at nine P.M. Mackenzie had come back from a card game and a conference with Crook and infantry commander Dodge. All evening it had been trying to snow, when the sky suddenly cleared and the bottom went out of the thermometers.

“We’re going at dawn,” Mackenzie announced to his orderlies as he stomped up through the fresh snow. “See that the company commanders are informed.”

Then the mercurial colonel disappeared into his tent for the rest of what was left of that horrid night.

Chapter 18

14–18 November 1876

Bloody Fight Between

Shoshones and Sioux.

THE INDIANS

Sioux vs. Shoshones—A Village of the Latter Wiped Out.

SALT LAKE, November 2.—A report from Camp Stambaugh, Wyoming, says a village of fifty lodges of Shoshones was attacked October 30, by a large Sioux war party, estimated at 1,300 lodges, at Pointed Rock, near the scene of Captain Bates’ fight, July, 1874, and about ninety miles from Camp Stambaugh. As far as learned only one Shoshone escaped by the name of Humpy, who was the Indian that saved the life of Captain Henry, in Crook’s second fight this summer.

The last of Dodge’s infantry was finally ferried across the North Platte that Tuesday morning in the overloaded wagons easing down the ice-coated banks, the teamsters doing their best to dodge the floating ice that bobbed along the surface of the swift and swirling river some fifty yards wide at the ford, each cake of the ice thrown against the ferry’s sideboards with a resounding and forceful collision.

Even Richard I. Dodge had confided to his personal diary, “The river is my terror.”

Almost as much as he wanted to keep his foot soldiers warm and dry, the colonel had itched to get a leap on the younger Mackenzie—but already the cavalry was moving away into the sere hills streaked with snow. Dodge didn’t have the last of his men across and on their way until 11:30 A.M. At stake each day in this unspoken race between foot and horse would be the best camping spots come sundown. Being second to get away from Fetterman put Dodge in a foul humor that would last for the next two days.

After days of intermittent snow, the sun was out that morning, hung in the sky like a pale, pewter glob behind the thin clouds. The temperature hovered at fourteen below zero.

To Seamus it didn’t seem it could get any colder as he mounted up, tucked the tail of his long mackinaw about his legs, and set out with some of the other scouts, waving farewell to Kid Slaymaker and those of his whores still up after the expedition’s last carouse before plunging into the Indian country.

A little west of north. Into the Powder River country searching out the Hunkpatila. The Crazy Horse people.

Donegan knew it was going to get a hell of a lot colder before he could once more hold Samantha in his arms. Before he would look into the face of his son and give the child a name.

Far in the advance he could see the dark column slowly snaking up what had become a familiar road that would lead them to old Fort Reno, like a writhing animal twisting across the white, endless landscape. On and on the bare hills and knolls and ridges lay tumbled against one another, each new one as devoid of brush and trees as the last, stretching into the gray horizon. For all any of them might know, Seamus thought as he pulled the wool muffler up to cover his mouth and nose, they could be marching across the austere, inhospitable surface of the moon.