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

Bellying to the top, the four immediately made out the firesmoke hanging in a layer low in the supercold air, off in the middistance along a bend in the river. As the light slowly brightened, the scouts gradually made out the whiteness of the soldier tents against the stark and spidery blackness of the leafless willow and cottonwood. When the graying light ballooned a bit more, Young Two Moon saw some of the white soldiers along with some Indians dressed in soldier uniforms and some Indians wearing their own native clothing all turning their horses loose to graze the snowy ground. One group led their herd to the base of the bluff where the scouts watched, leaving the ponies and returning to their fires. Another group of Indians drove their ponies across the icy river to graze on the far side of the Powder. And still a third group of soldier scouts returned to the herd beneath the tall bluff, climbed a distance up the side, and sat down to watch the ponies.

Because of those enemy herders, the four wolves dared not speak to one another, nor could they move without alerting those soldier scouts watching over their animals. They could only lie flat and motionless, mouthing their silent words to one another as the day became brighter and the river bottom came alive with men, wagons, mules, and horses.

Crow Necklace, the youngest among them, wanted action, whispering, “Let’s go down there, make our charge, and drive off some of those horses.”

“No,” Hail scolded between his chattering teeth.

“We can steal those horses,” Crow Necklace persisted. “It will be easy, and we can return to our families with something to show for this cold journey!”

“No,” Hail snapped, his eyes watching the soldier scouts below them on the slope. “If we do as you suggest, we might not ever make it home to our families.”

“Hail is right,” Young Two Moon asserted. “Look, Crow Necklace—the snow is deep. There are many people down there. They could overtake and capture us. Look, see how far it is now to the foot of the mountains where our village lies. Our ponies are tired from the last three days. The enemy’s horses are strong. And it is a long, level stretch of ground where we would have to run—we would not even make it into the breaks before they would catch us.”

They lay on the frozen ground among the squat sage for most of that day,* afraid to move for attracting attention. Not until late in the afternoon as the sun pitched into the southwest did the soldiers and the soldiers’ Indian scouts begin driving in all their horses for the night. Still the four wolves waited as the soldier fires began to glow, the dancing flames shimmering against the skeletal cottonwood trees and willow, the orangetitted flames reflected off the low, heavy clouds. How Young Two Moon yearned for some of that warmth for himself.

Long after dark they pushed themselves back from the brow of the hill and crept down toward the soldier camp, finding the horses all tied in long lines to picket ropes strung between the bare trees.

“I think we should leave our ponies here,” Young Two Moon suggested. “Two of us should go in, and two of us should stay with the horses.”

Hail nodded. “It is a good plan. If the soldiers or their scouts catch the two, then the others can mount up and escape in the dark.”

“I will go,” Young Two Moon said emphatically. “Who chooses to go with me?”

Eagerly Crow Necklace replied, “I will go with you!”

Turning to the younger man, Young Two Moon said, “This is good, for we may have ourselves a chance to get some soldier horses down there.”

“High Wolf and I will wait for you here,” Hail said. “Be careful.”

Young Two Moon gripped Hail’s wrist and looked into his friend’s eyes. “If you hear guns, or we do not come back soon—mount up and ride like a snow wind back to our village. Tell my family that I died doing my duty for my people.”

Hail grinned, saying, “You will be back. And you will be the one to tell the village of these soldiers yourself. Now, go. And we will rest here with the ponies until you return.”

“That young Cheyenne they caught up on Clear Creek is named Beaver Dam,” Frank Grouard told the white and half-breed scouts huddled by the fire late that Tuesday night, 21 November.

“Young and stupid!” snorted Baptiste Pourier.

Seamus Donegan shrugged. “Maybeso, Big Bat. But out in this weather, the way a man has to bundle himself up to keep out the cold—I couldn’t tell one Injin from another. Can’t blame the boy for making that mistake, I can’t. G’won, Frank—tell us what Crook learned.”