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

“Smart it was, for them Lakota and Arapaho scouts Crook sent out wasn’t wearing a bit of soldier gear—being fifty miles off in enemy country,” Grouard continued his story. “So this Beaver Dam come right up to them, figuring them to be a scouting or hunting party from Crazy Horse’s village. They waited till the boy was in the middle of ’em—jabbering away about all the villages in the neighborhood, him answering all their questions and such—before they grabbed the boy, tied him up, and hurried him back here to the general.”

“Means there must be Cheyenne in the country,” Seamus said.

“Damn if there ain’t a big bunch of ’em over on a branch of the Powder,” Frank went on. “But that youngster claimed he come from a small village of only some five or six lodges. He told Crook that his people would get afraid if he didn’t show up after he’d been out hunting—then they’d likely scamper off for Crazy Horse’s camp.”

“I’ll bet that got Crook’s attention!” Pourier said.

“Bloody well right,” Donegan agreed. “Crook’s been wanting to get eye to eye with Crazy Horse for the better part of a year now. Where’s Beaver Dam’s village, Frank?”

“Said it was up on the head of the Crazy Woman Fork.”

“He tell Crook where the Crazy Horse band was camped now?”

Grouard nodded. “A long ways off from here. Clear up on the Rosebud, near where we had our little fight with him in June.”

“That’ll be a goddamned long march—it will, it will,” Seamus muttered, stomping the deepening snow to shock some feeling back into a numbing foot. The cold was simply too much even for the double pair of socks he wore in the tall stovepipe boots he always bought two sizes too large. He feared he might lose some toes to the surgeon before this trip was over.

“So now Crook’s give out orders to all the units: moving northwest toward the mountains as soon as it’s light,” Frank explained. “He wants this expedition to come back with a worthy trophy.”

Big Bat cried, “Like Crazy Horse’s scalp!”

“The whole outfit’s moving in the morning?” Donegan asked.

“Yep, the whole shebang,” Grouard replied. “At least for now.”

“I figure Crook’ll break off Mackenzie soon enough—once he’s found the Crazy Horse village,” Seamus added as the wind seemed to stiffen and the snowfall thickened. “Damn,” he muttered again, stomping his feet. “Think I’ll go do what some of the others is doing, fellas: taking this last chance to write down a few words to send back to Fetterman with one of Teddy Egan’s couriers tomorrow. Too cold to sleep anyways.”

After midnight Crook sent off a Second Cavalry courier to race the ninety miles back to Fetterman with his wire to Sheridan:

Scouts returned to-day and reported that Cheyennes have crossed over to that other side of the Big Horn Mountains, and that Crazy Horse and his band are encamped on the Rosebud near where we had the fight with them last summer. We start out after his band to-morrow morning.

It was better that the two of them act as bold as they could. So Young Two Moon and Crow Necklace walked right along the string of horses on the picket lines, in among the soldiers and their tents as if they were two of the Indian scouts. Their bravado worked.

At the near edge of the camp a large fire blazed where many Shoshone and Arapaho scouts were busy cleaning weapons, drinking coffee, and playing several noisy games of “hand” on blankets and buffalo robes. There beside the fire a handful of their own people stood, singing Cheyenne war songs.

But they were not prisoners! Who were these Cheyenne in the soldier camp?

“I think that is Old Crow,” Crow Necklace whispered right against Young Two Moon’s ear. “And the other, he looks like a friend of my uncle’s—named Satchel.”

“I know of Satchel,” Young Two Moon replied, his gall rising. “Now I realize why these Tse-Tsehese are here. This Satchel is a relative of Bill Rowland at the White River Agency.”

“The white man married to one of our women?”

“Yes. That must be why they are here,” Young Two Moon replied. “Bill Rowland brought them here to find our camp in the mountains. To capture our ponies and take away our guns—just like the soldiers are doing at the White River Agency.”

“If these two are here with Bill Rowland,” Crow Necklace said sadly, “then there must surely be more of our people here with them.”

“I am ashamed for them,” Young Two Moon said, a sour ball of disappointment thick in his throat. “We have come to this: the white man making some of our relatives hunt down the rest of our people.”

After watching the singing and the games for a while, the pair moved on through the firelit darkness, walking below the soldier bivouac until they reached the camp where some Indians spoke a strange language.

“Who are these people?” Crow Necklace asked in a whisper.

For some time Young Two Moon stood and listened, studying the warriors who for the most part wore pieces of soldier uniforms. “I believe they must be the Ho-nehe-taneo-o, the Wolf People.”*

“Many, many winters have they have scouted for the soldiers.”