A Cold Day in Hell (61 page)

“The old days are gone, Morning Star! We are watching the sun set on the old ways. Do not let the soldiers kill any more of your relatives. Bring them to the agency where we can live out the rest of our days together in peace, smoking the white man’s tobacco.”

Jamming the heels of his winter moccasins into the flanks of that pony, Old Crow reined about in a cascade of snow and bolted away, turning his back broad and inviting to the warriors among the rocks.

But no man fired his weapon at Old Crow. It simply would not be an honorable thing to raise a weapon against one’s own people.

Even if that man no longer acted like one of the
Ohmeseheso
, but acted instead more like a white man … the hated
ve-ho-e
who brought destruction wherever his boot left a track.

E
very throb of that drum was like a tiny stab at his heart—making pain for him in each of his six wounds. Little Wolf knew the Snake Indians would beat it right on through the bitterly cold night.

But for the tiny fires they had kindled here and there in the breastworks and among the rocky crags that shadowed the valley, it was very dark. The stars had been blotted out not long after the sun had turned the clouds a deep reddish purple. And then it began to snow.

The clouds hovered just over their heads, shrouding the tops of the mountains, as the chiefs and headmen of the People gathered in council to discuss what course they should take.

There wasn’t much arguing—for their choice seemed clear. While there were those who spoke on behalf of the wounded, the sick, the old, and the little ones, who whimpered with the intense cold and their empty bellies, still no one chose to surrender to the soldiers in the valley. There was but one course to take, and that was for them to start away from the valley that very night, abandoning the camp where everything they owned had been destroyed.

How proud Little Wolf was that his people were still fierce and as full of fight as ever despite their devastating loss.

“I will remain behind, even if no others stay with me,”
Young Two Moon volunteered. “Tonight I will sneak down close to the village under the cloak of darkness and wait for the soldiers to leave tomorrow when I can go down to what piles of rubble and ash are left—to see what I can find for us to use.”

“This is good,” Little Wolf replied. “And we need others to follow the soldiers’ trail as they leave the valley. To see where they are going now that we journey north.”

“We must travel through the mountains for a long distance,” advised Walking Whirlwind. “If we go onto the plains too quickly, the soldiers will find us there and we will never reach the Crazy Horse people.”

Just as Old Bear’s small band of
Tse-Tsehese
had done last winter following the fight on the Powder River in the Sore-Eye Moon, they would again seek out the Hunkpatila Oglalla band of Crazy Horse, said to be camped for the winter along the Tongue River.

Besides that drumming and the triumphant singing of the Shoshone scouts in the valley below, all around the chiefs women were keening softly, crying out with shrill and angry voices, mourning the dead, singing over the wounded as the old shamans shook their rattles, blew their prayers into each bloody, frozen bullet hole with four long puffs of air.

Brave, heroic men like Yellow Nose suffered in silence for the most part, asking only for sips of melted snow as they lay curled close to the small fires.

For all the pain they had caused his people, Little Wolf still would gladly take Old Crow’s gift of soldier bullets—those boxes of the shiny cartridges left behind in the rocks below Morning Star and the others. Yes, Little Wolf was never so proud he did not use the white man’s bullets to defend his people.

He wondered now how Old Crow slept, wondering if he slept at all—having turned against the
Ohmeseheso
even though he too was one of the Council of Forty-four. Perhaps the power of the
Maahotse
would indeed kill all those who had turned their backs on their own people.

For a long time that afternoon Black Hairy Dog had prayed over the Sacred Arrows he pulled from their fox-skin quiver. Many warriors and women eventually gathered around the priest, all joining in to stamp their feet and sing the songs that would put a curse on every one of those who fought on the side of the white man against their own people.

Then, slowly, with much respect, the Sacred Arrow Priest lifted the Arrows one by one from the white-sage bed he had
made for them to overlook the valley, replacing them in the quiver. Then just past twilight Little Wolf sadly watched Black Hairy Dog place the
Maahotse
on his wife’s back, and together with an escort of some eighteen families they began their retreat to the south. Big Horse, White Buffalo, Young Turkey Leg, and others were, after all, Southern People like Black Hairy Dog.

“We will stay east of the mountains as we go south,” they told Little Wolf and the rest at their last council just before departing. “When we reach the foot of Hammer Mountain
*
we can then turn our faces south by east back to our agency.
†
Only then will I be sure the
Maahotse
are safe.”

Esevone
was safe as well. Some time ago Coal Bear and his woman had fled up the mountain with the Medicine Hat as men like Box Elder, with his Sacred Wheel Lance; Long Jaw, with his bullet-riddled red blanket cloak; and Medicine Bear, with the magic of the Turner, first used their powers to cloak the old couple with invisibility, then diverted the enemy’s bullets. By sundown there were many who had poked their fingers through the countless holes shot in Long Jaw’s cape, whispering in amazement that not one
ve-ho-e
bullet had penetrated his body.

Truly, the Everywhere Spirit had watched over His people this day. But they still faced the winter, and the wilderness, and the search for the Hunkpatila of Crazy Horse.

Little Wolf winced with the pain in his six wounds as he turned to look up the slope into the darkness at the faint points of red light glowing here and there. Beside one of those fires rested the Hat Bundle. With its power secure, the People just might survive the coming ordeal.

But at a terrible cost.

Then he shuddered to think how many were sure to die in the coming ordeal.

During his short nap in the midst of the long-range battle yesterday afternoon, William Earl Smith’s leg had gone to sleep and a deep cold had seeped into the muscles. As the night wore on, the leg continued to hurt all the more, making any attempt he made at sleep fitful and sporadic. Between the leg and the cries of the wounded in the nearby field hospital, Smith didn’t figure he had slept for more than an hour at a time all night long.

Each time he awoke, he came to with a start, slowly realizing where he was, listening to the groans of those in pain and the voices of those men on picket duty, or what soldiers were unable to sleep. And each time he came awake, the private always found Mackenzie pacing back and forth. At first he figured the colonel was attending to one matter or another, but Smith soon came to realize Mackenzie had instead slipped into some kind of deep depression.

William Earl liked the man, and it bothered him to find Mackenzie so sorely troubled. It even shook the young private to the core to have seen the colonel openly cry when he learned Lieutenant McKinney had been killed at the ravine.

The following morning Smith scribbled in his journal:

By dawn all of the killed and wounded soldiers had been brought in and accounted for, since it was generally believed the Cheyenne would resume the battle as soon as there was enough light for them to see their targets. Instead, the hilltops and rocky ridges were eerily silent as night bled into that Sunday, the twenty-sixth of November.

“It’s just as well,” Mackenzie murmured over his breakfast of black coffee as the sky grayed. “Last night in officers’ conference I decided that even the infantry would pay too high a cost trying to dislodge the warriors from the rocks in these mountains. Sadly, I now realize we’ve already paid too high a price for this victory.”

For a time Smith figured his commander might be morose simply because of losing so many casualties to the enemy, while at the same time during that officers’ meeting last night Mackenzie could personally verify no more than twenty-five warriors killed from the many reports. To justify so many dead soldiers, he should have clearly killed many, many more Cheyenne.

“But those are only the bodies which fell into our hands, General,” Wirt Davis had coaxed.

“How well we all know that the Indian drags off most of his comrades,” said John Lee.

“Perhaps,” answered a perplexed and clearly agitated
Mackenzie as his men went about settling on the official accounting of the enemy dead.

The Pawnee had taken six scalps. Two soldiers had taken another pair of scalps. Frank Grouard himself had lifted one scalp. While one lieutenant reported he had personally killed one warrior, Captain Davis stated his company had killed six to eight more. Then Cosgrove’s Shoshone stated they had dropped four Cheyenne warriors. A one-eyed civilian scout claimed to have killed another warrior. And the combined Sioux and Arapaho scouts tallied another dozen enemy killed.

That cold, snowy morning as Mackenzie penned his official report, gray clouds hung low along the silvery mountaintops ringing the red valley. While the men stomped their cold feet and trudged about through six inches of new snow, enjoying their coffee around the cooking fires, Mackenzie sent out some of his Cheyenne and half-breed scouts to make contact again with the enemy—perhaps now to coax them into surrendering after the awful cold of last night.

But as much as the scouts called out to the hills in their native tongue, there was no answer but their echo. Cautiously they inched up the slopes toward the breastworks at the upper end of the valley, fully ready to encounter an ambush. Instead, the snow only became deeper, nearly covering all the tracks. The Cheyenne had been gone for some time.

Returning to the valley at midmorning, the scouts reported to Mackenzie what they had discovered. The numerous black rings of long-dead fires had been drifted over with new snow. Deep trails showed how the many had struggled single file up the rugged slopes for more than five miles into the mountains. The broad scoops of old snow told of many travois used to carry the dead and wounded warriors as the defeated Cheyenne disappeared into the wilderness. And they did not forget to mention the occasional patches of blood not yet covered by snow at the tops of the mountainsides.

But what spoke most eloquently were more than a half-dozen pony carcasses found here and there along the trail. Once the tribe’s most prized possessions, those horses were now the Cheyenne’s only food.

“You say they did what with the entrails?” Mackenzie asked the scouts for a clarification.

Interpreter Billy Garnett repeated, “It’s what a Injun’ll do, General. They’ll shoot the pony and slit it open soon as it’s dropped. They pull everything right out of the belly so the old
ones getting froze up can stuff their hands and feet into the gut piles to keep from dying.”

“Dear God in heaven!” Mackenzie gushed in a whisper. “How … how many of those fresh carcasses did you find?”

“At least six, General. But we turned back—likely more on over the top. We didn’t dare get up that far. They had themselves a strong rear guard forted up and ready for us.”

“The enemy’s gone—you’re sure?”

Garnett nodded, saying, “’Cept them what’s staying behind to keep a eye on your army.”

“Yes,” Mackenzie replied as if his mind were elsewhere. “Now that I have stripped them of their pony herds and destroyed everything they own … the enemy will want to know what more I’m up to. Yes, by all means: let them flee through these mountains if that’s what they want. And for now, we’ll let the forces of ‘General Winter’ deliver the final blow to the Cheyenne.”