the marrow-robbing cold as the sun dropped out of sight and the temperature fell beyond human endurance. Because of their struggle for footing on the crusty snow, the trail-weary animals had little strength left to fight down through the icy drifts for what meager grass might be found. As the stars came out in those few patches of clear sky overhead, it was a quiet, melancholy camp of many men crowding around what few fires were kindled— surrounded by their herds of morose cavalry mounts, pack mules, and captured Cheyenne ponies.
For the past few days Seamus had become gravely concerned for the bay. Already its ribs were flung up beneath its heavy winter coat the way a brass head rail might poke its spindles beneath a bedsheet. If these big American horses did not get grain, and soon, the soldiers might just be limping back to the wagon camp afoot. He shuddered, remembering the horrors endured in their horse-meat march last September;* then recalled how he had struck a bargain with another horse during that ordeal—vowing that he would do everything he could not to allow it to go down, unable to get back up.
Man and animal alike hung their heads that night, all God’s creatures struggling to keep from freezing during that tortured, sleepless night until dawn finally arrived. They had no wood left for breakfast fires. No coffee to boil anyway. Only hardtack and cold bacon, and what good water they might find in their canteens.
Still, every man knew they would reach Crook’s wagon camp before nightfall. And that hope was enough to get these frontier warriors to their feet and pushing on at daylight. Another ten miles brought them into sight of the pickets Dodge had thrown out on the surrounding heights. The forward cavalry command hailed the infantry, and the word instantly shot back through the column like a bolt of summer lightning.
“I see ’em!” one man yelled at the head of that first troop. “The tents! The tents!”
Cheers and huzzahs went up as the weary, frozen men straightened in their saddles and joyfully slapped the trooper riding stirrup to stirrup beside them on the back. The warmth of those tents drew on them like iron filings to a lodestone as the hundreds of infantry fell out to watch the return of Mackenzie’s victorious horse soldiers. Dodge’s men cried out their congratulations, cheered, and tossed their hats in the air as the long column snaked over the hills and down to the banks of the Crazy Woman.
There was a lot to be thankful for. Many of the cavalry received mail that day, news of home and loved ones. There were even two letters from Samantha for him. More than hot food or a chance to get out of the wind beneath some heavy army canvas—simply to read her words, to touch those pages she had held in her hands days ago, to smell of those letters for the faintest breath of her fragrance … all of it warmed the Irishman as twilight fell.
That evening by the light of a fire kindled right outside a tent he shared with Frank Grouard and two others, Seamus sharpened his stub of a pencil with his folding knife and put it to paper. The weather was far too cold for him to dare writing her in ink, he told Sam, praying she would forgive him the inelegance of the lead pencil.
But after no more than the first three sentences, Donegan fell fast asleep over the borrowed field desk. And did not awaken until he caught himself shivering in the gray, seepy cold of dawn.
Finding himself among the raspy, throaty snores of rough and unlettered men, long-haired, bearded, and caked with the stench of horses … instead of awakening within the warm bosom of his little family.
For Young Two Moon there was nothing warm about the last two mornings. As they moved out of the mountains into the foothills, it snowed off and on throughout the day, and each night it grew so cold even he found it hard to move come the dawn.
Yet some of the young warriors had managed to locate some game. This, like the horse meat that had sustained them, the women would throw onto the glowing red bed of coals in the fires, as they had no cooking utensils. Using their belt knives, the men occasionally would turn over the strips and slabs of meat until they were properly roasted. The old folks and the little ones were always fed first. And with what was left, the women and warriors finally ate at every stop. Never was there anything left but hoof and hide.
Joining Yellow Eagle, Turtle Road, Beaver Heart and a few others, Young Two Moon had mounted some of the stronger ponies and left the main group behind as they skirted the foothills to the south. These young men intended to see once more where the soldiers were going, and possibly steal back some of their captured herd from the Indian scouts.
Early in the evening the warriors caught up with the soldier column after it had settled in for the winter night—fires glowing, men talking, many of the
On that subfreezing night, those guards had little idea they were watched by the ten warriors as the herders went to the mouth of a draw where they would be protected from the wind and built themselves a shelter from dried brush, bark, and grass. Inside, the herd guards built a fire. It was not long before Young Two Moon and the others—waiting silently in the snow and the cold—heard the snoring of the guards.
“Those ponies will remember our smell?” Yellow Eagle asked in a whisper.
“It does not matter. We move among them slowly,” Young Two Moon asserted, “they will come to know our smell.”
“Then we can take them home to our people,” Turtle Road declared.
It was as Young Two Moon had said it would be. They went among the unguarded herd, stroking the ponies, breathing in the nostrils of some of the mares, then slipped horsehair ropes around the necks of ten ponies. These few the young warriors led up the long slope to the north. In the dark, silvery silence of that winter night, many of the herd followed obediently.
And once beyond the hilltop, Young Two Moon signaled the others.
“Now we ride!”
With quiet yips of excitement, the warriors leaped to the backs of the ponies they had brought to this place from the Peopic’s march and quickly got the herd of eight-times-ten moving into the snowy night.
“It is a blessing upon us!” Little Wolf cried out as the ten warriors returned just before dawn with the horses. “Now more of the old ones and the ones crippled with cold can ride.”
They continued that day down Lodgepole Creek* all the way until the People reached the “Big Lake”† before following their scouts over the divide to the head of Crow Standing Creek,† where darkness caught them for a third cold night, forced to huddle out of the wind and snow, taking shelter down in the coulees and draws near the frozen streambank.
It was to this camp early in the morning that Big Head and Walks Last returned from their ride with five others back to the burned village in the Red Valley. They had gone back to search for any ponies that might have run off into the hills then wandered back to the People’s camp once the soldiers deserted the canyon. None of the seven warriors brought in any horses.
The white man had taken them all.
THE INDIANS
Gen. Mackenzie’s Fight—List of Casualties.
NEW YORK, November 29.—a dispatch dated in the field, November 25, via Fort Fetterman the 27th, gives the following additional particulars of General Mackenzie’s fight on the 25th: The hostiles had been having a war dance all night, and were not taken by surprise by the attack which was made at sunrise. The village was located in a canyon running nearly north and south. It contained about 200 lodges, with perhaps five hundred warriors. General Mackenzie’s fighting force numbered nearly one thousand men. Most of the enlisted Indians behaved well at the start but after the first heat of the charge very many of them relapsed into apparent indifference to everything except plundering the abandoned tepees of the Cheyennes, and trying to run off horses. About twenty Indians that can be counted were killed, and doubtless many more have fallen behind the rocks. About five or six of our forces have been killed. The following is a partial list of casualties: Killed—Lieutenant John A. McKinney, Fourth Cavalry; Corporal Ryan, Company D, and Private Keller, Company E. Wounded—Sergeant Thomas H. Forsyth, Corporal W. J. Lynn, Corporal W. H. Pool, Corporal Dan Cunningham, Jacob Schlafer, privates E. L. Burk, G. H. Stickney, J. E. Talmadge, August Streil, Issac Maguire, Charles Folsom, Joseph Mc Mahon, Edward Fitzgerald, Alexander McFarland, George Kinney, Henry Holden, William B. Smith and David Stevens.
The fight in that red canyon would eventually claim one last victim—its daring cavalry commander.
But for now, ever since returning to the Crazy Woman camp, rumor had it Crook was going to return the troops to winter quarters. There’d be no more god-awful chasing around in the cold and the snow.
