They needed no prodding, for all could hear the distant, throbbing, man-made reverberation wending its way up to them from afar.
“That’s a goddamned drum!” whispered Billy Garnett, Sioux interpreter with the expedition.
“Hell if it ain’t!” said Billy Hunter, half-breed guide serving the North’s Pawnee battalion.
“Shush!” someone ordered nearby.
You could almost feel them hold their breath—eleven hundred of them now. So damned quiet a man could make out the snort of a horse halfway down the entire length of the column, maybe even hear the fart of one of Tom Moore’s mules at the very end of the entire procession.
“Rowland!” Mackenzie called out to his headquarters group.
“I’m here,” the squaw man replied, inching his horse forward.
“Bring some of your Cheyenne,” the colonel ordered. “Have them take us ahead to where we might get us a look at the village.”
Rowland gestured to Roan Bear, Cut Nose, and Little Fish, three of those who sat their ponies behind him. Wordlessly the trio led off as the squaw man and Mackenzie followed until all five were swallowed by the leafless willow choking a bend in the valley ahead.
Now the nearly four hundred Indian allies visibly became restless, muttering and restive, barely able to contain their primal excitement. Most of them took this moment to pull off to one side or another, leaping from their ponies. Donegan had seen the whole process many times before, yet it never ceased to make his heart leap in anticipation—to watch these Indians go about their toilet, pulling out paints and grease, bringing forth feathers and amulets, those stuffed birds and animal skins they would tie in their hair, smearing their braids with white earth or hanging empty brass cartridges in their black tresses, every last one of them mumbling to the spirits and invoking his private war medicine now that they were within earshot of the enemy.
Now that every last one of them knew they would not have to wait out another day.
This was the morning of the attack.
There were Northern Cheyenne in there. While the various Lakota bands might eventually be whipped in detail and driven back to the agencies—the Northern Cheyenne were known to fight to the last man.
As Sharp Nose rode among the Red Cloud scouts, whispering low, signing with his quick hands, the scouts dropped to the ground, adjusting their reins and pad saddles.
Behind Donegan the soldiers were now ordered out of their McClellans, instructed that here they would tighten cinches, check the loads in their .45-caliber single-action Colt revolvers with the seven-and-a-half-inch barrels. Make sure they had handy the hundred rounds of ammunition each of them carried for his .45/70 Springfield carbine.
The Indians went among one another, talking low, touching hands, pounding one another on the shoulders, making low cries of the wolf or some other creature which would provide its spiritual protection now that they stood on the brink of battle.
Donegan knew they were reminding one another that this would be a glorious day—perhaps a great day to die. Knowing that these Northern Cheyenne would put up a fight truly worthy of a warrior’s reputation.
He fingered the buckle on his bridle, then nervously loosened both pistols in their holsters, checking next the lever and trigger action on the Model ’73 Winchester, and finally allowed himself to turn, looking up the darkened canyon whence came that low, steady hammer of a great war drum. The enemy was awake. And perhaps they were ready for the attack.
As he stood beneath the halo of frost steaming from the bay’s nostrils, Seamus thought of Samantha and the boy. Hoping she would not worry, praying she would talk to the child about his father every day, just as he had pledged her to do while he was gone from them both.
Then he thought on his mother, his eyes drawn up to the sides of the canyon that rose before them. Thoughts of Uncle Ian far to the west in that Oregon country—how he raised family and stock and crops, his feet buried in the rich soil, the sort of man a woman could clearly count on.
Then as his eyes climbed even farther, ascending from the ridgetop into that icy blue pricked with countless stars, his thoughts naturally turned to Uncle Liam. And Seamus began to weep, silent tears spilling from his eyes, freezing on his cheeks, icing in the mat of winter’s beard.
Somehow sensing that man was with him at this very minute, in this forbidding land—at his shoulder once more, now that the fighting was at hand.
Last night as the sun began to lengthen shadows at the upper end of the valley, Last Bull’s warriors organized the men of the village to drag in dry timber from the surrounding area. They stood the huge trunks on end to form a conical “skunk,” into the center of which they then stuffed smaller kindling wood. As the light disappeared from the sky, the Kit Fox Society ignited their bonfire while others dragged up the huge drum they had captured from the Shoshone village. Six men could sit around it without crowding, each of them singing and beating time for the dancers.
At the quivering fringe of the firelight some of the mothers protectively hovered beside their daughters. Other mothers tied lengths of rawhide or braided horsehair from their daughter’s belt to another until five or six of them were joined together in this fashion. It was their hope that such a precaution would prevent the young Kit Fox warriors from dashing up to snatch one of the young women and pirate her away when the celebration became heady with passion. By and large most of the mothers did not stray far from the dancing circle, staying in sight of their daughters, hoping to protect them from Last Bull’s strutting warriors.
And strut they did.
They came through the village, herding everyone toward the huge dance arena. And when the hundreds were gathered and the drum began to throb, the cocky warriors went among the crowd, commanding all to dance or be beaten with bows—a degrading humiliation. Only the most courageous refused to dance to the Kit Foxes’ victory over the Shoshone.
Men like Brave Wolf, who had taken a vow as a Contrary. Even Last Bull did not molest such a crazy, wanting-to-die warrior. It was gratifying to Morning Star to find that Brave Wolf and a handful of other young Contraries kept moving in and out of camp to the east in their lonely vigil—their keen senses on edge for the soldiers they expected to come from that direction. Up among the huge boulders along the sides of the canyon they rode, listening for any sound, watching for the glint of a rifle barrel or bridle in the winter moonlight.
Then the moon fell in the southwest and only the stars lit the sky with a cold blue light. Brave Wolf and the others returned to camp, reporting in to the three Old-Man Chiefs. What starlight fell from the sky was not enough to help them see an enemy far away in that rugged country.
The singing and dancing continued as the People grew more and more weary, and the Kit Foxes worked themselves into a frenzy of war lust.
Sometime after the moon had fallen, Sits in the Night went to check on his ponies he had driven down below the village to graze. As he was approaching the open glade where he had left them Sits in the Night saw someone driving the ponies off to the east. His heart in his throat, he reined about immediately and raced back to the village. There he told his story to the camp crier, who immediately went through those gathered at the dance to tell the story of someone stealing the horses.
“I got there in time to see people driving off my ponies. I could see them whipping my ponies. I could hear the blows as they struck my animals. I think the soldiers have come—for farther down from there I heard a rumbling noise!”
Many held their hands over their mouths, their eyes wide as silver conchos, afraid that Box Elder’s vision was coming to pass.
The crier declared, “We had better look to making breastworks! The soldiers are nearly upon us!”
Crow Split Nose—chief of the
Emboldened by the news of strangers around their camp and the courageous words of those who would defy Last Bull’s Kit Foxes, many of the families turned away at this time and once more prepared to take blankets and robes and special treasures into the surrounding hills to safety.
But as quickly the brazen chief and Wrapped Hair appeared in their midst, screaming for their warriors,
