southwest.
“Along the brow of that hill?” Seamus asked, squinting into the growing light reflected off the bright and crusty snow.
“They’re covering the retreat of their women, and harassing our men already in among the lodges, securing the village.”
“But from the looks of things,” Donegan replied, seeing the troopers formed up and beginning to move out, “you’ll have that under control in short time.”
“That’s McKinney’s troop—they’re going to have a field day of it!” the colonel said enthusiastically.
“May I join them?”
“By all means, Irishman,” Mackenzie answered. “Get your licks in before there’s nothing more than some mopping up—by all means!”
“General!” Seamus whooped, his adrenaline bubbling as he saluted before wheeling away at a gallop.
He had covered most of that gently rolling, level ground, easing the bay into a full-out gallop to reach the tail roots of the last of McKinney’s men racing forward in a tight column of fours, pistols drawn up, elbows bent, at the ready—when he saw the lieutenant suddenly rise in his stirrups, waving, reining to the side at the sudden appearance of that lip of a dark scar slashed across the white prairie.
At the next moment those first four troopers behind McKinney immediately sawed to the right, two dozen— maybe as many as thirty—Cheyenne warriors sprang out of the ground directly in front of the soldiers.
Right out of the bloody ground!
For that instant Donegan’s mind grappled with it, knowing the enemy must have hidden themselves down in that twenty-foot-deep ravine so well that the soldiers were powerless to see the enemy until they were right upon them.
As the second group of four struggled to wheel right, they jammed into McKinney’s first four as the shots exploded into them, point-blank.
His breath frozen in his chest, Donegan watched the muzzles of those Cheyenne rifles spit bright-orange jets of flame, illuminating the dawn mist, gray gun smoke wisping up from the lip of that ravine to congeal over the warriors’ heads as they fired more shots into the confused ranks.
Then the rest of McKinney’s troopers were all thrust together: many of M Troop’s horses suddenly reared at the gunshots and the Cheyenne’s cries, fighting their riders who twisted on their reins. The mounts corkscrewed about on their hind legs, pitching backward wildly with forelegs slashing the air, hurtling their riders off to the side as the sound of those deadly volleys rumbled across the flat ground toward the north slope.
As Seamus leaped off his horse, dragging the Winchester over the saddle with him, he watched McKinney’s horse go down in a twisted heap, flinging its rider off toward the edge of the ravine. While the Irishman crouched forward on his knees, he fired, then chambered another cartridge.
Beyond him the young captain struggled valiantly to one elbow atop that snow quickly turning crimson beneath him, spitting blood as he stared for a moment down at the glove he slowly took away from one of his half- dozen wounds, finding it slicked with red, then collapsed beside the animal wheezing its last.
The muzzles from those countless Indian rifles puffed with red flames again as most of the other horses struggled up on their legs, tearing off in panic and terror to the four winds, their hooves throwing up clods of frozen snow behind them. One by one McKinney’s fallen got to hands and knees, some able to do no more than claw themselves away on their bellies.
Then Seamus became aware of the distant roar of more gunfire coming from that nearby knoll, where more warriors lay now, all those guns trained down at these fallen soldiers like ducks in a tiny backwoods pond. Beneath the rattle and echo of near and distant gunfire, on the cold wind floated the cries of the wounded and the dying.
He chambered and fired into the teeth of those screaming Cheyenne bristling along the rim of the ravine.
Five of McKinney’s troopers moved, some better than the others, as most of those not hit circled and milled. In their midst Second Lieutenant Harrison G. Otis attempted to regain control and order over M Troop. Most had all they could handle struggling against their balky horses, at the same time attempting to fire their pistols down at the side of that ravine where the Cheyenne had waited, and waited … until the last moment—then burst up to shoot point-blank, all but under the bellies of the big American horses.
Two of the soldiers did not move, sprawled on the snow like some dark insects squashed there, their legs and arms akimbo. Just a few yards back from them the first of the mortally wounded horses were collapsing at last, one already flopping down, and the second going to its knees, then keeling over to its side, where all four legs thrashed until there was no movement in that air so quickly stinking of death, and blood, and the acrid smell of burned black powder.
That stench of burning sulfur reminded the Irishman of Hell … the cries of both the Cheyenne and the wounded troopers convincing Seamus that this was Hades itself.
Another man lay beneath his dying horse, its big, muscular neck struggling time and again to lift its heavy head until it finally collapsed. The soldier was McKinney’s bugler, Hicks, bleeding badly and with his legs pinned, bright crimson gushing from his mouth each time he called out in a hoarse voice for the others not to abandon him, for someone to free him before the Cheyenne would rush out to get him.
Try as Otis did to rally the remnants of McKinney’s shredded command, M Troop milled, yelling at one another, some of them ready to bolt, some sitting numbly in their saddles, most ready to obey Otis’s orders and stand their ground, although frightened to the core by the sudden, devastating shock of it. The young lieutenant suddenly ducked; a bullet spun his big black hat completely around on his head and pitched it to the snowy ground.
That was enough for two.
A pair of the soldiers suddenly wheeled about and put heels to their horses, breaking away in a wild retreat, making straight for the Irishman as he crabbed up on hands and knees. Behind the two, it was clear four more were ready to scatter in wild disorder.
Seamus stood suddenly, leveling his rifle at them, his hands shaking—sensing that gravity of pointing his weapon at white men, soldiers, comrades in arms … as the first two soldiers drew close.
“Halt!” he bellowed, watching their wide eyes grow even wider, realizing these were youngsters likely never before tested in battle—green as recruits could come. “You can’t retreat!”
“Just who the hell are you?” one of them demanded as both soldiers reined up, pitching up clods of icy snow.
“I’m the one gonna shoot you if you don’t turn back to help!” he bellowed, eyes narrowing as he now saw the wounded trumpeter twist his body beneath the horse so he could position himself to shoot over the animal’s quivering body at the Cheyenne crawling out of the ravine less than ten yards away from where the bugler lay trapped and stranded.
Of a sudden behind Seamus arose a clatter of hooves hammering the frozen ground, men’s voices raised in unintelligible panic and battle lust. Donegan twisted about, reluctant to take his eyes off the two soldiers ready to run in retreat but suddenly frozen by the sight of that something behind the Irishman.
A troop of cavalry was racing headlong for them, both flanks spreading out left and right, moments before ordered out of a walk into a rolling gallop across a broad front. At Ranald Mackenzie’s excited order, Captain John M. Hamilton was the first to lead the men of his H Troop, Fifth U.S. Cavalry, to the rescue.
More gunfire exploded back near the far head of the deep ravine—off to his right—drawing Donegan’s attention. Another H Troop, these men from the Third U.S. Cavalry under Captain Henry W. Wessels, Jr., suddenly found themselves in the thick of it as they too dashed up under orders to support McKinney’s butchered company on the extreme right side of the line. Now they became the big targets on those tall American horses.
Wessels’s men began dismounting in ragged confusion and a rush of adrenaline as more Cheyenne warriors flooded over the lip of the ravine, continuing to lay down a galling fire among the arriving soldiers. Some of Wessels’s horses escaped, yanking free of their riders and bolting to the rear, while a few horse-holders managed to grab hold of reins or bridles, clumsily snapping on the throatlatches to pull the unruly, frightened animals out of the action while the rest of H Troop inched forward, fighting on foot.
Close and dirty.
As Wessels’s men hurried to the right, up toward the northern end of that jagged ravine so they could cut off
