the advance of the Cheyenne snipers, Seamus turned back to the coming thunder, finding Hamilton’s mounted company was almost upon them.
“Get out of our way!” one of McKinney’s terrified soldiers screeched, digging his brass spurs into his horse’s belly as he shot past the Irishman.
Donegan leveled the rifle, then lowered it from his shoulder.
“I’ll … I’ll go back … with you,” the other young soldier coughed the words out with a struggle, swallowing down his fear, no less terrified than the coward who already had his back to them and was tearing off at an angle away from the wide front of riders coming at a gallop to the rescue.
“Then get down here and fight on foot, sojur!” he cried as the massed front neared.
He watched McKinney’s man wheel out of the saddle and slap his horse on the rear flank—sending it off with a clatter as he joined Donegan to sprint headlong back into the breach while the first of that battlefront Hamilton had arrayed finally reached the bloody battleground where McKinney’s soldiers lay dead and dying, all but swallowed by the warriors sweeping over them to count coup and claim the soldier weapons.
Hamilton’s men were but moments from finding out they had just pitched into what would be the toughest fighting of that cold day.
* The Pawnee.
Chapter 28
Big Freezing Moon 1876
“Get your guns!”
At the terror in that warning cry, Morning Star jerked up with a start, clawing for his leggings, kicking his feet out of the blankets and heavy robes.
“The camp is being attacked!”
Now he realized it was Black Hairy Dog’s voice, crying out from the hillside at the upper end of camp.
“The soldiers are here! Get your guns!
The enemy was swarming everywhere the moment he poked his head from the long opening he slashed in the back of his lodge with a butcher knife, pushing his wives and a nephew into the shockingly cold air. Guns boomed, their echoes reverberating from the red sandstone walls towering over the sleeping lodges.
War whoops cracked the frosty air on all sides. The shrill call of wing-bone whistles cried with the off-key notes of a flute. Then he saw them through the frozen mist.
Wolf People!
Bullets smacked into the lodge where he stood.
Morning Star whirled to find more soldiers’ scouts high upon the red, snowy ridge that rose high over the south side of their camp. Fire spat from the muzzles of their many, many guns. But those were not Wolf People. Instead they wore their hair like Snake—a tribe friendly with the white man for a long, long time. They fired down on the village, some of their bullets even landing among the warriors covering the retreat on the west side of camp.
By now the Wolf People were already among the lodges, dashing in and out with screams of joy as they plundered the Cheyenne homes. These were old enemies too—so it was natural that they would join the soldiers in making war on Morning Star’s peaceful
Then he cocked his head slightly, listening carefully above the noisy din a moment as he watched his family flee from that slit in the back of his lodge. So painful to hear Lakota spoken by many of those scouts rushing to capture the village’s ponies.
But what crushed Morning Star’s spirit was to hear his own tongue spoken by some of the scouts.
Past him and the other chiefs who stood protectively at the edge of camp flooded the last of the People now—most of them naked, bolting from their beds without robes and blankets, the men taking little but their weapons and cartridge belts, and the women dragging only their children into the cold and the snow. Many of these had slashed their way out of their lodges, plunging the blades of long knives through the backs of the frost-stiffened lodge skins or canvas lodge covers, frantically shoving their barefoot families out of the long slits into the bloody terror of that day-coming.
“Run! Run to the hills! Lie behind the rocks!” mothers cried at their little ones, men and women screamed at their aged relatives.
There in the breastworks the children were to stay until the parents could come to find them, until the strong could gather up the sick and the old—only then to continue their escape over the mountains to safety.
One group of five young women, including Buffalo Calf Woman—whose younger brother was blind—hurried clumsily past Morning Star, stumbling, collapsing together in a heap because they were all still tied together, just as they had been at the all-night dance of the Kit Foxes. Together they pulled one another to their feet, screaming in panic, starting away before the Old-Man Chief grabbed the last one in that line, jerking them all to a stop with one hand as his other snatched his dull-bladed knife from his belt. Quickly he raked the weapon against each thong binding the young women, one by one pushing them away toward the mouth of that narrow canyon running northwesterly from the edge of camp.
“Go!” he shouted. “Hurry!”
As he watched after them for that brief moment, he caught sight of his childhood friend, Little Wolf, standing there like a beacon fire a man would ignite atop a high and faraway point of land. Waving on the fleeing girls.
Just as the legends said Little Wolf had done last winter when the soldiers had attached Old Bear’s camp on the Powder, the Sweet Medicine Chief of the
It brought a mist to Morning Star’s eyes as he looked upon Little Wolf, his old friend of many, many winters —standing there beneath the onslaught of the weapons fired by those Wolf People scouts penetrating the lower end of the village, standing his ground while the bullets fell about him, putting his flesh between those soldier guns and the lives of the People.
A chief’s first responsibility.
Once the children and wrinkled ones were out of the village and on their way out of that network of ravines at the upper end of camp and into the deep and narrow canyon where the soldier bullets could not reach them, many of the women made their climb up the wall of that deep ravine and began to gather rocks at the lip of the canyon, erecting breastworks where they and their men would defend themselves to the death. For now the women sang their strong-heart songs as they worked, their voices rising like a prayer to give its power to their husbands and fathers, their brothers and uncles.
With their families out of camp, most of the warriors turned back to take up positions across the hillsides or at the crest of the knolls, where they flopped to their bellies on the snow and frozen ground, to fire down upon the advancing pony soldiers.
While none of the warriors at the lower end of the village had time to snatch up anything but their weapons as they urged their families to flee—some of those men choosing to make their stand there and then, dying on the bloodstained snow among the lodges—the men on the upper end of camp had enough frantic moments to catch up their horses, perhaps load a blanket or robe aboard them, and drive those ponies into the hills among that broken ground west of the village.
A few even whirled their ponies around and galloped back across the stream, singing out their war songs and exhorting one another to have courage once they spotted the first white soldiers approaching from the east at the foot of the hills along the north side of the valley. Although they had no hope of stemming the blue tide with their
