found out that the soldiers were coming. Are you one too?”
“Yes, together we saw the soldiers and their scouts coming from the Powder.”
“We will take him,” the first woman said as she stepped forward and slipped the pinto’s rein from Young Two Moon’s hand. “If your friend is meant to live, he will live. You go and fight now.”
The power of the People brought tears to Coal Bear’s old eyes that bitterly cold morning. Not only did they have the strength of
They had men like Long Jaw drawing the soldier and scout bullets away from Coal Bear and his woman as they hurried
It was only in this way—from ridge to gully, from gully to bluff, and on to the next ravine—that Coal Bear and his woman finally made it to the deep canyon where the others had fled, where the women old and young clutched their children against them and together sang the songs their warriors needed to hear as they plunged into battle.
Foot by foot the old man climbed, stopping often to turn and reach down a hand to his woman, who would pass up the Buffalo Hat; then she would climb on around him, and he would pass the Sacred Hat up to her. Leapfrogging their way up the steep side of that cliff, they made it to the top of the breastworks where the others had gathered.
Many of the women trilled their tongues when they recognized it was Coal Bear—keeper of the Northern People’s power.
There in the cruel wind that kicked up frozen, icy snow off the ground around him, the old chief raised the sacred bundle over his head, looked into the rising sun, and began singing.
His eyes closed, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“Hear me,
By the time Donegan and Grouard reached Mackenzie, the colonel and his orderlies were more than halfway up the side of a red sandstone spur that jutted from the north wall of the canyon onto the valley floor. From the heights Mackenzie could monitor most of the battlefield, save only for what fierce fighting was still raging at the south side of the village as the Pawnee and Sioux punched their way through the camp yard by yard, lodge by lodge.
The Cheyenne had fallen back foot by foot, covering the retreat of their families. And for the first time that morning as the sun climbed fully above the eastern rim of the valley, it looked as if the village was all but in control of Mackenzie’s forces. The colonel had deployed his battalions with deadly effectiveness.
Some of the companies hung back of the others to act as a rear guard and to prevent the Cheyenne from slipping around behind the soldiers’ flanks.
Other units worked in concert with the Pawnee as well as the Sioux and Cheyenne scouts to muscle their way into the village, plunging through it, where the fighting was tough against the hardy horsemen and snipers who hid within the lodges, contesting every foot of ground.
Still more of the troopers hunkered down in a copse of timber at the far western edge of the village, pinned there after beginning an assault on the warriors who tenaciously held on to the narrow mouth of a deep canyon where the women and children had escaped. Despite the fact that they were fighting against great odds in that skirmish, the warriors put up a stern resistance, firing from behind boulders and piles of rock, from behind this tree or that as they seemed to be constantly moving, never giving the soldiers a stationary target.
And from that low hill just to the northeast of the village came bullets that rained down here and there—as warriors sought to harass the soldiers on three sides of that battlefield. As the moments dragged on, fewer and fewer of the Cheyenne remained atop that knoll, until there were only five.
Mackenzie pulled the field glasses from his eyes, squinting in the brilliant sunlight bouncing off the snow. “That handful are making a damned nuisance of themselves.”
“They’re almost in the middle of the fight now,” commented Lieutenant Joseph H. Dorst. “They command quite a field of fire, General.”
“I can see that!” Mackenzie snapped uncharacteristically at his regimental adjutant. Then he turned to the half-breed and the Irishman. “How about you two? Should we wipe that hilltop clear?”
“As long as those Cheyenne are up there making things hot for your sojurs,” Seamus said, “none of us gonna be safe in that village.”
“Just my thinking exactly,” Mackenzie replied, wheeling about to pull Dorst close. “Take my compliments to Captain Taylor over there by the village. Tell him I need to clear that hilltop as soon as I can, and for him to form up a charge on the heights.”
Dorst saluted, saying, “I’ll leave in just a moment, General.”
He slid from the saddle and threw up the stirrup fender so he could give a tug on the cinch. Finding it secure, the adjutant climbed back atop his horse, asking, “Am I to return here, sir?”
“By all means, Lieutenant. Report back as soon as practicable. And whatever you do—stay low on your ride. Until that hill is cleared, any courier crossing that open plain makes a sitting duck of himself.”
Tugging down the brim of his hat, Dorst bade farewell to the headquarters group with a smile. “So—until I see your hairy mugs again!”
And he was off, lying back in the saddle a ways as his horse picked its way down the steep incline of the rock outcrop until he neared the bottom. There the wiry Dorst leaned forward and leaped his mount onto the rolling prairie, shooting off like a jockey spurring his blooded thoroughbred in a sudden burst of speed out of the starting gate. Lying low along the animal’s withers, he slapped its front flanks with a side-to-side arch of his reins.
“General?”
They all turned to find interpreter Billy Garnett loping to a halt with the Sioux leader Three Bears.
“What is it?”
“I better tell you something now while I got the chance.”
“Tell me what?” Mackenzie asked. His eyes flicked toward the Sioux chief impatiently.
“Three Bears says you gotta listen to his way of fighting—or all your men gonna fall like Custer’s.”
The colonel snorted. Some of his aides laughed outright. “Jesus H. Christ, Garnett!” Mackenzie scoffed. “Just look at the battlefield! Does it appear we’re about to be overrun?”
Garnett’s stoic face did not betray his belief in the words of Three Bears. He continued, “The Cheyenne are all driven out. Meaning they’re all around us now. They got the hills, the high ground, General. Three Bears is dead set on telling you what he thinks you oughtta know.”
“And what is that?”
“He says you gotta order your men to fight one by one. Not like soldiers anymore. Not like them what got killed with Custer—they hung together like soldiers. Officers kept ’em bunched up like sheep. You gotta tell your men to fight the Indians one on one, like these here Cheyenne are gonna do to us.”
Mackenzie turned quickly to the Sioux chief. “Is that how these Cheyenne are going to fight me now, Three Bears?”
The Indian nodded, not requiring any translation.
“From bush to bush, is it? Fighting from rock to rock, man to man, eh?” Mackenzie asked. “I don’t think so, gentlemen. In fact, you will soon see my battle plan prevail.” Then he turned his back on Three Bears and Garnett as if dismissing them both, placing the field glasses to his eyes as he slowly perused the terrain below him.
“How do things look, General?” asked Major George Gordon, still seeming a bit anxious. “Do the Cheyenne have us surrounded, like they did Custer’s outfit?”
“The day is won, gentlemen,” Mackenzie reassured them as they all watched the bullets begin to kick up tiny cascades of snow around that lone horseman, Dorst, sprinting across that open ground below. “But we still have much to do before this victory is complete.”
