“Will we destroy the village and its contents, General?” asked Lieutenant Henry W. Lawton.
“Damn right I will,” the colonel replied, then—noticing the dour expression on the two civilians’ faces— Mackenzie asked, “Don’t you two think we should wipe the earth clear of all that this band of renegade Cheyenne ever owned?”
“I suppose that’s what you’re needing to do,” Donegan said. “It’s just that I can’t shake the memory of what Reynolds did all too quickly last winter farther north on the Powder.”
Mackenzie visibly bristled, his eyes glowering. “Damn you, Irishman! I’m no pompous desk straddler like Reynolds! And I’ve never been accused of an error in judgment. Now, you yourself were with me at the Palo Duro* when we impoverished the Kwahadi of Quanah Parker, then slaughtered their wealth in ponies. It was a total success. So that’s exactly what we’ll do here.”
“As long as your men ain’t freezing and you ask ’em to march on empty bellies,” Grouard commented.
His eyes became cold fires as he glared at the half-breed. “Never have I asked more of any man than I was willing to sacrifice myself. I have my orders. General Crook expects me to finish the job here.”
Donegan said, “That’s right, General. Just like Reynolds was told to finish the job on the Powder.”
“Listen, you son of a bitch,” Mackenzie snapped with uncharacteristic alarm. “I don’t know what’s come over you, but maybe you don’t remember just who the hell asked you to join in on this expedition.”
“Hold on, General,” Seamus began to apologize, his tone becoming softer. “Perhaps I was a bit out of the barracks with that talk about Reynolds. Sorry that what I said nettled you the way it did. No offense meant toward you. Damn, if I don’t find myself running loose in the tongue department when I oughtta be keeping this bleeding mouth shut.”
“It’s all right,” Mackenzie said, his face softening as well, the anger passed.
Donegan explained, “General, I for one should damn well know you’re not the kind to go off and do something stupid … leaving your men without food or protection against the weather. I’m sorry, for I plainly spoke out of line.”
“Apology accepted, Mr. Donegan.” Then Mackenzie’s smile was gone as he rose in the stirrups and brought the field glasses to his eyes. “Looks like Mr. Dorst is at the end of a pretty ride, gentlemen.”
Seamus squinted across the dazzling shimmer reflecting off the snow. Dorst was nearing the end of his race across the open no-man’s-land hard to their left.
No longer was it a close and dirty scrap, hand-to-hand and mean. Now Mackenzie had himself what was shaping up to be a day-long battle to fight.
And the sun had barely lifted off the ridges to the east.
In their front at the center of the open ground, troopers under Hamilton and Hemphill were hunkered down, all but under the guns of the Cheyenne who had taken up protected positions among the rocks dippling the nearby heights.
Off to the far right at the northern spread of the valley, Wessels and Russell of the Third were holding their own far up at the head of that deadly ravine where McKinney’s men had charged into the jaws of Hell.
And some minutes earlier Captain Alfred B. Taylor’s battalion of L and G troops, Fifth U.S. Cavalry, had just set up a dismounted skirmish line where they began a long-range duel with those dogged and persistent warriors atop the low knoll on the far side of the deep ravine. That skirmishing began at the completion of a gallant charge into the lower end of the Cheyenne camp, where they slashed their way lengthwise through the long, narrow horseshoe crescent of lodges—driving before them the last snipers who burst from the far end of the camp.
Killing every warrior who would not be driven before them.
As he strode up and down the skirmish line behind his men, Taylor himself discovered the tattered hole in the wide, flapping lapel of his caped mackintosh: pierced by a Cheyenne bullet—right over his heart.
He licked his dry lips and shook his head, soundlessly uttering his prayer of thanks as he kept on moving up and down the line, cheering on his men in that hot little fight they were having of it.
“It’s our day!” he cried in the bitter cold. “They’re whipped and on the run now!”
*
Chapter 31
25 November 1876
When the daring warrior appeared from behind the knoll atop his pinto, Second Lieutenant Homer W. Wheeler wasn’t ready for the sight of such a man prancing his animal back and forth out there, clearly within range of their carbines, a man who taunted the soldiers and the Pawnee scouts as he exposed himself to their bullets with no more protection than a buffalo-hide shield on his left arm and a bonnet of eagle feathers on his head, it’s red wool trailer spilling over the pony’s rump and all but brushing the snowy ground.
“Goddammit,” Wheeler growled as his unit’s bullets kicked up spouts of snow here and there around the pony’s hooves. He turned to the trooper next to him, reaching for the soldier’s Springfield. “Gimme your carbine! I’ll take a crack at him!”
But try as he might—holding high on the chest, then raising his sight to the warbonnet, in addition to adjusting what he thought he should for windage—not a damn one of his shots hit their target as a small but growing crowd around him cheered for all of those taking a crack at the warrior, jeering the magically charmed Cheyenne horseman.
“Lookee there, Lieutenant!” one of the troopers yelled, pointing to their left among the brush that bordered the village.
Just then a warrior poked his head up, yelling something quickly before his head disappeared again within the thick clump of willow.
“All right, fellas,” Wheeler declared. “Looks like we got us another good target to practice on. Let’s see if any of you can hit that damned redskin!”
Immediately a half-dozen guns cracked into service, but in that momentary lull while the soldiers reloaded, the warrior’s voice cried out—more shrilly this time, and plainly terrified.
“Pawnee!” a voice shrieked behind the Lieutenant.
Wheeler turned on his heel as a Pawnee scout came sprinting up to the skirmish line, terror on his face.
Gesturing wildly, the scout repeatedly shouted, “No shoot Pawnee!”
Standing to wave his arm, and shouting, Wheeler ordered the second platoon to hold their fire while he sorted things out. “That’s one of your Pawnee in there?” he asked slowly of the scout, pointing at the brush. “In there?”
Without hesitation the scout nodded his head, pointing too. “Pawnee, him. Pawnee, me. Pawnee!” Then he turned away from the lieutenant and hollered to the distant clump of brush.
Like a frightened bird poking its head from a clump of ground cover, the warrior peered out. When both the Pawnee scout and Wheeler began to wave him on, the warrior finally leaped from his place of hiding, darting straight for the soldiers.
“Pawnee,” the frightened scout said breathlessly as he reached the skirmish line, pounding himself on the chest. “See, Pawnee!” He grabbed hold of his long scalp lock, braided with three shiny conchos and the claws of a red hawk. “Pawnee!”
“Pawnee hair, yeah,” Wheeler said, shaking his head and turning back to the rest of his men, who went back to their attempts at knocking that lone Cheyenne warrior off the back of his prancing, dancing pony.
Wheeler wasn’t sure whose shot it was—there were so many guns going off together in a steady staccato— when the warbonnet began to tip to the side and the man under it slowly slipped from the pony’s bare back into the snow, causing a small eruption of the trampled white flakes as he sprawled across the ground in a heap.
“I got him! I got him!” someone hollered, jubilant enough to leap to his feet and dance a quick jig.
“You stupid bunghole!” another challenged. “It was me!”
“Both of you—take yourselves a good look there!”
And from beyond the slope of that hill came another elaborately dressed warrior also displaying a great
