But the young man’s words were true: they did have a long way to go. Barely out of the village, the party was progressing all too slowly. From off to their right arose the thunder of many, many hoofbeats. Only iron-shod American horses made such noise on frozen ground.
“I see a dry creekbed—not far!” Coal Bear announced, his voice raspy with apprehension.
“We will make it there safely,” Box Elder replied confidently.
After reaching the mouth of the shallow ravine, the Buffalo Hat Woman led them up its twisting course as the ravine became deeper, until it intersected with the narrow canyon west of the village. Far up the sides of the canyon the women and children were climbing to the top, where the first arrivals were already digging rocks out of the side of the slope to stack one upon the other, forming breastworks for what they knew was coming: an all-out siege.
“Father!” a man’s voice called out from among the noisy din of many crying, wailing, cursing women.
“Is it you, Medicine Top?”
“Yes, father,” and the middle-aged warrior was at his father’s side, touching Box Elder’s arm.
“Your wife and daughter?”
“I brought them here,” Medicine Top answered. “They are safe. Now I return to the village to fight.”
A new voice called out, “Medicine Top!”
“Spotted Blackbird!” the son sang out. “Is your family safe?”
“My mother and sisters are all here now. Come with me back into the village to fight these Wolf People.”*
“Wait,” Box Elder said to restrain them, turning his face out of the sharp wind that stung his wrinkled cheeks as it fiercely drove the particles of old snow against his bare flesh. “Look back toward the village, into the valley. Is there a low hill where I might go to look down upon all that takes place?”
For a moment the old man waited on Medicine Top; then the young man answered.
“Yes. I see it. A rounded hill.”
He gripped his son’s arm tightly. “How far?”
“Not far.”
“Take me there,” his voice pleaded at the same time it demanded.
Spotted Blackbird protested. “We should be fighting the soldiers and their scouts in the village before they destroy all that we have!”
“No,” Medicine Top argued, laying a hand atop the old man’s. “I will stay with my father for now.”
“Spotted Blackbird—you both will take me to the hill,” Box Elder said. “From there I will show you how our medicine fights the soldiers just as powerfully as our bullets and guns.”
“Irishman!”
“General!” Seamus called out in reply as he reined up near Mackenzie and his aides.
“You’ve been to the village?”
“Barely. Fighting off snipers.”
“How goes the fight?”
“The Pawnee are having a time of it, what with the struggle the Cheyenne are making of it—determined to hold on to their village,” Donegan huffed, twisting in the saddle to point behind him at the high ridge to the south of the camp. “But up there Cosgrove and Schuyler have the Snakes laying down a pretty heavy fire among those lodges. Making things hot for what warriors are still in there.”
“There—that’s the bunch that worries me,” Mackenzie said, pointing his gauntleted arm to the 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.