“It is filled with many, many bullets!”
But then more soldiers were coming. Bull Hump and the others must have heard the hooves, the soldier guns, for they lunged back to the ravine … but instead of leaping to safety, Morning Star’s son skidded to a stop, sliding to his knees in the trampled snow as he scooped up a revolver, crawling on all fours to pick another off the icy ground. Jamming both of them into his belt, he hobbled on to the lip of the ravine and pitched over as more soldiers charged up.
Shrill voices rang out behind Morning Star, filled with challenge.
Below him at the upper end of the village, the last of Little Wolf’s warriors now gathered to taunt the soldier scouts who had seized the ridge above the south side of the village—flinging their voices at the Snake, those ancient enemies: boasting to the scouts that only days before they had wiped out a Shoshone village, every man, woman, and child falling victim.
In the midst of that hail of bullets, Little Wolf and the others screamed their challenge to the Shoshone and boasted that in a time to come they would take revenge for this day’s attack.
As soon as the left flank of those reinforcements began dismounting in a flurry among McKinney’s survivors, Seamus got himself a good look at an insignia here and there.
This was the Fifth Cavalry. H Troop. As battle hardened a bunch as there ever was
“Thank God,” he whispered, his eyes turning heavenward.
More bullets were again whistling among them. Those sharpshooters atop that knoll were spraying a galling fire into the horsemen arriving at the edge of that twenty-foot-deep ravine where the fallen horses and McKinney’s men lay scattered upon the crusted snow.
“Halt!” came the shrill command behind Donegan and the wounded lieutenant’s decimated troop.
There arose a cold clatter of metal and whining leather, scraping hooves and muttered oaths, as the entire command in battle front skidded to a stop.
Then an officer bawled, “Dissss-mount!”
The troopers leaped to the ground, yanking hard on their reins to turn horses about.
As Captain John M. Hamilton whirled toward the enemy, pistol held high, sergeants took up the cry, “Horse-holders to the rear!”
In a flurry every fourth soldier snatched the reins of three other horses, locking on the twenty-eight-inch throatlatches before wheeling about on his heel to drag his horses to the rear while the rest pushed forward on foot.
“Time’s come you young’uns make sure you’re loaded!” suggested an old file off to Donegan’s right.
“L-loaded, sir, Sergeant!” some high voice squeaked.
Then Hamilton’s boys were thrust into the thick of it.
Turning for one last look behind him at the plateau where he had galloped off from Mackenzie’s group, Seamus spotted another company coming up on the double, dismounting right among H Troop’s horse-holders, who were struggling away with their frightened, rearing mounts.
Now, with these numbers, at least they might just have a chance to cut their way out of things, Donegan thought as he dropped on one knee to take a steady shot—then immediately levered another cartridge into the breech and fired again as quickly as he could make that cold action work.
In the next instant he was back on his feet among the others, at least half of the soldiers advancing in a foragers’ charge while the rest of Hamilton’s company threw open the big trapdoors on their Springfield carbines and rammed home another of the fat, shiny sausages. Step by step, yard by yard, Hamilton expertly leapfrogged his men in two squads until Captain Wirt Davis’s F Troop, Fourth Cavalry, reached the back of H Troop’s line and infiltrated the skirmishing. Now both troops advanced together in a massed front as the Cheyenne on the tall bluff beyond the ravine laid their hottest fire in among the soldiers.
As the broad blue front inched forward across the bloodied snow, Seamus heard one man, then a second, cry out immediately as they were hit, both of them sprawling backward in the snow. The first went down noisily, thrashing and smearing the white, icy ground with a crimson stain, then lay still. The other collapsed to his knees, slowly settling backward as if he were merely sitting down to Sunday dinner without a complaint while his mouth moved soundlessly to form the word “Mother” and his blank eyes implored the cold blue sky above him
As the soldiers neared the edge of the ravine, the sun suddenly snapped over the ridge behind them, immediately flooding the snowy valley in an eye-stinging brilliance.
“By God,” Donegan murmured under his breath as he jammed another half-dozen cartridges into the Winchester’s receiver, his numb, clumsy fingers spilling a shell on the snow, “—the bastards have the sun in their eyes now!”
Some men grumbled curses all around him as they drew close to the enemy. A few men shouted commands as most struggled to reload with clumsy gloves and frozen hands—none of the platoons firing in ordered volleys now.
More warriors now at the edge of the ravine.
They were almost within spitting distance of the enemy. Still advancing on the Cheyenne. Foot by bloody foot. Another soldier cried out, and two men on either side of him knelt to grab the wounded one, turned and dragged him to the rear as he flailed his legs and screamed for immortal mercy, the front of his belly slicked with a dark stain.
“Damned gut wound,” the Irishman whispered under his breath. A horrible way to die. A slow journey, one filled with teethgrinding agony.
So it was he suddenly remembered American Horse, how bravely the chief had died that night within the smoking ruin of his village at Slim Buttes.* Would this madness ever end?
But as quickly Seamus knew it would not. Could not. Not until the Indian was back on each miserable patch of ground the government laid out for him and called a reservation. Not until these brave men had all been stripped of weapons and ponies—stripped of their warriorhood.
It was plain that these at the ravine had chosen to die standing up, fighting to the end as they protected family and home. Such a man fought savagely, Seamus recalled. Because he had so much to lose … and at the same time had nothing more to lose.
Such an enemy fought much, much harder than any soldier far away from home would ever fight.
Off to the right and at the center of the line the soldiers made the first close-quarters contact with the Cheyenne in a sudden clash of shock and noise and voices, grunts and screams. Then as quickly the rest of them were in the maw of that hand-to-hand struggle. Suddenly so close the troopers could smell last night’s supper on the breath of the warriors who flung their bodies against the two troops, close enough to smell the frozen grease on their hair. Close enough to smell the fear seeping from a man’s pores.
He smelled no fear from the Cheyenne this day.
Just in front of Seamus one of McKinney’s men flopped down onto his back, both his empty hands locked around the wrist of a warrior as the half-naked Cheyenne leaped onto him, a huge bear-jaw knife poised over his head. It was McKinney’s sergeant, Thomas H. Forsyth.
Seamus turned at the hip, aimed at the warrior’s head, point-blank, and squeezed the Winchester’s trigger. Watched the Cheyenne’s head snap away to the side in a bright spray of blood. Some of the crimson splattered upon that well-tanned face, which showed instant gratitude to him before the sergeant rolled out of the bloody snow.
Forsyth and another, Private Thomas Ryan, knelt over the body of their lieutenant, protecting McKinney as more warriors swarmed out of the deep ravine. Cartridge by cartridge they slammed beneath the trapdoors of their Springfields, daring to hold back the horde that screeched defiance and death.
“Deploy, goddammit!” the old sergeant bellowed again above the lieutenant’s body. “Don’t let them overrun us! Deploy as skirmishers! And stand!”