A Cold Day in Hell by Terry C. Johnston Page A

Gone now.”
    “Where’d you leave his body? The Sioux get him?”
    “No,” William said, turning to point as he answered, “Carried him all the way down in the brush, beside that tall cottonwood.” Some sadness crossed his face as he turned back to the lieutenant colonel and added, “Bear Plume wants to bury their friend.”
    “By all means,” Otis replied knowingly, his eyes shifting to watch the long-range scrap between his men and the swirling horsemen.
    True to his word, the colonel ordered Sharpe’s H Company to push on toward the far copse of trees along the Yellowstone where Otis stopped the wagon train, set out skirmishers, and effectively held the Sioux at bay while he had a detail bury the dead Arikara scout before pressing on.
    “Let’s get this wagon train to Tongue River!” he finally cried, setting Sharpe’s company out in the advance once more.
    Hour after hour the rolling fight raged on as Otis kept his civilian and soldier teamsters grinding along, whipping mules ahead of their heavy wagons. In and out, back and forth the Sioux swarmed, shrieking, screeching—never drawing close enough to use their bows but firing their rifles instead, showing a healthy respect for those long-range guns of the infantry. Minute by minute it seemed the enemy horsemen were reinforced—new warriors arriving at the scene until there was an estimated force of some seven to eight hundred Sioux facing the beleaguered, outnumbered soldier column.
    Desperate to punch his way through, Otis used every trick up his sleeve: with every Sioux charge, he ordered a countercharge by one company or another while the wagons continuedon at a slow but steady pace. One after another he ordered out the various squads and companies, each unit skirmishing with the enemy horsemen before being recalled while another company was dispatched into the fray at a different position along the line of march.
    As steady as was their progress, by two o’clock that afternoon Otis’s column had made no more than six miles since morning, virtually fighting tooth and nail for every yard beneath the high autumn sun that caused the men to sweat despite the season.
    “Looks like they don’t intend to budge from that bluff to our front, Colonel,” Sharpe cried out to Otis.
    For a long moment the train commander appraised their situation. Just ahead of him lay the narrow valley of Clear Creek, the stream having cut itself to the bottom of a narrow gorge some two hundred feet deep. On the far side of the rocky ravine at least two hundred Sioux held a commanding position—awaiting the soldiers. The wagon train came to a clattering halt.
    “We can’t make that crossing,” Lieutenant Kell complained.
    “We must, sir,” Sharpe argued, turning to study Otis’s face—hoping to find some resolve there. “We must make the crossing, Colonel.”
    “Or?”
    “Or we’ve been defeated and we’ll never resupply Tongue River again.”
    Otis turned on Sharpe, bellowing loudly, “Absolutely correct, Mr. Sharpe! Gentlemen—those fiends will not turn us back. It’s up to you. Do you understand?”
    Sharpe saluted smartly and said, “Requesting that you position one of the Gatlings to lay down a covering fire for my men, Colonel.”
    “Dandy idea, Lieutenant!”
    Within minutes the field piece was rolled into position and a crew set to rake the far side of the valley where the Indians waited while Sharpe quickly formed up his men and led them off on the double, rushing to secure the crossing. Just as they reached Clear Creek, with the bullets kicking up spouts of dirt around them, Sharpe’s sergeant Hathaway grunted, falling to his knees beside the lieutenant.
    “I’m hit, sir!” and he threw a hand to his breast as he collapsed to the ground.
    In that moment Sharpe watched the sergeant pull his hand away and inspect himself. There was no blood, no bullet hole,but there at his knee lay the spent bullet that had whacked him on the chest. Yet in the