Free A Cold Day in Hell by Terry C. Johnston

have with Mackenzie and Crook.
    It was not until late that night as they lay in the darkness, with the babe nestled snuggly in the hand-me-down cradle set right against Sam’s side of the bed, that she lay against Seamus’s chest and knew he was not sleeping.
    In the blackness of their tiny room, she asked him in a whisper, “What’s keeping you from sleep?”
    Moments passed before he spoke. “I don’t know what to do. Before … before the babe arrived, I was damned sure that I wouldn’t ever go marching off to make war again.”
    She felt him shudder, not knowing if it was from fear, or from a sob. Then Sam suggested, “Mackenzie asked you to ride with him again.”
    “Yes. He’s kept after me, he has.”
    “And this time you didn’t tell him no.”
    “Not exactly, Sam. But—I said I’d tell him in the morning.”
    “Seamus, my love: it took me some time before I came toreally understand who you were as a man. The sort of husband you’d make. And now the sort of father you will be to our son. I know you will have no peace in yourself if you don’t go off to do what it is that you need to do.”
    “Peace,” he repeated that word in a whisper in the dark. “I look at our son. I hold him in my arms. I gaze into his little face as he lies in my lap. And I grow scared.”
    “Why are you scared?” she asked, nestling her head in his neck.
    “Because I’m afraid that unless I go with Mackenzie, unless I keep going until this terrible matter is done, once and for all—there will be no peace for our son.”
    “You do have a job to do, Seamus,” she eventually said, feeling the sting of tears come to her eyes. “Part of that job is being here with me when you can to be a husband. Part of that job will be helping me to raise our new son. And a very important part of your job right now is finishing what you have begun.”
    For a long, long time he did not answer her. And when he did, Seamus quietly said, “Thank you for understanding my fear, Sam. And for understanding that I’m the sort of man who must go and look my fear in the eye.”
    “Go do this for us, Seamus. Go do this for your son.”
    “Yes,” he answered with a long, rattling sigh. “It’s about time that we finished what we started ten long years ago.”
    * Present-day Sand Creek.

Chapter 4
14–15 October 1876

Telegraphic
Gen. Merritt Marching
Into Indian Land
THE INDIANS
Merritt on a scout—Bad Indians Still Raiding.
    CHEYENNE, October 13.—General Merritt left Custer City with 500 men on a scout to-day. Their destination is not positively known but it is surmised to be the Bell Fourche Fork of the Cheyenne river. The remainder of the command is still at Custer. The party of Indians who killed Monroe near Fort Laramie a few days since also raided the ranch of Nick Jones on the old Red Cloud road, stealing twenty-five horses. Monroe’s body was pierced by eight bullets.
    C aptain Miner’s wagon train limped back to the Glendive supply depot after nine P.M . on the evening of 11 October, having hacked their way through the massing warriors, fighting for nearly every foot until the Sioux were certain the train was retreating to the east along Clear Creek. The warriors broke off their attack as the soldiers rumbled along a trail crossing higherground, thereby giving the soldiers a commanding view of the surrounding countryside as darkness approached.
    After allowing the mules and those four infantry companies two days to recoup their strength, Lieutenant Colonel Elwell S. Otis of the Twenty-second Infantry determined this time to set out himself to deliver those much-needed supplies to the Tongue River cantonment. On the afternoon of the thirteenth he informed his troops that with the addition of one more company to bolster their strength, they would be moving out come morning—at which point forty-one of the civilian teamsters buckled under and stated flatly that they were not about to ride back into the breech.
    Like many of