“He made a mistake. It can happen to the best of men.”
“No, you are forgetting who his chief is. My father. Long Hair. He put Stant in this position, a situation where he might not be able to win.”
“But why?” Worry creased the Indian’s brow.
George reached for the sense of it. “Victory here must have been a secondary goal.” He shook his head, trying to remember. “What was it Stant said? ‘There’s been enough carnage today’? What was he talking about? No one was killed here today…. Oh, God—”
“What is it?”
George turned to Storm Arriving, suddenly agitated. “My father is famous in war for two things, correct?.”
Storm Arriving agreed. “Stealth and surprise.”
“Two Roads said that there were Army patrols all up and down the Big Greasy. I thought they were to protect the president, but he is not here.” He grabbed Storm Arriving by the sleeve. “And neither are the patrols. We are not the primary goal!”
Storm Arriving saw it at the same moment.
“The camp.”
Storm Arriving shouted to Two Roads and the Council stopped to hear the news. He pointed to George several times during his narration and George saw the same light dawn in their eyes. It was an angry light.
“Nóheto!”
They were off at a reckless pace that turned the heavy raindrops into cloud-born bullets. The whistlers were pushed to their limit and the walkers were unable to keep the pace. Orders were given and the walkers peeled off from the main body. Grimly, George watched as the huge beasts regrouped and headed back toward the meeting place, urged on by the whoops of their riders. He tried not to think of the men who would die because of his own words. He tried not to think of how they would die. Between the Gatling guns and the jaws of a walker, there was little to recommend one choice over another.
As they rode against the wind, it occurred to him that he was more concerned about the camp of the Cheyenne than the soldiers of his own nation. But then he thought of Speaks While Leaving, of Blue Shell Woman and Mouse Road, of the people and families he had come to know, and he ceased to worry about the appropriateness of his feelings. He simply crouched down over the neck of his speeding whistler and squinted into the pelting rain.
Speaks While Leaving ran back into the lodge.
“Bluecoats,” she said to her mothers and grandmother. “Many of them. Get my grandmother to safety.”
“What will you do?” her mother asked.
In answer, she went to her father’s backrest and threw off the pelt that covered it. From within the wicker frame she took his old bow and a quiver of arrows. “They attack from the south,” she told them. “Go to the woods and hide there.”
The older women and their matriarch took up what weapons they could and made for the door. Speaks While Leaving poked her head outside. It was raining but the attackers were still outside the camp. Shouts and gunfire told her it would not be safe for long. She urged her mothers along and then turned to face the enemy.
From the west came the panicked shrieks of whistlers amid the organized crackle of rifle shots. She could imagine the bullets ripping into the flocks as the bluecoats tried to disperse them. Other volleys sounded to the south and she ducked in reflex as bullets slashed through the skin of the lodge before her. Soldiers cried out—in pain and in fury—as the bluecoats came onward.
She tore the two deerskin strips that tied the top of her left sleeve. It fell open at her side, baring her bow arm. She fumbled an arrow from quiver to string with hands out of practice to the task. Then she stepped around the lodge and sighted on the first bluecoat she saw.
He was young, with hair like shiny chestnuts. He was struggling with the bolt of his rifle as he walked toward the camp. He saw her and stopped, pulled again at the bolt. She sighted down the arrow. A limpid raindrop hung from the barb on the iron head, trembling. Beyond it, the soldier raised his rifle.
His aim sagged. He let the rifle fall and touched with disbelieving fingers the fletching that now protruded from his chest.
Speaks While Leaving stared as the man fell. She had never killed before, and she wondered if she had even now. She did not remember loosing the arrow, though it was gone from her bow. She had held it back, and then it had killed him. She had not even seen it fly between them. The bluecoat went down heavily to his knees, and then fell over on his side.
Shouts of soldiers broke her fascination. They joined her nearby, using the first line of lodges as protection and firing at the advancing line of bluecoats. She sent many arrows flying into their midst.
She heard hoofbeats and two horsemen rode down on them. A heavy chain was suspended between them and as they rode the long chain pulled over lodges two and three at a time.
The bluecoats opened fire into the empty space, aiming at anything that moved. Men and women went down before the volley, combatant and innocent alike. Speaks While Leaving felt her heart cry out in torment but her body did not. Her body was busy putting arrows to the string and sending them into the enemy.
“Come on,” shouted White Cloud. He grabbed her by the arm. “We must fall back. The riders need more time.” He pulled her and they ran toward the center of camp.
She heard the screams of children from beneath one of the fallen lodges.
“Come on,” the warrior urged her.
“No!”
She broke from him and ran to the sound. She lifted up the heavy skin and long poles, rummaging underneath them until she found the two children.
“To the woods,” she told the eldest, a boy of perhaps seven summers. “Take her.”
He grabbed his infant sister and ran for the north.
Another volley of shots sent bullets whizzing through the camp. Speaks While Leaving snatched her weapons and turned to run.
The boy lay face down in the trampled grass. The baby girl lay two strides in front of him. The bullet had caught them both, and they lay silent amid the chaos.
Her heart found a voice and she shrieked in fierce anguish.
A bugle sounded to the east.
“They come again,” someone shouted.
The horsemen with their chain passed through the camp again. Behind her there was a thick line of bluecoats that stretched far to either side. They had knives on the ends of their rifles and they began to run toward the camp.
Toward her.
She reached for the quiver. One arrow was left. She sent it and couldn’t help but hit one of them, so near to one another were they. Then she turned and ran.
She helped several who had been knocked down by the riders’ chain but for every one she helped another had to be left. Finally, she reached the center of the camp. Many had stopped at the lodge of the sacred arrows to attempt to slow down the bluecoats. Quivers were passed so every bow was ready. With the other men and women she set her back foot and waited for the enemy.
They came around the center line of lodges like the surge down a storm-swollen creek. Both sides fired. Speaks While Leaving heard a bullet snap by her ear and people went down on both sides. In the time it took the bluecoats to work their rifle bolts, the People got off two more volleys of arrows. Then a whoop was heard in the west. The bluecoats turned toward the sound and the People shouted as a hundred whistlers and riders poured into the heart of the camp. The bluecoats stood against them and the collision of forces was vicious as beak and lance met bullet and bayonet.
After that, all order was lost and it was a melee. Speaks While Leaving wiped the drenching rain from her face and tried to help one of the nearby wounded. The dazed man was unrecognizable through the blood and mud and pain that covered his face. His head had been grazed by a bullet. She cut away a section of his leggings and pressed the folded hide against the wound.
“Hold that. Press hard.” He did. She turned to help another. The man shouted warning and she turned back. A bluecoat swung his rifle butt and hit her across the face. She went down with a cry of shock. Her hands found the wou
nded warrior’s hatchet in the mud. In one move she stood, spun, and struck the vé’ho’e in the neck. The light in his eyes went out at once and he fell across the wounded man’s legs.
She looked down at the dead man. The hatchet had gone halfway through his spine just below his jaw. The sight of it did not sicken her as she had thought it would; it fulfilled her, and when the wounded warrior offered her his knife, she took it and she used it. Her own blood blinded her in one eye and her efforts were clumsy, but she completed the task and handed back the knife.
“You are part of a very exclusive society,” the warrior said and she recognized him by his voice. He was Fire Bear, crier for the Tree People band. “There are few women who have counted any coup at all, and fewer still who have done what you have done today.”
The battle had carried away from them and most of the gunfire now came from the east. She extended her arm to Fire Bear. He kicked off the dead vé’ho’e, took her hand, and stood.
“We are not done today,” she said as she checked his wound. “The bleeding has slowed. A patch of deerskin will stick to it like a bandage.” The reports from rifles sounded nearer.
“Come,” he said. “We must gather some arrows from the fallen.”
The land swept toward and beneath them in slow undulations. They ran their whistlers over rise after rise. The rain had lessened but still stung on cheeks and brow. Storm Arriving had been hoping as they rode, hoping that One Who Flies was wrong, that there was no second force attacking the camp of the People, but as the bluff above Fishing Lizard Creek came into view, hope vanished.
To the south in a hollow of the land and hidden from the sight of the guards on the bluff stood hundreds of horses gently cropping the sweet grass. Their heads came up and their ears swiveled as the soldiers cried out and changed course to charge the herd.
The several bluecoats with the horses fired shots into the onrushing pack, but none were hit. The oncoming soldiers shouted again with whistlers joining in, unsettling horses and bluecoats alike. Horses reared and pulled up the stakes that tethered them. Storm Arriving heard One Who Flies yelling as they bore down upon the herd, a short phrase he repeated ceaselessly—something like “Ogad, ogad, ogad.”—and louder as the distance closed.
A few of the bluecoats got off another shot but that was all. The warriors rode them down and rode on, piercing the herd like a knife. The horses scattered like shellcatchers on the shores of the Big Salty, fleeing in all directions. Three men pulled up to return and finish the job while the others raced on ahead.
They came up out of the hollow and saw the camp. The field was thick with smoke from gunfire and burning lodges. Clear swaths crisscrossed the encampment where lodges had been pulled down. Bodies littered the spaces between, and combatants from both sides ran among them.
To the east Storm Arriving saw the empty area where the flocks had been. Throughout the camp there were no more than two hundred riders.
A bugle sang out and the bluecoats began to run together.
“They are falling back,” One Who Flies shouted. “That’s the call for retreat.”
He was right. The bluecoats—hundreds strong—began to run back toward the horses. One group stopped and fired while the rest ran on. Then another group took up the defense while the first retreated. But there was no answering attack from the camp. The riders were outnumbered and the enemy was fleeing. That was enough for many of them.
It was not enough for Storm Arriving, however, nor for the rest of the Kit Foxes.
“After them,” he shouted, but Two Roads countermanded him.
“No,” he shouted. “They will be some time collecting their horses. We must first see to the safety of the camp and the Council.”
Storm Arriving saw the wisdom of this, but his rage pulled at him.
“Think of your families,” Two Roads said, and there was no more argument.
They rode with all speed into the camp.
It was a disaster.
Lodges were down throughout the camp and many of them burned where the skins had been dragged aside and the poles or furniture knocked into the firepits. The sounds of agony filled the air, and the flutings of frightened whistlers echoed off the stone cliffs. Storm Arriving heard a woman singing her death song as she lay in her husband’s arms. Her song was strong, the words clear.
Nothing lives long,
Only the earth and the mountains.
He heard a man shout and saw him point at One Who Flies. There was danger for him here. He grabbed the other mount’s halter and steered away from the angry man.
They crossed the center of camp, where many lay wounded near the lodge of the sacred arrows. West, in the camp of the Tree People band, many lodges were down and the fighting had been fierce. He led them through the devastation until at last he saw the handprints and hailstones that decorated his lodge. His heart lifted at the sight. He urged his mount around a neighbor’s lodge and pulled up short.
“No,” he said as he saw his mother kneeling at the door to the lodge. “No.”
She held a young woman in her arms.
“No!”
The blue shells on her breast were stained bright red with blood that darkened her dress from neck to waist.
“No!” He leapt down and ran, slipping on the slick grass and crying out the whole way, “No!”
His mother was weeping. She held Blue Shell Woman in her arms as she might a sleeping child, only her daughter’s dark eyes were not closed. They were open. They stared blindly up into the sky and did not blink as the raindrops pattered on her face.
“Little Rabbit,” her mother sang. “See the fox. Run and hide.”
“Mother,” Storm Arriving said.
She looked up at him from far away. “My little rabbit.”
“Where is Mouse Road?” he asked, fearing the answer.
“Little Rabbit,” she sang again. “See the fox. Run and hide.”
Storm Arriving could barely see for the rain and his tears. His breath burned in his breast like hot smoke. He reached out and took his sister’s hand in his. It was still warm. The blood that blackened her sleeve dripped onto the ground to pool beneath her and thin in the puddling rain.
Slowly, he became aware of laughter. Someone was laughing. How, he thought, can anyone laugh at this sight? All his hate and rage incandesced within him. He roared and surged to his feet, turning to face—to kill the man who laughed at the death of Blue Shell Woman.
Laughs like a Woman stood there, the rain streaming through the blood that covered his chest, his arms, and his legs. His hair was matted with gore and his thunder bow was sodden and red. He stood there, and he laughed. He leaned back and laughed his high-pitched woman’s laugh to the clouds above. He laughed to the sky, and Storm Arriving could not stand it.
He strode over to him and would have struck him except for the look in his eyes. The Contrary’s eyes were tortured, filled with pain; desolate. Tears ran down his cheeks and he bared his teeth in a smile that was not a smile. And he laughed.
Storm Arriving embraced him, and they held one another, laughing or crying as their responsibilities allowed.
The rain intensified and lightning seared the sky. Thunder shook the ground, but the Contrary did not flinch. Storm Arriving held his friend at arm’s length and looked again into his face.
The laughter was gone, and only the tears remained. Laughs like a Woman looked up into the sky as another glassy bolt lit the gloom overhead. The thunder rained down upon him and he showed no fear.
“The thunder beings have released you,” Storm Arriving said.
Laughs like a Woman signed agreement. “I am free,” he said.
Storm Arriving embraced his friend again.
“I have…seen Mouse Road.”
“You have? Where? Is she safe?”
“She is…safe,” Laughs like a Woman said. He spoke slowly, fighting the years of a Contrary’s habits. “I saw her.” He pointed toward the center of camp.
; “My thanks,” Storm Arriving said. “Mother, did you hear?” But his mother had not heard, nor could she. She was still lost in her grief. He turned back to Laughs like a Woman. “Will you watch over her?”
“No,” the other said, and then realized his mistake. “I mean, yes, I will watch over her.”
Storm Arriving started off toward the center of camp. He stopped when he saw One Who Flies. The vé’ho’e stared at the tragedy before him. Angry words came quickly to Storm Arriving, but he could not use them in the face of the bluecoat’s sadness. Even though all this was the work of the vé’hó’e, Storm Arriving knew it was not the work of this one vé’ho’e.
“One Who Flies,” he said. “Please take my sister’s body into the lodge.”
He nodded, and Storm Arriving left him.
There was much confusion in the center of the camp as healers tended to the wounded and mourners tended to the dead. In the clear space before the Council lodge three men kicked a bluecoat soldier. If the vé’ho’e was not dead now, he would be soon.
“Mouse Road,” Storm Arriving shouted over the noise. “Mouse Road!”
A young voice answered. “I am here.”
“Mouse Road.” He walked toward the sound of the voice, weaving through the moans and wails.
“Here. I am here.”
She ran toward him, thin and frail in her rain-soaked dress. She ran to him and he held her tight. Her arms and her legs were bloody.
“Where are you hurt?”
“I am not hurt,” she said. Her voice quavered like a dying leaf. “I was helping.”
“Helping? Who were you helping?”
She pointed.
Speaks While Leaving stood among the wounded. She was covered head to toe in blood. Her dress was torn and her hair was loose and her face was swollen and bruised along the left side. She stood there, looking at him, and he saw her eyes for perhaps the first time in four years. She gazed upon him, bold and unafraid. There was pain in her eyes, but something else, too. A pleading. A prayer.
“Speaks While Leaving,” he said in answer, but his emotions swept forth to close his throat and he could say no more. She had heard him, though, and her breath came out in a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. She covered her mouth with her hands in an attempt to still her weeping.
The Year the Cloud Fell Page 21