by John Benteen
He drew in a long breath. “Then it was over. The storm had passed. It raced on behind us, and I dared get up. Black Horse still stood there, among the dead. He did not move. I ran to him. I cried out: ‘Black Horse! Black Horse! Are you all right?”
There was awe in his voice as he went on. “He turned to me. I looked into his eyes. But they were not Black Horse’s eyes. They were someone else’s. And when he spoke, it was not Black Horse’s voice, it was another voice. And he said to me, and his voice was terrible: ‘Black Horse is dead.’ I said, ‘No,’ but he cut me off. ‘Black Horse is dead,’ he said. ‘The lightning killed him. I am a new man, born of lightning. The lightning is my father and my mother. I am Fears-No-Lightning, and I am sacred.’ He said that,” Lame Bear continued. “And he said, ‘And I cannot be killed. Lightning cannot die. I will live forever and lead the Sioux against all their enemies. That is my medicine and my magic and my mission.”
“And then?” asked Sundance.
“Then we walked home. On the way, we ran into a bunch of Crows, they had been chasing us since our raid, and naturally they overtook us. We fought them, two against six, just as we fought the Pawnees today. And ... we killed them all. The two of us, myself and Fears-No-Lightning.” His voice was still full of wonder. “It was ... so easy. They shot at us, but never hit us, and every time we shot at them we killed one. Fears-No-Lightning never missed, though he was the worst shot on the war party when we started out. After that, I knew I had seen a miracle. I knew that he was right, that he could not be killed and neither could any riding with him. And I knew that he would save the Sioux. With him leading us, we are invincible against any enemy. I speak truth. You have seen it.”
“Yes,” Sundance muttered. “I have seen it.” They rode on in silence. Sundance watched the straight back of Fears-No-Lightning, pondering what Lame Bear had told him. The Indian in him was impressed; no one could not be by what he had seen today. But his white father’s heritage was at work inside him, too.
When you came down to it, he himself had survived a lot, had been in fights out of which only a seeming miracle had brought him unharmed. Sometimes a man’s luck ran good, very, very good, for a long time. Such a man might think that the Gods had chosen him for special favor. Especially if, inept and the butt of ridicule, he had survived when better men had died. Leave aside the shock of being hit by lightning—which could easily unseat a man’s mind in itself—just surviving might have given him a self-confidence he had never had before; and, as Sundance well knew, self-confidence could make the difference between a first class fighting man and a bumbler. It was complicated, very complicated; and maybe indeed there was medicine here, good or bad. But for everybody, medicine sometimes failed, luck ran out. Fears-No-Lightning might think he was exempt from that rule, but Sundance doubted that he was.
They camped that night in a great dry wash, and from its high, striated banks, bones protruded: the enormous bones, the occasional weird skull of monsters dead for eons. Once they must have roamed this country almost as numerous as buffalo; now southwest Dakota was a graveyard full of them. Sundance was interested in them, as he was interested in everything unusual, but he had other things on his mind right now. Fears-No-Lightning had refused to post a guard. More than that: they had shot an antelope and cooked it openly, with no attempt to hide their fire; and now they were going to sleep in the same place in which their blaze, like a beacon, had danced for everyone to see.
“I don’t like this, Fears-No-Lightning,” he said bluntly. “We’re in Sioux country, yes, but that might not be the only bunch of Pawnees around. And what about Crows? At this time of year, they send their war parties into this country.”
“As long as you’re with me, you need fear no Pawnees and no Crows.” There was condescension and faint contempt in the yellow-streaked man’s voice. “Everyone with me is immortal.”
Sundance drew in a long breath. “All the same, if a raiding band sees that fire—They’ll wait until we’re all asleep, then lift our hair.”
Fears-No-Lightning’s eyes glittered like embers in the firelight. Slowly, he got to his feet. “You do not believe.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You would not worry about guards if you did. Suppose the Crows, the Pawnees, do find us? What can they do against men who cannot die? While they try to kill us and fail, we may kill them as we please, even if there are a hundred of them.” Then he gestured. “You do not believe. But I will make you believe. There. Your white man’s pistol. Shoot me with it.”
Sundance sat motionless, staring. He felt a chill walk up his spine. Fears-No-Lightning was mad, no doubt about it, totally insane. And that made him dangerous as a can of blasting powder with a burning fuse. A man with such an obsession could accumulate a lot of superstitious followers, wield, among a people who firmly believed in magic, tremendous power. And could lead them, too, straight into disaster. Such a madman could be responsible for the deaths of hundreds.
“No,” Sundance said. “Absolutely not. I won’t do such a thing.”
“I command you to.” The Indian’s voice rose. “Draw your gun and point it at my belly, here, across the fire, where you cannot miss. Do that, try to kill me. You will see.”
Sundance got to his feet. “I said, no!” he snapped.
Fears-No-Lightning’s mad eyes flicked from Lame Bear to Single Moon, who were watching breathlessly. Then he smiled faintly, reached for his rifle, levered in a round, and pointed the weapon at Sundance’s belly. “Either you do what I say, or I will shoot you. My orders must be obeyed. The lightning has said it. I am Wakan, sacred. You must see that. Often you ride among the white men, and you must know and spread the word. Now, do as I say, or you yourself will die.”
Sundance stared at him a moment. There was no doubt that the madman intended to shoot him. “And if I kill you,” he asked, “what about Lame Bear and Single Moon? Then they will try to kill me and ... I do not want to fight them.”
“You’ll not have to. If you kill me, your medicine is greater than mine, and you are sacred. Now. Do as I say. Shoot me.”
For a moment more, Sundance did not move. Then he nodded. Maybe it was better this way, maybe he should eliminate Fears-No-Lightning right now, before the obsessed Indian got a lot of his tribesmen killed. Better that one lodge should mourn, he thought, than many. “Lay down your gun,” he said, “and I’ll do as you say.”
Fears-No-Lightning put down the rifle, then straightened up. He faced Sundance across the blaze, hands dangling at his side. “One shot,” he said, “at point blank range. Then you will see.” A jagged streak of painted yellow ran down his chest, across his belly. Beneath it, the skin was copper, vulnerable. Sundance sucked in a long breath, drew his Colt, thumbed back the hammer, and, at a distance of eight feet, carefully lined the barrel on that yellow jab where it crossed Fears-No-Lightning’s heart. At least, he thought, he could make it quick and painless.
He pulled the trigger.
The hammer fell. The dry click it made when it hit seemed very loud in the hush around the campfire.
Sundance stood motionless, disbelieving. Then he looked down at the gun. The weapon had misfired.
A faint, cool smile tugged at Fears-No-Lightning’s mouth. “Now,” he said, “you see, you understand. I am Wakan.” Quite casually, looking at Sundance with pitying contempt, he sat down.
Sundance opened the Colt’s loading gate, spun the cylinder, jacked out the cartridge, deftly caught the fat brass round before it fell. He held it in the light, and he could see the little dent where the hammer had struck its base. A dud round, he thought, defective, one out of a hundred. He slipped it back in the chamber, beneath the hammer. Suddenly, with an angry motion, he turned, fired at the cutback.
The roar of the gun was thunderous in the dry wash. Dirt sprayed from the wall when the heavy slug plowed in. He stared at the smoke curling from the gun barrel, and the chill along his spine was colder now. But, of course, he forced himself to think,
the second time, they usually went off.
Still, he found no desire in him to try another shot. The Colt’s spring might have weakened, and if another round misfired—Already he had contributed too much to the legend of Fears-No-Lightning. Within minutes of reaching the Sioux camp, this story would be all over it.
“Maybe you are sacred,” he said, slowly sitting again across the fire. “But remember, sometimes the Gods change their minds.”
“They have not changed their minds. And when they do, they will tell me.” Fears-No-Lightning touched his head. “They always do. I hear their voices. Every day and night they talk to me.”
“Saying what?”
“I have already told you that. That I shall be the greatest leader the Dakotas have ever had. That I shall drive back the white men and kill them and that nothing and no one can stop me. And that my protection goes to all who ride with me. When you are among the whites again, you tell them that. Then they will be frightened and stay away.”
“Yes,” Sundance said, “maybe they will.” For now, he had decided, the thing to do was humor Fears-No-Lightning. At least until he had talked to the real powers of the Dakota, Gall and Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, Rain-in-the-Face, Crazy Horse and all the rest. “I am glad to be under your protection,” he said. Then he unrolled his blankets and went to bed. He did not sleep much, though. Sacred or not, Fears-No-Lightning was not going to cause him to be caught by surprise by Crows or Pawnees. With his weapons near, he stayed alert. But nothing happened, despite the fire, despite the shot. There was only the night-long howling of the wolves.
Chapter Five
Paha Sapa. Great, sprawling, turreted mountains, clad with timber, laced with broiling, rushing streams. Cool in summer, sheltered from the winter storms. Rich with game: deer, elk, even moose; bear; panther. Here there was everything the open plains lacked: abundant wood for lodge poles and for campfires; plenty of clean, pure water, teeming with fish; good grass in the valleys between the mountains. If ever there were a paradise on earth for Indians, the Black Hills—thousands of square miles lapping over from southwestern Dakota into Montana territory— was it. No wonder this was the place the Gods chose to live when they walked the earth like men; no wonder Wakan Tonka himself, the Great Spirit, the Old Man, the Creator, was very close here. And, Sundance thought, looking around the Indian camp, no wonder the Sioux were determined to fight for it to the last warrior.
They were camped together in a long valley, the Hunkpapa and the Oglala bands, with smaller groups of Minneconjou, Sans Arc, and Blackfeet Sioux—a division of the Dakotas, not the great tribe further north and west that white men called the Blackfeet— in other nearby valleys. Hundreds of teepees, ranged in concentric circles, dotted the level ground, and downstream and across the cold clear creek that furnished water, their huge horse herd grazed. Here they made medicine, purified themselves and prayed, in preparation for the forthcoming fall buffalo hunt out on the plains, and in the meantime rested in plenty and security.
It had been mid-afternoon when they had entered the big valley, and the camp was bustling with activity. Women went about their work, dragging in firewood, sewing skins, hunting through the valleys and along the hillsides for edible roots and berries, butchering meat for the pot, and tending campfires. They were joined in this by the berdaches, those men who had chosen to live and dress as women, and who were considered sacred people by the Sioux, as well as the Cheyennes. The warriors and old men worked on their weapons, cleaning guns, making arrows or bows or lances for the hunt. Children ran and played everywhere, laughing, but never crying—Sioux children were trained from infancy not to cry. Even a newborn baby’s squall was pinched off by its mother holding its nose, for the crying of a single child could betray a whole camp to the enemy.
Meanwhile, narrow-eyed Dog Soldiers, members of the greatest warrior society of the Sioux, patrolled the camp and its perimeter, serving as policemen and guards. Other young men raced horses down the valley or gambled. Dogs were everywhere, both to keep watch and to serve as food.
As he had been doing for the entire journey, Fears-No-Lightning had ridden ahead of them as they entered the camp; and he had begun to sing, brandishing the Pawnee scalps he’d taken from a coup stick. He sang of their triumph over a dozen enemy, and how his magic had brought it about, and of how Sundance, the half-Cheyenne whom he had saved, had tried to shoot him and could not. He sang of how mighty in battle he was and how strong his magic, and people flocked from all over the camp, hungry for details. Sundance’s eyes had narrowed as he had watched how they surged around the yellow-painted man—wondering children, enraptured women, admiring men. There was awe and worship in the way they reached out to touch him. And Sundance frowned as he saw that a number of the men wore jagged streaks of yellow, like Fears-No-Lightning’s paint, across their chests. Whatever he had been before as Black Horse, now, as Fears-No-Lightning, he was a big man among the Dakotas. Maybe even big enough to become a chief.
He, and to a lesser extent Lame Bear and Single Moon, had been the center of attention at the Medicine Lodge and dance later, to celebrate their scalp-taking, certify their entitlement to the coups they’d counted. And now, later, in the lodge of Pizi—Gall— the great war chief of the Hunkpapa, where the men of power of all the divisions of the Teton Sioux sat gathered, Fears-No-Lightning was among them.
Sitting Bull had prayed and now the pipe went around. When it came to Sundance, he automatically presented it to sky and earth and the four points of the compass, then smoked and passed it on. He looked around the circle at all those intent, bronze faces: Sitting Bull, greatest medicine man of the Sioux Nation, Gall, Crazy Horse and Red Cloud of the Oglalas, Rain-in-the-Face, and a half dozen others. Only Spotted Tail and his Brulés were not represented; but presently they would come to join the hunt.
When the smoking was done with, Sundance talked. They listened carefully, not interrupting, as he told them about Custer and the gold, about Horne and his column of buffalo hunters—and about the Gatling gun. They had never seen one in action, and they could not hide their disbelief as he described what it could do. When he paused, Gall leaned forward, frowning. “A single gun? That, in the time it takes to light a pipe, could shoot down everyone in this village?”
“I tell you, it’s true.”
“Not even the wasichu, the whites.” Gall shook his head. “I don’t believe even they could make such magic.”
“My father told me of the times when the first repeating pistol was used down in Texas. The Indians then thought it was magic because it shot six times. You’ve seen the Iron Horse and the Talking Wires and the steamboats on the Missouri. Don’t you think a people who could make all those could make such a gun?”
“They can do it,” Sitting Bull said. “I have seen those guns. Not in action, no. But two moons ago, you all remember, while the rest of you were hunting, I came alone here to the Paha Sapa to pray. I told you afterwards that Yellow Hair and his soldiers came but, finding nothing, went away again. And I told you that I dreamed that someday he would pay for trespassing on our sacred ground, that we would take his hair. And I told you he had cannons with him, but I was wrong. From what Sundance says now, I know that what I saw were these fast-shooting guns. So it is true, the whites have them.’’
The chiefs were silent for a moment. Then Gall stood up, blocky, potbellied. “Then when the whites hear that there is gold here, they will come. We will turn them back, the miners. But what do we do about that magic gun? I think that is a different matter. How do you fight a gun that can kill a hundred soldiers in a minute?”
Before anyone else could speak, Fears-No-Lightning sprang to his feet. His eyes glittered in the firelight; he spat into the coals. “Don’t worry about the buffalo hunters or their gun! I will take care of them!” He struck his chest with clenched fist. “I, Fears-No-Lightning! Let them bring their fast-shooting gun. My magic is stronger than theirs. It will not stop me or those who ride with me. As soon as it comes onto our la
nd, we’ll hit them and take it from them and kill them all!”
Sitting Bull looked at him obliquely, and Sundance saw displeasure, even disgust, on the shaman’s face and sensed here a rivalry. For years, Sitting Bull had been the leader of all the Sioux who were for making total war against the white men. Patiently, carefully, he’d fostered the idea that sooner or later there would be one last big battle in which the Sioux, with the help of Wakan Tonka, would defeat the whites and reclaim their land. Slowly but surely he had won over a large following. He did not like the prospect now of having a greater magician rise and snatch away what he had built. “Maybe,” he said harshly, “maybe not. Let Sundance finish talking.”
Sundance leaned forward. He was dressed now wholly as an Indian, feathers dangling from braided blond hair, and though he still wore buckskin shirt and gun belt and all his weapons, from the waist down he was naked, save for loin cloth and moccasins. “It would take a lot of magic,” he said, “to beat the fast-shooting gun that way.”
“You’ve seen my magic!” Fears-No-Lightning snapped. “You tested it yourself! Would you make light of it?”
“No,” Sundance said. “But sometimes magic fails. Remember Roman Nose, one of the greatest fighters of the Cheyenne. He had magic, too, a war bonnet that made him bulletproof. But that magic failed, and five years ago, he was killed in a fight on the Republican River, where a man named Beecher and thirty others stood off nearly the whole Cheyenne nation. If you should charge that gun and your magic failed or someone in the wagon train had greater magic, you’d get a lot of men killed.”
“Sundance is right,” the handsome, wide-shouldered Crazy Horse put in. “And it’s a risk we can’t afford to take if we can help it. If Sitting Bull’s dream is true and the last battle comes, the only way to win is to have every warrior who can hold a weapon with us. We can’t risk wasting ten, twenty or a hundred riding into that fast-shooting gun.”