by Dee Brown
Holding his horse steady a few paces to the rear of the Dog Soldiers, Dane saw the eagle feather in Lean Bear’s hair angle backward. Lean Bear had lifted his chin and was holding his head rigid, alert for any sign of panic among the nervous recruits from the Denver saloons and gambling houses. He knew that fear was more dangerous than bravado among such men as these.
Lean Bear wanted no bloodshed. He had accomplished what he set out to do. War Shirt’s party was safely entering the Ghost Timbers. Now all of Big Star’s Cheyennes were together again, ready to travel north to the Powder River country where they would be out of the way of the Bluecoats. To Lean Bear it seemed reasonable that the Bluecoats would let them go. But first he had to make them understand that the Cheyennes must go north to keep from starving. He turned in his saddle, his eyes narrowing against the sunlight. “Dane!” he called out, motioning him to come forward.
Dane guided the sorrel mare through the close-packed mass of horsemen, each warrior watchful of the twelve-pounder howitzer that had been halted a hundred yards beyond the cavalry. The artillery horses were unhitched, the guns unlimbered. The black-mustached captain wheeled his mount, rode back a few paces, shouted something to the gunners, then turned and came back to take a position slightly to the rear of the dismounted cavalrymen. He stuck a long cigar in his mouth, clamping his teeth on it.
“I will make talk with the soldier chief,” Lean Bear said to Dane. “You say the Veheo words. I do not want misunderstanding between me and the soldier chief.”
“At this distance he may not hear clearly,” Dane replied.
“We go closer.” Lean Bear started his pony forward.
The Dog Soldier on Lean Bear’s left, a young warrior named Porcupine, also put his pony into motion. Lean Bear gave him a sharp glance.
“I do not trust the hairy-mouth chief of the Bluecoats,” Porcupine said. “My body will be Lean Bear’s shield.”
“Stay behind me,” Lean Bear ordered roughly. “I am not a cringing coward like the Bluecoats there.” He rode on, with Dane alone at his side. “Drop your rifle easy on the ground,” Lean Bear said quietly to Dane. As both weapons slapped against the earth, Lean Bear clasped his hands before him in the peace sign. Then he lifted his left arm toward the sun, closing his fingers as though clasping the hand of the Great Spirit.
“Halt where you are!” the captain shouted.
“Tell him we come with peaceful hearts,” Lean Bear said.
Dane put the words into English, calling them loud and clear across the twenty paces.
“You broke off my pursuit of reservation jumpers,” the captain answered harshly. “By hostile action.” His eyes were hard under the visor of his forage cap.
“Tell him those he was pursuing are our brothers,” Lean Bear said. “Tell him we want only to go in peace to the north country. Tell him we will starve if we do not go north to the buffalo.”
When he heard the English words, the captain lifted his saber, pointing it at Lean Bear. “You’ll go where the army tells you to go!” he cried.
Lean Bear turned in his saddle, was surprised to see Porcupine just behind him, one of the new Springfields balanced in his arms. Four or five other Dog Soldiers had moved out from the front rank. Lean Bear motioned them back, and made a sign for all the warriors to lift their rifles high in the air. “Tell the Bluecoat chief,” Lean Bear said softly, “to look upon the power of our warriors.”
The captain shook his head angrily, sunlight flashing off the brass insignia of crossed sabers on his cap. “My orders are to kill Cheyennes where I find them!” he retorted. Second and third platoons! Ready aim, fire!
Dane saw thin puffs of blue smoke spurt from the rifle muzzles, heard an explosive rattle, felt fire burn the side of his head. Red Bird Woman’s sorrel whirled beneath him, the earth spun, and in front of him he saw Lean Bear floating out of his saddle, his naked chest streaked with blood. Porcupine was facedown on the ground, the sorrel springing over his body. Dane slumped forward over the mare’s neck, swaying loosely in the saddle, but his ears seemed stopped against sound. He tried to raise up but could not. His fingers gripped the sorrel’s mane before he lost consciousness.
In response to the first volley from the dismounted troopers, the Dog Soldiers surged forward, firing at the Bluecoats before they could reload, and then used their ponies to scatter them. At the same time other Cheyenne warriors swept around the Dog Soldiers to engage the mounted cavalrymen on the left and right. These soldiers tried to wield their sabers, but fire from the Cheyennes’ Springfields followed by use of lances and rifle butts drove the Bluecoats back toward the twelve-pound howitzer. The captain hastily retreated to the artillery piece, and he was riding back and forth trying to block the disorganized flight of his men. He shouted angrily at a young bugler who was too frightened to blow more than a rasping note or two in his attempt at a rallying call. When two fleeing cavalrymen swept by him, the bugler threw his trumpet on the ground and joined the retreat.
“Fire the goddamned cannon!” the captain shouted. The boom and swish of the howitzer sent riderless horses scattering across the plain. Pellets of shot sprayed the empty flat-topped rise where the Cheyennes had been moments before.
Cursing angrily, the captain leaned from his saddle and slapped the artillery sergeant across the back with the flat of his saber. “Lower the barrel, you bastard! Point-blank!” The gunners fired once more, the shot tearing into a limping cavalry horse. To the right and left of the gun, the retreat was becoming a rout. The captain was no longer in sight. Without waiting for an order, the gunners quickly mounted and abandoned their useless cannon.
Furious over the killing of Lean Bear, the Cheyenne warriors pressed the fleeing Bluecoats relentlessly, giving them no chance to halt and make a stand. Because of the speed of the horses, few shots could be fired by either pursuers or pursued.
Among those who rode the hardest was Pleasant McAlpin, To him, Lean Bear was more than a friend; he was the father he had never found in Dane. When Pleasant saw the Bluecoats fire on Lean Bear and Dane, it was Lean Bear he burned to revenge. In hot anger he fired too quickly at the Bluecoat captain and missed. Pleasant was the first of the Dog Soldiers to reach Lean Bear, dismounting and bloodying his buckskin shirt when he tried to find life in the bleeding body, and crying when he found no life, as he had cried at Poison Spider Creek beside his dead Appaloosa. On that day Lean Bear had been his father.
His eyes blurring with tears of anger, Pleasant turned then to discover what had happened to his real father. He was relieved to see Dane bent forward in the saddle of the sorrel that was galloping wildly for the Big Timbers.
In a single motion Pleasant remounted, one thought now fixed in his mind. He must kill the Bluecoat captain. Not until he swung his horse out and around the abandoned cannon was he aware that Rising Fawn on her fast-footed mustang was still beside him. Little Cloud and Lean Bear’s young nephew, Spotted Shield, were close behind.
Several times Pleasant was able to load and fire his rifle, but he knew that from the saddle of a charging horse he was unlikely to hit any moving target. His hope was that the Bluecoats’ mounts would tire before they reached Fort Starke, and as the sun rose higher in the sky he began to see signs of weariness among the cavalry horses.
“Listen!” Rising Fawn called suddenly, raising one hand. Above the sound of their hoofbeats came a louder drumming, and then ahead to the right, over the rim of an undulation in the plain, appeared a column of mounted Bluecoats, their bright pennons fluttering as they swept down the slope. One horseman remained on the crest, but even from that distance Pleasant could not mistake the hulking figure seated arrogantly in the saddle. “Belcourt,” he said aloud, “with fresh mounts from Fort Starke.” The exhausted Bluecoats in front of him began cheering, and he knew the chase was over.
Beckoning to Rising Fawn, he turned his horse. The Cheyennes were scattering in three directions, urging their spent ponies to one more burst of speed, seeking cover of high gr
ass, hillocks, gullies, and streams.
Frightening off a pair of pursuing Bluecoats with a shot from his rifle, Pleasant found concealment in a weed-bordered dry wash. When he dismounted, his horse was wet with froth, its muscles trembling. He loaded his rifle to cover the approach of Rising Fawn’s faltering mustang. Not a Bluecoat was in sight, but she slowed the pony and kept looking back.
“Hurry!” he shouted at her.
Anxiety was in her face when she dismounted beside him. “Little Cloud and Spotted Shield,” she said. “The Bluecoats cut them off.”
44
“ALL I EVER KNEW about that fight was what I heard from Pleasant and some of the others,” Dane said. He lifted one of his braids and showed me a scar behind his ear. “You might not think a scratch like that could put a man into the Darkening Land. Maybe I would still be there if Red Bird Woman had not brought me back to the land of the living.”
“That old medicine man, Two Crows, he brought you back,” Red Bird Woman insisted. “Two Crows kept shaking his deer-hoof sticks and a piece of buffalo tail over you till your eyes opened.”
“When I opened my eyes,” Dane said, “your mouth was on my wound sucking the blood out.”
“Two Crows told me I must do that.”
Red Bird Woman glanced at me, the white stranger, a flash of shyness in her eyes that made her face seem suddenly young again. “That was terrible day,” she said. “When we first heard guns firing we ran to edge of willow thicket. I could see smoke of guns and then my sorrel mare come galloping to me with Dane flopping across its withers like dead man. The horse stopped running when it smelled me and walked right up to me. I pulled Dane out of saddle, but his hands would not turn loose of mane, like they was frozen there. Dane’s legs hung loose and his face was pressed against sorrel’s neck, and I had to pull each of his fingers loose from mane hairs.
“But that was not worst of that day. Worst was when they brought Lean Bear’s bloodied body to me and told me he was dead.” She turned to face me, her shyness gone now, her full wide mouth remembering a long-ago sadness, her fingers touching thin white lines across her unwrinkled forehead. “I too am scarred from that day. I gashed my forehead for Lean Bear, letting blood run into my eyes. If a high cliff had been near Hinta Nagi, I might of gone and jumped. I was Lean Bear’s woman.”
We all sat silent for a minute or more, and then Dane dropped a chunk of wood into the fireplace, making sparks fly and crackle. “By late afternoon,” he said, “I felt strong enough to help in building scaffolds for the dead. Lean Bear, Porcupine, and four others. We left the dead Bluecoats where they fell. Because they acted so cowardly, no one wanted to take their scalps, but some of the women went out and cut the brass buttons off their coats. Most of our young men had not returned from chasing the soldiers, and we were all uneasy about what might have happened to them. The women and children were ready to start north, but it was long after dark before the Dog Soldiers and the other warriors came in. When they told us what had happened we knew we could not leave that night.
“Pleasant told me about it first. He and Rising Fawn stayed in the dry wash until the soldiers went back to the fort about sundown. The warriors came together then, intending to search for any who might be wounded or dead. Only Little Cloud and Spotted Shield were missing, and some of the Dog Soldiers told Pleasant they had seen the Bluecoats trap the young boys. They shot their ponies, but instead of killing the boys they tied them with ropes, and two men with stripes on their sleeves started off with them toward Fort Starke. Pleasant wanted to go at once and storm the fort, but the others told him they would all be killed by the big guns mounted on the walls.”
Red Bird Woman made a soft sound in her throat. “Spotted Shield,” she broke in, “was near to a son as I ever had. That night when they told me Bluecoats had made prisoner of Spotted Shield, I said it was just as well Lean Bear went to Land of Spirits. Lean Bear wanted a son but I could not give him one, and so he looked upon his nephew Spotted Shield like a son. Yes, he and Pleasant might of stormed that fort by themselves and both would been killed.”
“We talked through the night,” Dane continued. “Bear Woman and some others had found enough old lodgepoles to make a tipi frame, covering it with blankets and robes and pieces of clothing so the chief would have a proper place for councils. We sat there in the tipi—Big Star, Swift Eagle, Pleasant, Yellow Hawk, Spotted Shield’s father and brothers, several of the women. My wound hurt and bled a little, but the medicine man told me it would heal quick if I did not cover it. Pleasant’s anger had cooled by then and he knew as well as we that the Cheyennes could not recover the boys by attacking the fort. The Bluecoats would kill us all. None of us could guess why they wanted the young boys. ‘Perhaps they want to trade them or sell them,’ Big Star said. ‘I have heard that the Veheos do these things.’
“ ‘Trade them for what?’ Pleasant asked.
“ ‘Perhaps for the big gun they left when they ran away,’ Big Star said.
“Pleasant thought this was a possibility. Big Star then told Yellow Hawk to go and call out his Fox Soldier brothers and roll the big gun into the Hinta Nagi so that we would have it in our possession if the Bluecoats wanted to trade the boys for it.
“I sat there most of the night listening to the others and wondering about Little Cloud and worrying about Sweet Medicine Woman, who I knew must be awake waiting for us to come as I had promised. Then I said to Big Star that the only thing to be done was for me to go to Fort Starke under a truce flag and find out what the Bluecoats might want in ransom for our boys.
“ ‘This would be a dangerous thing for you to do, Sanaki,’ Big Star replied.
“ ‘That is so,’ Pleasant agreed. ‘Colonel Belcourt marked you that day he came to the trading post. He hates your dark Indian skin. If anyone goes to the fort, it shall be Pleasant McAlpin with my white man’s pallor and blue eyes.’
“Big Star said he must think awhile on this undertaking, seek a vision. He was disposed to wait through one more day. Perhaps the Bluecoats would tell us what they wanted with our boys, but if they did not, the leaders must decide in council what we must do. ‘The blood of my family runs in the veins of both Spotted Shield and Little Cloud,’ Big Star said. ‘Yet if they must be sacrificed to save the seed of this Cheyenne band—the women and children—then it must be done. We can risk waiting here but one more day.’
“We did not have long to wait. Before the sun was above the rim of the earth, our lookouts called a warning. Bluecoats, only a few, were approaching from the south under a truce flag. Before they reached the flat-topped rise where the fighting had started, they began lifting the dead Bluecoats from the ground and fastening their bodies to the backs of led ponies. Then they raised the white flag higher and started toward the Timbers, walking their horses very slowly. The officer in the lead was Major Easterwood. Most of the men with him were the gunners that our warriors had chased from their cannon.
“ ‘I saw that Bluecoat chief in a dream,’ Big Star said. ‘I must dress in the dragoon uniform the Veheos gave me at Horse Creek.’ He went into the makeshift tipi, and I mounted a horse and rode out with Pleasant and some of the Dog Soldiers to meet Major Easterwood. He was surprised to see me there, but made no comment other than to say that he had come to visit our chief.
“By the time we returned to the tipi, Big Star was standing very straight in front of it, a handsome old man with his white hair reaching the shoulders of the dark blue dragoon coat. Hanging over the brass buttons was the medal with the clasped hands of the treaty signers. He also held his copy of the scarlet-ribboned treaty.
“About twenty paces from the tipi, Major Easterwood halted his men, ordering them to remain where they were while he dismounted and limped slowly toward Big Star. I could tell that Easterwood was affected by the chief’s military costume and his dignified bearing. ‘I am Major Easterwood,’ he said. ‘I come from Fort Starke, commanded by Colonel Belcourt.’
“I had to interpret
the words and when I finished, the major thanked me.
“ ‘You have come here to talk about our young men,’ Big Star said.
“Easterwood looked puzzled, uncertain as to what the chief meant, and so I spoke their names, Little Cloud and Spotted Shield. ‘My son and a relative of the chief’s,’ I added. ‘Why have the soldiers made captives of them?’
“ ‘I have not come,’ Easterwood said, ‘to talk about the two young boys. My instructions from Colonel Belcourt are to recover the bodies of our dead and the mountain howitzer, and to order the chief to take his Cheyenne people back to their reservation below Sand Creek.’
“Big Star was angry when he heard these words. ‘You have the bodies of your dead,’ he said to Easterwood. ‘Take them. But you will not take the big gun until you bring our boys to us.’
“Major Easterwood was silent for a while, looking first at me and then at Big Star. ‘The two boys,’ he said then, ‘will be moved to Denver for a military trial. They are accused of ambushing wagons carrying army rifles.’
“ ‘You know this is not true,’ I shouted at him before interpreting the words for Big Star.
“His voice was almost a whisper. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But Colonel Belcourt wants it that way. The men who own Denver want it that way. There is nothing I can do.’ He gave me a strange look. ‘You have some of our rifles here. They were used against our men yesterday.’
“ ‘They were the guns in the abandoned wagon,’ I explained. ‘If we had not had the fast-shooting rifles in our hands, the cavalry and mountain howitzer would have destroyed us.’