The Powder River

by Win Blevins

  Calling Eagle gestured with her quirt into the darkness.

  Coming out of the little canyon—Smith could not believe what he saw. He looked at the silhouettes of his grandmother and his mother. They could not be as stunned as Smith was. They must have known. The people were coming in twos, threes, and fours—afoot, carrying what little they could on their backs. They had left the horse herd. They straggled far down the canyon, mere shadows, barely moving.

  “They left all sixty lodges standing,” Calling Eagle said softly.

  Sixty lodges. My God, thought Smith. Suddenly he realized. Our marriage bed won’t even be crowded into a tipi—it will be in the open, on the hard ground. He looked across at Elaine. Her face was set and somber. She realized. On top of everything, no shelter from the wind and rain and cold.

  “Good Christ,” Smith said in despair.

  Elaine shook her head and pursed her lips against tears.

  “My grandson was once a warrior,” observed Calling Eagle. She smiled her mysterious smile at him, world-weary but at the same time full of love. His grandmother was the most intriguing person he had ever known, and the wisest. “Be a warrior once more.”

  Just then the sky erupted into flame. For a moment it lit the sky and the earth and the four directions brighter than lightning. The people quailed, and knelt or stooped in fear, until they realized it was not the light of shell bursts. Then they rose and looked at each other and at the radiant sky.

  “A falling star!” Smith hollered.

  Smith heard low cries from the people in the canyon below: “Ah-ho!”

  “Ah-ho!” echoed Little Wolf and Calling Eagle and Lisette in vigorous assent.

  Calling Eagle turned to Elaine and then to Smith with eyes that had seen the griefs of more than seventy winters, and smiled enigmatically again. “The powers,” she said in accented English, “send a sign for the helpless ones.”

  Smith heard in wonder. Hope flushed within him, and he squelched it.

  Little Wolf smiled at everyone. It occurred to Smith that he hadn’t seen the chief smile all summer. “We’re going home,” Little Wolf said. “I believe. We’re going home.”

  Chapter 3

  Leading with the pipe and three good men, Morning Star went ahead. Then came the women and children and old people. Behind came the dog soldiers, in their proper place of rear guard to the people. A few were left at the village, to watch the soldiers’ sentries, make sure they did not catch on to the trick being played—and if they did, kill them quickly. Among these were Little Finger Nail and Little Wolf’s son Wooden Legs.

  When the sun rose, the people would scatter, and meet at the end of the day at the appointed place, where the young men might be ready with the horses. Scattered, they would not offer so fine a target for Captain Rendle-brock and his soldiers. Little Wolf said the officer from the white-man tribe called Germany, who always had whiskey on his breath, was too eager to shoot Indians. If Rendle-brock found the people, he would find only two or three or four together, unarmed, and those would say they were on the plain only to look for roots to eat. Even an officer of the white man’s army should understand the need to eat.

  Little Wolf walked among the old men and women and the children struggling along, and his heart felt heavy with responsibility for them. He had thought of giving himself as a hostage to the agent, a hostage to sit in jail and rot and die of despair like the others. But he was the appointed bearer of the medicine bundle—he put his hand on it now under his shirt—and must not show despair, no matter how tired and hopeless he felt.

  He fingered the scar beside his right eye, a habit he had when he was thinking. Sometimes he rubbed that one and the long, raking scar in his side at the same time. He never touched the scars on his face without thinking angrily of where they came from—the smallpox that the white man brought to the Indian. His face looked like a gopher village, he thought bitterly, because of this white-man scourge. The scars itched often and seldom let him forget.

  He did not resent the seven scars from seven bullet wounds gotten on the Powder River two years ago. That day he gave as good as he got. He was glad the marks were still red and angry—they were proclamations of honor.

  So now Little Wolf and Morning Star were leading the people home. Nearly a thousand Tsistsistas-Suhtaio had come south, and on this September night only three hundred were starting back to Powder River country. Most of the rest were piled up at the burial place. Little Wolf preferred not to think of the several dozen who were staying in the lodges at the agency, afraid to leave for home. Of the three hundred on the trek north, fewer than a hundred were men of fighting age. Even to approach a hundred, Little Wolf had to interpret fighting age liberally, including all males thirteen and older, no matter how infirm. Many of these were old enough only to be playing with bows and arrows, or too old to wield weapons.

  So Little Wolf knew he must avoid fights with the soldiers—killing bluecoats would only bring more blue-coats. And Little Wolf must avoid, even more strictly, fights with other whites. The vehos accepted fights with troops, but they went crazy over fights with ranchers and townspeople, even in self-defense. That made them set the copper wires to talking and bring soldiers from everywhere on the steel tracks and fight in a frenzy, not caring who they killed, even infants and the aged or infirm.

  Little Wolf needed more guns for the people and more horses, but he would have to trade for them. If he stole them, even though the whites had stolen his guns and horses, the price in blood would be terrible. So the buffalo robes the people had left, the beadwork that the women had done, the parfleches they had made, and the moccasins—these few items were the tribe’s last resort. Aa-i-i-ee, the traders would know the tribe was desperate, and the trade prices would be high.

  With it all, though, he would stick to his motto: The only Indian never killed is the Indian never caught.

  He rubbed the scars on his face with both hands and pondered.

  Wooden Legs and Little Finger Nail crawled on all fours, making sure they weren’t silhouetted—black, moving shapes could be seen against the moonlit sand hills. They kept their elbows on the ground and eased over the hummock and into the gully below. Now they could move out more swiftly.

  Good-bye, soldiers, thought Wooden Legs—be glad you will live to see the dawn.

  Wooden Legs and Little Finger Nail had watched two sentries near the far-shooting cannons all night. The village lay below, apparently peaceful, the fires making the raggedy canvas tipis glow for a while, then at last dimming until only black tripod shapes marked the presence of the lodges.

  Little Finger Nail and Wooden Legs’ job had been to make sure the sentries only used their eyes, and not their ears. If they heard the people leaving the village empty, if they went to alert the soldier officers, they would have to be silenced. Instantly.

  These two young dog soldiers understood the necessity for such a job. They had the wisdom to hold back if possible, and the audacity to act swiftly if necessary. Wooden Legs was a son of Little Wolf, the old-man chief, generally thought brave and maybe hotheaded. Little Finger Nail was a painter of beautiful pictures, a singer with a sweet voice, and a smart, bold man in a fight.

  At first light the soldiers would find the camp abandoned and know they had been tricked. First light was soon enough. At just that time, when the soldiers were trying to figure out what had happened, Little Finger Nail and Wooden Legs and the other young men would run off the pony herd. It would be funny, stealing the Cheyennes’ own horses from the arrogant white men. That is, it would be funny if it was not so galling.

  The two young warriors trotted lithely across the open space toward the lodges. They were to meet their comrades beyond, and movement here would look natural. Little Finger Nail made a little cry, a phrase from one of his songs, hoping that the soldiers would hear it.

  Tonight Little Finger Nail had crept close to one of the sentries, a beefy man with a walrus mustache of flaming red. He liked to give Indian women j
erked beef to open their legs for him. He was said to be amiable, and even give them a trinket or two he hadn’t promised. He had offered the woman Finger Nail loved, Singing Cloud, such a trade.

  Until Cheyenne women had gotten here, they had been chaste, many even belonging to the society, of those who had one man only. Now they were like the battered, cast-off boots of soldiers.

  Nail simmered to kill this one with the walrus mustache and the complacent expression. But not tonight. He had promised his father. Besides, the people would soon be out of easy range. And before long there would be fighting enough even for the war-hungry son of a chief.

  The old man was glad for the dawn light. He disliked the nighttime. It seemed endless. He didn’t mind dying so much—he had lived a long time, and his time had been full, and he was worn out. But at night he was afraid of death. He wanted to die with the sun warm on his old, wrinkled skin and the light shining through his closed lids onto his resting eyes. If he was lucky, he’d even have a belly full of buffalo meat. So he was glad when the sun rose and blessed him a little.

  The pony drag bumped, and made his achy hip hurt. The old man lay on a litter stretched between poles behind a pony ridden by his granddaughter Singing Cloud, one of the handful of horses the Tsistsistas-Suhtaio had for now, until the young men stole their own herd. Singing Cloud had staked the pony by their lodge last evening, because the old man couldn’t walk. During the night the poles had bumped over a lot of rocks Singing Cloud couldn’t see. Now, in the daylight, his old bones wouldn’t take such a bouncing. And he saw that she was coming out of the little valley into the sand hills. That was good—here he could see better. He still had strong eyes, and liked to see a horizon.

  Perhaps it would have been better to die back there at the agency. He had hoped he would die there. When the two old-man chiefs told the people it was time to go home, he wished he was already dead. He would have to go, and his bones did not feel up to it. But he had to go—if he didn’t, his granddaughter Singing Cloud would stay behind to care for him. He knew she must go north. She was the last blood of a long line of warriors. She was tall and erect, and moved around the cooking fire like a strong, athletic boy—the old man loved to watch her move. So she must live to bear warrior sons to a man like Little Finger Nail, the dog soldier, who was paying her attention. Or if she must die, it must be death in a dash for a true life, not a death by hunger, or by runny bowels.

  So the old man headed north with his granddaughter. Somewhere in the journey, he knew, he would get too tired to go on. Then he would slip away during the night and hide well. His granddaughter, unable to find him, would have to go on toward Powder River. She would go to Little Finger Nail, and he would go back to the earth. It was worth it, to put up with the bumpings and pains, to help such a woman.

  Half a night’s walk behind Singing Cloud and her father, a small, young man named Twist stooped by the little stream, cupped his hands, and drank. Normally this creek would be dry this time of year, but the rainy summer kept a little lukewarm water dribbling down its sandy bed.

  Twist was about to walk up out of this little valley in a moment and stand for a while and listen for sounds from the rear, the sounds of pursuing soldiers. Twist was helping the dog soldiers guard the people from the rear as they moved. To his shame, he was not yet a dog soldier himself, and he had to do the job on foot. The cursed vehos had the people’s horses, and the people were scurrying away like crippled birds, earthbound when they should have been flying. Twist hated the white people for laying hands on his horses. He hated them for taking away the life of glory through the warpath, so that a brave young warrior like himself could not achieve honors, could not become a member of the dog soldiers.

  But Twist and the other young men exulted in this flight from the agency. Now they would have the warpath, and they could achieve coups, so the Cheyenne women would look at them the way women look at men, in awe and pride.

  He took another handful of water, rinsed his mouth, and spat it out. Foul water, warm, murky, and corrupted—not like the water in the Cheyennes’ home country, where clear, gleaming creeks gushed out of the Big Horn Mountains, or farther to the west, out of the Yellowstone Mountains. He had heard the tall white-man doctor say it was the bad water here making the people sick, giving them what the white soldiers called “the shits.” They smirked when they named it, and the people died.

  For their contempt Twist intended to make them fill their pants from fear. Then he would splatter their blood and excrement across the dust and sand.

  Sometimes Twist thought of spilling the white-man doctor’s blood, too. He was arrogant, that doctor. He held himself better than other Human Beings. It was true the doctor had the right to count coup—the older men said the doctor had been a fierce fighter when the men went against the soldiers at the Platte Bridge. But now the doctor had given his mind and spirit to the whites, and was more a veho than any of them. That was his father coming out, another veho, that one. Otherwise, how could the doctor have married a veho woman?

  Twist thought the doctor was no Cheyenne. He guessed the doctor and his veho woman were going to run off. When it looked like the soldiers were going to put a bunch of Indian blood on the ground, the way Twist judged it, the doctor and teacher would flee to the white-man troops, crying, “We’re white people, don’t shoot us! We’re college-educated, don’t shoot us!” When they did, Twist meant to see they did get shot. From behind.

  Rain lay down just for a minute, lay down on a dry rivulet a hip-span wide and two fingers deep, filled with soft sand. She wasn’t going to make a sound. She would let the tears run—she was tired, so tired—but she wasn’t going to make a sound. She was too Cheyenne to make a noise that might give her friends away to an enemy.

  Her companions, not far ahead, were completely defenseless. Led by two plucky women, Brave One and Enemy, they were all women and children, and they had fallen behind. None of them knew where the main group of the people was, only that they were ahead. Far ahead, and getting farther.

  If the soldiers heard them, the women and children couldn’t fight back and would get herded back to the agency, and their men would have to come back too, whipped.

  Rain sat up and spread her blanket. She would rest a few minutes. That would make her feel better, stronger, and then she could catch up.

  It came again, a moderate pull, longer this time. The tears ran, because Rain knew from listening to the older women what was coming, and she was alone to face her first time. If only she could catch up and get help.

  She had never borne a child before. She wondered calmly if it would kill her. She looked around. If the soldiers came, she would have no hiding place and no protection, not here. She saw nothing around her but low buffalo grass and undulations of dirt and sand, nothing big enough to shield a human being. Well, maybe a hummock twenty steps away would hide her from sight in one direction, from where the sun was rising.

  The pull came sharply this time, and longer. It felt like her insides were being firmly turned, as when she twisted a hide hard to wring the water out of it. After the pull she panted for breath.

  So. Rain admitted it: she was not going to walk on. She would bring forth the baby here. That would put her hours behind even the laggards with Brave One and Enemy. And she would be even more defenseless. She had heard that at Sand Creek, where the bluecoats massacred Black Kettle’s people, soldiers had bayoneted mothers’ wombs and ripped the babies out.

  The last hour she had felt by turns calm and racked with despair. When she despaired, she did not ask the powers for life for herself, or even for her child. She asked merely that she get the child out and lift it to the four directions, and hold it once to her small breast. She wanted to put her arms around her child, at least, before any soldier got to it. She wanted her child to breathe air and see the light, at least, to know that much of the world. When she despaired, that was all she hoped for.

  The pain came again. This time it was pressure, intense pre
ssure on her abdomen. When she was a little girl, a horse had stepped on her chest, and she had nearly passed out. Now it felt like a hoof planted on her gut, bearing down, all the horse’s weight crushing her and her child.

  As suddenly as it came, it lifted off, and all was peaceful again.

  When she did not despair, when she was calm, she felt clear-sighted and easy enough. True, she was in danger. But she was too smart for the vehos. She would bring forth this child. She would hide as she needed to, and not permit the child to cry out. She would slip across the long miles and rejoin the Human Beings. And perhaps her dead husband, Red Hand, would somehow know there in the Starry Path where he lived now, and would have a full heart.

  The pain came. It felt like a hand in her guts—she yelled in her head that it was not the child’s hand. The fingers were grabbing, pulling, twisting. She felt sweat pop out on her face, and she was sure the sweat was blood. She gasped for air and got nothing. She gasped again, and breathed, and the pain quit. She felt peaceful, and exhausted.

  How much more, she wondered, how much more? She lay back, fully stretched out, and turned her cheek to the cool sand. How much more?

  The pain came in a great wave this time. She mounted the wave, riding higher and higher, still higher and still higher, endlessly higher. She clutched her knees and endured.

  Sergeant Breitshof reined in. He had seen something. He couldn’t see it now, but Karlheinz Breitshof had been on the plains a long time and wasn’t going to be fooled. Something had moved off to the right. And then maybe not—these plains could fool a man. Sergeant Breitshof had soldiered in this country for twelve years, and he had seen lots of things that weren’t there. The plains were too big and too dry and the sun glared off them too strangely. You saw ponds that weren’t there, buffalo that weren’t there, everything. And you didn’t see the goddamn redskins who wanted to kill you.