by Judd Cole
“I will not fight,” Little Horse said.
Touch the Sky paused to look at him, waiting.
“I have heard,” Little Horse said, “that an act of faith can sometimes give wings to a prayer. Sometime earlier, I heard you chanting the bullets-to-sand prayer. I know that you plan to stand where you will draw the first bullets. Brother, unarmed, I will stand beside you. If we are meant to live, we will live together. If we are meant to die, we will cross over together. I have spoken, and will brook no discussion from you. You are too weak to fight me, so accept it.”
This was a long speech for Little Horse, and both braves knew it.
“All right, then,” Touch the Sky said. “Then help me walk now, brother, for I confess I need your strength.”
“You have it, Cheyenne.”
Touch the Sky knew he must be a strange and disheartening sight to the others as he limped into camp, Little Horse supporting him. Already he could hear women sobbing from the tipis, many singing the death song and saying good-bye to their children.
Most of the men ignored them as they advanced forward of the breastworks and took up their position at the only approach to camp.
Another wolf howl sounded, this one much closer.
The Bluecoat death company was closing in.
~*~
It can’t be true, Carlson told himself.
Again he cautiously eased his head around the huge boulder and glanced toward the camp, aglow in moon-wash. But it was true.
Matthew Hanchon and his sidekick stood side by side, unarmed, presenting themselves as easy targets!
Carlson estimated the range. They were well out in front of the main camp, maybe only about a hundred yards away. With his carbine, they were already dead.
He dropped back and spread the order: Nobody must shoot at the two bucks. Anybody else, but not them. They were his. Commence fire, he added, only when they heard him shoot.
Carlson returned to the boulder and laid his carbine across it to steady his aim. He centered the notched sight on Hanchon’s bare chest and slipped his finger inside the trigger guard.
Breathe, he told himself.
Relax.
Aim.
Take up the slack.
Squeeeeze …
His carbine cracked loudly, splitting the stillness of the night. Immediately, all hell was unleashed as his entire unit unleashed every bit of firepower they owned.
Even in all the earsplitting din, Carlson frowned.
Hanchon hadn’t moved a muscle. But how could he have missed? He had qualified easily on targets up to five hundred yards away.
The Gatling was chattering to his left, the artillery rifles belching smoke and fire to his right. Carbines cracked all around him. He could hear Denton’s French bolt-action rifle making its solid reports.
Carlson drew another bead on Hanchon, fired, missed again.
He frowned.
A line of braves had surged forward from the tipis, and Ulrich raked the line with a sweeping pass of the Gatling. Behind the braves, tipis shredded, limbs broke, and objects lying about camp rolled and bounced as bullets struck them. But not one brave went down.
“Ulrich!” Carlson screamed. “You idiot, aim! You re burning good ammo!”
“Aim?” Ulrich shouted back. “Hell, I’m shootin’ right into their bellies!”
Even as Carlson watched, an artillery shell thumped into a tipi. There was a terrible explosion, a shower of fire and sparks. But every occupant of the tipi ran out into the night, screaming and crying but completely unharmed.
Ulrich had seen it too. His eyes met Carlson’s. Neither man was quite able yet to grasp exactly what was happening. But the first dull tickle of alarm moved up their spines.
“Keep firing that weapon!” Carlson growled. “Or I’ll shoot you on the spot for mutiny!”
~*~
The braves of Shoots Left Handed’s camp knew about Touch the Sky’s special medicine ceremony. But none gave it any credence or even a second thought as the Bluecoats opened fire.
It was Pawnee Killer who first began to wonder why Touch the Sky and Little Horse were still standing.
Then, when he saw a limb exactly behind Touch the Sky suddenly snap as one of Carlson’s bullets caught it, he realized—the bullet could not have hit that spot without passing through the Cheyenne. Yet there he stood, the worse for his ordeal, but clearly unwounded.
Screaming the war cry, Pawnee Killer led his braves forward. Touch the Sky and Little Horse watched, their faces elated in the eerie flickering light of the flames and artillery explosions, as they washed over the first line of soldiers like a raging river obliterating a line of anthills.
Touch the Sky watched Pawnee Killer sink his lance deep into the soldier firing the Gatling. Other Bluecoats raised hideous death cries as Cheyenne blades and bullets found easy targets. Yet they could not score a kill against the Indians even at point-blank range.
One soldier drew his Bowie knife and lunged at White Plume. White Plume made no effort to move, yet a moment later the soldier’s knife was embedded in the tree just to White Plume’s left. Calmly, White Plume pulled the soldiers own pistol from his holster and killed him with it.
By now the entire camp knew that Touch the Sky’s big magic had worked the ultimate miracle. Women and children raced forward from the burning tipis, snatching up guns, knives, hatchets. They rushed at the soldiers with open impunity.
A soldier held his gun to a little boy’s head and fired. A moment later the boy smashed the soldier’s cheekbone with a rock.
Carlson, his face a frozen mask of unbelieving shock, snatched up the Gatling from the dead Ulrich and set the tripod down so the gun was pointed directly at Touch the Sky and Little Horse. Hank Jennings had been killed, but not before he had stuffed the hopper full of bullets.
Carlson cranked the gun over and over, spraying a nonstop stream of lead at the two Cheyennes. He cut down an entire stand of cypress saplings behind them, but they still stood staring at him, their eyes mocking.
Only then did Carlson truly understand.
At first, like his men, he had been puzzled, then mystified.
Now, as Touch the Sky and Little Horse began to advance toward him, he felt something else: a cold, numbing panic that was building in his limbs and made the hair on the back of his neck stiffen.
He noticed it for the first time: The light in this village, it was unnatural, almost ghostly. A luminous white light, oddly different from moonlight, seemed to glow around Hanchon.
This place wasn’t right.
He threw down the gun and bolted at the same time that Denton and his men reached the same conclusion. As those five tore off from the left flank, riding hard toward the trail, Touch the Sky cried to Little Horse, “Turn the gun for me, I can shoot it!”
Little Horse quickly did as told. Wincing at the incredible pain as he knelt, Touch the Sky led the five riders with his barrel, then cranked the Gatling into life. The entire tribe had the satisfaction of watching all five men fly from their mounts like clay targets lined up on a limb.
But even as the soldiers bolted in panic and a resounding cheer rose up from the camp behind him, Touch the Sky realized: Once again Seth Carlson had slinked away under cover of darkness.
Chapter Sixteen
To the vastly outnumbered red men, all victories against soldiers were sweet. But the remarkable triumph of Shoots Left Handed’s long-suffering Cheyennes had no comparison in the history of the Shaiyena people. Even before the battlefield had been picked clean, an elder had named this encounter the Ghost Battle, and the name stuck.
Word of Seth Carlson’s ignominious defeat was not long in getting to the journalists. This topped Orrin Lofley’s debacle with the Hunkpapa Sioux—at least Colonel Lofley’s men had killed a few women and children. How, the writers screamed in derision, did a trained officer take such heavy losses without one confirmed kill?
The men’s absurd story about Indian magic ruining their aim was only more proof of
their drunken lack of discipline. The War Department stepped in quickly, immediately transferring Lofley and Carlson to the Dakota Territory and bringing in a new commander with a reputation for successfully negotiating with the red nations.
All this happened quickly, and Touch the Sky learned of it just as quickly from circular fliers and the newspaper published in Great Falls, copies of which scouts brought back from the trading post at Pike’s Fork. The new changes gave Shoots Left Handed and his people the one valuable thing they needed: time. Time to get stronger and time to flee out of the mountains, back down onto the plains where this horse-loving, roaming band belonged.
The mass, panicked exodus of the soldiers had left a windfall of weapons and supplies for the tribe. The soldiers had been provisioned for quite a stay in the field, and most of their rations had been discarded in the rout. Now the tribe had hardtack, dried beans, bacon, coffee, and other goods.
Shoots Left Handed was able to wink at Pawnee Killer and the others. Had they not questioned his loyalty to Arrow Keeper, his steadfast belief that this Cheyenne youth possessed strong medicine indeed in spite of appearances?
“Already the babies have stopped crying and sleep through the night,” the old chief told him several sleeps after the Ghost Battle. Even the eye covered by his milky cataract seemed to glimmer with new hope. “Soon the tribe will move south toward the Powder River hunting grounds, where we belong. The day of the red man has reached its final hours, and we must join one more time as a people before we follow the buffalo into the last hiding places.”
Touch the Sky and Little Horse would gladly have stayed longer and traveled south with them. But as soon as he had recovered enough strength and movement to ride, Touch the Sky said his farewells. Trying not to worry about Honey Eater was useless. Her image seemed to be painted on the back of his eyelids.
The night before they rode out, they were feted as heroes and saviors of the tribe. But Touch the Sky found it embarrassing when several of the elders timidly approached and reached out cautiously to touch him, as if verifying he were solid flesh and bone. When he was asked to bless several objects with medicine, he politely refused, saying he was not yet a shaman.
“Brother,” Pawnee Killer said as the two visitors mounted to ride out, “I confess that, at first, I was skeptical of you. Now I see that it was only unfortunate timing, this thing of finding Goes Ahead’s body right after the Renewal. You are both straight-arrow Cheyennes and the finest warriors this battle chief has ever known.”
“We will meet again at the annual dances,” Touch the Sky told him. “Your ponies will be fat then, your camp full of dogs again as it should be.”
Nearby, a group of children were throwing stones at birds. Now they shrieked with excited laughter when one of them nicked a finch and it flew angrily away.
“Brother,” Pawnee Killer said, “I have not seen a sight like this for many sleeps. You are both warriors, so I will not embarrass you with too much gratitude. Just know this, and know it forever. It was you who gave those children back their lives. For this, I swear my own life to you. You have but to send word, and Pawnee Killer’s lance will go up beside yours.”
These words, spoken simply and from an impassive face, nonetheless swelled both braves’ hearts with pride. But the final tribute came as they were about to round the bend that would cut them off from view of the camp.
“Brother!” Little Horse said, pointing back behind them. “Look!”
Touch the Sky did look. The children were playing another game. Two of them stood side by side while a group of them pretended to be soldiers, trying to shoot them with their stick rifles. The two unarmed children merely smiled smugly back as soldier after soldier threw down his rifle and fled in panic.
“They are refighting the Ghost Battle,” Little Horse said. “I have a feeling it is going to be won many times over from this day on.”
~*~
But despite the elation of this sweet victory, both youths knew they were riding back to an uncertain fate.
Their enemies had been conspiring against them even before they left; their secret departure from camp had only given their enemies more fuel for the fire. So they were not at all surprised by the hostile stares of many as they finally rode in, late one morning, and turned their ponies loose in the common corral.
“At least,” Little Horse said as they crossed toward Arrow Keeper’s tipi, “we were not arrested as we rode in. This means no decision was reached against us in council.”
Touch the Sky barely heard his friend, so nervous was he about spotting Honey Eater again. So far he had seen no activity around Black Elk’s tipi. At this time of the morning, she might well be visiting with her clan sisters.
Then he spotted Two Twists, and his face went cold.
The youth had been savagely beaten. He was leading his pony to the corral, obviously favoring his sore midsection. A mass of bruises covered half of his face.
His eyes met Touch the Sky’s. Two Twists then glanced hurriedly around before crossing to greet his friend.
“Touch the Sky, I am glad to see you alive! But I fear you will not remain that way long around here. Your enemies are more determined than ever to—”
“Never mind that, little brother,” Touch the Sky said grimly, still eyeing the bruises. “I know who did this to you. Tell me I am wrong.”
Two Twists glanced at the ground, saying nothing.
“He will pay for hurting you, buck. But now tell me this, for it is the only thing else I need to know. Look at me, Cheyenne!”
Two Twists did.
“Honey Eater?” was all Touch the Sky had to say. And the glint of confirmation in the youth’s eyes was all he needed to see.
Vaguely, as if in a thick fog, Touch the Sky was aware of both Little Horse and Two Twists trying to stop him, trying to change his mind as he bore down on Black Elk’s tipi. He felt them pulling on his arms, shook them off as easily as flies.
He reached the tipi, grabbed the entrance flap, threw it back.
Black Elk was gone. But Honey Eater was inside, brewing yarrow tea in a clay pot over the firepit.
Her eyes flew up, startled, when the flap was lifted. She expected to see Black Elk, back from his Bull Whip lodge.
Instead, the man she loved with all her heart stood staring at her—staring at the deep whiplash cuts in her face, on her neck and shoulders and back, clearly visible above the neck of her doeskin dress.
Touch the Sky said nothing. He met her eyes with his for several heartbeats. Then he lowered the flap and turned around, his mind bent toward one purpose only: finding Black Elk and killing him.
But it was Arrow Keeper who now stood in front of him, not his enemy.
“Listen to me, little brother, and place my words close to your heart. I know that you are now setting out on the course of murder. If you murder a fellow Cheyenne, the Arrows will be stained forever. You can never be a shaman with the blood of your own on your hands.”
Touch the Sky shook his head. “Father, I swore an oath to Black Elk during the buffalo hunt in Comanche country. I told him, after he beat Honey Eater, that I would kill him if he touched her again. I swore this oath on my medicine bundle.”
“And do you see this bundle?”
Arrow Keeper pulled a coyote-fur pouch out from under his blanket. “These are the sacred Arrows. I have hoped that someday soon, when I am gone to the Land Beyond the Sun, you would be the Keeper. Go kill this dog now, and you kill those hopes too. For you have made an oath on this bundle too, Cheyenne. An oath to keep them forever sweet and clean. Now make your choice.”
With that the old shaman turned his back and walked to his tipi.
Miserable, Touch the Sky stood there, unsure what to do. Conflicting emotions warred inside his breast.
“Brother,” Little Horse said in a low voice, “look behind you.”
Touch the Sky did. Honey Eater had lifted the flap of the tipi and was watching him. Despite the cuts, her beauty aga
in took his breath away.
And now, rising steadily louder, they all heard it: the young girls in their sewing lodge. They were singing the song about a Cheyenne girl and the noble brave who loved her—a song about suffering and patience and bravery and goodness triumphing over evil in the Life of the Little Day.
It was a song about them. And as Touch the Sky watched her, Honey Eater crossed her wrists over her heart: Cheyenne sign talk for love.
He crossed his too. And he understood what her eyes were begging him to do right now: She was begging him to make sure that satisfying his manly pride was worth being banished forever from the tribe. Because that also meant lifetime banishment from her.
He made up his mind. Speaking loudly enough for Honey Eater, Two Twists, Little Horse, and even old Arrow Keeper to hear him, Touch the Sky said, “Let us turn our ponies out to graze, brother, then bathe and sleep. It is good to be home!”
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