Sun Dance

by John J. McLaglen

‘You will take our young men with you?’ asked Red Oak.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And if they will not listen and follow?’

  ‘They will listen for I have looked into the sun and seen the truth. Even Crooked Snake may ride down from the hills and join our fight. Even Morning Cloud.’

  He threw out his strong, young chest.

  ‘I have looked into the sun.’

  There was one more thing White Eagle had to do and he had to prepare for it well. He watched the flames as they licked about the stones, red flickering to yellow and back again. When the stones were truly hot, he stood and removed his breech cloth. Now he was naked.

  White Eagle poured water on to the stones and they hissed and sizzled and threw up clouds of almost scalding steam. He stepped over the stones, washing his body clean in the steam, purifying himself.

  When that was done, he lifted the elkhorn container and poured grease over his shoulders, on to his back and chest, his thighs and hands. He rubbed the grease carefully into the skin, missing no section of his body, making it so smooth that it shone and glistened.

  He dressed himself again in a plain breech cloth and moccasins. Slowly he unrolled the shirt. Only now could he wear it and when he did his people would know what he had done. They would understand and they would listen: believe.

  The buckskin of the shirt was dyed scarlet and at the bottom there was the curve of yellow that showed the rising sun.

  White Eagle took up his bow and quiver of new arrows and began his journey to the west, following the waters of the river that the white man called Grand. He knew that he must travel until he was within sight of the mountains once more, then wait.

  He did all these things because they had been part of his vision and there was nothing else that he could do.

  He waited for so long that he thought the muscles of his body would cease to obey his commands. But finally it was there. He heard its jagged cry before he saw it. Looked then in wonder at the bulk and ugliness of its beauty. Strength. Freedom. Power.

  White Eagle slotted the first-chosen of his arrows into the bow and lifted it towards the sky, watching the white tail feathers as the huge bird soared above him.

  With a sudden pain in his heart White Eagle heard the ‘kri, kri, kri’ of its call as he pulled the arrow back against his shoulder.

  Chapter Five

  From two miles out they could see the smoke.

  Thick and black, it rose in columns towards the fresh blue of the sky with scarcely any wind to disperse it.

  Riding ahead of the column, seeking the first sign of the Agency buildings, Herne saw it before the others.

  A black pall that made his stomach turn inside. Without seeing any more he knew what it meant, could imagine what had happened. He had seen such smoke many times before, had ridden in upon small settlements in the wake of Indian attacks.

  He remembered once in Arizona, a day much like the present one, hotter if anything. The land had shimmered in front of his eyes. Herne had ridden in first; the bodies had been left where they had fallen. Those who had been killed inside the cabin had burned with it. The air had been thick with the sickly sour stench of charred flesh. The old woman ...

  One of the party following close behind Herne had been her grandson. Herne had run out, shouted, telling the boy to stay back. Eighteen.

  He had shouted in vain.

  The youngster cursed him, ran towards the still smoldering ruin. Herne grabbed at his arm but was shaken off. The chill scream told him that the boy had found her.

  It took three of them to drag him away and when they finally got him out of sight of the burnt cabin, they saw that there were deep gouges about his eyes where he had tried to claw them from their sockets, so appalled had he been by the sight that confronted him.

  Herne rode his horse back towards the column at a trot.

  ‘Smoke, Lieutenant. It’s coming from the Agency.’

  The smooth young face changed expression slowly. ‘Maybe it’s rubbish being burned... accidental...’

  ‘No.’ Herne shook his head. ‘It ain’t that.’

  The Lieutenant fingered his mustache, then turned in the saddle. ‘Sergeant!’ he called back. ‘Get the men up here on the double!’

  As the soldiers rode forward, the Lieutenant looked back at Herne. ‘These Indians. Stay with them. I’ll leave you two men. If there’s any sign of trouble, shoot.’

  ‘There won’t be no trouble. Not here.’

  The lines on the Lieutenant’s face tightened: ‘I don’t suppose anyone thought there would be trouble at the Agency.’

  Herne shifted his body in the saddle. ‘Lieutenant, I’d rather ride with you. If it’s all the same...’

  ‘No, it isn’t all the same to me. These Indians are your responsibility. You bring them in. And that is an order.’

  Herne glanced round. ‘These men, they’re liable to run pretty wild if I’m right about what’s happened. Maybe ...’

  ‘I’m perfectly capable of controlling my own platoon! Let’s hope you can do your own job as well!’

  The Lieutenant spurred his horse away from Herne and towards the Sergeant. Now they could all see the ends of the smoke trail high in the sky to the south.

  Herne could see a fresh excitement come to the young officer’s face as he sat upright in his saddle. He watched as Lieutenant Patten drew his shiny saber from its scabbard and brandished it above his head. Several of the soldiers were loosening their Spencer carbines.

  ‘When we have the Agency within clear sight, Sergeant,’ said Patten, ‘have the bugler sound the charge.’

  The main building of the Agency had been a long, low cabin built with timber cut and dragged from close by the Missouri. A double thickness had been used for protection—both against the winters and against any possible attack. Doors and windows battened down fast with narrow slits in the shape of a cross left for rifle fire.

  The Reservation Agent and his wife and children slept and ate in the right hand side of the cabin, while the remainder was used for meeting with the Indians and handing over supplies.

  The supplies themselves were stored in two smaller cabins at a right angle to the main one and stretching out behind it. These were also strongly built and were secured with padlocks and iron bars.

  A corral led off from the storage cabins; the two wagons which belonged to the Agency were normally kept alongside one section of this.

  Everything was well-designed to ensure that the place could be easily defended.

  If an attack was expected or forewarned. White Eagle gave no such warning.

  He brought the dozen braves who had followed his call up close to the Agency. They had ridden their ponies slowly, quietly. All other Sioux had been careful to keep well clear. Only when they were two hundred yards away had White Eagle thrown back his head and given out the fierce war cry. His strongly sinewed right hand had thrust up into the air and the blade of the hatchet that was grasped tight within it had shone cleanly in the sun.

  Bending over his ledger inside the building, Henderson had heard the unfamiliar sound and looked up. Set aside the wooden pen and pushed the heavy book away. Without even bothering to fetch his rifle, he had stepped towards the door. Too late he had realized what was galloping towards him out of the sunlight. ‘Martha! Martha!’

  His frightened voice had barely carried to his wife on the other side of the dividing wall; to his youngest son, Jamie, polishing a pair of boots out on the back step; to his daughter, Ali, working on the sampler that was to be her mother’s birthday present. ‘Martha!’

  Henderson ran back into the room, thinking of his gun; midway towards it he hesitated. The door. The door should be fastened first. Indecision froze him, finally turned him too late. At the door again he saw the leading brave hurl himself from the back of his pony while the animal was yet slowing down. Through the cloud of dust that rose as the Indian’s feet hit the earth, Henderson saw a face that he half recognized; saw the strange, bright
shirt; the tortured ferocity of the face as it came closer.

  The Agent put out both hands as if to ward him off.

  ‘No!...No! What the...’

  He saw the swing of the arm, the glint of the hatchet blade. He was certain now that he knew the Indian.

  Henderson backed away.

  ‘Running Deer! Running Deer! Why... ?’

  But the brave was no longer Running Deer.

  White Eagle jabbed his left foot firmly down into the ground and swung his right arm down and round. Henderson screamed and half-turned and the edge of the blade sliced through the top of his left shoulder, at the back, carving the flesh like freshly-hung meat, opening it so that it showed white and then red. Reddening quickly as the line drawn by the hatchet’s path carried on down the man’s side and stopped several inches above his left hip.

  Henderson fell headlong across the doorway and rolled on to his back.

  The space within the door frame was filled by White Eagle, arms out in front of him, the blade of the hatchet bright with blood, the front of the shirt splashed with it also. Bright red on the scarlet of the buckskin, on the yellow of the rising sun.

  Henderson shouted out again and heard a door open behind him.

  The hatchet swung through the space between his body and the door. It seemed to be coming for his head. At the last moment Henderson thrust up both hands and caught it.

  The pain that seared through him made his brain lurch aid instantly he was gagging as the contents of his stomach flew to his throat.

  The blade had met his opened hands greedily.

  It had severed the middle fingers of the left hand completely and taken the little finger from the first joint. The corner of it had sunk into the palm of the right hand, breaking through the brittle bones at the back of the hand and jamming against the wrist.

  For seconds it stuck there and the two men, white and Indian, stared at one another over it.

  Then White Eagle pulled the hatchet away and Henderson stared at his mutilated hands. Dribbles of spew fell from the edges of his open mouth. Blood ran down on to his body in thin streams.

  White Eagle wasn’t looking at Henderson any longer. The door at the side of the room was open and Henderson’s wife was standing on the other side of it. She had a pistol held in both hands, pointing at White Eagle’s chest.

  With a cry he leaped past Henderson’s fallen body and jumped towards her.

  Martha Henderson pulled the heavy Colt back into her stomach and began to squeeze on the trigger.

  The Indian brought back his right arm, preparing to swing the hatchet but there was too much space between them.

  Her eyes tight, holding her breath, Martha Henderson fired the pistol. Nothing happened. The shell jammed in the chamber.

  White Eagle stopped. He knew the gun had not gone off. It was true, then. When a warrior wore the sun shirt, when he had looked into the sun, he could not be killed.

  For a moment he let the hatchet fall by his side and in that moment, Martha Henderson slammed the dividing door shut and rammed across the wooden bar to secure it in place.

  Henderson was crawling slowly across the cabin. His rifle was resting against the edge of the table. Five, four, three feet away from his grasp. The ends of his fingers left bloody prints on the boards as he pushed himself forward. More blood poured freely from the gaping wound in his back and shoulder. Contemptuously, White Eagle knocked the rifle away from him. Henderson looked up at the Indian and his eyes flickered; a wave of blackness passed behind his eyes and when he saw White Eagle again it was as if through a mesh net.

  He sensed rather than saw the shapes of more Indians in the doorway.

  There was a gun shot from the other end of the cabin.

  White Eagle overturned the table and pushed it towards the wall. Not knowing how he did it, Henderson got to his feet and turned away. He ran for the doorway, bloody hands forwards, trying to force his way through the Indians who stood there, barring his way.

  For a moment he thought they would yield but a blow struck him in the face and sent him back into the room. A strong arm grasped his neck and hauled him backwards. He was thrown across the room, trying to keep his balance and failing. Knees, elbow, hand scraped on the floor. His head hit the wall and he collapsed.

  A sudden sight of the hatchet blade driving through the front of his gauzed vision. Filling it.

  The edge of the blade split his face diagonally across, entering the skull between the socket of the right eye and the left side of the jawbone. The cracking and rending of bone cut the cabin like lightning. The blade stuck fast. White Eagle stared at his hands, splashed with blood. He shifted his grip on the wooden handle and his fingers slithered on the new wetness.

  Henderson’s eye slithered across the surface of the blade like an uncooked egg across a skillet.

  With a shout the Indian pushed his moccasined foot hard against Henderson’s chest and levered the hatchet away from his face.

  He whirled round towards the other three braves who were watching him inside the cabin.

  He ran past them and out into the light and they followed.

  Jamie Henderson had heard his father’s first shouts of ‘Martha’ and paid them little heed. The polishing cloth moved over the surface of the boots, rubbing hard, making them shine so that he could see his own face in them.

  His own face.

  He held up the boot, one arm pushed down inside it, and peered at the surface of the leather. He saw the fall of his own light brown hair over his brow sure enough, his cheek—and something else. Something that moved slow: fast.

  Jamie looked over his shoulder and began scrambling away at the same time. The Indian reversed the knife and his hand and balanced his body for the throw.

  The corral, thought Jamie, the corral. The horses. I …

  The knife blade struck the center of his back with the force of a heavy punch. He felt his legs disappearing under him and tried to keep his arms going. His face pitched downwards and slammed into the harsh earth.

  The pain between his shoulder blades screamed at him but Jamie himself made no sound.

  He felt a touch of flesh as the Sioux leaped across his fallen body, straddling him. He did not see the uplifted club, nor its fall; hardly felt the blows after the first which stoved in the rear of his skull.

  The other braves had clamored around the end of the Agency cabin where Martha Henderson and her daughter had been when the attack began. The windows had been open to air the room on such a hot day.

  When Martha had taken the Colt and gone to the dividing door she had told Ali to fasten the windows.

  The girl had put down her sampler and done her best. But fear had made her fingers fumble, had flustered her fourteen year old mind. When her mother had tried to shoot White Eagle and failed, Ali had only shuttered one window across.

  She struggled with the second while Martha Henderson shut the door fast. As the wood was slotting into place a brown arm pushed it back and strong fingers seized her wrist.

  The girl fought, struggled; she felt the grip strengthening and she was hoisted off the floor. She screamed for help and as her head was jerked forwards she sank her teeth deep into the brown arm and bit.

  It tasted of salt and grease.

  She drove her teeth through the flesh, through the broken skin—the ringers that held her loosened their hold.

  Ali fell backwards on to the cabin floor.

  Behind her she could see that her mother had put down the pistol and picked up the old single shot rifle with the long barrel that her father had used for hunting. She saw the shell slide home.

  Saw her mother’s eyes widen.

  The head and shoulders of a Sioux at the window; lines of red and white and black marked strongly across it.

  The room was filled with the roar of the explosion and as suddenly as it had appeared the face vanished.

  ‘Mother!’

  Ali scrambled over the floor, hustling behind her mother’s ski
rts while the woman pushed a second shell down into the big gun. Her hands grasped her mother as prayers clung half-formed to her lips.

  Already the smell of burning.

  Martha Henderson knew what would happen: knew what would happen to her daughter. There was no way she could stop the Indians from getting into the cabin or burning it to the ground. No way she would be able to prevent them getting hold of Ali.

  An arrow flew across the room and the point stuck in the far wall, the feathered shaft quivering.

  Martha pushed the shell home and stepped away from her daughter, putting space between them. Lifting the long barrel. Ali stared at her unable to believe, to understand ... No! Knowing. Knowing now and...

  ‘No!’

  Her voice as keen as the sharpest of blades.

  Tears filled Martha Henderson’s eyes as she looked along the barrel of the rifle, sighted on her daughter’s breast, began to squeeze...

  ‘No! Mother, no!’

  The flint arrow tip seared through Martha Henderson’s neck, slicing her flesh aside and protruding through the skin at the front, inches above the silver chain which held the locket her husband had given her when Ali had been born.

  Ali stared at it as the rifle, unfired, slipped from her mother’s grasp. There were two inches of arrow shaft showing behind the head and the light wood was becoming darker, redder.

  Ali closed her eyes and sank to her knees.

  She heard words that she didn’t understand and then hands seized her and she was lifted high into the air. She opened her eyes and saw that there were several Indians in the room, dressed as she had not seen them before—half-naked, painted bodies, feathers around their heads.

  Somehow they had opened the door and she was carried through it. Looking behind her, back into the room, she saw one of the braves kneeling over her mother, a knife in his hand.

  Outside she was hurled to the ground.

  The smell of burning was stronger, clearer.

  Flames licked up the sides of the Agency cabin.

  She lay where she had been thrown, clutching her blue dress tight to herself, mouth open, gasping for air, unable to understand what was happening or why.