Wolf Mountain Moon

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Bear Coat’s soldiers will never reach our village,” the Horse repeated. “We will lure them to the place we want to fight, where we will have our warriors waiting. There the task of our decoys will be over—and the killing can begin!”

  “You will lead the decoys yourself?” asked The Yearling.

  “No, this time I will pick a young warrior,” Crazy Horse answered. “As I was given that honor by Red Cloud and Afraid of His Horses when I was a young warrior.”

  “They have become tired old women now!” shouted Bad Leg.

  “Yes,” No Neck agreed. “Both of them are like old women before the wasicu”

  “Whipped dogs!”

  “But they were not always whipped dogs!” Crazy Horse attempted to defend his old friends. “They drove the soldiers away from the Pine Woods Fort,† and from the Mud-Wall Fort# in those days. Remember what they did—because the Titunwan Lakota have never again forced the soldiers to empty any of their forts.”

  “They may have been powerful warriors once,” said Rising Sun. “But now they take the white man’s scummy meat and his thin blankets. They even gave up their horses and their weapons to the soldiers!”*

  Spotted Elk cried, “We will never give up, will we, Crazy Horse?”

  “No, a warrior never gives up his pony. Never lays down his weapons. The old ones too frail, the little ones too small, the sick ones too weak to fight—these we must protect from the wasicu chief and his soldiers, who lie to us about peace.”

  “You will lead us in this fight?”

  “I will lead you,” he promised them.

  His words were answered by an immediate and thunderous roar as both men and women screeched, shouted, trilled their tongues and cried out their praises to the blue sky above, frost lying in a wreath about every head.

  “This soldier chief Bull Eagle trusted,” Crazy Horse told that great crowd of his Lakota people and the wounded Shahiyela, “the one Bull Eagle called the Bear Coat … he talks to you of peace with one hand while his other hand grips a war club that he swings at your head. I think we should convince this Bear Coat that it is time to leave Lakota country forever.”

  Again the crowd roared its approval, women shaking their knives in the air, each blade coated with a frozen film of blood, the hundreds of warriors rattling guns and shields.

  “Yes, it is time that we teach this Bear Coat what we taught the Hundred in the Hand, what we taught Long Hair and his soldiers at the Greasy Grass!”

  “Remember the Greasy Grass!” came the echo from that great assembly.

  But as he turned away, Crazy Horse knew there was no prophetic vision the likes of which Sitting Bull had experienced last summer at the Deer Medicine Rocks.

  Perhaps it was only a matter of time until there were more soldiers in Lakota country than there were Lakota. One summer soon … perhaps one winter very soon—his people would not be able to hold back the wasicu any longer.

  But for now Crazy Horse would do as his people wanted, as they expected of a Shirt Wearer: lead them against this Bear Coat and his soldiers—cut a swath up and down the Buffalo Tongue River to avenge the deaths of the five chiefs. Perhaps even drive the soldiers from their fort on the Elk River. For now the heart of Crazy Horse beat strong once more. For now Crazy Horse would again be a war chief.

  And when the time came for him to hand over his pony and his weapons … as he knew that time would come, down in the marrow of him … Crazy Horse hoped he would again have the courage to do what was best for his people.

  As brave as he had been in battle, could he be just as brave in surrendering?

  Perhaps, if he was fortunate, Crazy Horse decided as he led the chiefs back to his lodge—he would never have to find out.

  Perhaps this would be the winter to die as a warrior, fighting the wasicu soldiers, defending his people to the last.

  Come the winter to die as a warrior.

  BY TELEGRAPH

  More Murders by Indians on

  Hat Creek

  THE INDIANS

  More Murders in Wyoming—A Coloradan

  among the Victims.

  HAT CREEK via CHEYENNE, December 20.—Four freight teams accompanied by five men were attacked by Indians in camp on Indian creek, six miles north of this place, about 9 o’clock last night. Three of the party escaped and arrived here at midnight barefooted and half clothed. A detachment of soldiers and a party of citizens repaired to the scene of the fight early this morning and found the bodies of two men—B. C. Steppens of Salt Lake, and a German named Fritz of Colorado—terribly mutilated with a butcher’s cleaver taken from one of the wagons. The contents of the wagons were scattered over the ground, the flour and corn in piles as it had been emptied from the sacks. The horses were missing and over forty bullet holes were in one wagon. The dead were brought here and buried.

  Two hundred and forty-eight Arapahoes and Sioux scouts from the agency, in charge of Louis Richards, a half breed, passed here on Sunday, en route to join General Crook.

  Samantha found her tea had gone cold the next time she sipped it.

  There was so much going on around her there with the officers’ wives in hand-knitted shawls, and buffalo-coated soldiers whirling in and out of the parlor, through the dining room and out into the vestibule, that she really hadn’t noticed that her tea was growing cold, the cup sitting there nearby on the tiny table made from an old crate.

  Samantha was simply paying all her attention to the child on her lap.

  She had wrapped the boy as warmly as possible before coming downstairs just after dawn this Christmas morn. It had been near impossible to sleep last night—what for all the disappointment that had caused her to sob silently in her pillow, for all the memories of parents and home, of family and these special holidays. Remembering how her father always killed a big fat tom for National Thanksgiving Day, how he fattened a goose for Christmas dinner.

  There in the cold and the dark just before dawn she had smelled it all the way up to her narrow rope-and-tick bed—those fragrances rising from the kitchen below her tiny room with the single frosted window. Someone was up early, baking already, loading kindling into the stoves, closing the iron door with a muffled clang. Samantha recalled how she and Rebecca would lie in bed side by side on Christmas morning, waiting impatiently to hear the sounds their mother would make in her kitchen. Then it was finally time to scurry out to greet parents with hurried hugs and kisses before they would sip hot tea and eat tiny rum cakes around the tree they had decorated just the night before with tinsel and tissue and a paper star on top.

  And each time Samantha had remembered those holidays of the past, she had sobbed all the harder … until she would again put her hand beneath the pillow, and her fingertips would touch the two folded sheets of paper.

  They had been carried south to her from that land where he had written those words trying to explain why he would not be keeping his promise to be home by this special day—their son’s first Christmas. Time and again Samantha read each word, each line, every sentence to wring from those two spare pages all that they had to tell her about the what and why of his not coming back with the rest of the Bighorn and Yellowstone Expedition that Crook was disbanding.

  If the generals were sending the men back to their winter quarters, then why wasn’t Seamus among them?

  Each time that question tore at her heart, each time she thought about this child’s first Christmas, Sam told herself that she must trust in him. Trust that her husband would always do what was right by them all. Not just what was right for country and flag … but what was right for his own family. She decided some time ago that she could do nothing less than trust in him.

  As well as trust in God to bring Seamus back alive.

  The child was beginning to squirm and fuss, what with all the noise from happy children and the singsong voices of those adults calling out their merry wishes to loved ones and good friends all. She probed a finger into his diaper and found that he wasn’t wet.
Perhaps he was getting hungry. Samantha would have to take him upstairs soon, where she would nurse him and he would fall asleep with his tummy once again filled with warm milk.

  But for now she prayed he would not grow too fussy and would allow her to stay down there among the noise and the warmth and the celebrants moving in and out as they visited the houses and quarters at Fort Laramie this cold, cold Christmas Day.

  It helped to keep her mind off Seamus and what he might be facing in that frigid north country. Helped her forget how much she had counted on his being home for their son’s first Christmas … and it was beginning to appear as if Seamus might not even be home a week from now—the first day of 1877.

  Her eyes misted, and she fought the sour taste her sobbing made at the back of her throat—fought back vainly, bouncing the boy on her knees, turning him so he could watch the room and people and flutting candles with her, all those colors and movement as he gurgled and chewed on a knuckle.

  Oh, how she remembered Seamus’s big-knuckled hands … so rough and callused, then grown so gentle and soft whenever they brushed her flesh.

  “Merry Christmas!” she called out as another group burst in through the front door and stomped across the entryway, scattering snow and ice from their boots, bringing in that sweet tang of bitter cold on the coats and scarves, hats and mittens, they swept off and hung on the last of a long row of iron hooks imprisoned on the nearby wall.

  From pockets came the tiny packages wrapped in red-colored tissue, or perhaps nothing more than homely newspaper if one could afford nothing else. Small presents from the heart, purchased from the sutler with a particular someone in mind. There wasn’t all that much out there for folks to choose from at this holiday of gift giving. But now that she had been an adult for a few years, Samantha was coming to realize at last what this holiday was truly all about.

  Not the tiny presents wrapped in scraps of newspaper. Not even those rare and fine presents her parents had wrapped in delicate tissue to present to her and Rebecca back home many years ago.

  Christmas was about friends and gathering close to loved ones.

  Christmas was about family.

  The baby fussed, perhaps sensing her disappointment as Samantha’s eyes glistened and the candle- and lamplight grew soft and fuzzy. Sam blinked to clear them, frustrated when she felt the tears spill down her cheeks.

  “Oh, Sam,” Martha Luhn said gently as she came up to her and knelt beside her chair, laying one hand on her arm, the other hand on the boy’s tiny legs. “It’s Christmas, and we are all here together. I know how you must miss him so.”

  She tried twice to say something, but the words would not come out. All she could do was swipe at her tears.

  “He’s safe. Trust in God, Sam,” Nettie Capron cooed. “On this day especially. Please trust in God to watch over him … wherever he is right now.”

  “Yes,” she croaked. How she wanted to believe.

  The baby fussed, and she bounced him some more, blinking as the swirl of people and candlelight became fuzzy again.

  “He’ll be home soon, Sam,” Elizabeth Burt said softly at her side. “He promised you before, and he kept his promise. Remember that. Seamus Donegan will move heaven and earth—and even hell itself—to keep his promise to you, Sam. You just remember that.”

  “Yes … I’ll t-try.”

  “I’ll bring you some cider, and then we’ll gather with Lieutenant Bingham’s wife at the piano. She does play so well, doesn’t she?” Elizabeth asked. “And singing will brighten your spirits, won’t it, now?”

  Sam watched Mrs. Burt rise and move off into the knots of well-wishers and joyful celebrants that Christmas morning.

  Swallowing down her fear the way she blinked back her tears, Samantha Donegan resolutely told herself that she would have to trust in God to bring Seamus back alive.

  She would simply trust in God.

  *The Fetterman Massacre at Fort Phil Kearny, as told in Sioux Dawn, vol. 1, The Plainsmen Series.

  †Fort Phil Kearny, Dakota Territory.

  #Fort C. F. Smith on the Bighorn River in Montana Territory.

  *Mackenzie’s raid, 23 October 1876, A Cold Day in Hell, vol. 11, The Plainsmen Series.

  Chapter 20

  26-29 December 1876

  BY TELEGRAPH

  Discredited Rumor of an Indian Massacre

  Sitting Bull Driven Across the Missouri

  New Plan for the Management of Indians

  Sitting Bull Heard From.

  ST. PAUL, December 21.—The following was received at headquarters department of Dakota to-day:

  FORT PECK, M.T., December 8.—Yesterday, with a force of 100 men of the Fifth infantry, I followed and drove Sitting Bull’s camp of 190 lodges south across the Missouri river, near the mouth of Bark creek. He resisted my crossing for a short time, and then retreated to the bad lands. Sitting Bull is in camp on Bark creek with over 5,000 warriors.

  [signed]. FRANK D. BALDWIN

  Lieut. Fifth Infantry, Com’dg.

  A New Idea.

  WASHINGTON, December 21.—At a meeting of the house committee on Indian Affairs to-day, Seelye submitted a proposition which embraces an entire revolution in the management of Indian affairs. It makes provisions for extending the laws of the United States over every Indian, giving to him the same status in the courts, conferring upon him the same rights and exacting from him the same duties as belong to any citizen or subject of the United States; abolishing the office of commissioner of Indian affairs, and transferring the entire functions of the Indian bureau to an Indian board or trust, constituted somewhat after the manner of great charitable and educational corporations.… It is the opinion of the committee that some change in the management of Indians affairs is indispensible, and that the transfer of the Indian bureau to the war department would be no improvement on the present management.

  “Damn their red hides!” Nelson Miles bellowed again when the soldier huffed into the office to report a third raid on the cantonment’s beef herd in the last two days. “Don’t the Sioux understand they’re cutting their own throats?”

  “You can’t blame them, General,” Luther Kelly responded, then looked quickly over to the tall Irishman. “A few days ago the Crazy Horse bands came riding in here under a flag of truce to talk peace with you—and then your Crow scouts went and convinced the Lakota that your word was simply no good.”

  “No good!” Miles shrieked. “A day after the murders I sent two of my Yankton scouts up the Tongue with presents to find the villages. As a peace offering, they took twelve of the Crow horses, some sugar, and tobacco too—along with my letter of apology to tell them no white man had a hand in the Crow treachery.”

  “But those Yanktons came back in here five days ago, unable to locate the hostiles,” Kelly declared.

  Seamus asked both men, “Do you really think those Yanktons of yours made a full-hearted effort to find the Crazy Horse camp?”

  Kelly shook his head. “Absolutely not, Donegan. I’ll bet they laid low a little south of here until they figured they could come back in here with their story about not finding the hostile village anywhere close.”

  “Considering the foul mood the Crazy Horse people must be in,” Miles explained, “I suppose I can’t blame those Yankton couriers for not making much of an effort. But since they didn’t succeed in getting my message and presents to the chiefs, Crazy Horse and the others have no way of knowing that those murders weren’t the fault of this army. So now the Sioux are raiding and stealing again simply because they don’t think my word is any good?”

  Donegan pushed himself away from the log wall and said, “They’ve got nothing else to believe, General.”

  “Don’t you think their spies would know that I’ve stripped near all the Crow of their weapons and ponies and sent even the innocent ones back to their agency with their tails tucked between their legs?”

  This matter of the Crow ambush was still clearly a sore point with Miles. A day
after the murders, the colonel sent a courier to the Crow agency with word that he demanded the arrest of those guilty, then requested the return of at least seventy-five of the innocent Crow warriors to serve as scouts.

  “All the Crazy Horse camp knows is that they had five of their chiefs killed,” Kelly repeated. “Which means they’re going to do everything they can to avenge those deaths.”

  “If they don’t see fit to trust me,” Miles fumed, “then—by God—they’ll taste my steel until they’re good and ready to surrender!”

  “I don’t think surrender’s what they have in mind, General,” Donegan observed.

  Miles’s eyes narrowed on the Irishman; then as quickly the furrow in his brow softened, and he replied, “So be it. I’ll be happy to oblige Crazy Horse … and give him the fight he wants.”

  Beginning early the day before on Christmas morning, soldiers and scouts had started celebrating with what spirits the post sutler and a pair of whiskey traders could provide: some potato beer, a peach brandy, a heady apple cider, and a little cheap corn mash. By midafternoon the guardhouse was so overcrowded that Miles issued an order forbidding the sale of any more liquor on the post. The sutler and those two savvy entrepreneurs had only to pack up boards, barrels, and tent, then move their saloons a few hundred yards to put themselves beyond the army’s reach—just outside the boundaries of the military reservation.

  With what little hard money he had left in his pocket, Seamus had joined Kelly and the old plainsman, John Johnston, for a few drinks. While most of the conversations among the soldiers were consumed with topics of the East and the hotly disputed presidential election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden, Seamus and other civilians talked more of hearth and home, of loved ones far, far away from this snowy, frozen land where the Sioux hunted buffalo and scalps.