Wolf Mountain Moon

by Terry C. Johnston

  On either side of the war chief were arrayed more than three dozen others, all of them shouting, screeching, some singing along with the one in the showy warbonnet. Didn’t take much to figure out that was a war chief up there, doing his best to keep his men worked up into a fighting lather.

  Nuzzling his left elbow down into the snow, Seamus slowly settled his chest onto the ground and spread his legs for a surer stance, bringing the Winchester into his shoulder.

  Cocky son of a bitch, isn’t he? Wailing and dancing, preening, prancing, and strutting … just daring one of us to knock him down.

  Uphill … aiming up that slope—Seamus realized he would have to hold high. How much? He calculated and cocked the hammer back … drawing a sight picture on the warrior’s head. If he had figured right, Donegan thought as he let half the air out of his lungs, then the .44-caliber bullet should smack the war chief right in the chest.

  After all—he began to squeeze the trigger—someone had to get rid of that noisy bastard.

  The wagon guns had been quiet for so long that the next belching roar from the knoll below Crazy Horse surprised him. The mouth of the big gun spewed a heavy cloud of smoke as it belched the big round ball into air with a hissing whistle.

  Up, up, up into the air, over the first lines of warriors arrayed along the lower slopes.

  It floated overhead long enough that the warriors assembled across the end of the ridge had time to scurry out of the way, scampering this way and that as the whistling, tumbling ball careened out of the sky in a lazy arc. When it finally crashed to earth in a spot where no warriors tarried, the ball exploded in a mighty gush of noise, snow, and splintered sandstone.

  As the scattered puffs of dirty gray snow and red-rock shards and black clods of dirt began to rain down from the sky, the warriors immediately danced back into view of the wasicu soldiers—yelling at them once more, taunting the white men, laughing at the enemy because their noisy wagon gun had done harm to nothing but some rocks and crusty snow.

  The sight caused Crazy Horse to recall the wagon gun Grattan’s soldiers had pulled out to Conquering Bear’s village the day after a visiting Miniconjou had killed that stray Mormon cow. The haughty soldier chief came demanding the warrior who had stolen and butchered that skinny old cow. It was a shame that so many soldiers had to die over one decrepit animal. A far greater shame that so many Lakota had to die on the Blue Water when soldier chief Harney had come marching on the revenge trail.

  Crazy Horse had been just a youngster back then. Many, many winters long gone now. Summers of fighting, autumns of hunting, winters of waiting for spring when young men thought of little else but getting themselves nestled between the downy thighs of a pretty girl.

  For Crazy Horse these noisy wagon guns aroused many memories of a lifetime spent fighting to hold the wasicu back. Was there a place where he could go for the winter without the soldiers following? Would there ever be again a hunting ground where he could ride after the buffalo, skin and butcher it, build his fire and eat his meal, sleep out the night in peace—without worrying when the soldiers would come?

  Painfully he squeezed those hard thoughts out of his mind the way a man would chew the gristle loose from the good meat, swallowing the soft red loin and tossing the rest into the fire.

  For a time it was amusing to watch the frantic activity around the wagon guns with those knots of soldiers looking very much like tiny black ants swarming around a prairie anthill—the creatures crawling over one another, then suddenly leaping back as one of the wasicus leaned in to fire the big gun.

  It roared again.

  The ball came whistling from the great throat in a belch of blackish smoke, sent ever higher, climbing into the snowy clouds, where it pierced the thick veils, disappearing for a moment as it reached the top of its arc to begin its fall back to earth.

  Crazy Horse’s warriors scattered, some of them pulling their ponies out of the way now, for this ball had managed to sail right on over the top of the ridge. Men stumbled against one another and fell in the snow, getting out of the ball’s path, ponies rearing and whinnying.

  The whistling was suddenly silenced as the black iron sphere splooshed into the crusty snow and all but disappeared against a drift trampled by many moccasins and hooves. For a moment every mouth was hushed—only the frightened ponies snorted and pranced, eyes still saucered with horror and fear. Men stared at the ball. Watching. Waiting. Expectant.

  Then Spotted Blackbird slowly crawled to his knees, rose to his feet, and circled the fire where he had been warming his hands. Dusting off the knees of his blanket leggings, the young warrior took a few tentative steps toward the half-buried ball. He stopped, then took a few more steps. Closer he went to the white man’s whistling weapon-ball as the rest watched in stunned silence.

  When he was finally no more than an arm’s length from it, Spotted Blackbird pulled his bow from the quiver strapped at his back. Gently he tapped the ball and leaped back as if stung by a rattlesnake.

  Many of the others gathered around him at a safe distance gasped, leaping back too.

  But nothing happened.

  Spotted Blackbird stepped closer once more. Then tapped the black ball again—harder than ever—and immediately dropped into a protective crouch.

  When no explosion shook the ground, the warrior walked right up. to the object and smacked it solidly with the end of his elkhorn bow.

  Then he began to strike it repeatedly, shouting in glee, dancing around and around it as he hammered the ball with blows. The other warriors came up to touch it too—counting coup on it as Spotted Blackbird had been the first to do.

  It was great fun … until they heard the next whistle above their laughter, that warning cry of the black balls coming from the far side of the ridge. Warriors scattered, dashing to the top of the bluff, watching the ball sail up through the lowering clouds, in and out of the dancing white of the wind-driven snowstorm. Again every one of them scattered, yanking ponies and pushing one another out of the way. Only a fool would think that all the white man’s exploding balls would land harmlessly in the snow like so much sandstone or a river boulder.

  With a hissing rush the ball sailed down, down—exploding in a blinding profusion of meteoric light, splintering rock and scattering red earth over those huddling nearby behind sandstone breastworks. The clatter of falling earth ended, and the warriors leaped to their feet, dusting the snow and dirt and rock chips from their clothing, shouting again to the wasicu, holding their genitals, pulling aside their breechclouts to wag their rumps at the soldiers.

  “Hit me here!” one of the Shahiyela yelled at the white men below, patting the crack in his ample rear end.

  Back and forth it would go like this, Crazy Horse believed. The warriors would not budge, and the big whistling balls would not drive them from this ridge.

  But over to his right … now, that was a different matter.

  Over there the soldiers were climbing out of the ravine that for a time had slowed their advance considerably. They wore too many clothes, he thought. The soldiers looked as if they had no legs as they struggled through the deep snow. Just the tops of their bodies, draped with those big buffalo-hide coats, the tails of which spread out like a whorl of prairie-flower petals come spring to this rolling country. Almost like tiny lodge men. Soldiers who looked like lodges. No legs had they, but still the wasicu pushed on.

  After so many summers of fighting, after all those battles, Crazy Horse could tell the leaders, the soldier war chiefs, gesturing and waving and shouting to the others, urging them on—marching even into the face of the withering fire from the Shahiyela on that far end of the ridge.

  Quickly he glanced at the knoll to the north to be sure. No, the Bear Coat was still there with the wagon guns. Then Crazy Horse looked back to the south where the soldier chiefs led their men lumbering to the bottom of the steep slope. It was there that Big Crow and his Shahiyela fired bullets and arrows down at the white men.

  Th
ese were very, very stupid soldiers, Crazy Horse thought as the wasicu shot their rifles up the far slope at the Shahiyela warriors, then reloaded to advance another few steps before shooting again. Like the crawl of black ants up the steep side of a prairie anthill.

  Yes, he thought: these are very, very stupid soldiers.

  That … or very, very brave men.

  *Present-day Battle Butte Creek.

  Chapter 33

  Hoop and Stick Moon 1877

  “Grandfather!” Medicine Bear had cried out to the old man last night as the hundreds of warriors had begun to stream out of the village into the dark, kicking their ponies north through the snow and the cold in a huge cavalcade toward the Bear Coat’s soldiers who had camped near Belly Butte.

  Coal Bear turned slowly on his spindly legs there before the Sacred Hat lodge, finding Box Elder’s young spiritual apprentice hurrying toward him. “Medicine Bear! You are not going with all the others to fight the ve-ho-e come the dawn?”

  “Yes,” he huffed, breathless with excitement. “I am going with the others, but I want to fight the white men the same way we fought them in the valley of the Red Fork.”

  The old man nodded, sighing. “You carried powerful magic that day, my son.”

  His heart swelled with pride. “Yes, Grandfather,” he said, using the term of respect for the older man who was Keeper of the Sacred Medicine Hat. “But Box Elder is too weak to ride so far in this cold. So I go to ride and fight for him.”

  “Hopo! This is a good and mighty thing you do,” Coal Bear replied.

  “You can help me,” Medicine Bear pleaded, his mouth dry with apprehension as he stared intently into the old shaman’s eyes. “I want to carry Nimhoyoh into the fight with me.”

  “The Sacred Turner?”

  Medicine Bear could see the extreme worry cross the old man’s face.

  “I carried it before—”

  Coal Bear interrupted. “I remember. In the battle against Three Finger Kenzie.* Yes, the Red Fork Canyon … when you carried Nimhoyoh above the rest of us all and thereby turned away the soldier bullets so we could escape with the Sacred Hat into the mountains.”

  The youngster hurried on with his plea. “When the battle begins at dawn, I wish to protect the many warriors the way I helped protect a few in that terrible battle.”

  Coal Bear stared dispassionately at the young man for a few moments, then said, “Come inside.” He pulled back the hide flap and hobbled into the lodge.

  A fire still glowed, warm and welcoming. Coal Bear’s woman had her back to them, turning to watch the two men enter. She nodded in recognition, then returned to her work at packing their few possessions into the second of only two small rawhide parfleches. After losing everything to the soldiers in the Red Fork Valley, all they now owned belonged to Esevone—the Sacred Medicine Hat of the Ohmeseheso. The last of their blankets had been folded and tied, everything made ready for the time when the woman would yank the pins from the lodge cover, when she and others would quickly dismantle this lodge that was the new home their people provided for Esevone.

  Though small—not near as grand as had been the previous lodge transported across the high plains for countless winters until it was destroyed by the Ho-nehe-taneo-o, the Wolf People,† in that terrible fight—this was nonetheless the first lodge the Tse-Tsehese women had collected hides for, sewn together, and cut in the proper shape when they began their slow rebuilding among the Crazy Horse people. From one hunt, then another, they acquired the hides until they had enough to erect this small lodge. Once more the Sacred Medicine Hat had a proper resting place—there at the back, opposite the door, sitting against Nimhoyoh.

  It was the Sacred Turner that Medicine Bear immediately cast his eyes upon now as he entered Coal Bear’s dwelling. Nimhoyoh, what he had been called upon to carry that terribly cold day of blood on the snow that was still so fresh in their memories.

  Coal Bear said, “I see you are wearing Box Elder’s powerful shirt.”

  Young Medicine Bear ran his hands down the front of the fire-smoked elk-hide shirt the great blind shaman of the Ohmeseheso had given him to wear. The four long legs of the elk hide swayed back and forth below his knees. “He told me that if I wore it, you could not fail to give me the Turner.”

  Coal Bear finally grinned. “The old man is a smart one.” He turned to gaze down at the sacred objects as the noise outside the lodge grew loud: men shouting farewells to families, women sobbing and children crying, dogs howling and ponies snorting. “Like Box Elder, I think I can trust you to protect the great power of Nimhoyoh. With your own eyes you have seen how its magic turned the soldiers’ bullets. There is no other reason why all of us escaped from the village with our lives when all around us the soldiers and their scouts darted here and there.”

  That bitterly cold dawn in the Big Freezing Moon, with the first gunshot and at the first shout of warning, Box Elder had clambered to his feet. For many winters already his vision had been clouded. As his apprentice, Medicine Bear was the old man’s eyes. Together they had scrambled to seize the most important object in Box Elder’s life before they had abandoned the shaman’s lodge and plunged into the madness of the retreating village. In that screaming, fleeing crowd they had somehow managed to find Coal Bear, with Esevone wrapped in its special bundle and tied upon his woman’s back.

  In the midst of that confusion and panic Coal Bear himself had been holding the Sacred Turner, both hands clutching the round cherrywood stick about the length of a man’s arm. Suspended from the stick was a crude rectangle of buffalo rawhide, the edges of which had first been perforated, then braided with a long strand of rawhide. From three sides of Nimhoyoh hung many long buffalo tails, tied to the rawhide shield much like scalp locks.

  “Give the Turner to Medicine Bear!” Box Elder had ordered that morning when the greatness of their people had turned to blood on the snow. “So that he might carry it above him on his pony to turn away the soldier bullets!”

  As instructed, the Medicine Hat Priest gave the heavy object to Box Elder’s young apprentice so Medicine Bear could ride behind them all on his skittish pony, holding aloft Nimhoyoh, waving the thick hide of the Sacred Turner and its long black buffalo tails back and forth to ward off the enemy’s bullets that kicked up snow and dirt “from the ground at their feet, knocking twigs and splinters from the trees all about them until they reached the open valley.

  Turning his sightless eyes to Medicine Bear, Box Elder had said in a strong voice, “The powerful medicine of Nimhoyoh you carry turns away all the bullets flying around us. Do not be afraid!”

  Nor would Medicine Bear be afraid now. He had seen for himself the power of Nimhoyoh—how it turned the soldier bullets to puffs of dust, nothing more than air.

  Now this night Coal Bear turned and handed the long cherrywood pole to the young apprentice and said, “Take this. And with it protect our warriors.”

  Medicine Bear rubbed his hands around the cherrywood handle, thinking quickly on the many generations who had held this sacred object of such great and awesome power. “Through its magic I will protect our warriors,” he vowed. “So that those warriors can protect all the Ohmeseheso”

  Through the cold fog of dawn Medicine Bear rode, far behind the first who had hurried from the village as the storm clouds rolled in to cover the late rising of the moon. It was not a hard thing to follow the trail of the others—the way was wide and deep through the snow.

  Just past the coming of day’s gray light he heard the first shots fired to the north. By the time Medicine Bear reached the hills west of the river, he looked down to watch the soldiers driving back the last of the warriors into the ravines across the Tongue from the knoll where the ve-ho-e stood around their wagon guns. With the warriors’ retreat that band of soldiers themselves withdrew across the river to rejoin the other white men.

  But just when Medicine Bear had decided to cross the river himself to join those warriors flooding to the tops of the bluffs, many
of the Tse-Tsehese fighting men came out of the coulees and brushy draws, drawn to the apprentice who held the Sacred Turner above his head.

  “See!” Beaver Dam cried to the others, waving them on. “Do not run!”

  “Nimhoyoh!” shouted Crow Necklace.

  More and more painted faces appeared from the brush in the ravines. A large circle of warriors crowded around Medicine Bear’s snorting pony.

  “The Turner will protect us!”

  “Attack the soldiers now!” Gypsum called.

  “No,” warned Brave Wolf, an older warrior. “What we must do is circle around behind the soldiers.”

  “Yes, go upriver,” High Wolf agreed. “Then cross and come in behind the soldiers to free our people from them.”

  “Seize their wagons!”

  “Steal their horses!”

  “No bullets can harm us when we fight under the power of Nimhoyoh!”

  By the time the warriors rounded up their ponies and set off through the deep snow, spreading out to follow Medicine Bear like the point of a great arrow, they emerged around the river bend to discover that soldiers already occupied the top of a low line of hills on the west bank of the river.

  “What are they doing?” Spotted Blackbird shrieked in dismay.

  Like the others, Medicine Bear stared into the distance, studying the actions of the white men.

  “Are they digging?” someone asked.

  “Like a fox at its burrow!” was the answer.

  Indeed, it appeared that the soldiers were hurriedly digging rifle pits for themselves atop that bluff—entrenching all the faster once the warriors came into view.

  An older man named Long Jaw placed a hand on Medicine Bear’s forearm. “This is Box Elder’s shirt.”

  “Yes,” he answered. “My Grandfather gave it to me to wear into battle this day.”

  Long Jaw smiled at the apprentice. “It is good, Medicine Bear. You must lead us into this fight. Hold Nimhoyoh high over our heads so no bullets will touch us! So we can root these soldiers out like voles from their burrows!”