by John Benteen
The gun went off.
When that happened, Sundance launched himself in a sidelong dive. A lot of other things happened, too, all at once, blurred impressions as he rolled.
He saw Yellow Bird bend, scoop up a handful of dust, fling it into the strong North wind and heard the shaman’s cry. “Now! For the Wanekia, the Savior!” At the same moment, he saw Sam Walking Calf stand up, level a rifle whipped from beneath his blanket, line it and fire. The soldier who had been helping Cochrane hurtled over backwards, face a wash of blood. The other men on the camp’s perimeter, five, six of them, Thunderbird riders all, not Minniconjou, but Pawnee, Cheyenne, Blackfoot, Crow, came up, lined their guns and pulled the triggers.
That, and Cochrane shouting, and Joe Bob Hoffman yelling something, with both guns out, and he was pumping slugs at the rolling Sundance, and they missed, and then Sundance was behind a lodge. He sprang to his feet, and his voice rang out, trumpeting, above the tremendous roar of gunfire as the soldiers all around the camp began to shoot. “Hoka hey! Eagle!”
Then he hit the ground again, as the very earth seemed to shake with the roar of guns. Bodies dodged in front of him, shielding him, and he was on his feet, and he screamed that command again, and he heard a shrill, answering neigh from across the camp. Hoffman and Fain were caught up in the moil of soldiers and Indians, and Sundance ran, to meet the big Appaloosa stud pounding toward him. As he crossed the open space, people surging all around him, he saw a woman shriek something and ram a knife home in a soldier’s belly. Another soldier slammed her in the face with a rifle butt and she dropped limply. A child screamed something and ran to her, fell across her body, a boy not six years old. The soldier’s rifle butt rose and fell again, crushing down, and the boy lay still. Sundance cursed, and then the stallion was there, the reins ripped from Blake’s hands trailing. He caught them up, but a gun roared behind him and the horse reared and screamed and pawed and fell heavily on its side, dead before it hit the ground, and Sundance cursed and vaulted over its body, as another bullet whined by his ear. He lay there for an instant, shielded by the stallion’s corpse, his hands scrabbling at the panniers. He managed to get them loose, rip them free. Then he looked up; a corporal was leaping over Eagle’s body, carbine aimed at him. Sundance rolled, seized the gun barrel, jerked. The corporal flew across the ground, impelled by his own momentum and Sundance’s muscle, and Sundance had his single-shot carbine in his hand. He reversed it and as the soldier tried to rise pulled the trigger, and the man in blue fell back. Sundance threw the empty Springfield away and dug into the panniers. When his hands came out this time, they had the bow and quiver. He lay flat behind the dead horse, as an Indian and cavalry man locked in combat fell across its neck. The trooper rammed his knife deep into the Minniconjou’s belly before the brave’s war ax could come down, and then rolled free, sprang up and disappeared. Sundance shoved the bow between his knees, deftly looped its string of buffalo sinew into place.
His hand slid back into the pannier. He got out the Ghost Shirt, white, and it would make an excellent target, he knew. He no longer cared. He jerked it on over the wolf skin jacket, and for that moment, as he donned it, hands upraised, he was vulnerable, but nothing touched him. Then it was fully on and he pulled the Thunderbird shield from the other pannier and put it on his left arm. He slung the quiver, whipped two arrows from it, notched one, jumped to his feet—
He saw Big Foot lifting himself from his pallet in the middle of the turmoil. “Wait, my people—” And then a bullet hit him in the head, and he fell back, vanished in the melee, fogged now by drifting powder smoke. At that instant, as Sundance came erect, the world exploded.
There were screams and shouts and shrieks not only in Sioux, but in English as a great blossom of flame and smoke erupted in the center of the battle with a roar like Judgment Day. Sundance froze, as another huge explosion blew a teepee into shreds, flinging bits of body with it. The Hotchkiss guns! He whirled, stared toward the knoll. The fools up there were lobbing shells blindly into the camp, killing Indians and their own men alike.
The Indian camp had turned into a hell. Cannon shell after shell exploded, lead crossed and crisscrossed in a deadly whining pattern. Men fought hand to hand, with knives and guns and axes and died, often under the fire of their own side.
But within Sundance, there was a great exultancy. He wore his Ghost Shirt and now he knew who he was, and there was no more walking of the tightrope. The bow felt good, right, in his hands, and his yellow hair gleamed and shimmered as he threw back his head and a Cheyenne war whoop came ululating from his throat. “Hoka hey, Thunderbird!” he screamed. “It’s a good day to die!”
Lead was whining all around him now, but none touched him. He felt invulnerable, immortal, as he leaped over Eagle’s body, ran into the fight. Then he halted, staring. Sergeant Blake swung toward him, raised his gun. “Sundance!” Blake roared, eyes widening. “Jim, don’t—” But even as he yelled that, he lined his Colt, thumbed back the hammer, the soldier in him ready to blast a friend to eternity, and there was nothing for it, and Sundance cursed and let loose the arrow.
It caught Blake in the chest. His gun fired straight up as he fell back, and Sundance said thickly, in English, “God damn it—” and he spun away, nocking another arrow by sheer instinct. He did not want to kill soldiers. What he wanted was Fain, Fain and Hoffman. Indians had died, yes; and their death warrants were signed and sealed...
But at that moment another soldier plunged from a teepee, and by one arm, he dragged a woman whose other arm clamped a two-year old child to her chest. The soldier’s face was contorted in battle madness; even as Sundance watched, he drew his pistol, fired it. The bullet went clean through the child’s frail body into the mother. Sundance loosed the arrow. It caught the trooper beneath the arm and drove through him to the feathers and he fell, and Sundance reached for more shafts from the quiver.
“Fain!” he bawled. “Hoffman! Goddamn you, where—” He dodged around a knot of struggling troopers and Indians, then brought up short as a blue-clad body loomed before him. He drew the arrow to its point, and then he froze, staring into Cochrane’s baby face.
Cochrane’s eyes were wide, his mouth trembling, his cheeks drained of all color. But that was not why Sundance did not loose the arrow. He held it because Cochrane had clamped to him with both arms an Indian boy not more than three years old, screaming in fright and with blood running from a bullet slice on his naked shoulder.
“Sundance!” Cochrane cried. With both hands full, he held no weapon. “Sundance, don’t shoot! I didn’t know it would be like this!”
“You wanted your war—”
“Not like this—” A Hotchkiss round went off nearby, drowning his voice, its concussion throwing him sidewise. He bent over the crying child protectively. “Jesus, Sundance,” he shrieked, “not like this, I didn’t understand—” Another cannon round exploded, closer this time. Cochrane whirled, still clutching the child. He ran forward, Sundance forgotten, in the direction of the knoll. “Stop!” he shrieked. “Stop, damn you! Don’t you know what you’re doing? Don’t you—?”
He ran full into the next round. His body and that of the child vanished in the thunderous roaring plume of dead white smoke that boiled up from point of impact. Then the smoke drifted away. Sundance stared at the tattered blue clad thing that had once been Tom Cochrane, and neither mind nor voice found words. But beneath Cochrane’s body, the child, shielded, cried out lustily. And Sundance left it there, in the shelter of Cochrane’s corpse, which offered it protection he could not give it.
Three minutes, four, no more than that had passed since Eagle had gone down, and now the character of the battle had already changed. The Indians were beaten, no doubt of that; and now they fled, as behind them a bugle blew the staccato notes of Charge! The mounted troop surged forward, and men on foot, and suddenly the land behind and beyond the camp was full of fleeing Sioux.
Sundance ran after them, still seeking Hoffman, Hoff
man and Fain. He leaped over a lean body torn by a dozen slugs: Yellow Bird. He leaped over the bodies of women, of children, and, worse than the dead, the wounded, the crying men, the screaming babies, and the men with arms or legs blown off or bullets in their entrails, as many in bloodstained blue as in blankets or buffalo robes. He ran, hunched low, the arrow still nocked, toward the mouth of a deep, narrow gully that debouched up beyond the camp. Behind him, the soldiers rolled forward like a blue wave, shooting at anything that moved, regardless of age or sex, slaughtering even the dogs and horses of the camp. He heard a shrill cry: “Remember Little Big Horn!”
Then, except for one more sprawled body, he was in the clear. He started to leap over that, then halted, seeing the little bells at its ankles, the big Sioux war bonnet on its head. He knew that bonnet, and—He turned the corpse over, stared down into the sightless eyes of Sam Walking Calf. Maybe it had only been agony, maybe reflex, but something had drawn the Minniconjou Sioux’s mouth up into a grin.
Sundance swallowed hot, green bile, ran on. Ahead of him, a tide of women and children sought shelter in the gully. His head cleared a little of the steam of battle. For the moment, Fain and Hoffman made no difference. If he could plug the gully’s mouth, fight a delaying action ...
A woman ran past him, panting, baby in her arms, as he pressed back against the gully wall. She seemed not even to have noticed that a slug had blown the child’s head in two. Back in the village, teepees were burning with yellow, waxy flames. A blue wave raced forward between them.
Then Sundance’s eyes narrowed. In the forefront of that wave were two figures not clad in blue, and one of them had a blotch of white in the middle of its face. The other, smaller, legged forward awkwardly, used to riding, not running, pumping a Winchester as fast as he could work the lever.
Sundance sucked in a long breath. Fain. First of all, Martin Fain ... He raised the bow, held it steady, pulled the arrow back until his thumb touched his sharp cheekbone. He sighted down the shaft’s length, over the sharp head of flint, which he had chipped himself. He held that breath he’d drawn, and now Fain was ten yards closer. Sundance loosed the arrow.
Even before it hit, he had drawn another one and fitted it on the string, but he never took his eyes from Fain. He saw how the man walked full into the shaft, and how, propelled by all the strength of Sundance’s arm, the arrow went in through the left breast and out the other side and how Fain’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open, and suddenly gushed blood, and how he took two steps more and then dropped his gun and fell forward on his face.
And Sundance let the next arrow go, aimed at Hoffman, but as Fain went down, Hoffman sidestepped and the shaft went wide. But what had happened checked the troopers, and behind Sundance, the women and children were making the shelter of a line of brush. He drew another shaft.
For this was the first thing he’d learned as a Cheyenne, and he could shoot arrows as fast as he could fire a gun, and as Godfrey’s voice rang out: “Damn it, move!” he filled the air with shafts. Like-angry wasps they rushed toward the troopers and found their marks and drove the blue clad line back, and every arrow bought time for the fleeing women and their children behind him in the gully.
And then, crouching low in the gully, he whipped back his hand to the quiver and it closed over a single shaft, the last arrow. Almost as if they sensed it, but maybe because the Minniconjou fire from the gully walls had slackened, the soldiers surged forward again, as Sundance nocked the last arrow to the bow.
And so, buying that last instant of time, he stood erect and blocked the mouth of the gully, arrow drawn, shield on his left arm, its scalps dangling, confronting all those troopers.
One arrow, one man; and yet something about him made them halt. That was what he thought momentarily; then he heard the distant hoof beats and the shouts and knew they had heard them too. Instinctively, he knew the difference between the sound of shod and unshod hooves, and he knew, too, that what he was hearing was the thunder of many Indian ponies.
But he dared not look around to see what was happening. For now, seventy yards away, a towering figure had moved out in front of all those soldiers. It wore a Texas sombrero and a bandage made a white blob over its nose. “Sundance!” roared Joe Bob Hoffman.
Sundance stood up straight. Hoffman had two pistols, one in either hand, but he was out of range.
“Goddamn you!” Hoffman yelled. “You’ve killed Mr. Fain! There’s a mess of Indians behind you on that ridge line—”
That was when Sundance risked turning to look. On the hill behind him, he saw the silhouettes of fifty Indians, their ponies checked and rifles aimed. His heart kicked. The scattered groups and villages around the battlefield at Wounded Knee had heard the shooting and had ridden in. And there would be more any minute—
Then a trumpet sounded Recall Almost as if it had been a signal, the sky darkened. A few snowflakes swirled across Sundance’s vision. Behind him, and also to the south, he heard more hoof-beats, knew more Indians were coming. The bugle call sounded once more. The soldiers faded back.
But Hoffman didn’t. He stood there, not quite a hundred yards away, guns in hand.
“Sundance!” he roared again. “Damn you—” Then he ran forward.
Sundance waited. He could have put an arrow into Hoffman before the man took his first step, but he did not. Because he wanted to be sure. Fain was dead, and no matter what happened to him, Hoffman must die, too. And so he would wait. He would wait until he was absolutely certain.
The soldiers were a distant blue line now, and Hoffman was alone. Snowflakes swirled between his big form and Sundance, the first harbingers of a blizzard. In the village, teepees burned. Everything was, all at once, curiously silent; the cannons had stopped firing. Only wounded cried out, in the burning village, and children.
Hoffman came on, through a light drifting veil of white. The bandage on his nose was like a bigger snow-flake. Sixty yards, now, fifty-five, fifty. Sundance, in the gully’s mouth, felt his own legs moving under him. Without willing it, he was going to meet Hoffman. Two steps, three, the arrow still nocked ...
A hawk rose out of the scant brush along the creek called Wounded Knee, giving a mewing cry ...
Forty yards now, and the snow was drifting more heavily. Thirty-five, and now it was like being in a gunfight. Hoffman held his Colts lined, but Sundance did not watch them. He could see Hoffman’s lambent eyes, and that was what he watched.
And at twenty-five yards they changed; and Hoffman halted, and his right hand gun roared; the shield on Sundance’s arm twitched, and Sundance stepped back a pace. Hoffman raised the gun again, eyes wide, staring, unable to comprehend he’d missed. “Why, hell—” he yelled.
“The Ghost Shirt!” Sundance yelled back, and Hoffman fired again, even as Sundance cried out, “It makes me bullet proof!” The shield jumped once more. Hoffman stepped back a pace, and Sundance stepped forward. “You see, Hoffman!” he shouted. “You can’t kill me! I’m too much Indian!” And now only fifteen yards divided them, and Hoffman’s mouth worked beneath the bandage, and he raised the right hand gun and fired again, but this time there was only a dry click; he jerked up the left and brought it into line, and Sundance laughed and loosed the arrow.
Hoffman’s left hand gun went off straight down as the shaft slammed through his barrel chest. The flint point cut his heart in two, and he must have been dead before he hit the ground.
Sundance stood there, breathing hard, not yet feeling pain. But it would come soon, he knew; he had taken two wounds in his chest. Maybe they would even kill him, but not before—
He began to sing. He sang his death song as he walked through the whipping snow. Everything was unreal now except for the cry of a child in grief or pain in the distance. The empty quiver bounced on his back. Hoffman lay face down, snowflakes beginning to cover the red on the back of his shirt where the arrowhead was upthrust.
Sundance stood over him. Then, weakly, aware of all the Indians on the sur
rounding hills, he held the bow up high. He wanted them to see it. He wanted them to see him count coup on Hoffman. He felt warm blood trickling down his chest, under the Ghost Shirt that should have made him bulletproof. He touched Hoffman with the bow.
The coup was counted. Sundance was very tired. He sat down beside Hoffman’s body. All around him, now, the hills were ringed with mounted Indians and the cavalry was firing a few shots for effect as it struck its tents. Then even that sporadic gunfire faded. He sat there by Hoffman’s body and let the snow fall on him. He thought of Walking Calf. “Maybe Indian enough,” he said aloud. And then he thought of all the others he had known: Red Cloud, Cochise, Roman Nose, Crazy Horse, Geronimo, Quanah Parker, Satank, Captain Jack ... Their names ran through his mind in a crazy litany. He was bleeding, but he didn’t know what to do about it.
And Big Foot, he thought; and Kicking Bear and Little Chief; Dull Knife and Little Wolf; American Horse and Plenty Coups ... Washakie and Victorio ... Thunder-Rolling-in-the-Mountains, or in Nez Percé, Heinmot Tooyalaket, whom the whites called Chief Joseph ... Seattle of the Suquamish, and Buffalo Horn of the Bannocks ... Their names drummed through his head with the rhythm of his pulsing heart...
And, he thought, all the others ... He looked up at the snow that drifted down upon him. The other blood ... the generals ... McKenzie, Miles, Crook, and the lesser ones, Carrington, Benteen, Reno ... And, of course, over them all, dominating the history of the West and of the Indians like a black shadow, the man who had opened the Black Hills to settlement and gone to his death at the Greasy Grass and had never known what he was doing or triggering off or how many lives he had cost; Custer, George Armstrong Custer ...
Sundance thought, Christ, I’m tired. He lay down. Hoffman had fired twice, and Hoffman hadn’t missed. Both bullets had gone through the shield and into his heart. Sundance closed his eyes. He felt the light touch, a kind of dance, of snowflakes on his face. Once more he heard an Indian child cry out. Then he drifted slowly into darkness. But, he thought, before thoughts faded, Indian enough.