That made Billy cut himself off abruptly, seeing how that last word affected the rest of them. A sad and bitter silence fell over this lodge with its canvas cover rolled up so the summer breezes could drift through as they sat around the empty firepit and took their supper in the age-old manner of Lakota men. Garnett’s belly did a flop, not knowing if he should apologize or wait for someone to strike up the conversation anew. He realized he was the youngest man there, and only half-Oglala at that. The rest were full-blood, men who had lived their entire lives on the open prairie.
In that strained, painful silence, he began, “I shouldn’t have said something so thoughtless—”
“It is no matter,” Crazy Horse interrupted him with barely a whisper, and a slight gesture of his hand. “We know where freedom is … and it lies in the north.”
“Not here, no,” Billy said, thankful and wagging his head, staring at the empty firepit, his heart made heavy to know he had brought up something so painful.
“Here we eat the white man’s spotted buffalo,” He Dog grumbled, gazing down at his rawhide platter.
“But his flour is good,” Crazy Horse replied, surprising many of them with the lightness in his voice. He looked around the firepit at the faces. “It does no man’s heart any good to dwell on what was. On what we once had. This young half-blood’s heart weighs heavy now because he feels he ruined the dinner I invited you all to attend while I asked him about important matters in the wasicu world.”
“But I am afraid I have ruined your dinner for you,” Garnett apologized.
“No,” the Horse said. “I have made up my mind no man can make my life miserable but me and me alone. No, young man,” he said, putting out his arm to lay a hand on Garnett’s shoulder, “we can remember the freedom we once had and become bitter. Or we can remember that freedom and choose not to be angry. Freedom was only what we once had, like something that we lost back upon our way to this place … something we now cannot find. I do myself and my people no good if I mourn its loss now.”
How undeniably sad that made Billy feel, wondering why his Oglala blood did not boil when he thought about what had been taken from these people, when he considered how the white man had surrounded and corralled his mother’s people, driving these free-roaming bands onto this tiny reservation by killing off enough of the buffalo and causing the children to starve. It stabbed him deep inside to sense how his white blood mingled with his Lakota spirit. He had grown up in both worlds, learning both languages, absorbing all that he could of both cultures—worlds apart that they were.
“Don’t take any of these old men so seriously,” Little Big Man said with a hint of a grin. “It is only that in our bones we have such a distrust for interpreters.”
“It’s dangerous, not knowing what the translator is saying about our words to the wasicu and his soldiers,” Big Road agreed.
“What do you think about Grabber?” He Dog asked the young half-blood.
He saw how all their eyes were trained on him as he considered his feelings about Frank Grouard. “He has never given me a reason to distrust him.”
“Just wait,” He Dog snorted, tearing off a chunk of fry bread between his teeth.
“The soldier chief, Three Stars, believes in him,” Billy asserted, scratching for some reason for him to support Crook’s favorite interpreter.
“Maybe that is so,” Crazy Horse said. “As for me, we trusted him once … but will never trust him again. Not as far as I could spit.”
“If the Grabber comes along as a translator, will that change your mind about going to Washington with Red Cloud?” Garnett asked.
“No. I will still go, because Three Stars and White Hat say I have to do that to get my own agency,” Crazy Horse declared. Then he looked around the firepit at the others. “Those of you here tonight realize that there are fewer and fewer of those I can trust among our own Oglala people.”
“The talk is strong behind your back,” Little Hawk declared.
“It makes me laugh,” Big Road said, “how every time the white men come to visit the agency, they don’t come to see Red Cloud and the old chiefs anymore.”
“No!” snorted Little Big Man. “They come to see Crazy Horse!”
He Dog nodded, saying, “Red Cloud has always been a jealous sort—given to rumors and intrigue, this old man. But what I fear most is that Red Cloud and those who whisper in his ears will one day believe their own poisonous words.”
“Wh-what words are those?” Billy asked.
The dark-skinned Shirt Wearer turned to Garnett and explained, “This preposterous story that claims the white man and his soldiers will make Crazy Horse the head chief over all the Oglala, even head chief over Spotted Tail’s Sicangu as well!”
Billy admitted, “I never heard any whispers of this—”
“Such talk isn’t true!” Crazy Horse protested. “More than once I’ve told the White Hat and the soldier chief I don’t want to be chief over anyone! Not over my uncle’s people. Not even to be a chief over Red Cloud’s people.… I am tired and do not want to carry that responsibility at all. No matter what I say to the soldiers, this bad talk has been given birth, and taken on a life of its own, so not even the truth will ever kill it now.”
Little Big Man said, “A man needs only look at Crazy Horse, to come to this village to see us—then he will understand that Crazy Horse is not wanting to be chief over Red Cloud and his people.”
“This is Red Cloud’s agency,” agreed Little Hawk. “Let him be chief here.”
“We want our own agency in the North Country,” Crazy Horse said quietly. “Let Red Cloud have to deal with White Hat and the wasicu agent here.”
After a long silence in the lodge, Garnett gazed at Crazy Horse. “Before you go east with Red Cloud, I want to teach you everything you want to know about the white man’s ways, to prepare you for your visit to the wasicus’ grandfather.”
“Perhaps in the time left before I go on this journey, you can teach me some more about that land far to the east, where you say the white man is like the blades of grass.”
Billy wagged his head, a shiver of regret shooting through him. “I don’t know much about that land to the east. I have never been there.”
“But you can teach me about the white man, yes?”
“I will teach you everything I know before you leave.”
Sipping at his coffee, Crazy Horse said, “I am thinking this will be a quiet summer, here on Red Cloud’s tiny island in the middle of a sea of white men. Later we will leave for our hunt White Hat has promised us.”
“Has the White Hat told you when you are going to hunt in the Powder River country?” Garnett asked.
“Soon,” Crazy Horse responded. “Soon … is all White Hat will say and right away he wants to speak of the trip east, or changes to talk of another subject.”
“So what do you want to do for the rest of this summer until the Northern People go on your buffalo hunt?” Billy asked.
“Me?” the war chief asked. “In these long days of summer, I don’t want to do anything but to eat, sleep too, and couple with Black Shawl—once she has healed and is stronger from her coughing sickness.”
“So what about our new agency?” He Dog reminded.
“Yes,” Crazy Horse said. “That’s why, more than anything, I want all my people to go on the buffalo hunt the white man has promised us. Men and women, children too. Not only so we can make meat for the coming winter … but so I can show Three Stars and his soldier chiefs the country where they have promised to put my agency.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Wicokannanji
THE MIDDLE MOON, 1877
BY TELEGRAPH
The Strike Sub-siding—Bummers Still Rioting.
More Indian Massacres in the Black Hills.
Indians Murdering Near Deadwood—A General War.
CHEYENNE, July 26.—A dispatch from Deadwood, dated yesterday, says: James Ryan, a resident of Spearfish City, just in, states Lieu
tenant Lemly, with his company of soldiers augmented by a dozen civilians, left this point Sunday morning with two days’ rations, and have not been heard from since … Two large bodies of Indians were seen yesterday on Red Water, about five miles from Spearfish … Intense excitement prevails throughout Deadwood. At short intervals since yesterday morning, horsemen have been arriving from the different towns and hay fields in this vicinity, bringing details of fresh murders and outrages by the savages, who seem to have broken loose from the agencies in large numbers and are infesting the country in all directions …
“Now that Crazy Horse has agreed to go east with you,” No Water grumbled to Red Cloud, “White Hat and the new agent—all those stupid wasicus—can’t seem to do enough for him!”
Red Cloud brooded. That was indeed a thorny problem. More and more every day he had taken to worrying about Crazy Horse, his popularity with Red Cloud’s Oglala people, his growing influence on the white men who at one time had feared and distrusted the Northern war chief.
Brushing some stray hairs out of the corner of his mouth, Woman’s Dress1 licked his lips and hissed, “No one should have ever trusted Crazy Horse.”
Red Cloud turned his head and peered at this man who would be a woman, a friend who had been tapped with a very special medicine. As a child he had been called Pretty One, because of the fine features of his face. In their youth, Pretty One had played with Crazy Horse and his younger brother, Little Hawk. Soon enough the boy had taken a different path from the rest: instead of playing the rough-and-tumble games of youth, he stayed behind in camp with the girls, concentrating on learning what it was that he must know to become most like a woman. And soon he was wearing the ear- and fingerrings, the bright vermilion paint, even the decorative dresses of an Oglala woman. At one point there was an argument among hotheaded youngsters, strong words were spoken, and Crazy Horse ended up smashing a clenched fist into Pretty One’s nose. Much later in life Red Cloud’s Bad Faces and the Hunkpatila parted ways—when Red Cloud realized the great might of the white man and brought his band to the agency, while the Crazy Horse people continued to fight for the North Country. Fiercely loyal to Red Cloud, Woman’s Dress came to this place on the White River with his chief.
“You only say that because he broke your nose as a child,” Red Cloud said, goading his friend into an unpleasant remembrance. “It’s natural that you’ve never liked him.”
Red Dog, never far from Red Cloud’s shadow, asked the chief, “Did you?”
“Did I what?” Red Cloud asked and brought the dipper of cool water to his lips.
“Ever like Crazy Horse?”
He drank, long and deep, refreshed on this hot summer afternoon. “Yes. I liked him, very much.” Wistfully he gazed into the distance, and finally said, “Things might have been different.”
“How?” No Water demanded, clearly upset.
Red Cloud looked at this man who had refused to let his woman go with Crazy Horse, even when she had run away from No Water, openly showing all the Oglala that she no longer wished to be No Water’s wife—fleeing with her husband’s worst enemy. Because No Water could not give her up, a war was almost started. A war that Crazy Horse made sure did not explode in their faces.
“He could have used his powers to help me,” Red Cloud admitted. “To help all the Oglala, instead of surrounding himself with the obstinate ones.”
“The stubborn men like himself,” No Water spat with a sneer.
That had been a most precarious time for the Oglala, when No Water went after his wife and nearly splintered the tribe for all time with his selfish act. But after he had healed, Crazy Horse hadn’t sought revenge for his terrible wounding. Instead, he went off by himself, eventually gathering around him more and more of those who were of like mind, rather than openly, publicly breaking with Red Cloud. For that Red Cloud knew he would always be grateful. But for that same act of kindness Red Cloud would always be resentful too. By not forcing a show of power at that moment in their people’s history, Crazy Horse had forever denied Red Cloud the supreme seat of Oglala power. In his saving the tribe for Red Cloud, Crazy Horse had assured that he would one day rise to a prominence that would threaten his former chief and mentor.
For his not destroying the Oglala with a vendetta Red Cloud would always be grateful and love Crazy Horse. For what he came to do by retreating into the Powder River country and surrounding himself with like-minded lovers of freedom who refused to believe in the might of the white man … Red Cloud would always begrudge and hate Crazy Horse.
And for now, that hate was heating to a boil.
He himself had been far to the east, talking with the white man’s grandfather and all his little uncles too, seeing with his own eyes the might and far-reaching ingenuity of the wasicus. For the longest time now, Red Cloud had believed that all Crazy Horse had to do was go east and he would be made a believer too. Such was a conviction that had allowed Red Cloud to be used by White Hat simply to bring in Crazy Horse. Last year, in Canapekasna Wi, the Moon When Leaves Turn Brown, Three Stars had become terrified that Red Cloud’s Oglala would escape from their reservation and break for the north to join the wild Northern People. The soldier chief had ordered his soldiers to surround Red Cloud’s camps, to strip the Oglala of all their horses and confiscate their guns. Then Three Stars even raised Spotted Tail over Red Cloud, making him chief of both agencies.2
Biding his time in shame and humiliation, Red Cloud had waited through a long winter for Three Stars to reinstate him as chief at his own agency. He had never made any trouble. He had not run away and gone to war like the others. He had not wiped out all those soldiers the way Crazy Horse had. So time and again through the long, agonizing seasons of that war in the North Country, Red Cloud had wondered why it was taking Three Stars and the wasicu leaders so long to lift him up before his own people again, to make him a powerful chief once more—the man who had the say of when and where and how the rations were distributed to the Oglala. For a people who did not roam nor hunt, that was an immense power for one man to wield.
As he had waited out the winter, word drifted in that the Bear Coat was attempting to lure the Hunkpatila north to the mouth of the Tongue River. About the same time, Three Stars sent out Spotted Tail and a mighty escort to bring in his sister’s son, Crazy Horse. Not to be outdone, the upstart little soldier chief they called White Hat had convinced Red Cloud that the one and only way he could ever get the attention of Three Stars and the wasicu rulers was himself to be the man who brought in Crazy Horse for White Hat.
Little did it matter to Red Cloud at the time that White Hat would wreath himself in unimaginable glory for having brought Crazy Horse to surrender at his agency near Camp Robinson. It simply made sense that this was what he had to do to get himself reinstated. Red Cloud had gone north to see that old friend he hadn’t talked with in many a summer—only to discover that Crazy Horse was already bringing his people in … but had decided on Spotted Tail’s reservation. Red Cloud convinced him that the Hunkpatila belonged with the rest of the Oglala. They were family, of the same blood.
But when Crazy Horse had come in to surrender, it was not as a prisoner, and Red Cloud was hardly treated as a hero for his success! Instead, he had been shunted aside while all the attention and light was turned on the Strange Man from the North.
Under these circumstances, there was little for Red Cloud’s friends to do but wait and keep their ears open. He kept his spies out among the people in all the camps, even among Spotted Tail’s Sicangu people over on Beaver Creek too. Some would watch and listen around the army’s Soldier Camp, hoping to hear whispers of talk as to when Three Stars would again raise Red Cloud.
But instead the soldier chiefs and wasicu leaders wanted so badly for Crazy Horse to go east with Red Cloud and the other headmen that the white men courted and played up to the Northern war chief, anything to win him over to their campaign to take him east to see the white man’s grandfather. And lately, rumors had it that when
Crazy Horse returned to the White River because he had been so powerful and fought against the army for so long he would be made chief over all the Oglala! Some said he would even be raised over his uncle’s people at the Spotted Tail Agency too!
Flies buzzed annoyingly around their faces in the heat. Red Cloud gently wagged the horsetail swatter he gripped in his left hand as he brooded.
He had done everything White Hat asked of him in the spring. But now he and the new agent were both going to betray Red Cloud and install Crazy Horse above him! Chief over all these people, with all that power stripped from Red Cloud’s hands.
“Can we lure White Hat away from the others some day,” Red Dog suggested, “get him alone?.… For he is easy to convince when you flatter him.”
“Yes,” Woman’s Dress said, his face lighting up with conspiratorial glee, “we could kill him and blame it on Crazy Horse—”
“No,” Red Cloud interrupted gruffly. “The wasicu are not like the Lakota. We can’t kill one man and be done with it. Even if we get rid of White Hat, the white man will send another to take his place … and besides, there are more men than just White Hat who are talking now of making Crazy Horse chief over us all. The murder of one man won’t do.”
“Then how?” asked Woman’s Dress, smoothing the front of his long calico skirt he wore over blue wool leggings trimmed with silver buttons attached along the fringe at the outside seam. “Perhaps we should kill Crazy Horse.”
“No, that will not do,” Red Cloud said, shaking his head. “There would be too many questions, too many problems raised for us if we killed Crazy Horse. Murder will not do.”
Standing Bear spoke up for the first time, “Something must be done about Crazy Horse soon, because the White Hat and Three Stars are ready to give his people a long hunt into the buffalo country—”
Turn the Stars Upside Down: The Last Days and Tragic Death of Crazy Horse Page 15