Turn the Stars Upside Down: The Last Days and Tragic Death of Crazy Horse

by Terry C. Johnston

  Crazy Horse’s eyes touched the young interpreter. “Billy, I ask you not to give White Hat my Lakota words I am about to say, because I want to talk to these men as my friends and relations. Will you hold your tongue until I am done, when I say that you can make wasicu words for him?”

  Garnett swallowed and nodded once there beside the White Hat.

  “Good,” he said, laying a hand on He Dog’s knee a moment before he continued. “The wasicu are a strange people, aren’t they? Their black robes and holy men tell us our people are evil because a Lakota man can have more than one wife … but here sits the White Hat, speaking for all the wasicu chiefs above him, offering me a second wife because I think he believes it will make me happy.”

  “Won’t it make you happy, old friend?” asked Jumping Shield in a grave voice.

  “She is very pretty,” Crazy Horse admitted. “And very young too.”

  “Black Shawl needs help,” Looking Horse observed. “And Worm has given his approval too.”

  Crazy Horse looked at his uncle, Little Hawk. “Yes, my father must have agreed, or Little Hawk would not be here to smoke and talk, trying his best to convince me to take this young woman into my lodge.”

  By this time White Hat was whispering nervously to Billy Garnett, in all likelihood demanding to know why the half-blood wasn’t interpreting while the Lakotas talked one to another.

  “Tell him,” Crazy Horse spoke up, his voice louder than it had been for some time, “that you were only making sure of the words we have spoken before you translated. Say that I trust my friends coming to me about this question. If he had come to me alone, I would have suspected the wasicu wanted something of me. But since my good friends are here, and my uncle too, then I trust there is nothing underhanded in you asking me to take the trader’s daughter as my second wife.”

  Garnett translated the White Hat’s words, “‘When he came to me, the trader wanted only to ask some way to honor Crazy Horse. That is why he offered his prettiest daughter to you, why I came to your friends to ask them how you would accept this gift of the woman.’”

  Looking at the war chief, He Dog reminded him of Lakota etiquette: “My friend, you cannot insult a man who wishes to give you a gift.”

  Then Young Man Afraid stated, “Black Shawl will be glad for the help in her lodge.”

  “When will this happen?” Crazy Horse finally asked.

  “Tomorrow,” He Dog answered. “Unless you want to wait.”

  Crazy Horse looked at the White Hat for a moment, and eventually answered with his eyes locked on the white man’s. “No. There is no reason for me to wait.” He sighed. “Thank you, my friends, for this honor you have given me. I accept the trader’s daughter as my second wife.”

  “It is done,” He Dog said with a smile.

  And as soon as the half-blood translated Crazy Horse’s agreement to take Helen Laravie as his wife, the White Hat slapped both hands down on his thighs and roared in glee, “It is done!”

  * * *

  He could barely catch his breath as the young woman rocked slower and slower atop him, his manhood impaled within the trader’s daughter.

  No, she is no longer Long Joe Laravie’s daughter, Crazy Horse thought to himself, sensing the sweat leaking from every place on his skin where flesh was pressed against flesh. Now she is my wife.

  For now he called her Nellie, which she explained was not the name given her as a newborn. That was Helen. So that first night she had come to stay in their lodge, Crazy Horse had explained that among the Lakota, children began life with one name, later they were given another. Not only full-blood men but women too. So it was not unusual, he had told Nellie in the presence of Black Shawl, for her to have been born with one name, and to have another now that she had become an adult.

  Adult. Nellie was no more than seventeen winters old. Half his age. Her body still taut and new, never having known the pleasures of bonding with a man until she had come to find him by the river this third night of their marriage.

  Pressing her hips against him there in the twilight, half-hidden by the tall willow and rustling branches of the overhanging trees, Nellie had laid her face into the hollow of his neck and told him how she had waited two nights already for him to make her his wife in fact, and not just in promise.

  “I cannot come to your blanket in Black Shawl’s lodge,” he had replied, feeling how stirred his manhood became as she molded herself into him, slowly moving as if by some ancient force.

  “That’s why I came to find you here,” Nellie had told him, reaching down to pull up the bottom of his loose cotton trader’s shirt, running her eager hands over his cool flesh.

  “The horses.” He had tried to explain that he needed to tie the ponies in the nearby trees, those three animals he had taken down to the riverbank for water before returning them to stake them near the lodge.

  “They won’t wander far,” she had whispered against his mouth. “And if they do, everyone knows the horses of Crazy Horse anyway.”

  By that time one of her hands had played itself down his belly and slithered its way inside the front of his breech-clout. Nellie released a muffled squeal.

  “So this is what becomes of a man’s member when he is aroused enough to mount his woman!”

  As soon as she wrapped her fingers around his throbbing manhood, Crazy Horse’s hands grew hungry—one of them encapsulating a small, hard breast, the other quickly yanking up the bottom of her trader’s cloth dress, feeling her bare hip, brushing across the top of her bare thigh, and then finding her heated moistness ready for his touch.

  They had both groaned as he caressed her there, legs quivering, while Nellie’s hand squeezed and squeezed until he thought he would be mad. No longer did the three horses matter.

  Not as he cupped both of her buttocks in his hands, lifted her slightly, and tipped her onto the grass below them. Quickly she had ripped aside his breechclout, her fingers finding him again, and sought to guide him where he was already aiming his heated eagerness. They spent themselves all too quickly, then lay together, still as the stars, while the night darkened and the insects began to sing from the branches around them.

  She had pulled his shirt from his arms sometime later, lightly massaging his chest as he explained why he bore no scars from the sun-gazing dance like many other Lakota men.

  “You are man enough that you don’t need to prove yourself to anyone,” she had cooed to him as her slim fingers once more sought him out.

  But when he had attempted to roll her aside so he could mount her again, Nellie instead pushed him back and threw a leg over his hip. Grabbing his manhood, the young woman had settled it within her with a groan, then began rocking slowly atop him as Crazy Horse’s hands found both of her breasts. He kneaded them fiercely as she pulled up the bottom of her dress, yanking it off her arms and over her head to straddle him completely naked, but for the ankle-high moccasins strapped around her feet.

  That time it had lasted exquisitely long.

  “Does Black Shawl make you feel the way I make you feel?”

  For a moment he studied her face. “Sad things have happened in our lives. When we were married, she was not as young as you—”

  “So I am better than Black Shawl with you?” she prodded, both of her hands outspread on his bare chest, sliding across his damp skin.

  “We have not been together for some time,” he explained, gazing up at her. “She has been so sick.”

  “That is the only reason you were so hungry for me?” Nellie begged. “Or … was it only me that made you so ready to mount me?”

  “You,” he admitted. “I can remember how your eyes told me long ago that it would be just like this.”

  “It will always be like this between us too,” she whispered, reaching down to take his hands off her sweaty hips, placing them on her breasts, pressing hard and closing her eyes as her head rocked back slightly.

  “Yes,” he vowed. “You can remain my second wife for as long as we
both shall live.”

  That’s when she opened her eyes and brought her face down closer to his. “Husband, I want you to live a long, long time.”

  “Yes,” he said, knowing his flesh was sated and limp, but feeling inside the stirrings of a renewal of desire for this woman who—if he were not careful—might just consume all of his flesh.

  Her long, lustrous hair hung down so that the fragrant ends almost brushed his face when she said, “To live a long, long time with me, Crazy Horse … you must stay safe.”

  He smiled up at her in the starlight. “I am safe. There is no more fighting. And if we ever break free for the old hunting ground, I will take you with us. No white man’s bullet will ever kill me.”

  “I know. My father told me of your vision,” she said, inching his hands down from her small breasts to place them on the flat of her adolescent belly. “But that does not mean a white man cannot make a prisoner of you.”

  “A p-prisoner?”

  “Yes, when you go east with Red Cloud and the others,” she whined in a small, childlike voice.

  He chuckled softly. “No wasicu will ever make a prisoner of me. This agency is already as much a prison as they will ever find that will hold me. And perhaps not even this—”

  “You cannot go,” she said with fiery urgency.

  “Go?”

  “To see the white man’s grandfather,” she whimpered. “If you go away from here, I know they will put the iron ropes on you and never let you return to me!”

  She fell against him, nestling her long black hair against his cheek as she sobbed atop him, her whole body quaking. “Don’t let them take you from me!”

  “It is only a journey to make the wasicus and White Hat happy,” he argued. “Three Stars will give us our own agency when I return. Then you can live with me in the country of the Powder R—”

  Surprising him, she sat upright in an instant. “No—they will never give you your agency.”

  Feeling horror and disbelief, he demanded, “Why would you ever make up such a story?”

  “I know the truth,” she confided. “I hear the white men talking. You know I understand their language. When they don’t know I am listening, I hear a little bit of a story here, a little bit more over there.”

  Studying her face for some sign that she had betrayed herself in this joke, Crazy Horse asked, “W-what are you saying?”

  Tears came to her eyes as she leaned over his face, hot drops spilling on his cheeks like summer rain. “There are plans to keep you from ever coming back again!”

  “But the promises—”

  “How many promises must they break before you believe that the wasicus plan to keep you a prisoner far from here?” she pleaded. “Far from me and the country you will never see again?”

  “This is hard for me to believe.”

  “Don’t you see, husband?” she said, taking his face between her small hands. “The white man and his soldiers are too scared to move the agencies while the terrible Crazy Horse is still around. So they plan to start you on your way east … then put you in a prison where you can’t raise a hand to help your people!”

  For a long time he stared at her face, not wanting to believe that everything he recently had come to believe was true had in reality been constructed of lies from the beginning. What they had promised to persuade him to bring his people in … what they had sworn to in convincing him to take the journey east with Red Cloud. Surely she must know. Nellie spoke the white man’s tongue. She was the healer’s translator now. The young woman moved in circles where she would hear the wasicus and the soldiers talk.

  She was his now, so she was showing him her allegiance and loyalty. No longer only a half-blood trader’s daughter … Nellie was the wife of a Hunkpatila war chief. Second wife to the renowned Crazy Horse.

  He felt her begin to grind her buttocks atop his thighs again in that dance that had driven him to madness.

  “I feel how your manhood grows beneath me again,” Nellie whispered as she rocked forward onto her knees, found him with her fingers, and massaged him into instant readiness.

  Then settled atop him again as his breath caught high in his throat.

  “Promise me, husband,” she whispered as she bent over him, her hair in his eyes, her mouth almost brushing his. “Promise me you will tell them you have changed your mind.”

  “Changed?” he murmured, his eyes closed below hers.

  “Tell the wasicu agent that you won’t go east with Red Cloud.”

  “No,” he repeated in a hoarse whisper. “I won’t go.”

  “You must tell the White Hat too,” she said as her hips began to rock with more fervent heat, “tell him you are not going to see the white man’s grandfather until they have given you your agency first.”

  “Just as … I told them … when I came here,” he said between gritted teeth, seizing the tops of her arms as he drove himself upward, thrusting into her fiercely again and again in time with her rhythm.

  “But don’t ever tell them it is because you want to stay here with me,” she whimpered as she bent over him, her face low, long, fragrant hair spread across his face, as she took his ear between her teeth. “So we can be together like this every night.”

  Crazy Horse opened his eyes when he felt he was beginning to lose himself, staring right into the heavens through that opening in the trees overhead, saw the sky spinning as the stars became a blur.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Wasutun Wi

  MOON WHEN ALL THINGS RIPEN, 1877

  BY TELEGRAPH

  ILLINOIS.

  Remains of General Custer at Chicago—Other News Items.

  CHICAGO, July 31.—The remains of General Custer arrived here to-day from Fort Lincoln, and were forwarded at 5:15 P.M. by the Michigan Southern railroad, to West Point, where they will be interred in the receiving vault until the funeral in October. The remains of Colonel Cooke, Lieutenant Reilly, and Dr. DeWolf arrived on the same train …

  Maybe he was wrong about these important things.

  Crazy Horse sat beside the White Earth River and brooded on how life had changed for him ever since he had decided he would come in to the agency.

  For so long he had resisted every threat or entreaty from the soldiers, fighting on and on till it seemed there was little left to fight for. Their old hunting grounds were being surrounded, invaded, stripped away year by year. And even the buffalo were all but gone. Perhaps the great black beasts would come back one day, stronger than ever, blanketing the prairies so the Hunkpatila could once again grow strong.

  But for now … he had changed his mind about keeping up the fight, and for now he had brought his people here to this prison on the White Earth River.

  Once he had come here, the wasicus made his ears hurt, they talked so long and loud of how they wanted him to go east with Red Cloud’s delegation, there to see all the marvelous things the white man had made of his world. For the longest time he had resisted every plea, deciding that this was where he had come, and this is where he should stay. After all, he had no desire to see that world east of the Muddy Water River. Perhaps it was true that the wasicu had made something of that country. Still, Crazy Horse knew in his marrow that this was the country that the Great Mystery had made for the Lakota. Why would a man ever decide to live where other men made their world something artificial, when he could live in a country where the Creator Himself had carved out the hills and valleys, rivers and streams, the animals and the sky too, all of it for His children?

  So Crazy Horse had refused the invitations, asking only that he be given what had been promised when he agreed he would bring in his people to Red Cloud’s agency … refused until the spirits on the mountaintop convinced him that he could do well for his people if he used this power the wasicus and the soldiers were convinced he possessed. That was amusing, he thought, to consider how his old enemies gave him so much more prestige and influence than he had ever possessed as a poor man of the Lakota. Crazy Horse a
leader of great power? No, only a simple man with no title and no responsibilities, a warrior at best.

  So was it that he had made a mistake about the young woman? Could he have been wrong to let the others convince him to take her into his lodge? Her flesh was soft and smooth, and she brought him to the heights of such pleasure he had not experienced since his few days spent in the arms of Black Buffalo Woman …

  So how could he have refused the honor of her being offered to him by his friends? That would have been an insult. One did not turn down a gift from friends. Yet … until she had come into his lodge, and laid in his arms, Crazy Horse was decided he could do best for his people by going east—doing what the wasicus asked of him so that those wasicus would be forced to do what they had promised him.

  Could it be that he really was in danger to go east? That was the question he had asked himself over and over in the last handful of days since she had convinced him that she knew what his white enemies had planned for him. They dared not take him here at the agency, where too many would rise up and free him, fleeing from this prison and making for the old country. Perhaps it did make much more sense that the white man would lure him back east, lulling him into believing he was safe, just so they could close the jaws of their trap around him. To kill him outright would be far better than … for them to put iron shackles on him and keep him locked up inside four walls, beneath a roof, cramped between other prisoners. That would be unbearable—the death of his spirit!

  Although friends told him about the place, Crazy Horse had no interest in seeing the wasicu prison lodge at the Soldier Town. While Little Big Man had been inside, and described how dark it was, how the foulest stench assaulted the nostrils … the idea of such a place simply repulsed Crazy Horse, knowing how it would grip his belly with torment to look upon men whose freedom had been stripped away. Better to die than to find himself stripped of his freedoms.

  So he had listened to the description of that place given by Little Big Man and Billy Garnett … then put those terrible thoughts out of his mind … realizing he had been thinking about little else but the young woman, how she knew of the plotting of the wasicus around the agency, brooding on the white man’s evil plan to imprison him. And if he fought, they would kill him.