Billy continued, “I know about you, how you’ve wanted to get even with him ever since he accidentally broke your nose in child’s play!”
“This is not child’s play!” Woman’s Dress snapped, refusing to look directly at the younger man now. Instead, he went back to addressing Baptiste Pourier. “It will happen when Three Stars arrives at the council grounds. Crazy Horse will be there with at least six-times-ten of his faithful warriors. He will make a handshake with the soldier chief, so that Crazy Horse can hold onto Three Stars’s hand tightly while he brings out a pistol from under his blanket. When he shoots Three Stars, the rest of his warriors will fall upon the other soldiers and quickly do away with them.”
Billy studied the Lakota man closely, despairing that there really might be the slightest kernel of truth to this rumor. Over the last few weeks, Crazy Horse had become more and more distant, harder and harder to speak to and deal with. It seemed as if he were lending credence to all the bad whispers and furtive talk about him preparing to escape the reservation. Crazy Horse had been doing nothing to counter-act the bad talk made about him by the White Hat and Red Cloud’s friends. Then he had put the top on it by walking out on that council with Clark, declaring he was leaving.
And now as he watched how Pourier’s translation of Woman’s Dress’s warning was striking General Crook and Lieutenant Clark, Billy could see that Crazy Horse had done himself no good in refusing to bring his camp closer to the agency, in not showing up at some of the councils Clark or Crook had called, in trying to remain a wild Indian on a pacified reservation. The time when Billy could have helped Crazy Horse had passed. Too many wheels had already been put in motion.
“You know this for yourself?” Garnett demanded of the winkte. “Heard it with your own ears?”
With disdain, Woman’s Dress glared daggers at the younger man and said, “Lone Bear’s brother, Little Wolf, has been staying in the Crazy Horse camp to court a girl who lives near Crazy Horse’s lodge. He was listening outside the chief’s lodge when he overheard the plot being made with Crazy Horse’s friends. So Little Wolf hurried to tell Lone Bear—and Lone Bear has just told me of this plan to murder Three Stars.”1
“Little Wolf?” Pourier asked. “The same warrior who fought so hard against the soldiers at the Greasy Grass?”
“Yes!” Woman’s Dress answered. “Since the Greasy Grass fight he has become a good-hearted man and does not want to see Three Stars killed!”
“Lone Bear and Little Wolf, they’re Bad Faces,” Billy grumbled, remembering that it was said of Lone Bear that he had cut out the tongue of a Custer trooper, and still kept that battle trophy in a medicine pouch. “All of you are Red Cloud’s friends.”
“No matter what you believe, little talker,” Woman’s Dress accused as his eyes narrowed to slits, “I speak the truth.”
“You Bad Faces are like camp women,” Garnett growled with disdain. “All of you wanting to be chiefs over other men. To cling onto some little shred of power … so you use tricks and schemes when you can—”
“Perhaps the soldier chief needs to know that this little talker cannot be trusted at his side, eh?” Woman’s Dress asked Pourier.
“I am not afraid of you or what you may say about me,” Billy said. “I am known to speak nothing but the truth. While you are a petty man trying to play big with the soldiers.”
Turning back to Pourier, Woman’s Dress said, “Remember that your wife is my cousin. I will trust only you to speak for me to Three Stars. This little talker is a bad man.”
After watching all the back-and-forth between his translators and Woman’s Dress, Crook took a deep sigh and arched his trail-weary back, gazing at Garnett. “Well, Billy—what do you make of this one’s story?”
For a long moment he considered speaking what lay in his heart—his doubt that Crazy Horse could ever think of committing such a cowardly act as cold-blooded murder—but then he remembered how strange Crazy Horse had behaved in recent weeks, Garnett wondered if Crazy Horse could somehow feel justified, driven to this rash act of madness.
Finally he told Crook, “This is too big a thing upon me to answer. And a bad time with lots of words and feelings and actions all mixed up. I cannot answer in my own heart if this Woman’s Dress speaks the truth of what will be.”
His face still a blank slate, Crook next turned to Pourier and asked, “What about you, Bat? Is this a man to be trusted? Someone I can believe?”
After a brief moment, Pourier said, “I never knowed him to speak crooked, General.”
Crook ground one of his bootheels into the dirt, brooding, then suddenly turned to the sergeant of his escort and Lieutenant Clark. “I don’t want to make a mistake, for it would, to the Indians, be the basest treachery to make a mistake in this critical matter. So I’ve decided we’ll go on to the council.”
“General!” Clark squealed in dismay. “Don’t you realize what lies waiting for you out there?”
Irritated, he whirled on the lieutenant. “I never set off to go anywhere but what I didn’t get there.”
Clark sputtered, “B-but this man has brought us news of a secret conspiracy to kill you!”
Scoffing at that, Crook said, “In every battle I’ve ever fought, believe me, there have been men who have wanted nothing more than to kill me.”
“But this is something different, General,” Clark protested. “What’s been planned is going to be a murder committed by a man who will kill you under the pretense of shaking your hand at the beginning of a peace talk!”
“Outright murder?”
Clark nodded. “Crazy Horse’s reformation does not run very deep at all.”
His eyes narrowing, Crook turned to Clark, saying, “Such a cowardly act would pretty much do it for Crazy Horse, wouldn’t it?”
“He’s been on a collision course with you for a long time, General,” Clark agreed. “I can’t help but think of General Canby’s murder, how Canby trusted that Modoc, Captain Jack, when he sat down to negotiate a peace—and the bastard chief shot Canby in cold blood!”2
“Truth be known, in the back of my mind I’ve been concerned about just this sort of thing since the man met my troops on the Rosebud last summer,” Crook admitted. “I wouldn’t doubt that Crazy Horse has considered murdering the man who drove him off from that fight, scattered his warriors after we caught him napping at Powder River, and we drove him off again at Slim Buttes. Yes, I am certain in my bones that he could indeed hatch such a plot to murder the man who has dogged his every step for most of a year.”3
“Because you are his nemesis,” Clark stated. “You are his conqueror, General. Even if he died in the act, I am certain Crazy Horse is just insane enough to kill you in the middle of a peace council, with your soldiers and subordinates around.”
Crook turned to gaze at Woman’s Dress, while he spoke to Pourier: “Bat, ask him to confirm that Crazy Horse is planning to run, to flee with his people, once he has killed me.”
Woman’s Dress nodded when Pourier asked the question. “Yes. He is going to steal all his people away from the agency and go north to kill whites.”
With the gray of concern coloring his features, Clark said, “General, we’ve got to get you back to the post now. There’s no telling if Crazy Horse has his agents watching for our approach at this very minute. They might even attempt to commit their assassination right here on the road to the council. We’ve got to get you out of here!”
Billy watched Crook, seeing how things boiled inside the man like the roiling surface of a coffee pot. Behind the two officers that escort of soldiers muttered among themselves, turning this way and that, watching the trees, searching the hillsides for any sign of attackers.
Suddenly the general spoke and broke the brief, uneasy silence: “We’re turning back for the agency. Bat, you and Garnett ride on ahead to the council grounds and select those chiefs you know are entirely loyal to the agent. Get them off to the side and order them to meet with me at the post in two or th
ree hours. Just the ones of a loyal brand—Clark himself will tell you who they are. Don’t—and I repeat don’t—let Crazy Horse or any of the Northern leaders know of this secret meeting.”
Garnett wanted to tell Crook then and there that Big Bat and Woman’s Dress were related, how Pourier was married to the Lakota’s cousin. And Billy wanted to tell the soldier chief that no man should ever trust anything that had come down to him from three tongues, one to the next to the next. Especially from Red Cloud’s lodge dogs.
But Pourier slapped him on the shoulder and things were already in motion around him.
“Let’s go, Billy,” Big Bat said as he turned back to his horse.
Garnett leaped into the saddle, his heart in his throat. Wondering if by their poisonous words Woman’s Dress, Lone Bear, and Little Wolf hadn’t already accomplished the death of Crazy Horse for their leader, Red Cloud.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
2 September 1877
BY TELEGRAPH
Death of Brigham Young.
Indian News—Sitting Bull On His Way Home.
Chief Joseph in Search of General Howard.
UTAH.
Death of Brigham Young.
SALT LAKE CITY, August 29.—Brigham Young died at 4 o’clock this afternoon.
WASHINGTON.
Sitting Bull Heard From—Returns to United States.
WASHINGTON, August 29.—The government is informed by telegram, from General Miles, of the crossing of Milk river by Sitting Bull in the neighborhood of the Little Rocky Mountains, and about 50 miles east of Fort Belknap. Sitting Bull’s presence again in the United States, with a large force, will cause additional activity at the war department in dealing with the Indian problem.
The chiefs and headmen1 began to murmur the moment William Clark brought Woman’s Dress into the drawing room of what was Colonel Luther Bradley’s personal quarters, although Bradley hadn’t been invited to this secret meeting. Clark and Woman’s Dress came to stand near General Crook and Frank Grouard, Billy Garnett, and Baptiste Pourier, the three who had just explained to the Sioux that they would now learn why the white men had never made it to the peace parley.
“Garnett, have this man tell the chiefs what he told us after stopping us on our way to the council site this afternoon,” Crook instructed the young half-breed.
Always one to dress and strut in a showy manner, Woman’s Dress was not a shy speaker in the least. As he warmed to his subject, the man began to gesture dramatically as he described how Little Wolf had sneaked up behind Crazy Horse’s lodge to listen to him laying his plot to kill Crook, Clark, and the other soldiers before they bolted from the reservation. As the Indian went through his recitation, Clark kept an eye on Crook, measuring how the general was weighing things, especially this matter of the story coming through three mouths, through three Sioux who held no goodwill for Crazy Horse.
But this was hardly a difficult case for William P. Clark to decide. Easy to figure out that once Crazy Horse discovered he would not have anything like the freedom he once enjoyed on the wild prairies, the war chief had become less than cooperative. At first it was only with minor things, like his refusal to sign the agent’s ledger for the rations and goods his people were drawing each bi-weekly ration day. Then it was a most vexing problem: his refusal to go to Washington with the other chiefs to visit President Rutherford B. Hayes. And beneath it all was the rumbling current of those rumors and the talk from the spies Red Cloud put out, their ears and eyes open to everything. Not that Red Cloud wasn’t a carping, grasping, insecure man, a leader who had surrounded himself with a loyal cadre of venal lieutenants, some of whom held more jealousy, distrust, and animosity—read that: more outright hate—than even Red Cloud himself had for Crazy Horse.
But at least Red Cloud and Spotted Tail were the white man’s chiefs. And Red Cloud, well … make no mistake, he was William P. Clark’s Indian. They were both going to help put each other on the map. Clark had convinced Red Cloud that by working together they could reinstate Red Cloud to his former position of prestige and power over all of the Oglala. By so doing, Clark would be vaulted into a position of prominence not only at Camp Robinson, or in the eyes of Department Commander George Crook … but Clark was fully aware that Lieutenant General Philip H. Sheridan and Commander of the Army William T. Sherman were both watching the unfolding of events with much interest. The success that Clark had been crafting for himself and Red Cloud was about to bear fruit.
How he had played Crazy Horse like a fine-tuned violin! By first grabbing the honor and the limelight for accepting the war chief’s surrender back in May, and now for backing the man into a political corner so that he would refuse all overtures from Crook to do what the government was requiring of him. The man was nothing more than a savage warrior, one who thought in no other terms but fighting all the efforts of the white man to acculturate him into the new life he must lead here for the rest of the nineteenth century. With emotions so primitive, it had been almost child’s play for Clark to guide and manipulate both Red Cloud and Crazy Horse into playing their opposing roles, one antagonistically against the other—with Lieutenant Clark becoming all the more important for it!
Not that Crook was easy to deal with on this. That old soldier had seen it all, done it all, and a man didn’t rise to his stature without having learned a thing or two about the politics of the army’s command structure. When Woman’s Dress finished re-telling his story to the quiet room of loyal chiefs, Crook questioned Woman’s Dress again about the details of Crazy Horse’s plot. Clark figured that cross-examination probably made the general feel as if he were really getting to the bottom of the scheme.
For a moment the lieutenant turned to look at the face of No Water, sitting there between Red Dog and their chief, Red Cloud. No Water turned and gazed at Clark for but a moment, his eyes steady, just the hint of a smile in them. Then the warrior looked away, a gaze of serious and rapt attention returning to his face as he stared at Woman’s Dress.
I wonder if he has the slightest idea that I know he orchestrated this whole charade, Clark thought to himself. Does No Water realize that I know who created this whole jumble of lies?
“Bat, you or Grouard ask the chiefs now what they think of this man’s testimony,” Crook instructed. “Do we have something to worry about? And if we have something to worry about … do these chiefs realize they have a problem in their midst?”
As soon as Baptiste Pourier put the question to the Sioux, some of them began to mumble to one another, their eyes furtive and darting. But … every one of these men had something to say. Finally, it was Red Cloud’s faithful mouthpiece who stood to speak.
When Red Dog had finished, Pourier translated. “‘We have a trouble-maker among us. Crazy Horse will never be one of us. He will always be wild and…’I can’t think of how to translate that word—”
“Take your time,” Crook said.
“‘Crazy Horse will never learn to be a reservation man,’” Pourier continued. “That’s as close as I can make it.”
“Good,” Clark said, feeling assured. “What else did Red Dog say?”
A look came over the faces of all three interpreters at that point, and they glanced at one another knowingly. Grouard looked away. Garnett nodded to Pourier.
So it was Bat who made the startling announcement. “The chiefs say to tell you they will kill Crazy Horse if Three Stars wants them to.”
For a moment the room was hushed, even to every breath being held. Clark could not believe his ears! He had brought the chiefs here, hoping at the best they would fall into line behind a plan to arrest Crazy Horse and get him out of the way, shipped off to a prison cell where he could rot far, far away from Clark’s reservation.
But these men must truly fear Crazy Horse. If they only hated him, were only jealous of him, then these chiefs and headmen would just want to have the despised one taken away from the reservation so that he could never again rally around him all those who were dissatisfie
d, disaffected, yearning for a breath of the old days and the old ways. But … Red Cloud, American Horse, Little Wound, No Flesh, High Wolf, Little Bear, and Red Dog … they were damn well afraid of Crazy Horse!
And that was an emotion Clark could understand. The only way you rid yourself of the source of your fear was to get rid of it once and for all.
“K-kill him?” Crook blustered, clearly taken by surprise with the offer from the chiefs. His eyes briefly touched the stunned Garnett, then Clark. Beneath his beard, the old warrior had blanched. “No. N-no, that would be murder. We can’t condone murder.”
The room was quiet, the chiefs looking at one another, studying Crook’s face too. Then the general realized that nothing was happening.
“Bat—tell them that, goddammit!” Crook bellowed.
“I think it was a mistake to make scouts out of the Northern Indians in the first place,” Pourier complained. “No one had any business giving them guns—”
“There was nothing wrong with my decision to make them scouts!” Clark bawled like a wounded man.
“Just tell them I can’t approve of murder,” Crook said firmly, jabbing a finger at Big Bat. “No. Tell them I can’t approve of them murdering Crazy Horse.”
As soon as the general’s words were spoken, the chiefs went back to murmuring among themselves. Clark was reminded how much they seemed like a pack of wolves worrying over the bones of a carcass at that moment. The question had been decided! No longer was there going to be any worry over how Crazy Horse would react to this or react to that. No more would he have to be concerned with the sullen, unresponsive, melancholy, brooding savage who thought far too highly of himself. Crazy Horse was going to be out of Clark’s hair, one way or the other, from this hour on!
“‘Winters ago,’” Pourier started to translate Young Man Afraid’s words when the chief stood to talk, “‘the white man put Spotted Tail in a prison because he did not do what the white men wanted him to. Spotted Tail came back to his people a changed man. His heart was softened toward the white man. Perhaps we can we do this to Crazy Horse?’”
Turn the Stars Upside Down: The Last Days and Tragic Death of Crazy Horse Page 26