Of a sudden they heard piercing war cries and angry shouts. Mason called for a halt as they prepared for possible attack. As it turned out, the soldiers were in no danger—only Red Cloud’s scouts. When the agency friendlies showed up near Touch-the-Cloud’s village, those northerners who were supporters of Crazy Horse boiled out of the camp, brandishing what weapons they still owned. A few carbines to be sure, but hardly a match for all the firearms the army had issued to its scouts. Mostly the Northern warriors carried long lances, rock-or nail-studded clubs, waving tomahawks in the air as their ponies hurtled them on a collision course for the Oglala.
And just before it appeared he would witness the bloody outbreak of a civil war among the Sioux, Red Cloud called off his men. And a wise thing he did, Clark thought to himself. Although the scouts had more guns, the fact that those warriors racing out to confront the friendlies had been the very men who destroyed Custer’s men when the Seventh U.S. Cavalry had possessed more guns was a sobering reality for any man who might consider attacking a camp of those Northern bands under the war hero named Touch-the-Clouds. Making grand and showy gestures with a mighty lance, one of the Minniconjou joyfully herded none other than No Water and his played-out horse toward the stockade walls at the agency.
But at that moment, Spotted Tail’s Brulé warriors began to show up, intending to drive back Touch-the-Cloud’s Minniconjou, by quickly riding around the outskirts of the Minniconjou camp to join up with their allies among Red Cloud’s scouts, making a formidable force. In Touch-the-Cloud’s village women were screaming orders, shouting to gather their children, hurriedly tearing down their lodges, preparing to make a break for freedom and safety while their men formed a barrier and sought to protect their families from Red Cloud’s war party. Both sides fiercely drew up their lines, shook their weapons, dared the other to strike first, shouting insults and shrieking their war cries at one another—but neither side had suffered a casualty. So far.
“You’re the expert here, Lieutenant,” Mason bawled as he brought his horse to a halt beside Clark’s. “What do you think? Is Crazy Horse hiding himself in that camp?”
“I don’t think those Northern hostiles would have put up this fierce a show if they didn’t have any reason for turning back Red Cloud’s posse,” Clark grumbled.
Mason cleared his throat and asked, “What’s your take on the situation then? Should we force our hand and go in after him?”
“No,” Clark said after some consideration. “I suggest that we take our troops on to Camp Sheridan. Captain Burke commands only two companies to withstand any attack on his post. I want to talk to him and Agent Lee to see if we can come up with a way to convince Crazy Horse to come in for a talk, try to convince this outlaw to give up peaceably and without a struggle that will clearly leave a lot of soldiers and our friendlies dead—not to mention how the Northern bands will bolt and scatter across the prairie.”
“Another goddamned Sioux war to put down,” Mason growled.
“Mind you, all I want is one Indian,” Clark reminded firmly. “I want him in irons, taken back to Robinson, and on his way to Omaha and the Dry Tortugas as General Crook ordered.”
“That’s what Sheridan wants done with him?” Mason asked, referring to their division commander.
Clark regarded the older war veteran a moment, then carefully stated, “Yes, sir. I am acting under Lieutenant General Sheridan’s instructions to General Crook. That’s where I derive my authority.”
“Very well, Lieutenant,” Mason sighed. “I’m turning my men aside to Camp Sheridan, which means you’ll have your shot at convincing Crazy Horse to surrender to you on his own.”
* * *
“My brother!” Touch-the-Clouds called out as he hurried forward on foot toward the four riders who had just raced into his village.
Four people could have caused no greater stir among these people who had fought to the bitter end with Crazy Horse at Red Flower Creek, then at the Greasy Grass, at Slim Buttes, and finally in the last skirmish against the Bear Coat on Buffalo Tongue River while a blizzard descended upon the battlefield. This was like returning to the fold of friends and family, seeing familiar faces, hearing their calls of greeting as they crowded around Crazy Horse, his wife, and the two brave friends who had accompanied them here to safety.
“My horses, they are very tired,” Crazy Horse confessed.
“See that they are watered!” Touch-the-Clouds ordered, and it was done. Four young boys leaped through the throng to take the lathered ponies off to the creek. “My heart is frightened for you, brother,” he said as he laid a hand on Crazy Horse’s shoulder. “You have come from far away, against the laws of the wasicus and the soldiers—on four weary horses. Are you being chased?”
“No Water will be the first to show up,” he told his mother’s brother. “If he does not kill the last of the three horses he rode after me.”
“Why would No Water be chasing you here?”
For a moment Crazy Horse stared back to the southwest, gazing up the White Earth River in the direction of Camp Robinson. “Because the soldiers and Red Cloud’s chiefs have made a pact to take me prisoner.”
Around them more than a hundred women shrieked in terror. Men shouted that this must finally mean war against Red Cloud’s loafers. Touch-the-Clouds, all seven feet of him, held up his arms and bellowed for quiet. Finally he asked the fair-skinned one before him, “What will they do with you if they take you prisoner?”
He shook his head. “There have been too many lies told about me already.”
“The Grabber?”
“Yes, you know about that lie,” Crazy Horse said. “But another, more serious lie comes from the lips of Red Cloud’s most faithful: Woman’s Dress, and his brothers.”
“What have they said against you?”
“That I was plotting with my friends to murder Three Stars when we met in a council,” he answered, feeling Black Shawl’s weight lean against him. “Brother, can your people find a place where my wife can lay her head and rest? It has been a very hard ride.”
Touch-the-Clouds put his arm around Black Shawl’s shoulders, helping support her as he said, “And she has been so weakened by the white man’s coughing sickness too.” He waved two women over.
Crazy Horse briefly clutched his wife’s hand before she started away with the Mnicowaju women, swallowed by the crowd of murmuring people who were listening to the story.
“We will not let them take you by force,” Touch-the-Clouds promised. “We must see that you have a chance to tell Three Stars and the White Hat that the words of Woman’s Dress are nothing more than lies intended to destroy an honorable man.”
“Thank you—”
Shrill shouts burst from the lower edge of the camp. Everyone turned, and the women began to shriek at once. In the distance they all could see the dust being raised by the many hooves. Beneath the clouds of spinning dust turned golden in the slanting afternoon light came more soldiers than they had confronted at the Greasy Grass. And with them rode half as many Lakota horsemen, blood of their blood, but riding on the side of the loafer chief Red Cloud and the wasicus!
“Strike the camp!” Touch-the-Clouds gave the fateful order. “Tear down the lodges and prepare to flee!”
All around them now the headmen were issuing orders to their society members as the women wheeled away, searching desperately for their children here in the heat of a late-summer afternoon when the little ones would be scampering about on the prairie, or down by the creek, perhaps playing in the nearby hills of the Beaver Valley. Frightened women combing the camp for their little ones, then turning back to tear lodgecovers off the poles as the hundreds of soldiers and agency scouts came loping toward them.
“Protect your families!” Touch-the-Clouds led the cheer. “Put your bodies between the enemy and the innocents!”
Crazy Horse’s head burned in utter dismay. He had caused this, bringing this terror down on these people who had already lived through so much
, stayed loyal so long, been faithful to him day after day of fighting and running. There were a few of his Hunkpatila here, men who had made the race from his camp, following on his heels … but the majority were Touch-the-Cloud’s people, who were clearly prepared to defend this one lone Hunkpatila against a mighty array of Bad Face warriors come to snatch him away.
“Tell me!” Crazy Horse yelled above the tumult. “Among those who are coming to take me prisoner, does anyone see my old friend, He Dog?”
When the question was shouted to the approaching Red Cloud forces, the answer came back. One of the Northern men turned and relayed the message, “No, He Dog did not come with the wasicus’ scouts. But they tell me that Little Big Man, Young Man Afraid, and Big Road did come along on the chase.”
“O-old friends,” Crazy Horse said. “Even old friends have turned their backs on me, betrayed me this day.”
It caused him such heartache. Despite their falling out in recent days, He Dog had stayed behind rather than join this mob clamoring to get their hands on Crazy Horse. Perhaps he had refused to come because of all that they had shared in the old days. Now it was clear that three old friends had shown up—like the worst brand of betrayal—making his heart shrink and grow so cold.
“Come with me now, nephew,” Touch-the-Clouds said, leaning down closer to Crazy Horse’s ear. It was hard to hear in the midst of the yelling and screaming, the taunts and the threats as those two lines of warriors drew up to challenge one another.
“Where?”
“To the lodge of the agent.”
“A wasicu?” he asked in horror, stopping in his tracks.
Touch-the-Clouds looked kindly upon his relative. “He is a fair-minded man, Crazy Horse. You must go to him so you can reveal the sinister evil behind these lies being said about you.”
* * *
“Crazy Horse is here?” Jesse M. Lee asked his interpreter to repeat, startled at the news in light of Clark’s plans to arrest the Oglala leader back at Red Cloud’s agency.
Interpreter Louis Bordeaux said, “Yes, Crazy Horse has come to the camp of Touch-the-Clouds.”
“And he’s alive? Not wounded?”
Quickly, Bordeaux questioned the young courier from the Minniconjou camp. “Yes, Crazy Horse is alive. Not hurt, no.”
This young lieutenant in the Ninth U.S. Infantry, who had been serving as Indian agent for Spotted Tail’s reservation since early May, turned to look at Captain Daniel Webster Burke, post commander at the nearby Camp Sheridan. “How in Hades has this happened, sir?”
In the complete darkness just after moonset, in the wee hours of that Tuesday morning, Lee and Brulé chief Spotted Tail had put Camp Robinson behind them with an armed escort of more than twenty Indian soldiers, not reaching the chief’s camp until ten o’clock. They immediately went to the village, calling together the chiefs and headmen so Lee could explain to them that over the next few days their people might well hear rumors of trouble at Red Cloud’s agency upriver. He wanted them to remain calm, since the army was going to sort out with Crazy Horse and his closest friends a story that Crazy Horse was planning to assassinate General Crook. With the leaders’ promises not to become aroused by rumors and unfounded tales, the weary lieutenant mounted up and made the short three-mile ride on in to his quarters at the agency itself.
Feeling as if he were sitting on a powder keg, and wondering when—and who—would light the match, he immediately went to bed at midday. It seemed no time had passed at all before loud voices outside their quarters awakened him. Looking from the window, Lee spotted Louis Bordeaux and another interpreter, Joe Merrival, at the center of a small gathering just outside his office, the two translators talking to an excited young man who was tightly ripping the reins attached to a horse white with foam. As he buttoned up his shirt and stepped out the door, it was plain to see that the young Sioux rider had come from some distance, punishing his animal in the bargain.
“What’s he got to tell me, Joe?” Lee asked.
The dusky-skinned half-breed turned to find the agent stepping down from the plank porch. “Says he come from Red Cloud’s agency. Brings word there’s fighting going on over there.”
Fighting! Damn if Philo Clark doesn’t have his hands full now! But we might all be in for it too.
As soon as he had extracted what skimpy information the youngster had to tell, Lee told Bordeaux to get over to Camp Sheridan and bring Captain Burke back with him. They had to put their heads together, perhaps call in Spotted Tail and Touch-the-Clouds, along with their leaders, to somehow forestall for the worst. If fighting had broken out between Red Cloud’s friendlies and Crazy Horse’s Northern People, then the flames of violence just might spread like a prairie fire whipped by a terrible wind. After all, the Spotted Tail folks had been loyal to the white man and his soldiers a long time, while until this past spring, Touch-the-Clouds had been a Northern hostile, a close friend and fighting companion of Crazy Horse.
It didn’t take long for Burke to show up; and the two of them had begun to discuss their strategy in talking with the chiefs they were about to call together, instructing them to assemble outside Lee’s office, when a second rider came racing up to the agency buildings with more news.
Black Crow, one of Spotted Tail’s most trusted shadows, was carrying the electrifying news that Crazy Horse had reached their camp with his wife and two friends.
“This isn’t good news, Lieutenant,” Burke murmured all but under his breath as he stood and shifted his gunbelt. “It’s a sure thing that the fighting at Red Cloud is going to follow Crazy Horse here. Only a matter of time now.”
Bewildered that one of Spotted Tail’s most trusted lieutenants would be the one to carry so important a report, rather than one of Touch-the-Cloud’s Minniconjou, Lee turned to Bordeaux. “Ask Black Crow if he has any idea what Crazy Horse wants here.”
In a moment the interpreter translated, “He asks to stay with his friends at his uncle’s agency. Wants to move away from Red Cloud’s people.”
Burke and Lee looked at each other for a moment before the captain exclaimed, “By the stars, if it doesn’t appear Crazy Horse is requesting sanctuary from you!”
Lee agreed. “That’s exactly what he’s looking for—sanctuary.”
“Agent Lee! Agent Lee!”
Turning into the open doorway, the lieutenant squinted into the sunlight, finding an excited interpreter, Joe Merrival, pointing up the road to the Red Cloud Agency. A soldier atop a lathered horse burst through the open stockade gate and reined up in a cloud that threw dust on the half-Mexican translator.
With a salute, the young soldier gulped and eyed both officers, asking, “One of you officers Lieutenant Lee … ah, sirs?”
“I am Jesse Lee.”
The private pulled a twice-folded piece of parchment from inside the folds of his damp blue fatigue blouse, urged his weary pony forward three more steps, and handed the parchment down to Lee there on the porch of his office.
Tearing open the thin dollop of wax sealing the flap, the lieutenant looked at Burke, and said, “It’s from Clark, sir.”
“To you?”
“Yes, Captain.”
Burke nodded gravely. “Tell me what it says.”
Aloud, Lee began to read.
Dear Lee:
There has been no fight; Crazy Horse’s band is just going into camp, and will give up their guns without trouble in all probability. Crazy Horse has skipped out for your place. Have sent after him. Should he reach your agency, have “Spot” arrest him, and I will give any Indian who does this, $200.
Clark
“We’ve got to get on top of this before it blows up in our faces, Lieutenant,” Burke warned. “We damn well know they’ll be coming for him, and real soon. Troops and friendlies both. If we don’t convince him to come to the post—or, better yet, to the safety of your agency stockade—we’re going to have a major bloodletting on our hands right over there in the Touch-the-Clouds’ camp!”
“I suggest we go immediately to see what we can do to convince Crazy Horse that his very life—and the lives of many of his people—might depend on him getting behind the walls of this agency.”
“A capital idea.” Burke slapped his hat back on his head. “As soon as we get Crazy Horse to return here with us, I’ll go straightaway to Camp Sheridan and mount up my two small companies. We’ll return and prepare to receive Crazy Horse … or prepare for the worst.”
Lee waved Bordeaux over so he could give instructions to both interpreters. “Joe, I want you and Louis to go hitch up the ambulance for Captain Burke and me. You two can ride your horses if you prefer. While you’re doing that, I’m going to alert Lucy to keep her eyes open—that some rumor or news might come in from any quarter while we’re gone.”
“Where you want us to go with you?” Bordeaux asked.
“Louis, I want you and Joe to come with me to the northerners’ camp.”
It gave Jesse Lee no small measure of reassurance that both of his translators chose that moment to quickly glance at each other, something less than bold confidence in their eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Canapegi Wi
MOON WHEN LEAVES TURN BROWN, 1877
Crazy Horse carried none of his guns, not a bow, lance, nor tomahawk. All he had folded across one arm was that red blanket.
“Stay with me, Sicun,” he whispered to his spirit guardian as he watched the buildings appear through the trees far ahead of him.
I am with you, Ta’sunke Witko. I will be with you to the end—till you draw your last breath … and I am freed for the rest of time.
Turn the Stars Upside Down: The Last Days and Tragic Death of Crazy Horse Page 30