Predators, Lee thought, that’s what these others are. Predators who will never be anywhere as magnificent and noble as their prey.
* * *
It suddenly struck him that there were more and more of the Sioux showing up now at the heart of this post, easing in from all directions. Lounging in the late-afternoon shade offered by the log buildings, the older men, women, and children were doing nothing that made Donegan suspicious as to their motives. Just that … there was one hell of a lot of them.
For the most part there were more women and children, along with bent, ancient ones too, than there were any men of fighting age among the growing crowds—but over the moments he stood watching, Seamus began to see that the men were showing up. Whereas the women and children arrived on foot, their men showed up on horseback. And many of them were wearing some item of war regalia tied onto or strapped over their soldier tunics. As Seamus stopped there close to the adjutant’s office, not all that far from the guard-house where Private William Gentles continued plodding through sentry duty at Post Number One, it struck him that many of those horsemen showing up among the crowd were also proudly displaying their army carbines.
It didn’t take that wide saber scar down the middle of the great muscles of his back for Donegan to sense that something was afoot. Although he did not feel any ominous dread or threat, Seamus nonetheless sensed a tremor of misgiving at the pit of his belly and turned, intending to strike out for their little camp—just to assure himself that Samantha was still playing with little Colin by the tent, that they hadn’t become frightened by the appearance of so many hundreds of Sioux—
“Seamus!”
He wheeled around at the cry of that familiar voice, finding Valentine McGillycuddy waving at him from the covered porch on the front of the adjutant’s office.
“Over here!” the doctor yelled to him when it was apparent Donegan was troubled about making the decision between turning off to camp and detouring for a talk with his friend.
McGillycuddy stood at the edge of a loose knot of more than half-a-dozen officers, young and old, all of them watching the gathering of the Sioux from the narrow porch at the front of the adjutant’s office, lowering their heads from time to time to make a whispered comment to their fellows. Many of them puffed on pipes, or sucked on black-fingered cheroots, as if this were the best entertainment they’d had all week.
“Just the man I want to see,” Seamus called out cheerily.
“Come over to find out what’s going on?” McGillycuddy answered as the Irishman approached.
“Naw. Was looking for you,” Donegan explained. “Wanted to know if you’d look after Sam and wee Colin for a few weeks.”
“What have you got on your mind?”
He took a step up on the low porch and took a place beside McGillycuddy beneath the overhanging awning. “I’ve heard what the wire has to tell. The Nez Perces are coming to Crow country—they’ll be on the Yellowstone soon.”
McGillycuddy studied him a moment. “What does that war have to do with you, Seamus?”
“Miles is up there. A fighting man if ever there was one,” Donegan declared. “If them Nez Perces are coming to Yellowstone country, it’s for damned sure that Nelson A. Miles will have a mix-up with ’em before it’s over.”
“You’ll offer yourself to scout for the man again?”
“Aye, that’s it,” he answered. “So say you and Fanny will watch over my bride and son. I’ve got money to leave you for food.”
“Sam doesn’t eat that much,” McGillycuddy said with a grin.
“That mean you’ll do it?”
The physician nodded. “When you plan on leaving?”
“Come morning. Soon as I see Sam and Colin are took care of.”
“We’ll see to them while you’re away, Seamus Donegan,” McGillycuddy said. “Just make sure you ride back here when Miles is done with the Nez Perce.”
“I’ll be back before you have a chance to miss my cheery company!” Seamus responded.
Rubbing his one left eyelid that drooped, McGillycuddy looked up at the taller, gray-eyed man, the smile disappearing from his own face. “Too bad you couldn’t just take them two with you when you leave Camp Robinson.”
“Take ’em with me?”
“Yes. Not a good time here … right now,” the doctor replied, turning his head so that he could stare once more at the crowds.
Finally Seamus asked, “You mean all the Sioux popping into the post?”
“You’ve hit the nail, Irishman.”
He nodded once, a bit grimly. “Damn right. Don’t all of them showing up make something itch inside you?”
McGillycuddy glanced at him with a small measure of appraisal. “The old warrior seeping out of your pores again, is it?”
With a shrug he said, “What kept me alive this long, I suppose. By the by, why the devil are you here yourself, Doc?”
“’Stead of being over at the hospital?”
“You ain’t got no sick to tend to? No stewards to order around, have you?”
“I came this way looking up someone who might know just what it is brings all these folks out of Red Cloud’s camp.”
“Any of ’em Crazy Horse people what made their stampede yesterday?”
“I’ll bet a good number of ’em are.”
“Makes sense,” said Captain James Kennington, officer of the day that Wednesday. He stuffed the pipe stem back between his teeth and returned to studying the Sioux filling the parade ground and all the spaces between the buildings.
“What makes so much sense?” Seamus whispered to McGillycuddy after he tore his eyes from the ceremonial sword slung from Kennington’s belt.
“Reasonable there’s gonna be a lot of Red Cloud’s people and Crazy Horse’s here both,” the doctor explained. “The Red Cloud folks have been very suspicious of Crazy Horse, for the longest time. And, the Crazy Horse people are here to watch their chief being brought in.”
“T-they’re bringing him in?” Seamus asked in disbelief. “I thought word was he’d run away to the north while his folks scattered and made it hard to follow him.”
Shrugging, McGillycuddy said, “Guess not. Not long ago one of Spotted Tail’s couriers brought a note in for Lieutenant Clark. Came from the agent over at Spotted Tail. It was news that he was bringing Crazy Horse in to see Bradley.”
As the open ground before them began to fill with soldiers formed up for the daily parade, it took a moment for that to start to sink in. “If that don’t beat all. What’d Crazy Horse do to get hisself arrested? Did he give up peaceable? Or did they run him down last night and they’re dragging him back in chains—”
“Nothing so dramatic as that, from what Billy Garnett got out of that Sioux courier while Clark wrote a letter back to Agent Lee,” McGillycuddy declared. “He showed up at a friend’s camp and asked to stay there with his mother’s people. But Lee and post commander Burke somehow convinced him that he can’t move there till he gets his problems put to bed back here.”
“Problems?”
“The Grouard thing,” McGillycuddy growled as Kennington and the other officers stepped off the porch and onto the parade to take up their positions.
Down the middle of the open ground came a procession of flags. It all seemed a little unreal to Donegan, watching this afternoon ritual performed this day for the first time in front of thousands of too-quiet Sioux.
“Don’t remind me about that double-talking bastird,” Seamus hissed angrily. “The man can’t be guilty of anything to do with Grouard!?”
Whispering as Kennington shouted orders that echoed over the parade, Dr. McGillycuddy said, “Story has it one of Red Cloud’s men slipped up by Crazy Horse’s lodge a few nights back and heard the chief plotting with his best friends to murder Crook and Clark when they showed up at a peace council away from the post.”
A sudden gust of laughter escaped his lips. “Sorry!” he whispered when some of the officers turned and glared at him over t
heir shoulders. “I couldn’t help but laugh about that! Crazy Horse? Him? Stupid enough to think he could kill them two officers and get away with it?” He sniggered with laughter again. “Tell me, Doc—who’s the bleeming idiot believed in that scheme to kill Crook and Clark?”
Lieutenant Henry Lemley turned and leaned back to say, “Crook and Clark themselves.”
The smile drained from his ruddy face. “Crook thinks Crazy Horse would actually murder ’em.… and then try to run off to that country up north what ain’t theirs no more?”
“General Crook believed it enough,” Lemley explained quietly, “that he gathered all the chiefs who don’t want Crazy Horse around and put them up to arresting the man.”
He shook his head, dumbfounded. “This all been going on here?”
“Last couple of days, Seamus,” McGillycuddy replied.
“Good friend you are,” Donegan growled. “A juicy piece of news like this and you didn’t tell me.”
“Well, here’s a news bulletin for you,” McGillycuddy said. “The agent bringing Crazy Horse in says he wants to have an audience with Bradley, so he can get all his problems ironed out before he moves his people over to Spotted Tail, where his father and the rest of the Northern People are camped.”
For a moment Donegan looked off to the southwest, thinking of her and the boy back at camp. Growing more than concerned that with all these Sioux crowding in, all hell could break loose when they brought Crazy Horse onto the post and attempted to put him under arrest. “How soon’s this gonna happen—him coming back to talk with Bradley?”
Dr. McGillycuddy reached out with both hands and turned the taller man back around so Seamus faced northeast now. The soldiers on the parade were breaking up, heading back to their barracks as a hush fell over the post. Donegan stared, transfixed, as everything came to a halt while the sun began its final descent. The only object moving was an army ambulance that had begun to part the immense throng of Sioux, thousands of whom started to shout and yell. Close on the tailgate of the ambulance followed a tight knot of horsemen, at the center of which rode Crazy Horse.
Damn, Seamus thought, if he don’t have the look of a man being dragged off to the gallows.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
5 September 1877
“Holy mother of god!” the interpreter whispered sharply beside him.
Bordeaux had yanked the words right out of Jesse Lee’s mouth as they stared in utter awe at the masses of Sioux who had packed themselves tightly together on the grassy parade, and in among the log buildings, when their ambulance rumbled up from the White River crossing and onto the grounds of Camp Robinson. On the hard plank seat across from Lee and Bordeaux, Swift Bear and Black Crow were yammering loudly between themselves, gesturing and looking about at this unbelievable scene.
Lee turned with sudden recognition that Crazy Horse had to be watching the same scene. He found the Oglala, along with Touch-the-Clouds and High Bear, all three staring ahead, transfixed, as if in complete disbelief. Never before had any of them—white, red, or half-breed—ever seen the Sioux gather at this post in such numbers. Perhaps such an occurrence could happen over at the agency, but only on ration day.1
He suddenly looked for his Lucy, squinting in the late-afternoon light at the porches along officers’ row, noticing all those white officers, their wives, and enlisted men on the periphery of the fort, come to witness this momentous historical event. What a sight to remember: all of Red Cloud’s Oglala come to watch their once-esteemed war chief brought back a prisoner, under guard by his uncle’s agency scouts. Lee realized his wife had to be watching, somewhere among those white women, because Lucy would have heard he was on his way with this famous prisoner.
As soon as the first of those at the edge of the crowd heard the noisy approach of the ambulance and the hoofbeats of more than seventy horses clattering up from the river crossing, the throng fell silent. On the parade that silence swept across the waiting crowd like a wave as more and more of the Sioux learned of their approach. Then the ambulance was forced to slow, and began to inch its way into the mass of Indians reluctantly parting to let them through. As soon as Spotted Tail’s scouts passed by, the bystanders were closing their ranks once more, sealing up that narrow tunnel they had opened for this procession.
First one woman began to keen. Then more women took up that sad lament. Old men raised their reedy voices in war song. Some men simply shouted curses or praise. The eerie effect started out low and indistinct, but eventually grew in discordant volume as the ambulance made its way past the cavalry stables. Skirting around the saddler’s shop, swinging west, the prisoner’s procession moved closer and closer to the adjutant’s office—where Lee hoped he would find Bradley.
Three years before the lieutenant had taken a personal hand in construction of Camp Robinson … so Jesse Lee knew that less than seventy yards of open ground lay between that office and the post guardhouse. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? They mean to throw Crazy Horse behind bars without the slightest charade of justice! Yet he hoped—no, Lee prayed—that the prisoner would be allowed to speak a few words to Bradley. After all, he himself had given Crazy Horse his personal promise.
Sensing the first tremors of misgiving he would not allow to become fear, Lee kept his eyes moving across the crowd, all the way over the extent of the parade to this building and that along officers’ row, searching not for Lucy now, but for the face of Lieutenant William P. Clark. He was the one who had sent a message that Lee was to bring Crazy Horse to Bradley’s place. So where the hell was he?
Then it struck him how dangerous a spot he was in, as the lone soldier who was bringing in Crazy Horse … and here were all his fellow Oglala. Lee turned and quickly looked over Spotted Tail’s Brulé horsemen. They appeared as nervous as he felt—fear, apprehension, and an impulse to fight on their faces as they cocked their rifles and held them close, ready.
But in that next moment, Lee read the mood of the crowd—and realized that the great majority of the crowd were not singing out the praises of Crazy Horse, nor calling for the prisoner’s release. Instead, these Sioux were crying out in anger at this man he was bringing back to them … a captive.
Lee turned and glanced at his prisoner, worried.
Still, on Crazy Horse’s face registered no sign of fear, nary an emotion. Instead, the stoic mask of a true warrior confronting the inevitable … but the man’s eyes danced constantly. He had to be looking over the crowd that clamored around him, sang his praises or cursed him for the trouble they believed he had brought down on their heads—perhaps he was looking for a friendly face, someone who might pluck him from this noisy madness.
More soldiers appeared in view ahead, a solid phalanx of blue in front of the office as the ambulance slowed.
“Lieutenant Lee!” cried James Kennington.
“Captain!” he called out, standing unsteadily, gripping the sidewall as the ambulance shuddered to a halt. “I was expecting to see Lieutenant Clark. He sent me a message—”
“General Bradley directs that you turn over your prisoner to me, the officer of the day,” Kennington interrupted curtly.
When Kennington took a step down from the porch, Lee saluted him, struggling to gather his wits about him.
“B-but…” Lee stammered. “No, not yet, Captain. I’m hoping Crazy Horse can say a few words to the commanding officer before he is … before … this is done. I’ve promised … you see, I told him—”
“You’ll have to take that up with the commanding officer himself,” Kennington said as he approached the side of the ambulance in the manner of a man in full recognition of his authority at that moment as thousands looked on. “No one can answer for the general but the general himself, Agent Lee.”
“Of course, sir.” And Lee turned, threading his way between the knees of three other men, and leaped from the back of the ambulance.
Immediately going to Crazy Horse’s side, the lieutenant looked over his shoulder at the inter
preter. “Bordeaux, get over here!” As the translator stopped at the rear gate of the ambulance, Lee looked up at the Oglala and said, “Crazy Horse, the general wants me to turn you over to another officer.”
Behind him, Bordeaux was beginning his halting translation.
“I know I promised you could talk with the general when you got here,” Lee plunged ahead. “So I’m going to talk to the general now, let him know you’re here. His office is right over there.”
He watched Crazy Horse’s eyes follow the direction of that arm he held out, pointing all the way across the parade, through all those gathered thousands of Sioux. Then the man’s intense eyes came back to the young officer who stood at his knee. But his lips did not say a word.
“I want you to go inside with Bordeaux,” Lee continued. “Sit down with Touch-the-Clouds and High Bear. Black Crow and Swift Bear must go with you too,” and he pointed at the door to the adjutant’s office. “You wait in there and I’ll come right back when I’ve told the general that you want to talk to him.”
As his English faded off and Bordeaux’s Sioux translation continued, Crazy Horse’s eyes moved from the lieutenant to the open doorway. When the interpreter finished, the prisoner looked again at Lee. He nodded, dropped from his horse, and stood waiting for the four Sioux to gather around him as the crowd began to murmur in whispers now. While Bordeaux started them toward the office Lee whirled about on his heel and plunged through that narrow gap the Indians in the crowd made for him as he scampered across the parade.
All 200 yards of it, holding himself to a half-trot because he wanted so to run, constantly reminding himself to keep it to a fast walk instead. The porch was crowded with officers and two white women as he bolted up the steps. They cleared a path for him to the door. Almost before he had finished knocking, a uniformed striker2 was there to open the door for him. This long-faced young private showed Lee into the parlor, then left. In a moment Bradley came in, finishing with the buttons of his tunic.
Turn the Stars Upside Down: The Last Days and Tragic Death of Crazy Horse Page 34