Lee saluted. “General, I respectfully come to ask that you have a few words with Crazy Horse.” He went on to explain in the most earnest and solicitous language why he felt Bradley should listen to the prisoner, then concluded, “I know you to be a most fair and generous commander, sir. That’s why I took it upon myself to give the man my word that you would listen to what he had to say in way of explanation—”
“You gave your word, Lieutenant?” Bradley cut him off.
“Y-yes, General.”
Then Bradley turned to the side and gazed out the window at the crowded parade. “It’s too late,” he sighed as if with a great weight pressed upon his shoulders. “Talking to him won’t be of any use, Mr. Lee.”
“But sir, if you would only hear him tell you himself that he never said anything about killing white men,” Lee declared desperately. “That he never conceived any plan to murder General Crook.”
“The general’s order is peremptory,” Bradley said gravely, still staring out the window rather than meeting Lee’s eyes. “There’s nothing I can do to change it here and now.”
“Or-order, sir?”
“In fact, I doubt that General Crook could change the orders he gave me.” The man finally turned to gaze at Lee. “This directive comes from Chicago, Mr. Lee. Orders from that quarter don’t get changed by men like me.”
“But, sir, isn’t there some room left for you hearing the man out—”
“Mr. Lee,” Bradley interrupted sternly, eyes narrowing. “There is nothing further to be said. Now, go about your duty as a soldier … and see that Crazy Horse is handed over to the officer of the day. The sooner you do that, the better.”
Pleading, he said, “I gave him my word that if he returned here peaceably, you would see him.”
Bradley shook his head. “It’s just too late to have any such talk. Everything has been decided by those higher in command.”
His mind burning with a thousand different scenarios of how he would return to the adjutant’s office, Lee asked, “C-can he be heard by you in the morning, General?”
Slowly, deliberately, the commanding officer turned away, back to the window. “Turn your prisoner over to the officer of the day. Instruct Crazy Horse that he is to go with Captain Kennington and not a hair on his head shall be harmed.”
For a long moment he stared at the back of the colonel’s shoulders. Every fiber in Bradley’s constitution had the make-up of a soldier. To him an order was unequivocal. The orders he had received from above were law and gospel. They were to be met with instant and unswerving obedience. And—as Lee had come to learn about the man in the past few months since Bradley had arrived to take over command of Camp Robinson from Ranald Mackenzie—woe be to the subordinate who dared to question his orders.
Of a sudden he was struck with the stark realization that he best end this interview. Better that these orders from far, far away be obeyed, and obeyed quickly.
Out the door without ever hearing it closed behind him by the striker, off the porch and onto the parade, plunging into the crowd, once more parting the masses that continued to whisper and murmur, some of the women keening, others sobbing quietly as he struggled to get back to the adjutant’s office. He suddenly remembered Lucy, wondered if she had been watching him from one of the porches.
“It’s too late,” he recalled Bradley saying. While the colonel certainly must have meant that it was too late for anything but the arrest and incarceration to proceed unchanged … Lee decided that he could explain it away to Crazy Horse by telling him it was too late in the day.
Just as he reached the end of the crowd, the sun leaked out of the sky, the last of the sharpest shadows gone in that heartbeat. His own began to hammer with the fear of insurmountable failure.
“Tell Crazy Horse this,” he huffed as he bolted through the office doorway and snagged Bordeaux’s arm. “Night is coming on and the general said it’s too late for a talk now. Bradley said for you to go with the officer of the day … to go with this man,” and Lee indicated Kennington. “If you go with him, you will be taken care of, Crazy Horse. And the general wants you to know: not a hair of your head shall be harmed.”
For a breathless moment after Bordeaux finished his translation, there was complete silence in the spartan office, save for what high-pitched, eerie sounds of keening reached them through the open doorway. Suddenly the four Sioux who had accompanied Crazy Horse into the office shouted collectively.
“Hau!”
It was a good sign. They were all smiling. Crazy Horse got to his feet and went to the door where Captain Kennington stood and held out his left hand. They shook. The two of them filed onto the porch, two armed soldiers stepping up as escort. Touch-the-Clouds started to join his nephew, closely followed by the other three Sioux.
But Lee reached out and managed to grab the tall man’s arm. “Bordeaux, tell them I want them to wait here and listen to me.”
Instead of translating, Bordeaux whispered, “We better get out of here! If they go to put him in the guardhouse, there’s gonna be hell to pay and the two of us gonna get killed because we’re the ones brought him over here!”
“You’re going to stay right here with me and do what I tell you,” Lee snapped.
His face carved with worry, Touch-the-Clouds watched after his nephew a moment longer. When Crazy Horse did not turn in farewell, but instead wore the look of complete trust in the soldier who was escorting him off the porch, the Minniconjou chief shifted his full attention on the young agent. Lee quickly explained to the three that he had done his best to secure an audience with Bradley, but that orders had been given from the highest command for the arrest of Crazy Horse.
“I hoped to again make my case in the morning before he was moved from the post.”
“The army is taking him away?” Touch-the-Clouds asked when Bordeaux had explained.
“Yes, like Spotted Tail was taken away for a time,” Lee explained lamely.
“You told him the soldier chief would listen to his words,” Touch-the-Clouds said sternly.
“There isn’t anything more I can do as a soldier,” the lieutenant said. “I am subject to a higher authority now.”
“Who is this?”
Lee wagged his head, hopelessness sinking in. “Someone … a soldier chief far, far away.”
The chief fell silent, and all Lee heard was the breathing of the four other men as the voices of the crowd floated into them.
Touch-the-Clouds turned back to the lieutenant and asked, “So he will be safe tonight?”
Lee swallowed, daring to answer, “No one can hurt him now.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Canapegi Wi
MOON WHEN LEAVES TURN BROWN, 1877
“Ta’sunke Witko! I will come with you!”
He spotted his old friend emerging from the edge of the crowd that had begun to part for the soldiers who were walking in front of him.
“Little Big Man,” Crazy Horse called as the stocky warrior moved up on his right side. The soldier chief walked on his left, and now a friend at his right. “Did you come chasing me yesterday?”
“Yes,” he admitted without the slightest shame, allowed by the soldiers to step right up and walk beside Crazy Horse.
“Did you come after me for the reward White Hat was offering to the man who caught me?”
“No,” Little Big Man asserted firmly, his face stony and serious. “Man Afraid and I came along with Red Cloud’s men to be certain that no harm came to you.”
“No harm?”
The muscular akicita nodded. “Yes. We were afraid that you might do something that would cause the others to hurt you—even … kill you.”
“Lakota injure Lakota? Why, this is unthinkable…” Then his voice drifted away as they started across the patches of dirt and of trampled grass.
Because he remembered No Water, and reached up to touch the scar at his left cheek, felt the way it had drawn up his lip as the skin healed. Every heartbeat of every d
ay, it had served as a reminder.
“I will stay with you now,” Little Big Man vowed. “Wherever you go, I will go with you and stand by you.”
“It is good,” he heard himself saying. “Even though your feet are now walking a different road, and you have become a metalbreast for the agent … I am glad you are here to help me understand.”
In front of them two soldiers slowly cleared the way through the noisy crowd. These white men did not carry the long rifles of the walking soldiers, nor the carbines of the horse soldiers. Only pistols on cartridge belts strapped around their waists. He glanced to the left at Kennington’s belt. A pistol there too. And that long, shiny knife slung from his left hip so it swung with every step. Little Big Man did not carry any of his soldier guns on him, only the knife on his belt.
Between the place where he had made his talk with his uncle’s agent and that log building where they were leading him now lay a patch of open ground. Here at sundown it was packed with many of his faithful, people who had endured terrible winters, suffered through the summer chases, lived on in the old way even though the soldiers burned and destroyed everything they had been forced to leave behind. Some of his supporters cried out his name, while others wept or quietly keened. After so many of his Northern People had attempted to escape to the four winds, it was reassuring to know they had come to see him at this difficult time.
Among all those Lakota faces at the edge of the crowd, Crazy Horse suddenly saw a white face he recognized. It was the wasicu healer, pushing himself through the narrow gap between two of Red Cloud’s agency police. The white man reached out an arm.
Smiling at the healer, Crazy Horse said, “Hau, Kola!”
As the escort passed the white man, he called back, “Kola!”
It was as if the healer wanted to say more, but could not—Little Big Man was moving him on so quickly.
Crazy Horse shifted the red blanket from his right arm to his left, feeling the reassuring hardness of that new knife soldier chief Bradley had given him as a welcome gift after his arrival. Still hidden there in the folds of that red blanket, it had remained a secret from the moment he had awakened before dawn in his uncle’s lodge. That seemed so long ago now, so far away too … this very morning back where he belonged near his beloved Beaver Creek, camped beside his father and his two stepmothers. Where he and Black Shawl could live out the rest of their days in peace because no one would talk against him there. No one would spread lies about him on that reservation. No man could convince the soldier chiefs there that Crazy Horse meant to do any white man harm … the way they had managed to convince the soldier chiefs here.
But tomorrow morning he would speak to these white doubters, if need be saying more words than he had ever uttered in public. And he would make them understand that he had laid down his rifle, untied his pony’s tail, and vowed to stay peaceful—
Ta’sunke Witko!
He paused a moment, believing someone in the crowd had called out his name. But Little Big Man took a firm hold of his right arm, nudging him into motion again. Crazy Horse realized it was the voice of the true one inside his head. His spirit guardian talking to him not through the mouth, but within his own heart.
Breathe deep now. Taste this air. Is this the air of freedom and peace that you hoped for back when you gave your body over to these soldiers and Red Cloud too? Did you really mean to throw your body away to these fools? Or will you remain faithful to the oath you made so many winters ago: that you will only give your life away as a warrior?
“I was a warrior,” he said in a whisper. Yet neither of the men on either side of him heard, not for the noise of the crowd as they neared another low-roofed log building.1 “Now I am just a man. No longer a leader. Just a man.”
Only the rocks and sky live forever, Ta’sunke Witko! A warrior does not die an old man.
Looking ahead between the two soldiers just in front of him, Crazy Horse noticed the lone guard with the long rifle turn on his heel at the near end of the covered porch and slowly pace away with his back turned. And for the first time he realized how many wagon guns were lined up in front of this place where he supposed the soldier chief wanted him to sleep until morning, when they could finally talk and all would be made better for it. And at the edge of the crowd sat Red Cloud and his pompous son-in-law, American Horse, both of them glaring down at him from the bare backs of their big horses.
“You are a coward!”
The throng went quiet at that shrill cry from a man’s throat. He stopped, looking for him. There!
“I thought you were a brave man,” shouted the warrior who wore one of the soldiers’ blue coats. “But we can all see you are nothing but a coward now!”
In a sudden, blind fury, Crazy Horse lunged for the Red Cloud man, arms outstretched to seize him by the throat, but Little Big Man held fast to his right arm, and pulled him back.
“Do not worry about what he says,” Little Big Man said quietly as he returned Crazy Horse to his place.
“Yes!” the shouter cried with a loud snort, and other men around him laughed. “Go along with the soldiers now, you man of no fight!”
His attention was snagged in the opposite direction as a door was drawn open by a soldier who stood right inside, beneath the awning, partly wrapped in shadows. Little Big Man tightened his grip on his left elbow as they turned left and stepped under the shady awning, onto the porch. For the first time, the soldier chief reached out to grip his right arm, tightly there above the elbow as they approached the door.
“Crazy Horse.”
He turned at the familiar voice. From the faceless crowd stepped another old friend. “He Dog,” he said with relief.
Now there would be two trusted companions at his side in this difficult time. But when Little Big Man threw up his arm to halt He Dog from approaching any closer, Crazy Horse grew uneasy.
So He Dog took a step back and warned, “This is a hard place you are going into, Ta’sunke Witko.”
When Little Big Man tugged on his arm in a rough manner, pulling him away from He Dog, Crazy Horse moved on, following the two soldiers in front of them as they stepped onto a wooden porch and filed through a narrow opening that forced his old friend and the soldier chief to fall behind him momentarily.
Stepping through the doorway, Crazy Horse did not turn to Little Big Man when he asked his old friend, “Is this where we will sleep together tonight?”
With both feet inside he opened his eyes widely, glancing left and right, letting the eyes grow accustomed to the dim light in this place, now that the sun had fallen and night would soon draw itself like a blanket over the land.
“Yes,” Little Big Man answered quietly at his right ear, stopping right behind Crazy Horse. “This is where you will sleep tonight, my fr—”
—at that very instant Crazy Horse realized where they had him!
This was the terrible place others had described to him! Tall shafts of iron extending from floor to roof … and behind them he spotted the dirty, bearded faces of soldiers who wore heavy iron shackles clamped around their wrists and ankles too. And what a foul stench assaulted his nose! The air so close, suffocating … his eyes darted—realizing the prisoners had no windows to look at the sky. Only tiny air holes chopped up high in the log walls.
“Where have you brought me!” he cried in horror.
Out of the reeking gloom appeared six soldiers: the two who had escorted him into this dank, repulsive, confining place … and four others, who held shackles and chains in their hands. Ready to make him a prisoner like these pitiful wasicus, who appeared to have been wallowing in their own filth. To throw away his freedom like this would be worse than death!
“No-o-o-o-o!” he shouted, whirling around on his heel, knocking away the soldier chief who had been gripping his left arm.
“Ta’sunke Witko!” cried Little Big Man. “No! No! They will hurt you!”
Growling with the fierceness of a grizzly, in one lunge Crazy Horse was at the do
orway, his fingers frantically stabbing through the folds of his red blanket. In a second lunge he found himself barely through the open door, where the crowd immediately gasped and most started to scream. Inside that foul, stinking place behind him, the soldiers were yelling too. Clatter of metal against metal, clanking iron and jangling chain, scuffling feet, all landed upon his ears.
Onto the porch ahead of him bounded the two Sicangu, who were his uncle’s closest shadows, men who had come with him on this journey only to make sure he was locked away in this terrible place. Swift Bear and Black Crow wore hard faces as they pounced toward him, but Crazy Horse lowered his head and threw his shoulders into the two agency police. With a grunt, they both fell aside, arms reaching, hands grabbing at his legs as Little Big Man charged up behind him. Their momentum carried them off the porch.
Behind you! Ta’sunke Witko, watch behind you!
To his left, out of the corner of his eye—he saw the old soldier still some distance away at the corner of the log building. The soldier suddenly looked over his shoulder, beginning to whirl around at the same time, his long weapon slowly coming down from where he had been carrying it at his shoulder. A last shaft of sunlight glinted off the long knife affixed to the muzzle of the weapon.
“Don’t do this, my friend!” Little Big Man shouted behind his right ear. “No! Don’t do this! You can only hurt yourself!”
He felt his friend’s mighty arms thread around him: the left ensnaring him around the waist, the right looping across Crazy Horse’s chest, that hand immediately ensnaring Crazy Horse’s left wrist as the red blanket spilled from his forearm.
But he had managed to pull the knife into sight.
“A knife!”
Angry voices thundered around him while the shrieks and cries and wails became deafening.
“That son of a bitch has a knife!”
As he staggered beneath the great weight of Little Big Man on his back, in a blur Crazy Horse saw how American Horse threw down his soldier carbine on him with a sneer—but in the next moment some of the Northern People leaped in front of American Horse and prevented him from shooting. Snarling in frustration, American Horse shouted his shrill order.
Turn the Stars Upside Down: The Last Days and Tragic Death of Crazy Horse Page 35