Those drumbeats and that wailing only served to heighten their tensions as they waited out the hours, knowing how very real was the possibility of attack by the dying man’s supporters. Realizing that Crazy Horse’s people fully blamed Agent Lee for bringing their leader here as a prisoner, to be stabbed by that nameless sentry … to die an agonized death. As an immeasurable guilt weighed down his shoulders, Lee felt it was only natural the Northern Indians blamed him for this tragedy.
Just moments after American Horse’s six Oglala scouts had carried Crazy Horse into the adjutant’s office, that surly chief came back outside to address the thousands of onlookers and hundreds of mourners. Red Cloud’s son-in-law had stepped to the edge of the porch and shouted, “We have the body now and you can’t have it!”
An uproar began anew. The Crazy Horse supporters shouted their curses on the agency Indians, while Red Cloud’s Oglala cheered, clearly ecstatic that their leaders were holding the wounded man hostage.
“We’ve been arguing over this!” American Horse yelled above the noisy clamor of the thousands. “But we’ve got him in this lodge now, and you can’t have him!”
Lee had just begun to explain to Lucy and some of the other officers how that arrogance on the part of the agency forces was certain to inflame the passions of Crazy Horse’s people when a half-dozen warriors spurred their horses across the empty parade, heading straight for the commanding officer’s home.
“How’d they get on the post grounds?” one of the officers was demanding.
Another officer shouted for enlisted men to come on the double.
Yanking back on their reins right at the edge of the porch, the Oglala horsemen immediately began screaming in Sioux at the soldiers.
“What are they saying?” Lee and others demanded of their interpreters.
Baptiste Pourier explained, “That one, he’s Crazy Horse’s uncle. Named Little Hawk.”
Indeed, the angriest of the antagonists appeared to be the wounded man’s uncle, who suddenly dragged a pistol from under his shirt and waved the muzzle directly at Lieutenant Lee, that gun hand shaking in fury.
On the far side of the parade, Lee could see that more than three dozen of Red Cloud’s policemen were already rushing toward this tense scene, but in those moments before they arrived, Little Hawk spewed out his vilest hatred for Lee, as well as the interpreter at Lee’s side, Louis Bordeaux—both of whom had accompanied his nephew to this place where he had been killed by a soldier’s bayonet.
Had a single bullet been fired in those tense seconds, a massacre of small proportions would have taken place on Colonel Bradley’s porch. White women, officers, and enlisted too, along with Crazy Horse’s people and Red Cloud’s police—all would have died there and then. But the reservation scouts made a mighty show and convinced Little Hawk and his warriors they stood little chance of getting away with murder.
Their fury still unquenched, the Northern men wheeled about, shoving through the agency police who outnumbered them more than six-to-one. Little Hawk and his warriors raced away, shouting their oaths and firing their pistols into the air.
Jesse put his arms around Lucy’s trembling shoulders, realizing just how frightened she had become at this brush with sudden death.
“They blame me,” Lee confessed with a deepening sadness. “Even though I did everything I could to get him that audience I promised he would have with you, General Bradley … Crazy Horse’s people blame me for his murder.”
“You did everything expected of an officer and a gentleman,” Bradley advised. “There’s nothing for you to be ashamed of.”
“Then why is there such a big hole inside me right now?” Lee asked. “A hole big enough that all the explaining away in the world isn’t going to make it better.”
“You’re Agent Lee?”
Jesse turned at the question from an unfamiliar voice, discovering a dark-skinned civilian standing at the bottom of the steps. “Yes, I’m Lee.”
“My name’s Provost. John Provost.”
Bradley stepped up to explain, “Provost is one of our post interpreters. Had a Sioux mother.”
“What do you want with me, Provost?”
Staring up at the lieutenant, the half-breed said, “Doctor said you’re wanted over at the office.”
He momentarily gazed across the parade. “McGillycuddy?”
Provost nodded. “Sent me to tell you Crazy Horse wants to see you.”
“C-crazy Horse?” he said in disbelief.
“Doctor sent me to get you,” Provost said, turning to point back at the adjutant’s office. “Said to come in a hurry.”
Quickly bending to plant a kiss on Lucy’s cheek, Jesse bounded off the porch, the interpreter falling into a trot right beside him.
That evening word had it that many of Crazy Horse’s people had bolted out of the surrounding camps of agency Indians, some to scatter upon the winds, while others headed directly downriver for Touch-the-Clouds’s camp at Spotted Tail Agency. Yet most had chosen to stay and mourn right there, across the river from Camp Robinson—because, Lee thought, they must have realized that if they ran, the soldiers would come hunt them down … the way the soldiers had always hunted them down. So instead of running this time, they wallowed in their grief: wailing, keening, singing, drumming the darkness down. Lee knew the men would be giving voice to coup counting and their most fervent brave-heart songs, for these were the warriors who had faithfully followed Crazy Horse against the soldiers at the Platte Bridge fight, or the Fetterman massacre, or the other victorious skirmishes and battles to defend their northern hunting grounds, like the Rosebud and the Little Bighorn. Men who had vowed to follow Crazy Horse … tonight they had no leader.
Not just the men—but the women, children, and old ones too. While the men had charged into the battles, still it had been these innocents who had suffered most, enduring beyond all human endurance when, time and again and again, they were forced to abandon all their possessions, or were forced to watch the soldiers burn everything they owned along with their stockpile of winter’s meat too. So these unsung women had placed the weak and the old with the little babes on the pony-drags and plunged into the icy snows, following their men … warriors who had vowed to follow Crazy Horse to the end.
What to do now? Now that these poorest of the Oglala, the Crazy Horse people who had endured unimaginable loss, privation, and death … now that they had no leader?
“Agent Lee, come in; come in,” Valentine McGillycuddy said, gesturing with a hand, bringing him over from the doorway where Captain James Kennington stood guard. “He’s heavily medicated—to kill the pain.”
“Provost said he wanted to see me?”
The surgeon scooted back some. “Come closer. Kneel here, where he can see your face. Yes, Lieutenant—he wanted to talk with you before … Crazy Horse knows he’s going to die soon.”
Inching sideways on his knees, Jesse came even with the wounded man’s shoulders and leaned down slightly. Crazy Horse’s half-lidded eyes seemed to spot him, and his scarred face turned toward the lieutenant. His dry, cracked lips began to move, a bare whisper of words.
Provost translated, phrase by phrase, “‘My friend, I do not blame you for what happened today. Had I listened to you, this trouble would not have happened to me.’”
It made hot, unexpected tears come to Jesse’s eyes to hear those words. He laid a hand on Crazy Horse’s shoulder. Lee said, “At Red Cloud Agency, you may have been a little chief, and your word may not have been trusted much … but I would have seen that your good words were spoken to the soldier chief tomorrow if…”
And his voice drifted off into silence.
“‘Thank you,’” Provost translated. “‘I do not blame you for what others did. You were a good man to me. I am useless now to help my people. Do what you can for them when I am gone.’”
When Crazy Horse turned his head slightly and closed his eyes, Jesse waited in expectation with the others for the wounded man to bre
athe again, worried that those last words might indeed be the death rattle. But after agonizing seconds, they heard Crazy Horse’s labored breathing resume, watched his chest rise and fall with a slight shudder.
“He’s growing weaker and weaker as we watch, Lieutenant,” McGillycuddy said.
Patting the dying man’s shoulder, Jesse nodded and rose to his feet.
“Ever since I arrived here with this man and Bradley refused to see him,” Lee said quietly to the surgeon, “I worried that I would be made the goat of this affair. But now … now it just doesn’t seem to matter anymore.”
He swiped at the tears that spilled down his cheeks and gazed across the tiny office at Touch-the-Clouds. Lee gestured toward the tall Indian and said, “This chief … you can rely on him for anything you need during your death watch, Doctor. I regard him as honest as the sun.”
McGillycuddy nodded before he laid two fingers into the groove of thick muscle on Crazy Horse’s neck, feeling for the weakness of the pulse.
Sensing the immense burden of guilt bearing down his shoulders, Lee put his hat back on his head, stood rigid, and saluted the dying man on the floor. “Tell him … try to explain to him why I don’t think I can stay here anymore … waiting, watching while he dies.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Canapegi Wi
MOON WHEN LEAVES TURN BROWN, 1877
Somewhere outside himself, Crazy Horse heard the soldier trumpet blow. Muffled, beyond the log walls of this place where they had brought him.
For a moment he wondered if it were this death road that made him hear such a thing.… Then he remembered why the soldiers blew their trumpets. He had heard their brassy call raised so many, many times in battle.
Crazy Horse thought on all those people gathered to watch the little soldier chief and Spotted Tail’s akicita bring him back to the Soldier Town. It seemed as if all of Red Cloud’s people had turned out.
Now a soldier was blowing his war trumpet so he feared that fighting had broken out between the army and his people. But … he heard no gunfire. No screams of women, no strong-heart songs from the men. Why was the trumpet blowing?
He stirred fitfully, blinking, hoping to see more than the wispy edges of pale light—waiting, anxious for the first gunshots, the cries of men rushing into battle, the shrieks of the women and little children fleeing …
But there were none. Only the melancholy notes of that soldier trumpet, fading into the darkness that was closing in around him.
Sad that the soldiers had put down their roots and raised their log houses in this land that lay in the shadow of the majestic Crow Butte—where as a boy he and his best friend had hunted the tiny creatures among their burrows. Sometimes they had used their small bows and arrows. And other times they had hunted with rocks. That was before the soldiers came to take this land from them all and then give it over to Red Cloud … as long as Red Cloud obeyed the White Hat and Three Stars too.
Looking back now, it seems to be a whole lifetime away, Ta’sunke Witko.
Then he heard the whisper of his father, and looked up to find the old man bent low over him. Even felt Worm’s fingertips gently caress his face. It was good his father was here for this coming of death. And his uncle too. Instinctively, he knew Touch-the-Clouds had never left his side.
Fitfully, pain rising again, he remembered how the soldier wagon had led them down toward the leafy trees at the crossing of the White Earth River, all of Red Cloud’s people gathered to watch him in this time of trouble. With so many unfamiliar and hard faces pressing in around him, it had surprised Crazy Horse when his old friend had stepped out of the crowd, dressed as a warrior once more—wearing those powerful clothes he had always worn into battle … all those battles the two of them had fought together.
You see He Dog in your dream. But fail to remember how he abandoned you, his old comrade, and went over to Red Cloud’s camp.
Maybe he went to stay in his uncle’s camp so he could save his women and children, Crazy Horse answered the soft voice that reverberated in his marrow with a galvanic electricity. He Dog will always be a warrior.
Remembering now the recent memory of his old fighting kola. No matter that they had disagreed and He Dog had moved across the river. He had been there at that terrible moment they brought him to the hard place, and the two of them were together again. But Little Big Man became just as hard as that terrible, reeking place … and kept He Dog away.
Oh, had He Dog only been beside Crazy Horse when his arms had been held from behind! Had He Dog been close to protect his back, then Black Crow and Swift Bear could not have trapped him as he rushed from the doorway; then Red Cloud and American Horse could not have penned him in, to prevent him from breaking free.… None of them could have made him stop and struggle until the soldier’s long gun knife tore apart his insides.
None of the evil-talkers were there at his final struggle. Not Woman’s Dress, No Water, not Lone Bear nor Little Wolf—the two who had spewed out the lies about him plotting to kill Three Stars. None of them were to be seen in the noisy crowd. Only Red Cloud, sitting majestically and triumphant beside American Horse, both chief and son-in-law enthroned imperially on their ponies—watching this final undoing of the man they believed to be so much a danger to them and their exalted positions of influence. Come now to see Crazy Horse humiliated before his people, stripped of dignity, and scourged by the soldiers for nothing he had done by his own tongue, much less his own hand.
Those Oglala, his own people … how ugly they had turned against him.
From afar he heard footsteps on the tiny rocks outside, measured steps—like those of a man’s dance. Crazy Horse wondered if he should have been a dancer like the others. But his medicine had told him no. Slow, rhythmic steps came into this place where he lay. Measured beats like the drum he felt reverberating within his breast. Each beat oozing a little more blood from the awful tear in his body.
After riding on the crest of some rising pain, he felt like sleeping again.
And when he awoke, Crazy Horse still heard those drumbeat footsteps, felt the rhythm inside him as it grew in volume and pain. So deep in his bones that it had to be the very heartbeat of the earth itself—the mother, the womb of his people.
He stirred a little, his breathing become ragged as he fought the swell of fiery agony through his belly. Sensed his father’s face hovering over him, his uncle’s hand on his shoulder, comforting. Against his arm, he felt the healer press.… Ah, the sleeping water slowly warmed his veins again.
“F-father…” he muttered as his eyelids grew too heavy and he felt himself succumb to sleep once more.
“I am here, my son.”
Too late, for he was already dreaming.
Crazy Horse had only wanted to tell his father to let him go.
Camp Robinson, Neb.
Sept. 5, 1877.
General Crook,
Green River, Wyo.
In the melee, Crazy Horse got a prod in the abdomen, possibly from a bayonet, but probably from a knife when he attempted to stab Little Big Man: the latter I am trying to persuade all the Indians. The Doctor reports that [Crazy Horse] has no pulse in either arm, and it will be impossible to move him to-night. His father will be allowed to move his lodge near the guard-house and take charge of him should he be alive in the morning.
Clark,
1 Lieut. Commanding.
He pulled the watch out of his vest pocket and tilted its face slightly, toward the greasy yellow light of the smelly lamp. Wasn’t too long and it would be midnight.
Dr. Valentine McGillycuddy returned the watch to his pocket and listened to the sound of gravel underfoot outside, whispers rising from those faceless soldiers who came and went beyond these walls, and the muffled sobs of the old woman who had come to sit in the shadows, crumpled against a wall, her blanket pulled over her head in mourning. Beside her sat the old man, holding fast to their vigil with Touch-the-Clouds. The giant never moved from the dying man’s side.
From time to time Valentine laid his two fingertips along the groove of the great muscle in the neck, searching—then finding—the faint and thready pulse. Measuring how it weakened hour by hour. Yet his patient was suffering little from all the morphine—only a little at a time, just enough to help him sleep himself into death.
God, but what a way to go.
He suddenly thought of the small, leather-covered flask he had along, and dug it from the bottom of his bag. Chances were that some of the brandy would magnify the narcotic effects of the morphine, make these last long minutes all the easier on Crazy Horse. Valentine unscrewed the pewter cap, poured it full, then slowly lifted the wounded man’s head on one arm. But as he brought the cap to Crazy Horse’s lips, Worm rocked forward to clamp his hand around the doctor’s wrist. The old Indian shook his head emphatically, whispering.
“What’s he say?” McGillycuddy asked Garnett.
“Doesn’t want you to … to whirl his mind,” Billy explained.
With a reluctant nod, the doctor gently returned Crazy Horse’s head to the folded blanket beneath it. Gazing down at the brandy in the cap, he quickly tossed it back, enjoying how the liquid burned all the way down his throat, briefly robbing him of breath.
The old man certainly had some understanding of the white man’s whiskey. So Valentine decided it was better that Worm did not fathom how this morphine was affecting his son. No earthly reason why the living should be allowed to subject the dying to this agony of a slow death, all in the name of courage and stone-faced warriorhood … when McGilllycuddy had it in his power to help his friend, Crazy Horse, in his final moments.
He had been thinking for some time, deep in his own thoughts, when the dying man stirred, moaned softly in his sleep. That sound of fitful dreaming made McGillycuddy’s heart lurch in sympathy; he turned away with a sigh, forcing his hands into busy-ness again with the morphine bottle and the hypodermic. He had it filled once more and slowly turned to Crazy Horse, finding both Touch-the-Clouds and the old man at the wounded one’s side. They were touching him, whispering so quietly it seemed as if their lips were only moving … but then his ears heard their faint singing. Sioux words, mournful as a death march, a plaintive melody sung in time to the marching footsteps of those sentries posted outside the door.
Turn the Stars Upside Down: The Last Days and Tragic Death of Crazy Horse Page 38