by Andy Conway
The mass of blueshirts up on the ridge had disappeared, perhaps to retreat forever, or to look for another way across the river.
We stared at that far bank, wondering if more soldiers would come.
And then the strangest thing.
Two blueshirts appeared on the other bank, one on foot, one on a horse, walking leisurely up the bank.
We stared.
The soldier on foot lay on the bank and scooped water into his mouth. The other began to cross the river.
I looked at the others. We exchanged puzzled glances. Had we become invisible? Were we seeing something from another time? How could they not have seen us? It felt embarrassing to shoot them, so much did they act as if we were not there, so much that we perhaps doubted our own presence.
Then, just as quickly, the spell was broken.
The one drinking water saw us and shouted to his friend, who turned, annoyed, and then as we raised our rifles to shoot, he dropped into the water and scrambled back.
They darted down river, running north and were quickly lost. One of the Cheyenne ran into the river and took the reins of the horse, whooping with delight.
Then another puzzling thing. Runs the Enemy came riding down from the ridge on the other side of the river. I had thought that side of the river had contained nothing but blueshirts, while our side was Lakota and Cheyenne, but now I saw that we were already crossing the river all over that side and engaging the enemy.
A sudden volley of gunfire thundered down the hill and we stared up high to the left. I could barely see them, but one of the hills was covered in blue soldiers who sent up a cloud of gunsmoke. They were firing on Indians who had crossed the river further downriver, climbing up to them.
Up on the ridge to the right where the Cheyenne had seen Crow scouts, there were now two of our own, waving blankets and shouting out a warning.
Braves were now piling out of the village to join us, returning from the battle upriver. They poured out from between the tipis and the wickiups, on ponies and on foot.
Runs the Enemy rode across the river to us and shouted, “Many soldiers. As thick as the grass. They cover the hills.”
I thought of Little Star shouting out their numbers and asking who would take them. Was it now my job to do that?
“Our women and children are over there,” he cried, pointing north up the river.
We all knew immediately that the regiment of soldiers that had fled up the deep ravine were circling round to find another way to cross further north. They would capture the women and children and the battle would be over.
Then from out of the teeming throng of warriors, Sitting Bull rode. Every brave turned to him, desperate for a sign of hope.
“Warriors!” he cried, riding his horse back and forth, as Crazy Horse had done only an hour before. “A bird, when it is on its nest, spreads its wings to protect its eggs. We are here to protect our wives and children, and we must not let the soldiers take them. Make a good fight!”
Crazy Horse and Gall led the men across the river and into the hills.
I watched the torrent flow, more and more flooding through the village. In seconds, the hills on the far bank were crawling with braves.
Two Moons led more of them thundering downriver to block any attempt by the whites to cross further north.
Sitting Bull called to his nephew, One Bull. “We must head north and prepare the women and children to move out of danger.”
His eyes fell on me and I saw that he doubted the vision the spirits had given him.
The shock of defeat was wide in his eyes.
I didn’t care. I kicked my horse on and crossed the river with the torrent of braves to take part in the fight.
It was a good day to die.
Stirring gravy
AS I HAD DISCOVERED the previous night, what looked like a gently rolling hill from the camp was a series of bluffs split by ravines and gorges, making the way up treacherous.
The soldiers occupied the high ground in several clusters and it was impossible to see them all at once. They fired down the hills at us. Like many others, I left my pony behind, tied to a clump of sagebrush, and crawled through the tall grass.
There were men and some women all around me, as if the ground had sprouted Indians, creeping up the rise, the grasses swarming with us.
A brave sprang up, shot his rifle, and dropped into the grass again. The soldiers fired back but they could see nothing. A few seconds later another brave would jump up, shoot, and dive to the floor before they could answer.
I crawled past an Oglala warrior lying on his back, his moccasins towards the enemy uphill. He raised his bow and shot an arrow off, arcing through the bright blue sky.
More arrows flew overhead. We heard the soldiers scream as they fell. Our bowmen the invisible enemy raining death upon them.
Braves exchanged whispered instructions as they crept through the grass, passing on orders that had come from The Men who are Talked About.
Some had had enough of creeping. They got on their ponies to make death runs in front of the firing soldiers and a great volley of thunder rang out as they all shot at once.
It was so loud my teeth rattled in my skull and for a moment, fear gripped me.
But I thought of Little Star, who would ride out to the enemy with nothing but his two fists and I kept him in my heart, which burned for revenge.
It seemed like we crawled through the tall grass for an hour or more before the uneasy stalemate broke.
I could see hundreds of warriors had squirmed all over Greasy Grass Ridge, and I got a clear view of clusters of soldiers occupying the hill higher up on the end of a much higher ridge.
Then the soldiers came charging down the hill.
We scattered and fell back to Greasy Grass Ridge and I saw there were no more than thirty blueshirts on horses. The rest of them remained on their hill, firing at Indians to the right.
The riders dismounted and formed a line on their knees, aiming their rifles at the grasses all around them. But as they dismounted I could see their legs were shaking with fear, their bodies swaying like trees in a strong wind.
They held their line but knew this was the place they would die.
We crept towards them, unafraid, again braves popping up like prairie dogs to fire and then disappear.
A Cheyenne warrior, sitting on his pony and wearing nothing but a blanket round his waist, his hair unbraided and falling loose down his back, was calling out to the braves all around.
I don’t know what he said, but it was clear he was urging all of us on to attack.
All around braves were jumping up, shooting, ducking down again. Getting closer and closer each time.
I stood and fired off two shots myself and ducked as a bullet whistled past, burning my face.
Cowering in the grass, I rubbed my ear to see if it was still there. No blood. It had missed me, but only by the width of a wasp’s wing.
Another Cheyenne — this one a short man who had had time to dress for battle — rose from the grass and stepped forward and shouted out to all of us hiding, waving his arm towards the soldiers on the ridge, urging us to follow him.
Bullets filled the air around him and he fell, and I thought he was hit, till he rose again and urged us forward once more.
Twice he made to run forward and only on the fourth time did every brave in the grass spring up and run with him.
I jumped to my feet and ran to meet death.
The line of soldiers fired their guns but only a handful of us fell. We fired too as we ran at them.
They scattered in fear, heading for the long ridge to the right that would lead up to the hill where the greater cluster were still shooting to the south.
We took the lower ridge they had held. In the dirt lay four blueshirts, dead. Every brave rushed to tap them with their spears, rifles or coup sticks. I too counted coup with my rifle.
The soldiers who’d run from this spot formed a line on the long ridge to t
he right, hoping to hold us back once more. But we cowered from them no more.
We charged for the ridge and I did not fear their bullets. We rolled towards them like a wave of death and overwhelmed them. They were all was lost in a cloud of black smoke.
Half of the soldiers who held the ridge were dead when I got there, and there was no one to kill because the other half were running to their comrades up on the hill. An officer on a horse was shooting behind him, twisting round in the saddle, and if it had not been for his bravery, all the soldiers who ran on foot would have been killed.
It was a long run up a steep hill. I felt my legs turn heavy but the soldiers were slower. We ran them down like the oldest and weakest buffalo before they could reach the safety of their comrades up on the hill. Only half of them escaped.
I contented myself with tapping the bodies of the dead blueshirts, swearing I would count coup on a hundred wasichus this day to avenge the death of my sister.
The soldiers on the hill wheeled round so their line faced us, covering the retreat of their men running towards them. We ducked once more. The fire was heavy but I was not scared. No bullet could touch me this day. And if it did, I did not care.
There were so many shots, I could hear no moment of silence between them. It was one great rolling, unending thunder. And from that cloud of thunder came down a rain of arrows.
I lay on the grass, using a dead soldier as cover, aimed my rifle at the hill, firing off several rounds and reloading but did not know if I hit a single soldier up there.
Many Indians must have crossed the river as they ran that first attack through the timber. Perhaps they had wiped out every soldier in that attack. They had certainly continued over the river and were now pouring at that line of soldiers on the hill from the south.
Because the soldiers had moved their line to fire down on us, they had left their left flank exposed, and the Indians to the south sprang at them.
If I’d continued that buffalo run I’d have been with them, my Hunkpapa and Oglala brothers, instead of on this side of the battlefield with mostly Cheyenne, whose tongue I couldn’t understand.
But I needed no words to see the disarray in the soldiers on the hill. The Lakota braves poured at their flank, and I joined the Cheyenne braves around me storming up the hill into the guns.
For a moment I felt pity for those poor white soldiers. The shock of fear on their faces. The looks of incomprehension. This was not how they had seen it happening. They had imagined kneeling in their line and shooting us savages dead at a respectable distance. But now we savages were among them, pouring into them from two sides, and they could not hold us back.
The soldier who carried the flag charged out of their line and tried to spear the Cheyenne chief who led our charge, but the brave grabbed the guidon from him and tapped him with it, counting coup with the enemy’s own flag.
“Hoka hey!” I screamed.
We slammed into them as they struggled to reload their rifles, hundreds of braves swarming all over them.
It had been a long distance fight.
Now it was stirring gravy.
The hill was a hell of screaming and shouting, lost in a cloud of smoke, lit only by flashes of rifle fire.
I found my anger again and ran into the smoke, hoping they would leave at least one soldier for me to kill. I was shouting all the Lakota swear words I knew, shouting every dirty name that Little Star had given to a new child in the camp. His giggling wordplays became my furious war cry. I was a blood-faced she-warrior chanting obscenities, baying for revenge. The filthy names he’d bestowed on babies would be the curses that destroyed the men who’d killed him.
Life names for death.
Hurtling through the thick black cloud, bodies all around me, it was hard to tell who was friend and who enemy. One Indian rushed past me wearing a cavalry shirt. Was he a Crow or Arikara scout, or one of us?
I did not shoot him.
And now I was hearing their screams — the screams of the white soldiers, under the cries of the braves.
I heard a man cry out, “Mother!” and he turned to face me, appearing through the smoke in a flash, blue eyes wide, mouth a gaping hole of terror.
As I ran to him, I raised my rifle and pulled the trigger.
The bullet shot straight into his screaming mouth. A red headdress sprayed out from the back of his skull and, for the final moment of his life, he was a chief donned in a red war bonnet.
He tottered, swayed, his legs buckled and he fell to his knees, mouth still a gaping O, blood spurting from his head.
All around me, warriors clubbed soldiers to death. They did not even fight. They sat on the ground waiting for death to take them. Some begged for mercy and called out to their God.
But he didn’t answer.
They were shouting in English. My own tongue. Little explosions of understanding. For a moment I questioned whose side I was on.
“Mother!”
“Mercy!”
“God help me!”
“Have pity!”
I rounded on one whose blond moustache could not hide the fact he was almost a boy. He stared dumbfounded.
“You’re white,” he moaned.
“You’re dead!” I screamed. “This is for my sister!”
I swung the rifle round and in one sweep clubbed him.
He fell back and I smashed his face to a pulp, his skull crackling like eggshell.
My eardrums ached with the sound of eagle bones shrieking, and the soldier’s head was a flat steak beaten into the dirt.
I had thought this was the end of the battle but once on the top of the hill, and with the smoke clearing, I saw there were more soldiers on the other side of the hill, and a great many horses, and even more Indians attacking from the east on the opposite side. They must have ridden north up the river, crossed over and circled round to attack them from the rear.
Then there was a commotion to the left in the grassy ravine that led down to the river. Horses bolting. A stampede. Indians riding amongst a great herd of horses. All could see they were soldiers’ horses, from their saddles and packs. We had taken them!
We screamed in triumph and I could see the shoulders of the blueshirts slump with despair. There would be no escape now.
Almost at the same moment there was a commotion to the north where another ridge ran down to the river, mirroring the ridge we had run up on this side.
My heart went cold.
A huge force of cavalry over there, watching this battle.
Beyond them, I could see the great tide of women, children and old people fleeing the village and migrating north like a herd of bison. There was no one to protect them from this force of blueshirts.
All the time we had thought we were fighting the entire cavalry, and now it was plain we were only fighting the right wing.
The left wing was over there, calmly watching.
As the thought chilled my heart, something smashed through that line of soldiers from behind them.
They scattered to each side as a band of warriors rode through them, screaming and shooting their rifles.
The Suicide Boys.
The blueshirts parted, like saloon doors opening and closing behind them, and the Suicide Boys rode right through. One of them fell from his horse, dead, and the rest rode on into the dip and headed up the long slope of the hill towards us.
I couldn’t help but notice the Suicide Boys were still very much alive.
They had scattered some horses and a handful of the blueshirts were killed, but they were now riding on like a deer on a frozen river that could not turn round.
So much for their glorious deaths.
The soldiers left alive on the right wing ran to a cluster of mounted men to the north, bunching into a great circle.
I kneeled and shot down into them. They were surrounded on three sides but we could not get among them.
I looked back at the Suicide Boys, still heading for us. If they crested the ridge and rode
over it, they would be mown down by the soldiers’ guns and get their wish.
The blueshirts’ horses panicked, pulling against their owners as they tried to shoot, so their bullets pierced nothing but the sun. Perhaps the horses wanted to run with their brothers, run to the Indian camp where they could live free on the plains again.
Then Crazy Horse struck.
It was he and his men who’d circled round and were attacking from the rear. But he did not stop and crouch down and fire on them as the rest of us had.
He rode straight into them, his eagle bone whistle shrieking.
He tore them in two like a knife through a blanket.
His braves followed, smashing through them, and the blueshirt circle disintegrated.
Those closest to me ran up to the ridge where I lay firing on them.
I looked at them, panicking, fleeing, hoping to escape over the ridge, unaware of the swarm of Indians climbing the bluffs.
Unaware of the Suicide Boys riding up towards them.
They didn’t see each other coming.
They crested the ridge at the same moment.
It was like when two buffalo bulls charge to lock horns and crack their skulls, to fall dazed and confused.
They smacked into each other.
It was an obscene tangle of men and horses and no one came out of it alive.
Down on the other side of the ridge they were stirring gravy now — Indians in among the soldiers, fighting hand to hand. I saw it for a moment before a great cloud of smoke obscured it.
A soldier in a blue tunic walked out of the cloud and I almost shot him down, but I saw he was an Indian brave wearing a soldier’s shirt. It was the Cheyenne chief who’d rode into battle almost naked. He walked up the grassy ridge, clutching his blanket around his waist, and sat down with a bump right next to me, a curious smile on his lips.
His eyes.
My eyes.
I thought he was going to make a joke about taking a break from the fighting and I almost laughed.