Death Chant

by Judd Cole

  “But now,” Arrow Keeper said, “we face a new evil, and I fear for your safety. Before you ride out, bring me your pony.”

  Touch the Sky wanted to ask more, but knew he’d learn soon enough. He finished eating, rounded up the dun, and reported back to Arrow Keeper’s tipi. The sun had still not cleared the crests of the Bighorn Mountains. Black Elk’s party was just then assembling near Yellow Bear’s tipi.

  Using a lump of soft charcoal, Arrow Keeper drew magical symbols on the horse’s flanks. He hung a medicine bundle from its hair bridle. Then he tied a polished antelope horn, into which he had inserted various herbs, around the pony’s neck.

  “Now,” said Arrow Keeper, “join the others. I have just blessed your pony with long wind, speed, and strength.”

  Touch the Sky thanked him. By this time their sister the sun was starting to burn the mist off the river. Shortly thereafter Black Elk’s party was riding toward the southernmost fork of the Powder. Their destination was the trading post at Red Shale, located just north of the soldier town called Fort Connor. They hoped to discover Buffalo Hump, Strong Eyes, and Sun Road. Failing this, they hoped they could at least learn something of them.

  It was a journey of one-and-a-half sleeps. They followed the river valley south, easily tracking the sign left by the three braves. Before their shadows were long in the sun on that first day, Black Elk rode up out of a cutbank and then immediately halted his pony. He stared hard at the trail before him. The others rode up beside him and also halted. For a long moment Touch the Sky, Little Horse, and the others stared, unable to move or speak.

  The three missing Cheyenne lay dead across the trail, shot and scalped. Flies swarmed in thick, blue-black masses around the clotted blood. When Black Elk finally swung down off his horse, the others followed suit.

  The bodies were riddled with lead, the popular .53-caliber buffalo balls used by white men. Except for the scalpings, no attempt had been made, such as had been done during the murders on the Rosebud, to make the deaths look as if they had been caused by Indians.

  An empty travois lay beside the dead Cheyenne. It had once been piled high with buffalo and beaver pelts.

  The sight shocked all of them to the core of their souls. Overcome with grief, a brave named Walking Coyote dropped to his knees beside his dead brother, Buffalo Hump. But he was a proud warrior and refused to let the grief come up from his heart into his face.

  “I will burn down my tipi and cut short my hair,” he said to the others, sorrow heavy in his voice. “All of my horses are for those who take them.”

  Surely his brother and the others had died before they could sing the death song. They would never cross over in peace to the Land of Ghosts. Instead, they must wander forever alone in the Forest of Tears, souls in pain. All Walking Coyote could do was sing a battle song to make the warriors’ deaths less frightening.

  “Only the rocks lie here and never move. The human being vapors away.”

  The simple Cheyenne words made Touch the Sky’s throat pinch shut. Even Black Elk, who despised public displays of feeling, was moved. For a moment he was forced to turn his face away. Though the ghastly scene saddened all of the Cheyenne, no one moved to stop Walking Coyote when he drew his knife and slashed his own arms.

  While scarlet ribbons of Walking Coyote’s blood trailed onto the ground, Black Elk lifted his voice in a vow. “Walking Coyote! Brothers! Hear me well. I know not who did this thing. Be they lice-eating Pawnee or white buffalo hunters, Ute or Crow, I swear by this battle lance they will die a hard death.

  “Brothers, know this! They have no place to hide from Black Elk. If they be in breastworks, I will drive them out. I swear this thing to you, brothers!”

  He held his streamered lance out and every buck present, including Touch the Sky and Little Horse, crossed his lance over Black Elk’s. In that moment they were all red brothers, and all hatred between Touch the Sky and Black Elk was forgotten.

  The bodies were lashed to the travois. Then Walking Coyote and a brave named Two Fists were sent back to camp with the dead. The others resumed their trek toward the trading post. Now they had to learn what they could about whoever sold the stolen pelts.

  That night they camped in a copse beside Beaver Creek. The next day, when the morning sun was starting to burn warm, they crested the last rise before the trading post. Located on a crescent-shaped bend of the river, it was a long, square structure of cottonwood logs with oiled paper for windows and a slab door on leather hinges. Two pack mules, with huge panniers over their flanks for carrying goods, were tied to the rail out front. Beside them stood two saddle horses, a big sorrel and a claybank.

  Black Elk watched the scene grimly. Unlike some of the headmen in the tribe, he was opposed to trading with the palefaces. True, ammunition, black powder, and tobacco were necessary things. It was foolish of the white man to part with such valuable items for beaver pelts and elk skins that any fool could obtain on his own.

  It was also true that many of the traders tried to be good to Indians. After all, the red man brought them riches. But Black Elk never forgot that a soldier town stood nearby. There lived the long knives who killed the red man as casually as they might shoot prairie chickens.

  “We will wait here,” he announced to the others. “Touch the Sky will leave his weapons with us. He will ride down and speak with the whites. He will ask what they have heard about the killings. He will ask who has recently come with many beaver pelts and buffalo robes to trade.”

  Black Elk looked at Touch the Sky. “Be wary like the fox. The whites never speak the straight word to the red man. Watch to see if their eyes run from yours. Find the truth hidden behind their words.”

  Filled with pride at the responsibility, Touch the Sky held his face expressionless and only nodded. He nudged the dun and rode forward. While he dismounted in front of the trading post and tethered his pony, a fat, florid-faced white man was busy nailing a circular proclamation beside the door. Intent on his mission, Touch the Sky neglected to read it as he stepped inside. The fat man stared at him for a moment, his mouth dropping open.

  Touch the Sky’s moccasins were silent on the rough puncheon floor. The inside of the trading post was crowded and smelled of whiskey and leather and linseed oil. Everywhere he looked, various animal pelts had been pressed tight into standard packs for transportation back to the warehouses in New Orleans. The number in each pack varied according to the size of the animal: ten buffalo robes, fourteen bearskins, sixty otter pelts, eighty beaver, one hundred and twenty fox, six hundred muskrat. Four packs of beaver equaled three hundred and twenty pelts and would fetch seven hundred dollars at the post.

  A bald, clean-shaven clerk in a paper collar glanced at Touch the Sky curiously for a moment. Then he turned back to wait on two customers who had heaved a pack of beaver pelts onto the broad deal counter. The clerk supplied them with two new rifles, cartridges, powder, coffee, sugar, and twists of chewing tobacco.

  Both men were bearded and wore their filthy hair long. One, dressed in buckskins and a broad-brimmed plainsman’s hat, turned sideways for a moment. Touch the Sky felt the back of his neck tingle when he recognized the coarse-grained face. It was the man he had seen at the camp on the Rosebud calmly cooking balls of meal while his leader scalped and mutilated a corpse!

  He did not recognize the second man. Nor was there any sign of the scar-faced leader of the murdering band. Touch the Sky waited until the clerk had finished and the two men were gathering their supplies.

  His tight-lipped mouth held as straight as a seam, he approached the counter. “I need some information,” he said to the clerk.

  All three men turned to stare, mouths agape.

  “Christ Jesus!” the customer with the coarse skin said. “This white man has seen it all now, by beaver!”

  “I don’t credit it,” his companion said. “Hell, he’s one a them apple Injuns. Red on the outside ’n’ white on the inside!”

  Ignoring them, holding his
face impassive, Touch the Sky asked the clerk the things Black Elk had told him to ask. He asked if there had been any word about the killing of three Cheyenne or if anyone had been in recently with a great number of buffalo robes and beaver pelts.

  The clerk listened attentively. But when Touch the Sky finished speaking, the white man’s eyes shifted toward the two filthy men. There was fear in the clerk’s glance. Now Touch the Sky detected the strong odor of liquor on the breath of the two customers.

  “Sorry, son,” the clerk said. “I can’t help you. I’ve heard nothing. We haven’t had any buffalo hides come in for several days now.” The clerk lowered his voice and added, “Do you know who that fat man out front is?”

  Touch the Sky shook his head.

  “He’s from the Territorial Commission. You speak English good. Can you also read it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, when you leave,” the clerk said, “you best read that circular proclamation he’s putting up.” The clerk shot another glance at the grinning customers. “I had nothing to do with it, son. You tell your people that.”

  The coarse-skinned customer laughed. “Don’t you fret, Harlan. Old fat Jacob ain’t got the oysters to kill no Injun. Everybody knows you’re soft on the red Arabs since you took one as your reg’lar night woman.”

  He looked at Touch the Sky. “You got a set of stones on you, young buck, I’ll give you that. Hell, it ain’t been that long since you quit shittin’ yellow. Now here you are, bold as a full-growed he-grizz, struttin’ around in front of whites when there’s a bounty on your dander.”

  His words confused Touch the Sky. Now the other customer said, “What tribe you with, boy?”

  “Yellow Bear’s.”

  The two men exchanged a long glance.

  “Well, now,” said coarse-skin, “that’s mighty providential. We ain’t had a chance to meet old Yellow Bear yet.”

  He stepped out front, then returned with a bottle of whiskey. “H’yar, take this to your big chief. Tell him it’s a gift from my chief, Henri Lagace. Tell your people there’s plenty more strong water where this come from.”

  When Touch the Sky backed up a few steps, refusing to accept the liquor, both men laughed.

  “Well now,” said the man Touch the Sky had seen on the Rosebud, “either you take this liquor, or me and Stone take your hair.”

  Seeing the confusion in the young Cheyenne’s eyes, the clerk said, “Son, you best go read that circular.”

  Touch the Sky stepped back outside and read the official notice.

  TO ALL WHO SHALL READ THIS NOTICE, GREETINGS. RECENT AND NUMEROUS ATROCITIES COMMITTED BY CHEYENNE INDIANS AGAINST WHITE TRAPPERS AND SETTLERS HAVE LED TO THIS PROCLAMATION: ALL CITIZENS, ACTING INDIVIDUALLY OR IN SUCH PARTIES AS THEY MAY ORGANIZE, ARE HEREBY AUTHORIZED TO GO IN PURSUIT OF ALL CHEYENNE ON THE PLAINS. THEY ARE FURTHER AUTHORIZED TO KILL AND DESTROY, AS ENEMIES OF THE COUNTRY, ALL THAT CAN BE SEARCHED OUT. ALL MILITARY POSTS IN THE TERRITORY WILL ISSUE $20 IN GOLD FOR EVERY SCALP CERTIFIED TO BE CHEYENNE.

  The words swam before his eyes, and Touch the Sky felt his face go numb. Suddenly, he understood the enormity of what the scar-faced leader and his murderous band were up to. By killing legitimate white trappers, they could profit from selling their furs. By making the deaths look Indian, they avoided any blame and made the Cheyenne the culprits. Thus, they could scalp Cheyenne for bounty—as they no doubt had done to Buffalo Hump and the others from Yellow Bear’s tribe—and profit doubly. As if this treachery were not enough, they were stirring up more trouble by selling whiskey to the tribes.

  The two white customers were grinning broadly when Touch the Sky, his thoughts still in a turmoil, came back inside. He knew he had to do something to stop this madness, but what?

  “Please,” he said. “This is wrong! Much trouble can be avoided if you speak to your leader. You must—”

  “Whoa, blanket ass!” said the white called Stone. “You look as dry as a year-old cow chip. You swaller a swig or two o’ this, ’n’ we’ll hold palaver with you.”

  Touch the Sky was too desperate to refuse. The whiskey burned in a straight line to his gut and brought tears springing into his eyes. At the men’s urging he swallowed another mouthful, then a third. Already his head felt light and the interior of the trading post began to blur.

  “I don’t hold with selling whiskey to Indians,” said Harlan, the clerk. But he was silenced by a murderous stare from his customers.

  One of the stinking whites threw his arm around Touch the Sky. The young Cheyenne was too confused to resist.

  “Hell, Innun, we’re your friends,” said Stone. “You take the rest of this back to your chief ’n’ tell him we got lots more to trade. If you wasn’t our pard, you think we’d let twenty dollars in gold go unclaimed? A Cheyenne what speaks English can be right useful to us.”

  They said they were his friends. The room was spinning, and Touch the Sky felt his numb confusion giving way to a warm sense of inner peace. One of the men still had a friendly arm around him, both were grinning. Something had troubled him deeply only a moment before. But he forgot what it was. He was dizzy, but felt good. A broad, foolish smile broke out on his face. These men were not murderers, they were his friends, they—

  “Touch the Sky!”

  The words, spoken harshly in Cheyenne, shocked him out of his numb trance. He spun around and stared at the small, bronzed figure in the doorway.

  “You are a white man’s dog!” Little Horse said sharply. His dark eyes were filled with contempt. “We thought you were in danger, and Black Elk sent me down. Now I find you dancing and capering with the same paleface devil you saw committing murder only two sleeps ago. Wolf Who Hunts Smiling has been right all along—you are a spy for the whites!”

  Chapter Four

  Little Horse felt torn in his loyalties. He could not quite bring himself to report what he had seen to Black Elk. After all, Little Horse told himself, he had been wrong once before about Touch the Sky. He had accused him of trying to run away from battle with the Pawnee, when in fact he was only fleeing for help to save Yellow Bear’s tribe.

  Little Horse had been wrong before, but what he had just seen reawoke his distrust of his new friend. Touch the Sky had not only been drinking devil water with white men, but with one of the paleface butchers they had seen on the Rosebud! Now his friend was crazy from drinking and could barely mount his pony for the ride back to join the others.

  By the time the youths had returned to the others, Touch the Sky had sobered enough to feel his face burning with shame. Black Elk and the other full warriors cast curious glances at the bottle in his hand when he and Little Horse rejoined the other warriors. Touch the Sky explained the message from the white men to Chief Yellow Bear. The warriors were troubled when Touch the Sky added that one of the whites had been involved in the Rosebud River slaughters. However, all else was forgotten when Touch the Sky explained about the white man’s proclamation announcing a bounty on Cheyenne scalps.

  Everyone was silent during the long ride back to the Tongue River village. His face stony with disapproval, Little Horse avoided all of Touch the Sky’s glances. Each time his friend spoke to him, Little Horse pretended to hear nothing. He acted exactly as he had during the early days of their warrior training, when he had treated the new arrival’s presence in camp as an embarrassment.

  When they returned to the camp, they found the entire village in mourning for the three braves who had been killed on their way to the trading post. Several old squaws were keening in grief, and the warriors had all cut short their hair. The dead had already been outfitted in new elk skin moccasins for their journey to the Land of Ghosts.

  Black Elk decided to take their news directly to Chief Yellow Bear instead of calling a tribal council first. With Touch the Sky at his side, they visited the old chieftain in his tipi. Reluctantly, Touch the Sky explained how he had drunk the strong water and become confused. He was surprised when the chief’s leather-cracked fa
ce showed sympathy instead of anger.

  “I have heard,” Yellow Bear said, silver hair spilling out over his red blanket, “how the white men sometimes place bad medicine in their whiskey and rum to further the red man’s need for it.”

  Yellow Bear explained how he had seen drunken red men snatch burning logs from the fire and rub them on their heads, rape buffalo cows, kill themselves and each other, freeze to death, drown, burn themselves up, and fall from their horses and break their necks.

  When he finished speaking, the chief rose, took the bottle of whiskey outside, and dumped the contents out. He returned and listened with an impassive face while Touch the Sky again explained the message contained in the circular proclamation posted outside the entrance to the trading post.

  “These words hurt my ears,” he said when Touch the Sky had finished speaking. “Strong water is a danger to my people, but we can fight against those who would give it to us. However, how can we fight the entire white nation? For every paleface we kill, a swarm comes fighting. So long as this talking paper has power, anyone may kill Cheyenne.”

  After much meditation he sent Touch the Sky to find River of Winds, the same brave who had interrupted the last council to report on the three missing Cheyenne sent to the trading post.

  “Select two good men,” the Chief instructed River of Winds when the two had returned. “Learn from Touch the Sky just what these white men look like. Then wait near the trading post, well hidden, and watch for them. Follow them to their camp and learn about them. Then report to the council everything you have seen.”

  River of Winds nodded. After Touch the Sky had provided descriptions of the men he had seen, River of Winds left to carry out his orders. Yellow Bear, his aged face slack with worry, dismissed his visitors. Touch the Sky was returning to his tipi when he encountered Little Horse in the middle of the camp.