by Judd Cole
Chapter Eight
While Black Elk’s band was drawing nearer to the white marauders at the confluence of the Yellowstone and the Powder, Henri Lagace was traveling with the group he had sent to the Little Bighorn River valley.
This was well to the southwest of Black Elk’s cold camp, between Sioux and Shoshone country. It was land where open plains alternated with vast mesquite flats and buttes. Lagace preferred this kind of territory because it made surprise Indian attacks on his well-armed pack trains much more unlikely.
Now, as the midmorning sun began to burn with its first real heat of the day, the steely-eyed Frenchman led his men in a southerly course paralleling the Little Bighorn. The pack train moved slowly but steadily, many of the men leading pack animals by ropes secured to their saddle horns with half hitches. Jagged mountain spires rose majestically into the sky on their right. The wide, empty plain stretched off to the horizon on their left. The sky was a vast, deep, bottomless blue spotted here and there by a thin white puff of cloud.
Even sitting his saddle, Lagace was obviously a tall man. He was thickset without running to fat, his long, yellow hair tied in a knot under the brim of his hat. Like the rest of his men, he wore fringed buckskins, the strings stiff and black with old blood. But the trait to which every eye was instantly drawn was the deep and raw gash that extended from the corner of his left eye well past the corner of his mouth.
Lagace never talked about that scar, and no one who knew him was foolish enough to ever mention it. He was a vain man who had once considered himself a favorite with the ladies. A Cheyenne tomahawk had ended all that.
He had received the scar six years earlier during the last mountain man rendezvous held on the Green River. In those days he had been a licensed trapper for the Northwest Company. One night he managed to trade a few bottles of whiskey for a huge cache of beaver pelts that a group of Cheyenne braves had brought to the rendezvous. While the Cheyenne were cavorting drunkenly, Lagace entered one of their tipis to rape the Indian’s unmarried sister.
He made the mistake of picking a girl who was promised to one of the warriors. Even so, he might have gotten away with it if she had been Mandan or Crow. But he did not learn until it was too late that the Cheyenne valued chastity more than any other Plains Indians. Even alcohol couldn’t blunt the warrior’s wrath when he and the brother returned and discovered Lagace forcing himself on the girl.
Luckily for Lagace, another mountain man shot the buck before he could tug his tomahawk back out of the Frenchman’s face and deliver the deathblow. But to this day, though he hated all Indians, Lagace carried on a special vendetta against the Cheyenne.
“Keep your eyes skinned,” he said now to Longstreet and McMasters, who rode beside him at the head of the pack train. “We’re entering Snake country.”
Snake was the mountain man name for the Shoshone tribe. Lagace felt no real fear of attack from them. They were among the most poorly armed of the Plains Indians and notoriously bad shots with a rifle. His plan was to establish contact with a Snake chief and make his tribe a handsome gift of many bottles of liquor.
Longstreet backhanded the sweat off his coarse-grained face. “Hell’s bells! I’m plumb sick of raggedy-ass redskins. I can’t remember what it’s like to rut on a white woman.”
“Damn good thing you kin cook,” McMasters said, “cuz with that face a yourn, you’re lucky red wimmin’ll let you poke ’em.”
Almost immediately he realized what he had said. The eyes Lagace turned on him were as cold and dead and flat as two stones. McMasters clamped his mouth shut and stared off toward the mountains.
They crested a long rise and Lagace halted the pack train. He was riding a handsome sorrel gelding he had acquired in a trade with a cavalry officer. It was the fastest animal he had ever encountered on the plains, faster even than the best Indian ponies. His sorrel had never been outrun and had never lost a race.
He leaned back against the cantle of his handsome, hand-tooled saddle. He broke out a pair of U.S. Army field glasses. Carefully, patiently, he scanned the entire area before him, looking for any sign of Indians.
Lagace had earned a good living as a legitimately licensed trapper. But ironically, the fate of the rugged mountain men depended directly on the state of fashion in dandified London: as beaver-pelt hats began to go out of fashion, the price of plews, or beaver furs, began to drop. With too many fur-trading companies already working the best beaver streams, this drop in prices began to squeeze out the free trappers. Many of them ended up marooned in the frontier, bitter and disgruntled.
There was still a market for plews, but the low prices did not justify the hard work of trapping or the constant struggle for survival. Lagace had already learned there was an easier way to make quick profits: robbing the traps of others. It was a stroke of genius when he came up with the idea of not only blaming his enemy the Cheyenne, but also profiting from Cheyenne scalps.
He recruited his own private army of frontier hardcases and cutthroats. This was easy, given the number of criminals and malcontents who had fled the law in the East. Once driven out of the trapping business by falling prices and organized companies, many were eager to serve a ruthless, cunning leader who would assure their survival in a harsh land.
By now he had organized a group that numbered almost a hundred men, currently divided into four roving bands. Lagace was the linchpin, the key to holding these highly individual, often dangerous, personalities together. He ruled with an iron hand and doled out the only two things they would respond to: money and violence.
The territorial vigilantes welcomed their presence because they were a direct threat to the Indians. Drunk Indians occasionally committed atrocities against white settlers. But in general a drunk Indian was as easy to control as a child.
Occasionally the Army, in a halfhearted gesture to the politicians and reformers back East, threatened to disband Lagace’s private army. But so far, generous bribes to the right colonels and generals had eliminated that threat. The biggest danger by far was the Indians themselves. However, they were always busy warring with each other and didn’t have the common sense to organize for their own good. His liquor, which he always supplied free until the Indians were addicted and would do anything to get it, took care of the rest.
Still, Lagace was vaguely troubled as he carefully searched the vast plains. He had heard, through a Pawnee who served as a scout for the Seventh Cavalry, that a tribe of Cheyenne was on the warpath against him. Such news traveled fast through the Indian nations. Now he needed to capture some redskins and learn as many details as he could.
And suddenly, he discovered his opportunity.
He focused the field glasses for a better look. Below, perhaps a mile off across the plain, a trio of Indians stood near the edge of a stand of scrub oak. They had built a fire and were roasting a freshly killed elk. While the meat cooked, they were eating boiled guts. Using one hand to force the contents of the intestines down, they devoured the gut behind it.
“Snakes, all right,” Lagace thought without bothering to study the Indians’ features more closely. He knew the Shoshone considered boiled intestines a delicacy.
Lagace lifted one hand high, signaling the pack train to stop and rest where they were. “Follow me,” he said to Longstreet and McMasters. “But hold your mounts to a trot.”
Rifle butts protruding from their saddle scabbards, the three white men descended the rise and pointed their bridles toward the Shoshone. Busy over their meal, the Indians did not notice the new arrivals until they were well on them. Lagace had pulled a white truce flag out of his saddlebag and held it high as they approached.
The Indians glanced toward their ponies, tethered nearby. But the palefaces would be upon them before they could mount and flee. Lagace watched them confer briefly among themselves. Apparently they decided to trust the flag. Their faces impassive, they watched the whites approach.
Lagace could speak a few words in several Indian tongues. He gr
eeted the Shoshones in a crude mixture of their own and Crow languages, knowing the Crow were their allies in battle. “We are friends of the red man. We have gifts for your chief.”
The oldest of the three braves was named Sioux Killer. He had once been a guide for mountain men and had learned English. He looked at his companions, Red Bull and Thunderhead. Barely moving his head, Red Bull signaled his distrust.
“We have gifts,” Lagace repeated in his mixture of Shoshone and Crow. “We want to parley.”
Lagace said something to Longstreet, and the cook pulled a necklace of brightly colored baubles and trinkets out of his saddlebag. It caught the sun’s rays and glowed in a rainbow of pretty colors. All three Shoshone stared, captivated.
“We want to parley,” Lagace repeated.
Sioux Killer glanced back up at the scar-faced white. “What do you wish from us?” he said in thick but understandable English.
Lagace resisted a smile as he realized his luck— an English-speaking informant! He dismounted and told his companions to do likewise. He took the necklace from Longstreet and carried it over to Sioux Killer.
“Our business concerns your enemies, the Cheyenne. We have heard of a plan. One of the Cheyenne chiefs is on the warpath against me. The enemy of your people is the enemy of my people. Who is this Cheyenne chief, and where are his clan circles camped?”
Sioux Killer again glanced at his companions. It was true the Shoshone were allies of the Crow and enemies of the Cheyenne and Sioux. However, they were not presently at war with either tribe. Of course Sioux Killer had heard of the plan this scar-face spoke of. Yellow Bear had sent word-bringers throughout the plains, asking his allies the Sioux and the Arapahoe to join the fight. The Shoshone had learned this much through spies.
However, Sioux Killer also knew that all red men had a dangerous common enemy in the whites. The necklace glittered in his fingers. Speaking in his own tongue, he explained to his companions what it was the white man wanted.
“Brothers, this thing would be left alone,” Red Bull advised. “I have no love for the bloodthirsty Cheyenne who killed my father. How many times have they stolen our horses and stolen our meat? But these palefaces, they are bad medicine.”
“Truly they are,” Thunderhead agreed. “But may we not wear the mask of friendship and acquire more of these fine gifts? These are only long knives. Speak in a wolf bark, but put on the face of a friend. They have stolen from the red man, let us now steal from them.”
Sioux Killer considered this and decided he liked it. He gestured toward the fire, offering the three white men some meat. “Eat!”
Longstreet spat into the dirt. Then he removed a plug of tobacco from his possibles bag and gnawed off a hunk. “These Injuns don’t know shit from apple butter,” he said impatiently. “I say we jist put ’em under.”
“Shut up,” Lagace said, fixing his steely-eyed stare on the cook. “I want your opinion, I’ll beat it out of you.”
Lagace returned to his gelding and removed a bottle of whiskey from the saddlebags. It was from a fresh batch of his notorious Indian whiskey brewed from straight alcohol boiled with river water, gunpowder, and chewing tobacco. He pulled the cork out with his teeth and carried the bottle over to Sioux Killer, handing it to him. He repeated his question about the Cheyenne.
Sioux Killer, who remembered the joys of drunkenness from his days with the mountain men, accepted it eagerly. But as he drank and passed the bottle to his companions, he played dumb. His face was friendly, but it was as if his English had somehow been lost.
“They figger they got us buffaloed,” McMasters said. But he remembered Lagace’s warning to Longstreet, and he said nothing else.
Lagace was more patient. He knew it wouldn’t take long for the powerful liquor to oil the Indians’ tongues. Again he repeated his question, throwing in as many Shoshone and Crow phrases as he could remember. Again Sioux Killer feigned friendliness, but shook his head as if he didn’t understand.
At first the plan to loosen his tongue with alcohol backfired. As the Indians began to get crazy drunk, they started to mock the whites among themselves in their own tongue.
“Brothers!” Red Bull said. “Are these hairy-faced dogs all blind? Do you see how they stick their stinking faces right up to ours when they speak? And they shout as if we were on the far side of a vast canyon.”
“Yes, this is surely true, brother,” Thunderhead agreed. “And have you smelled of them good? Phew! I have smelled carrion, many moons gone with maggots, that does not reek as they do!”
“I have smelled this stink indeed,” Red Bull said. “And jabber? They are like chattering chipmunks, wasting words as if they have no importance. Palefaces speak merely to hear themselves make noise, and thus they cheapen the importance of talk.”
Longstreet pawed at his coarse-grained face, clearly impatient. Even Lagace was showing signs of short temper. But in their drunkenness the Shoshone failed to see these signs.
“Look there, brothers!” Red Bull said, pointing at Lagace’s fancy calfskin boots. “How can they walk or ride or sneak up on their enemies when they wrap their feet in hides as stiff as the Bluecoat saddles?”
This struck all three Indians as hilarious. Unable to control themselves, they rolled on the ground shaking with gales of mirth.
Cursing, Lagace said something to his two companions. They walked to their saddles and returned with their rifles. Lagace drew his .32-caliber Colt Patterson pistol out of his sash. While he covered the surprised Indians, Longstreet and McMasters tied Red Bull down spread-eagle near the fire.
Lagace repeated his question to Sioux Killer about the location of the Cheyenne camp. Still the brave feigned incomprehension.
Longstreet kicked Red Bull in the ribs. “Cut off his pizzle. They’ll palaver then, by beaver!”
Calmly, Lagace grabbed a burning limb out of the fire and shoved the glowing end into Red Bull’s exposed stomach. His scream hurt the ears of his companions. The stench of scorched flesh wafted to their nostrils.
Shock and anger glazed Sioux Killer and Thunderhead’s eyes.
“They look mad enough to grease hell with war paint!” McMasters said gleefully, digging at a tick in his beard. “Wouldn’t they love to raise our hair!”
This time, when Lagace repeated his question, Sioux Killer responded in English. He named the Cheyenne chief Yellow Bear and gave the exact location of his camp on the Tongue River.
“Hell’s bells!” said Longstreet. “That-air’s the tribe that young buck at the trading post mentioned!”
Sioux Killer had remained on the ground during all this. Now Lagace squatted on his rowels and made the Shoshone swear on his medicine bundle that he had spoken the straight word. Then he stood back up and nodded to his men.
Without a word Longstreet drew his knife from its sheath. He bent down over Red Bull and made a deep slash in his lower belly, gutting him. He was an expert at this. The Indian’s intestines spilled out before his own terrified eyes, yet he didn’t die instantly.
“Brothers!” Red Bull cried out. “They have cut me open like a buffalo!”
He tried to sing the Shoshone death song, but the shock and pain set in before he could utter the words. The last sound from his throat was the death rattle.
Tears brimming in their eyes at the fate of their red brother, Sioux Killer and Thunderhead started to sing the death song. McMasters and Lagace fired almost simultaneously, shooting both of them in the brain.
Longstreet chuckled, staring at the coiled white guts spilling out of the dead Red Bull. “There! Le’me see him stick anything in his meat bag now!”
Lagace returned to his mount and stepped up into leather. He was content. He had learned the name of his enemies and the location of their village. It was time to take the bull by the horns and to strike first.
Chapter Nine
For two more sleeps Black Elk’s band tracked the whites along the twisting route of the Powder River. They were in the northern re
aches of Sioux country, skirting the Crow nation to the west and approaching the hunting grounds of the northern tribe known as the Assiniboine. Although they encountered no Indians along the trail, there were clear signs that the white men had: twice the Cheyenne found spots where unshod Indian ponies had mingled with the shod horses and mules of the pack train. These were clearly friendly meetings, judging from the number of empty liquor bottles littering the area.
Worse, when the Indians ponies had left, at least one made far deeper prints than the others—suggesting, Black Elk pointed out grimly, that the red visitors had taken a plentiful supply of devil water back to the tribe with them.
“Clearly,” he said to his band, “the palefaces are spreading their poison throughout the Indian nations. Now they call the strong water a gift and assure us there will be more. But soon it will not be a gift. The red man will give everything—his hides, his horses, his meat, his women even—to obtain more. In his drunken sloth he will forget the pride and skills of the warrior. And soon, like the once-proud peoples east of the Great Waters, he will be herded onto reservations. He will stop hunting and grow corn, he will answer the Bluecoat’s roll call, and he will beg like a dog for any scraps the white man might toss to him!”
They were still one-half sleep below the confluence of the Powder and the Yellowstone when they discovered horse droppings still fresh enough to be moist.
“Ride out ahead,” Black Elk said to his cousin Wolf Who Hunts Smiling. “Use the arts of concealment I have taught you. Sneak up as close as you can to our enemy and study them well. If they are in camp when you find them, learn where they position their guards. Make a picture in your mind and bring it back to me.”
Wolf Who Hunts Smiling held his face impassive and only nodded. But Touch the Sky and the others knew he was swollen with pride at the importance of this mission. He had been chafing ever since Black Elk’s approval of Touch the Sky’s skill at reading sign. Here at last was a chance to prove his own superiority.