“Katia,” another voice murmured, and after that, “Graceful Swan.”
She opened her eyes. The shape of a man, black against the bright blue cloudless sky, loomed over her. She groaned as she struggled to sit up; her body felt stiff and bruised. It took a few moments for her to realize that she was sitting on the ridge where she had first seen Sitting Bull.
“I waited for you,’’ Rowland said. “I waited until dark, and then I was going to come up here and look for you, but—” He paused. “I couldn’t do it. I could not make myself get up and climb up here to you. I don’t know how else to explain it.”
He sat down next to her. “I must have slept,” he continued, “and I know I dreamt, but I can’t remember much about the dream.” He rubbed his face. “Except for this—I was walking along the river there, and I think I heard the sound of guns. I started to run toward the sound, but something was holding me back. A voice told me, ‘You do not belong here, you do not live here, you do not exist here.’“ Rowland shook his head. “And for a moment, I—was not.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I had no memories, no place, no being. I don’t know how else to say it.”
Katia pressed her hands together. “I saw Young Spring Grass,” she said, “and she told me she didn’t know me. I saw things that can’t happen and was told of events that didn’t happen. And Sitting Bull spoke to me.”
“Tell me of what you saw,” he said.
She spoke to him, telling him everything she could recall. By the time she was finished, the bright noontime sun was lower in the sky, the wind picking up. Rowland went to water their horses and brought her some of the dried meat from his saddlebag. His face was solemn as he watched her eat.
“We can’t stay here by ourselves,” she said.
“There must be people camped not more than two or three days’ ride from here,” he said. “We’ll rest tonight and ride tomorrow. I’ll find someone to ride to Touch-the-Clouds or else go to him myself.” He looked toward the river. “I thought attacking the Blue Coats was a mistake,” he continued, “not that any of the chiefs would have been interested in my opinion. Whether he used his own methods, or fought as the white soldiers do, I didn’t think Touch-the-Clouds could win that battle either way.”
“You were wrong about that,” Katia said softly.
“His victory might still turn into a defeat for him. There will be many who will want to punish all the Indians now for what happened at the Mountain Goat. Maybe that’s what your vision was telling you, that they will now come after us and take their revenge.”
Katia and Rowland left the banks of the Greasy Grass at dawn and rode east. Already the weather was turning sharply colder. Not far from the foothills of the Wolf Mountains, they found the trail of people moving their camp southward, and followed it. Five days after leaving the Greasy Grass, they came to a circle of Lakota tents.
The chief in this camp had just returned from the battle with Custer’s Blue Coats. Katia, weakened by her ordeal, stayed in the tent of his wife and helped her with her work while he and Rowland rode to Touch-the-Clouds.
Seven days later, the two men returned with Touch-the-Clouds, Sitting Bull, and a rider in buckskin clothes who was the size of a boy. Katia, working at buffalo hides outside the circle of tents with the other women, saw no other men with them, not Grisha, not even any of the young men who had left their families here to join Touch-the-Clouds.
My husband is planning another battle, she thought. Touch-the-Clouds wanted to keep his warriors together, most likely so that he could fight again before winter set in. She remembered what Rowland had told her, and wondered how much wrath her husband might bring down upon his people.
Touch-the-Clouds greeted Katia with one nod of his head and no words. The rider in buckskin clothes was the white woman Rowland had found after the battle, the only member of Custer’s group who had survived. Rowland left her with Katia and went inside the council tepee with the other men.
The white woman sat on her heels as Katia scraped at the hide. “Lem Rowland says you talk American,” the woman said.
“Yes, I do.”
“Just like the chief,” the woman said. “Fact is, seems a few of the braves know at least a little of our lingo.”
“My husband thinks it is wise to learn what he can about his enemies.” Katia paused. “I should not have said that to you. You are not my enemy. I know what you must have endured. When I was a girl, soldiers came to my father’s camp and slaughtered everyone—my mother, the babies, everyone except for me and an old woman, and we lived only because they didn’t find us.”
The woman stuck out her hand. Katia gazed at the hand, then clasped it for a moment. “I go by the name of Martha Jane Cannary,” the white woman said. “Got the right to call myself Martha Jane Hickok, but my husband Wild Bill took off and I ain’t seen him for a while. Some call me Calamity Jane, but you needn’t.”
“Calamity Jane?” Katia asked.
Martha Jane Cannary shook her head. She had blond hair poking out from under her hat, a pointed face darkened by sun and dust, and pale blue eyes. “Hell, calling me Calamity’s even more fitting now than it was. I witnessed the worst damned calamity I ever hope to see.”
Katia did not know what to say.
“Lem told me I could stay with you a while,” Jane continued.
“I’m sure we won’t be here for long,” Katia replied. “My husband will expect me to leave with him, to stay in his camp with his other wife.”
“You talk good American,’’ Jane said. “Hell, you talk it better than I do.”
“I lived in the East,” Katia said, “in Washington and other places. Grigory Rubalev found me among the Lakota when I was a child, after the Blue Coats killed my father and my mother. He named me Katia Rubalev and brought me up in the East, and when I was older, he brought me back to my people so that I could marry my husband.” She was saying too much. The Lakota women near them could not have understood what she had said, but she saw the concern in their eyes.
“Rubalev,” Jane muttered. “Lem left me with him. Told Lem I’d take an oath not to even think of escaping if he just got me away from that man.” She shook her head. “Wasn’t anything he did to me, you understand, but I couldn’t help seeing he’d gun me down if he could get away with it.”
Katia was about to say that Grisha was not always hard, that there was some kindness in him, but did not speak. Grisha did not need her to defend him, and she had never really known him. Maybe he had already lost what little kindness he had possessed.
“Didn’t tell him I had a daughter,” Jane went on, “‘cause then he’d likely be expecting me to try to run, just to get back to her.”
“A daughter?” Katia asked.
“Her name’s Jean. Couldn’t keep her, and she’s better off with the good folks who took her in, but I wasn’t about to explain all of that to that blond devil.”
“I’m sorry,” Katia said.
“Ain’t much for you to be sorry about,” Jane muttered.
“Graceful Swan.”
She looked up. Touch-the-Clouds was coming toward them. Katia got to her feet.
“You will come with me, wife,” her husband said in Lakota. “Sitting Bull will speak to you of your vision.” He turned toward the other women and motioned at Jane. “Keep this Wasichu woman with you,’’ he told them, then took Katia by the arm and led her away.
Touch-the-Clouds made Katia sit inside the council tepee and speak of her vision, and Lemuel found himself watching the stern face of Sitting Bull as Katia spoke. He wondered what the great Hunkpapa chief was thinking. Sitting Bull had said nothing after hearing what she had told Lemuel, nothing at all during the ride here.
The three of them were alone with the woman. Touch-the-Clouds apparently did not want others to hear of his wife’s vision, at least not until Sitting Bull told him what it meant. Sitting Bull had strong medicine, and since Katia had seen him in her vision, he was the
one who would have to interpret the vision for them; so Touch-the-Clouds had reasoned. Now his eyes shifted restlessly from his wife to Sitting Bull. It came to Lemuel that Touch-the-Clouds was afraid of what the other chief might tell him.
When Katia fell silent, the men said nothing. Lemuel could read no expression in Sitting Bull’s impassive face. The fire in front of them was burning low; at last Lemuel reached for some kindling and fed the flames.
“I had a vision,” Sitting Bull said at last, “before the battle with Long Hair and his Blue Coats. I saw the Wasichu falling into the Black Hills, and their heads were pointed at the ground. It is like the vision told to you by the Sitting Bull you saw.”
“We had a victory,” Touch-the-Clouds said. “Your vision told you that we would defeat the Blue Coats.”
“And this woman’s vision showed her another victory, one that cannot now come to pass,” Sitting Bull said, “and she spoke of a defeat that would come after it, and of a world where the spirits will no longer speak. Perhaps her vision was of what will now happen to us.”
Sitting Bull’s face was impassive, but his eyes were fierce as he gazed steadily at Touch-the-Clouds. “This victory may be followed by defeat,” he continued. “You do not fight as we were used to fighting. You do not let the young men win enough honor for themselves in battle. You make allies of men who are not like us, who do not understand our ways. You yourself are forgetting what it is to be a Lakota.”
Touch-the-Clouds looked directly at Sitting Bull; only his eyes showed his anger. “I do what I must do so that my people will keep their land, so that they can live by hunting the buffalo.”
“That is what you tell yourself,” Sitting Bull said, “but I saw how you fought this battle. There was little glory in it for a warrior.”
“The Wasichu are dead,” Touch-the-Clouds said, “and they deserved to die for what they have done to our people in the past. They will not bring more of their miners and settlers to Paha Sapa. That is enough glory and honor for me.”
“They may send more of their Blue Coats against us,” Lemuel heard himself say.
He had not meant to speak. Sitting Bull slowly turned his head toward him.
“You rode with the blue-coated soldiers once, Orphan from the East,” Sitting Bull said, “so you can see what they might do. But there is this. The woman spoke of things that cannot happen and of things that did not happen. We may still be able to avoid the defeat she said would come after the victory in her vision.”
“I agree,” Lemuel said, “but you cannot wait until more soldiers ride against us. I think that is what your wife’s vision shows. You must prepare for your next action now.”
“Are you so certain of that?” Touch-the-Clouds asked.
Katia looked at her husband. “The buffalo told me that the victory I saw in my vision would lead only to defeat and death. That was what I was shown in the end.”
“Your vision showed you bodies lying in the snow,’’ Sitting Bull said, “and Blue Coats pointing their firesticks at them. Perhaps the Wasichu mean to attack us in the winter. They can take us by surprise when we are most defenseless, huddled in our lodges against the cold.”
“They will also have to bring their food, their wagons, cattle to feed themselves,” Touch-the-Clouds said. “That will slow them down. We could defeat them by stealing their food.”
Sitting Bull’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Your wife’s vision showed her people lying in the snow, women and children, all of them dead.”
“They were killed because they were dancing and calling out to spirits for their power,” Katia said, “and the soldiers were afraid of that.”
Lemuel was suddenly certain that Sitting Bull had grasped the true meaning of Katia’s vision. “I must speak,” he said. “When the Blue Coats you killed don’t return to their fort, others will start to wonder what happened to them. They’ll be waiting for some word, for dispatches, for a scout to reach a fort with news. The Wasichu woman I found told me that reporters were with them, and miners, all of them writing dispatches to be sent back to newspapers—to talking papers, so that others would know what they found. Their wives will wonder what happened to the men. This Custer, this Long Hair, was not a man to do things in secret—he liked attention. The more time passes without any word, the more certain his commanders will be that Custer and his men met with disaster, and the more they will thirst for revenge against the Lakota and the Cheyenne. They may not wait until late spring or summer. They may decide to hunt you down during the Moon of Strong Cold.’’
“We would be at our weakest then,” Sitting Bull said. “They could come at a camp with a force and kill the horses, drive the people into the cold. They would not even have to kill us themselves. The winter and the cold and the loss of our food and shelter and horses would take care of that.”
Touch-the-Clouds was silent, but Lemuel could see that he was already turning things over in his mind, that his words and those of Sitting Bull had found their mark.
“You speak the truth,” Touch-the-Clouds said at last. “We must strike again, and quickly, so that they will be afraid to come after us. We must show them our strength and their weakness.” He looked at Sitting Bull. “This time, perhaps we can fight as we have in the past—draw them out into an ambush, strike and then disappear.” He glanced at Lemuel. “I may need to send you among the Wasichu again.”
Lemuel said nothing.
“There is the chief you know, the man called Clarke,” Touch-the-Clouds continued in English. “You can find out what the Wasichu are thinking from him, and you can tell him things I would like for him to believe.”
“I will advise you,” Lemuel replied, “and I will do my best to see that you get what you want as quickly as possible, but I won’t betray an old friend, and that’s what you’re asking me to do.” He glimpsed a spark of anger in the other man’s eyes, but Touch-the-Clouds was keeping his rage inside himself.
“I have advised you to strike,” Lemuel continued, “to secure this victory with another. But fighting and winning will not be enough to get what you want. You will also have to know when it is time to stop fighting, to offer mercy and a treaty to an enemy who surrenders to you.”
Sitting Bull said, “Speak in Lakota.”
“We must meet with the other chiefs,” Touch-the-Clouds said, “and decide where to strike first. That is what the Orphan was telling me. I think he has told me as much as he can. If I need any more advice from a man who knows the Wasichu, Yellow Hair Rubalev can give it to me.”
Lemuel thought of Rubalev dancing with the scalp he had taken. He would not let any scruples influence his advice to the Lakota chiefs.
Touch-the Clouds motioned to Katia. “You have told me what I needed to know,” he told her. “Leave us now.”
Katia slept restlessly. The others in the tepee were asleep, the chief with his wife, their two children near the entrance, and the woman Calamity Jane Cannary next to the fire. Sitting Bull had seen some of the truth of her vision, but not all of it. Even without being able to grasp all of what the vision meant herself, she knew that some of its meaning had escaped the great chief.
The battle she had seen in her vision could not happen, yet she felt that it was as real as anything that had come to pass in this world. The dead soldiers could not have been singing around their campfires on the Mountain Goat, and still she knew that what she had seen there was yet another truth.
At last she slipped quietly from under her blanket and went outside. The camping circle was quiet, the only sound that of a horse nickering, and then she saw a man walking toward her.
“My husband,” she whispered as Touch-the-Clouds came up to her.
“I leave tomorrow,” he said, “and every fighting man in this camp will ride with me.”
She had expected that. She did not ask him where they intended to fight, or how. “I will pray for you,” she said.
“I have something else to tell you,” he went on. “You are free to
leave me after I return.”
“Again,” she said.
“Yes. I do not need you as a wife, and you are not content as my wife, and you are useless as a wife. But I will not drive you away. Once again I am trying to save you from being shamed.”
“And where am I to go?” she asked. “Who will look out for me? Grisha?” She wondered if her former guardian would want to keep her with him.
“No,” Touch-the-Clouds replied. “I do not need you to tie Yellow Hair Rubalev more closely to me. I was thinking of Rowland, the Orphan. Surely you can see that he cares for you.”
Perhaps Rowland did. Maybe that was why he had gone with her to the Greasy Grass River. If it was so, she should have seen it for herself.
“Yes, he would accept you as a wife, and both of you have glimpsed visions I have not. You also know how to live in the Wasichu world. It is right for you to be together.”
It is useful to you, she thought, to have us together, that’s what you are thinking. She kept her head down, not speaking until he finally stood up and walked away.
THIRTEEN
The Lakota and their allies had decided to make Fort Fetterman their first target. They would fight in the way White Eagle preferred to fight, in a way that Crazy Horse had used before with success: ride to the walls of the fort, draw the Blue Coats outside, lead them to where great numbers of warriors would be waiting to strike at them. Crazy Horse had seen that this was what they would have to do, and there would also be a chance for some glory and for counting coup. White Eagle could be pleased at the victory the Lakota had won for themselves in the Black Hills while still wishing that there had been more glory in it.
A vision had shown Crazy Horse how they would have to fight this time: draw the Blue Coats out, strike at their flanks where they were weakest, dart at them, and run away. The Blue Coats liked to fight in skirmish lines, from trenches, or from behind their walls and earthworks, and they could not be allowed to fight that way. Whenever Crazy Horse had a vision before a fight, he was protected from the enemy’s weapons; no Wasichu bullets would be able to harm him.
Climb the Wind: A Journey Into Another Past Page 22