“Dismount!” came the cry from a sergeant with some faded chevrons on his blouse, the first officer to make it across among Tyler’s men.
A soldier reached the south bank, clumsily spurring his mount onto the grassy slope on all fours, only to be struck by a bullet which toppled him to the ground. More bullets hissed past the Irishman.
“Dismount, goddammit!” the sergeant was hollering. “Horse-holders to the front!”
In the maddening confusion of men and animals whirling in all directions like a Kentucky reel, Seamus spun to the ground, dragging the horse behind him as he lunged for some tall willow. Hidden here where the warriors couldn’t easily spot him, the Irishman knotted the reins to the brush then sprinted to a nearby stand of trees to begin firing at the hillside.
“There’s Injuns behind us!”
At the cry, Donegan whirled around in a crouch. But there were only two Indians, then two more—all four of them bursting from the west side of the village, plunging off the steep bank into the creek.
“Sweet mother in heaven!” Seamus whispered, seeing how Miles and his staff were already across the creek behind Tyler’s and Wheelan’s men … headed at an angle directly toward those warriors.
From the sound of it, Miles was having Bruguier and Hump yell a message to the escapees. As Donegan started toward the bunch, his carbine hammer cocked, he heard Robert Jackson calling to Miles.
“General, that’s Lame Deer!”
“The chief?” Miles asked, reining up suddenly, his chestnut raring slightly.
“Lame Deer!” Jackson repeated, pointing at the one wearing a long, double-trailer warbonnet, clutching a broken tree limb in his free hand. To the end of that stick hung a dirty white rag.
Hump was next to recognize the leader and shouted in Lakota at the four armed men angling away from Miles’s group toward the closest hillside where their people continued to holler and bellow.
Miles bawled, “Tell them to halt, Jackson! Tell them I’ll honor their white flag of surrender!”
Both Jackson and Bruguier cried out the Bear Coat’s order. But only Hump urged his horse into motion just as two of the four suddenly peeled away from the others. With daring, Hump advanced on his two fellow Lakota, hand held out in peace there in that deadly middle ground.
Dressed in that bonnet of his battle acclaim, Lame Deer stopped, turning slightly to holler in reply to Hump. On the chief’s heels came a second warrior, a younger man. Across the slopes the Lakota rifle fire trickled off.
Reining around, halfway between Lame Deer and the soldiers, Hump loped back toward the white men, stopping in front of Miles. He spoke, his words translated by Bruguier.
“This man is Lame Deer. He is Mnikowoju—my people. He asked me if the soldiers have followed him here to kill all of them in his village.”
“Tell him I do not want to kill any more of his people,” Miles replied.
Then Johnny interpreted, “Hump says Lame Deer wants to meet the Bear Coat.”
“Very good,” Miles replied, turning to indicate those he wanted to accompany him. “Let’s go tell this Lame Deer face-to-face that he must surrender to me. I will look him in the eye and tell him that he is now my prisoner.”
* * *
Nelson Miles nodded as Lieutenant Baird and his orderly, Private Shrenger, came to a halt near the rear flanks of the colonel’s mount. “Here, Private,” he said and handed Shrenger the white bandanna he tore from his head. “My hat?”
“Of course, General.” Shrenger twisted in the saddle, pulling up the flap to his saddlepocket, and removed the wide-brimmed hat.
“Thank you, son. I want to wear it to meet this Lame Deer,” Miles said as he re-creased the cream-colored hat before snugging it down on his head. Then he turned to one of the Second Cavalry officers. “Captain Norwood, please accompany me to our parley with Lame Deer.”
“My pleasure, General!” the commander of L Troop acknowledged.
By the time he turned, Miles found two more warriors converging with the first two. Lame Deer waited for the pair to reach his side, then handed one of them the stick with that greasy scrap of towel tied to it, while the younger warrior at the chief’s side passed off the reins of a lone war pony to the fourth man. Only then did Lame Deer and the younger man start alone for that open, middle ground some distance from the soldier lines.
“Perhaps that was Lame Deer’s own war pony,” Miles observed, tension rising in him like a spring flood. “All right, gentlemen—let’s go.”
He was going to meet this last war leader of the mighty Sioux, face-to-face! A warrior who had gone with Crazy Horse to whip Crook at the Rosebud, a fighter who had helped Sitting Bull crush his old friend Autie Custer. Last fall Miles came nose-to-nose with Sitting Bull himself when they parleyed at Cedar Creek. While he would always regret not having the chance to have himself a look at Crazy Horse during their fight at Battle Butte, here he was about to effect the surrender of this last wild band of hostiles on the northern plains.
Halfway across that open ground between them, Miles reined up, raising an arm for those eight soldiers behind him to halt.
“Careful of their weapons, General,” Captain Norwood warned Miles with a growl as the four Sioux came forward, all of them warily looking this way and that.
“I suspect they’re fearing treachery,” Miles replied, reading the deep suspicion on their unpainted faces.
He watched the two in the rear start to slow their pace, not near so anxious now as they got closer and closer to the soldiers.
“Goddamn their red souls,” Baird grumbled. “These bastards’re the ones you can’t trust, General.”
The trio of warriors stopped a few yards away as Lame Deer continued on alone those last ten yards. Then one of the three stepped up close behind the chief’s shoulder. That younger one was clearly nervous, agitated to the point of pacing, his rifle held at his hip, ready. His head twitched this way, then that, eyes trying to see everywhere at once as he watched the eight soldiers accompanying Miles, acting as if he were the chief’s bodyguard.
“Lame Deer,” Miles called out in English, remembering to smile. A moment ago he had pulled off his right glove and now he held his hand out so the chief could shake it. Then he remembered that Sioux word of greeting, the word for friend. “Hau, hau kola.”
Lame Deer stopped in his tracks to peer over the soldiers arrayed behind the soldier chief.
“No one will harm you,” Miles said. “Tell him that, Bruguier. Tell him it is safe to shake my hand. He should shake the Bear Coat’s hand.”
The half-breed interpreted, instilling enough confidence that Lame Deer shifted the rifle into his left hand. Inching forward again, he stopped at the chestnut’s side, holding up his empty right hand to Miles. They clasped, and the colonel squeezed firmly, wanting this enemy leader to feel the sincerity and integrity, if not the power of the soldier chief who had just conquered his village.
As Lame Deer pulled his hand away, Miles instructed, “Johnny, tell Lame Deer and the rest they must put down their weapons. Tell them to lay down their rifles, put them on the ground.”
Again the half-breed interpreted. And the moment his words were finished the young man closest to Lame Deer began to yell at the chief, arguing, berating.
“That one,” Bruguier warned, “Hump tells me his name is Iron Star, Lame Deer’s nephew. He’s causing trouble. Watch out: he’s saying Lame Deer must not lay down his gun.”
“Tell them they must all surrender their weapons,” Miles repeated grittily, angry at the young warrior’s intrusion, the hair bristling at the back of his neck as he closely studied that anxious warrior a few yards behind the chief, seeing how agitated Iron Star had become, pacing a few steps in one direction, then a few steps in the other, holding his rifle exactly as would a sentry on guard duty.
Lame Deer turned from Iron Star to look again at Miles. The chief knelt, laying what Miles recognized was a Spencer carbine on the ground. But as he did so, the c
hief cocked the hammer, and positioned the weapon so the muzzle pointed at the colonel.
While Iron Star continued to talk louder and louder, more of the Sioux on the slopes began to holler. The women wailed, the children cried—terribly dismayed by their chief surrendering his weapon.
Miles swallowed, his heart thundering, then he began instructing, “Tell Lame Deer that all of his men must come forward and surrender their weapons to us. His warriors are to bring in any ponies we haven’t captured.”
He waited a moment while Bruguier translated, but through none of those words did Lame Deer appear interested in listening with his full attention. Instead, the chief had turned slightly, as if to better hear the calls from the hillside.
A suspicious Robert Jackson urged his horse closer to the chief, halting a few yards to Miles’s right so that he stood on the other side of Lame Deer, leveling his Springfield carbine at the Sioux chief.
“Don’t frighten him, Jackson!” Miles barked. “Get back!”
“He won’t listen to you good unless he’s scared for his life, General,” Jackson explained. “Be on your guard—this Lame Deer don’t act like a man going to surrender.”
At that moment White Bull came up and halted at Miles’s left elbow, tapping the colonel’s leg with his moccasin toe. When Miles glanced over at the holy man, the Cheyenne gestured at the Spencer carbine Lame Deer had laid down, crooking his thumb to indicate that the hammer was cocked.
“I saw,” Miles told the Cheyenne in English. “Not a good sign.”
Nodding, his lips pressed in determination, White Bull urged his horse into motion, moving past Lame Deer toward Iron Star.
“Mr. Baird, go with the Cheyenne,” the colonel ordered.
As his adjutant jockeyed by on his left side to follow White Bull, Iron Star started to wave his rifle menacingly at Miles, placing the butt against his hip and swinging it this way and that, all while he was muttering angrily.
“He’s saying this is his country,” Bruguier translated nervously. “Says you killed an old woman this morning. You killed his grandmother. You do not belong here—this is his land. He’s a soldier on his own land and he shouldn’t have to give up his weapon to no man—”
“Tell him he must surrender his rifle—”
Bruguier interrupted, wagging his head apprehensively as he continued, “He keeps saying he is a soldier, walking on his own land. He won’t give his gun over to no one.”
Somehow White Bull must have understood enough of that Lakota for he wheeled his horse up suddenly and leaned off to grab the muzzle of Iron Star’s carbine, being brandished in the air.
And now Lame Deer was yelling, Bruguier hollering his translation, “My nephew is only a young man! Only a young man and doesn’t know any better!”
In the blink of an eye, Lieutenant Baird reined up on the other side of Iron Star, reaching over to seize the warrior’s forearm. Struggling for a few moments between the lieutenant and White Bull, Iron Star bellowed a warning, causing the two warriors behind him to turn and flee.
As the struggle continued the half-breed Bruguier kept on bellowing his translation, “My nephew doesn’t know any better!”
Miles growled, “Get the weapon away from that red son of a bitch and tell him to surrender now! Tell him to look at all the women and children in the hills—”
“That bastard’s gonna shoot someone!” Captain Ball cried.
“Mr. Baird, get that rifle from the son of a bitch!” Miles bawled angrily. “Get it now and tell him to surrender! Bruguier—”
White Bull struggled to hold onto the muzzle of that carbine Iron Star was waving around so menacingly. Suddenly lunging back with his elbow, the Lakota knocked Baird aside, then brought his left hand up to clasp around his rifle’s fore-stock.
With a startling crack, the weapon exploded, its bullet ripping a hole in White Bull’s coatflap, causing the holy man to release the carbine, flinging it aside as he jerked away in the opposite direction.
Lame Deer was yelling at the young warrior, snarling at the soldiers. Behind Miles, he heard his officers cursing, warning.
From the far right side of his vision, the colonel spotted a flicker of movement and spun quickly in the saddle to find Lame Deer lunging for the Spencer on the ground.
The word leaped from his throat, “No!”
But the Sioux chief yanked the carbine up to his knees in one smooth arc and pulled the trigger.
That muzzle spewed orange flame, belching a puff of dirty gray gunsmoke as Miles listened to the whine of the bullet that carried his name.
Chapter 38
7 May 1877
With the way Miles jerked aside as Lame Deer’s carbine exploded, Donegan was certain that bullet had killed the colonel.
In that next instant came the sound of lead smacking against flesh and bone like a flat hand slapping wet wall putty. Barely a yard behind Miles, Private Charles Shrenger pitched backward off his side-stepping mount. His hat flew off in the opposite direction as the young soldier spilled out of the saddle into the rain-soaked, trampled grass.
“Son of a bitch!” one of the officers shrieked.
In firing that shot at White Bull from his own weapon, Iron Star freed his rifle from the Cheyenne’s grip, then whirled about to start racing for the nearby slope where the Lakota from the village once more sent up a howl. But after only two steps he suddenly stopped and wheeled, dropping to his knee, the carbine jammed against his shoulder.
One of Norwood’s sergeants had spurred his horse forward, leveling his pistol at Lame Deer at the same moment Iron Star found that sergeant in his sights. The .45-caliber army bullet missed the Lakota chief, sailing on to strike one of the two warriors fleeing up the long slope. The Indian pitched forward into the grass, a’sprawl, then lay still.
Iron Star’s bullet hit its intended target. With a startled grunt, Sergeant Sharp keeled to the side out of the saddle, his left boot tangled in its hooded stirrup as his frightened horse pranced in the midst of all the hubbub.
Havoc was loosed like a swarm of maddening wasps. Down the hill toward that open no-man’s-land raced more than a dozen warriors. Every soldier and Sioux with a gun was firing, some in what might soon be a deadly crossfire that could well have soldier killing soldier.
Baird and Norwood rushed forward to reach Miles as the colonel began to pat himself, trying to find a wound, discovering nothing but a bullet hole in his wool coat. Another pair of soldiers dropped to the ground to see to Shrenger, finding the young orderly already dead.
In the confusion, Lame Deer rejoined Iron Star where the bottomground met the rising slope, no more than two hundred yards from where Seamus now spun out of the saddle, flipping the reins twice around his left hand to steady the claybank. Laying his repeater over the saddle to steady his shot at Lame Deer and the nephew, Donegan figured those impressive bonnets of eagle feathers with their long trailers sweeping the ground behind them would make fine targets.
Behind him Seamus could hear an exasperated Miles yelling orders along with the rest now. Wounded or not, the Irishman thought, the general ain’t dead yet.
When Seamus fired the carbine, his bullet struck Iron Star low in the back. He watched Lame Deer’s nephew falter, then straighten to courageously keep on scrambling toward the slope.
At that moment it seemed the whole right flank came alive with a fusillade of gunfire aimed at the escaping pair. That sound of the soldier weapons became a thunderous roar. This time Lame Deer faltered, dropping his Spencer carbine as he collapsed to one knee. Then slowly the chief struggled back to his feet, turning to find Iron Star down on hands and knees.
In the midst of that noise, Lame Deer yelled at his nephew. Though bleeding terribly himself, the chief looped an arm around the younger man’s waist, pulling Iron Star onto his feet.
“He’s telling Iron Star to turn and fight!” Bruguier announced. “Telling him to fight until they’re dead!”
Arm in arm, the two Lakota whirled
about, with Iron Star struggling to raise his weapon, having trouble leveling it at the soldiers as bullets sailed at them. Lame Deer fought to maintain his balance each time a new bullet shocked through his body. Brazenly, bravely they both turned their backs to the enemy and started up the hill, trudging wearily, both bleeding terribly from their wounds.
What gallantry, Seamus thought. Instead of fleeing for their own safety, both warriors struggled to save the life of another. What courage in the face of certain death.
They were both done for, Donegan figured, dragging his carbine off the saddle and chambering a fresh round with the lever. Those two can’t make it up the hill to safety—not with all those soldiers concentrating their fire on them, even shave-tail soldiers who didn’t practice their marksmanship.
Seamus stood there in amazement as the pair trudged farther and farther away as the soldier line roared away. After a few more yards Lame Deer dragged a pistol from his belt and waved that last weapon back toward the soldiers. Crazily, he fired, and fired again, unable to aim the weapon, the explosion of each round a small puff of muzzle-smoke. Yet each bullet did nothing more than smash into the rain-sodden earth a few yards behind the chief.
Another last apt of bitter defiance in the face of death. Lame Deer’s last courageous sneer in the face of the enemy.
It was plain the chief couldn’t last much longer, not with so many wounds.
Finally, the strength seemed to flush out of Lame Deer. He stumbled and pitched forward onto all fours. Iron Star fell backward beside him, rolling onto his side and crumpling into a ball.
Off to Donegan’s left, Robert Jackson kicked his horse into motion, bursting from that group of officers protectively surrounding the colonel. Hunched over his horse’s neck, Jackson galloped east toward Captain Wheelan’s company.
Shrill shouts drew Donegan’s attention back to the escaping pair. Up the slope, Lame Deer was squatting on his knees, trying to yank Iron Star off the ground when he was struck with another bullet that rocked his whole body. Slowly the chief keeled back onto one elbow, then sank for the last time.
Ashes of Heaven (The Plainsmen Series) Page 35