by Crazy Horse
Without waiting for an answer, Bordeaux rode across the compound and out onto the plains. He headed for the Laramie River, Collins riding to his left and slightly to the rear. “Where we heading?” Collins shouted.
“Closest village makes the most sense. It ain’t like we’re in real demand. This might not work at all, you know. Lot of them Indians don’t have no use for a white man, even one like you.”
“And what kind am I, Peter?”
Bordeaux turned to look at him before answering. “I don’t rightly know. And if I don’t, it’s for damn sure the Sioux won’t, neither.”
Red Cloud and many of his people were camped about ten miles upstream from the fort. They were no longer taking the annuities, and seldom came near the fort itself, but the hunting was good in the area, and the reduced army presence reduced the chances of being attacked by the troops. Back in the East, the Civil War was at its height, and the government had its mind on a more immediate enemy. The Sioux and the other plains tribes were still raiding wagon trains, but the raids were almost always by small groups, and usually the raiders left the people alone as long as the settlers were willing to part with some coffee or sugar or ammunition for the rifles that had been finding their way into Sioux hands.
The sun was well up in the sky by the time the pair reached a bluff overlooking the Sioux village on the river below. Collins stayed there for a long time, his hands draped over the saddle horn, staring at the great circle of lodges. There were nearly a hundred tipis, and Bordeaux estimated that seven or eight hundred Sioux called the village home.
“Reckon we might as well go on down, Lieutenant. They ain’t likely to come on up with a cup of tea for you.”
“You know any of the Indians who live here?” Collins asked, as they backed off the bluff and found a way down that took them out of sight of the village.
Bordeaux nodded. “Quite a few. Most of them have been through the fort at one time or another. I’m half Sioux myself, so I guess it’s easier for me. But it sure don’t seem easy.”
“I didn’t know you were …”
“My mother was a Brule Sioux. She died a few years ago. But she taught me a lot. And most of the chiefs know my father. They even like him, I think. I know they trust him.”
“How do you know that?”
“Still alive, ain’t he?”
“Why is it difficult for you, then?”
“Because the Sioux think I’m more white than Indian, and a lot of whites, most in fact, think a little bit of Indian blood goes a long way. You can imagine how they feel about a half-breed.”
Collins nudged his horse close enough to grab Bordeaux’s arm. “Look, Peter, if this is going to cause you any pain, make you uncomfortable in any way, then …”
Bordeaux shook his head. “Don’t worry about me, Lieutenant. Sooner or later, the Sioux are gonna have to learn to live with the white man. The sooner they do, the fewer innocent people will die. On both sides. If you can help make that happen, then I’m all for it. Besides, it ain’t likely you could make things much worse than they already are. Most of the officers they send out here are clowns. Hell, there was one colonel sent a letter back East talking about the Winnibigoshish being on the warpath.”
“Never heard of them.”
“Neither did anyone else, Lieutenant. It’s a goddamned lake. You ever see a lake on the warpath?”
Collins laughed, but Bordeaux never cracked a smile.
When they hit the flats leading into the village, Collins felt his shoulders go stiff, as if he were a clock and someone had overwound him. Everything inside was tight. He was breathing rapidly, shallow drafts that seemed to catch in his throat. He had never been this close to a Sioux village before, and realized that he knew next to nothing about these people. But he forced himself to stay calm.
Some of the warriors nearest him glared at him or, he hoped, at his uniform. But most of the men paid no attention to him. Either they found him uninteresting or they felt that he posed no threat and therefore could safely be ignored.
Some of the warriors waved to Bordeaux, while looking curiously at the white man wearing the uniform of the bluecoats. Bordeaux dismounted, and motioned for Collins to do the same. The lieutenant took a deep breath and slid from his saddle, curling the reins in his hand and squeezing them until his knuckles whitened.
“Well,” Bordeaux said, flashing him a grin, “here we are.”
“What now?”
“You tell me, Lieutenant. This was your idea.”
“Can you introduce me? I don’t know what the protocol is.”
“Protocol?”
“You know, good manners. Should I meet the chief first?”
“Absolutely.”
“Where is he?”
“He’ll be along. Just relax.”
A moment later, some of the more curious among the Sioux began to gather in a circle around the two men. They were keeping their distance, but their faces were not unfriendly. Collins, trying to conceal his nervousness, nodded politely, smiling and waving with his free hand.
The circle grew in thickness as more Sioux lined up behind the first. Then the circle parted abruptly, and a tall, vigorous-looking man, his hair hanging in long braids down over his shoulders, stepped through. The circle immediately closed around him.
Collins looked to Bordeaux. “Red Cloud,” the trader said.
He then turned to the chief and conversed for several moments in Red Cloud’s tongue. Collins, knowing it was foolish even as he did so, tried to translate the conversation. He noticed that Red Cloud kept looking at him, darting glances that seemed to linger, while still paying attention to Bordeaux. Then the trader turned to Collins and waved him closer.
“Lieutenant Collins, this is Red Cloud. Chief, this is Lieutenant Caspar Collins.”
Red Cloud was watching Bordeaux closely now. He said something, and Bordeaux nodded, then responded.
Turning to Collins, he said, “The chief wanted to know if you are related to the colonel who rules over Fort Laramie.”
“What did you tell him?”
“The truth.”
“Good. Does he have any objection to my being here?”
“No. He says as long as you behave properly, you are welcome.”
At that, Red Cloud stepped up to the young soldier and extended his hand. Collins clasped it and almost winced at the older man’s grip. Red Cloud pumped the hand vigorously, almost a parody of the conventional white man’s greeting, then said that he had things to do. By the time Bordeaux had translated, Red Cloud was gone.
“Let’s have a look around, then, Peter,” Collins suggested. “I’d like to meet some of the warriors. We are all soldiers, so we will have at least that in common.”
“Don’t count on that meaning much, Lieutenant.” Bordeaux said something to the circle, which had drawn still closer after Red Cloud left, and the Indians parted to let the visitors through.
They walked into the middle of the camp, several children following close behind, some of the others keeping a little distance, almost as if they wished to keep an eye on the young bluecoat who had come to their village.
Collins walked halfway around the camp, looking at the lodges and admiring the paintings on the skins covering them. Some of them were rolled partway up to let in fresh air, and Collins bent over from time to time to peer inside. He kept looking at Bordeaux, his head swiveling back and forth. “Let me know if I’m being rude, Peter,” he said.
“You bet your ass I will, Lieutenant.”
Across the large circle, Collins spotted a young warrior sitting on the ground, working on a bow. “How about that fellow?” he asked, gesturing toward the warrior. “Do you think he’d talk to me?”
“I doubt it.”
“It won’t hurt to ask, will it?”
Bordeaux shrugged. “Wait here,” he said. He walked over to the young warrior and squatted beside him. The young man didn’t look up, but canted an ear to Bordeaux. When the trader wa
s finished speaking, the warrior grunted, then looked at Collins. The lieutenant smiled.
The warrior straightened up gracefully, and Bordeaux gestured for Collins to join him. “He says he’ll talk to you.”
“Do you know him?”
“Hell, yes. And you don’t know how lucky you are, Lieutenant. This man is as good as it gets. Meet Crazy Horse.”
The warrior looked intently at his visitor, then extended a hand. Collins shook it, then laughed.
Chapter 13
October 1863
CASPAR COLLINS LOOKED AT HIMSELF in the mirror and wondered what was happening to him. He no longer felt as comfortable in his uniform as he used to. The buckskin pants felt natural to him now, the shirt as if it were an extension of his body. Many of the troops, members of the 11th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry regiment, had adopted frontiersman garb, too, but for reasons he did not share.
The troops, disappointed at being sent west, to a region they regarded as the most desolate and godforsaken spot imaginable on the continent, had expected to be fighting rebels in Virginia and Tennessee. Spoiling for a fight, frustrated at not getting one, they felt as if their time was being wasted, so they emulated the white men they saw most frequently, the hunters and scouts, pretending they were ready to take on any damn bunch of Indians the plains had to offer. Their arrogance was that of the late Lieutenant Grattan. It didn’t seem to matter that that attitude had gotten Grattan killed.
But Caspar Collins was irresistibly going native for other reasons entirely. He had spent several months, off and on, with Crazy Horse. The Sioux was given to long silent stretches, and Collins had come to accept them, but when he did talk, he proved to be articulate and intelligent, displaying an understanding, and a kind of sad resignation at the future, of his people. But he was devoted to the old ways, and Collins was starting to agree with him.
There was something criminal in forcing a way of life on a people that was as far as imaginable from the one they already had, the one that had allowed them to flourish in land that belonged to them, if it belonged to anyone, and it seemed to Collins that Sioux belief was not that acquisitive. The land, along with everything in it, was there to be used, to be lived on, to be loved and feared.
This morning, he was going hunting with Crazy Horse for the first time. He had been making progress in studying the Lakota language, enough that he no longer needed Peter Bordeaux along to interpret, although he was far from fluent. Crazy Horse proved to have a sly sense of humor, and delighted in teasing him about his mispronunciation and limited vocabulary, two aspects of his shaky command of the language that often led him to turn right when instructed to turn left, or to think a conversation was about the Great Spirit when it was about a buffalo.
There was a kind of pantheistic embrace of the universe in Sioux thought that saw holiness everywhere, meaning in the eye of a butterfly and the whole wheeling shield of midnight stars. The approach was one Collins had found congenial, even persuasive, and in the few conversations he’d had with Crazy Horse’s father, Worm, he had learned a great deal about respect for the land and, especially, for the animals and plants on which Sioux existence depended much more directly and completely than any white man’s did.
Stepping back from the mirror, he ran a hand across his features, delicate under the light brown hair, almost the color of his Sioux friend’s hair, and recognized that his face was aging, as if the weight of the Sioux future were impressing itself on him, too. The colonel had asked him once whether he might not be getting too close to the Sioux, a people who, after all, he was here to supervise. But the colonel was almost as impressed with the Sioux as he was, and had meant the question not as a rebuke but as an expression of parental concern. It was a kind of warning that his heart might be broken in a way he could not anticipate. Caspar acknowledged the risk, but thought it one eminently worth taking. In any case, it was too late to do anything about it—he was smitten.
Turning away from the mirror, he glanced once over his shoulder, and it seemed for a moment as if the figure in the glass were someone else. Maybe, he thought, it is, but he turned away and headed for the door. Stopping for a second to grab a new pair of Springfield rifles, he stepped outside and closed the door. His horse was already saddled, standing nervously at the hitching post in front of the officers’ quarters, and he mounted up with a wave to a couple of his men.
“Where you goin’, Lieutenant?” one of them called.
“Hunting.”
“For Injuns?”
Collins shook his head. “No, Timmy. With Indians.”
The soldier waved derisively, but Collins, knowing the man probably would not understand and if he did, would disapprove, waved back and kicked his horse into a trot.
He felt better once he got away from the fort. It had come to symbolize something that he could not justify much longer, if he still could. He felt like he were trapped between two great stones. Both seemed solid, and each pressed flush against him. If either moved, he would be ground to fine powder, and it was beginning to seem that there was no way out, no way to slide away from the stones because any attempt to do so would cause one or the other to shift, not much, but enough to do him in entirely.
The ride to Red Cloud’s camp was second nature now. The Sioux were accustomed to his presence, and barely noticed him when he arrived. Some of the other warriors waved a greeting, and, as always, he stopped by the chief’s lodge to pay his respects, then walked his mount around the outside of the village circle to hobble it behind Crazy Horse’s tipi. He took one of the new Springfields from the back of his saddle and held it behind his back as he moved around to the front of the lodge.
The warrior was expecting him. They hadn’t seen each other for more than two weeks, and Collins was curious about where the Sioux had been. As he entered the lodge, he waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the firelight. Crazy Horse was sitting in front of the fire, working on a new bow. He looked up and nodded at Collins.
In greeting, Collins tried the creaky mechanism of his Lakota, and drew a smile from the warrior. “I brought something for you,” Collins said.
He brought out the rifle and offered it to Crazy Horse. The warrior looked skeptical, but Collins pressed the gift on him. “It’s brand new,” he said. “I have one just like it for myself.”
Crazy Horse took the rifle and examined it. Most of the guns the Sioux had, and they didn’t have many, were old throwaways. Many had their barrels bound in rawhide to hold them together, their stocks cracked and scarred, decorated with brass tacks driven into the wood.
“Thank you,” the warrior said.
“I thought we might use them on our hunt.”
Crazy Horse grunted, looking at the unfinished bow where he had left it beside the fire. “No,” he said. “We both know how to use guns. But you do not know how to use the bow. We will hunt with bow and arrow.”
“I’m not sure I …”
Crazy Horse shook his head vigorously. “You want to learn the way we live. That is how we live. To understand it, you should learn to do it. Just be happy that your life does not depend on the bow, as ours does.”
Crazy Horse held the gun for a long moment. “Thank you, my friend. I hope that I never have to look at you over the sights of this rifle.”
“No chance of that, Crazy Horse,” Collins said.
“We should go now.” The Sioux led the way out of the lodge, and Collins followed behind him, meek as a child, glancing longingly back once at the rifle, where Crazy Horse had placed it against the wall of the lodge.
Mounting their horses, they rode away from the village, heading up into the hills away from the river. “What are we hunting for?” Collins asked.
“Food. And wisdom.”
“I have enough food but not nearly enough wisdom.”
“No man has enough wisdom, Caspar. My father is the wisest man I know. And Sitting Bull, the Hunkpapa medicine man. But even they together don’t know half of what there is to know.”
“Will we go far?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“When one hunts, one must go where the prey is to be found. One never knows that until he gets there.”
The rolling grassland of the river bottom was falling away behind them as they moved up into the hills. As they reached the high rise ahead, Crazy Horse turned on his pony and pointed back down toward the river, which caught the sunlight and seemed to be on fire. The lodges of the Sioux village seemed like toys, and the warrior nodded, then said, “The Lakota are a very small thing. The world is very large. Sometimes I wonder why there does not seem to be enough room.”
“You mean the white men?” Collins asked.
Crazy Horse nodded. “Yes. And the Crow and the Pawnee and the Arapaho and the Shoshoni.” He paused for a long moment, then added. “And the Sioux.”
Collins didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. After a pause in which the warrior’s face seemed to betray a thousand ghostly sorrows that swept in wave after wave across his features, he turned and nudged his pony forward with his knees.
Collins knew this was no ordinary man he followed. But he was still surprised by some new revelation every time they were alone together. It seemed almost as if there were some secret Crazy Horse that he reserved for rare moments of confidence, times when he could tell Collins things he dared not share with his own people.
And Collins felt himself changing almost daily. Going about the performance of his everyday duties, he would catch himself, suddenly wondering what he was doing. It didn’t take much to set off the doubts. Maybe he heard one of the other officers say something about the Sioux that struck him as woefully ignorant, or maybe it would be just a little thing, like a ladybug landing on his wrist triggering a recollection of something Crazy Horse or Worm had said. No matter what it might have been, once triggered, the doubt was almost impossible to brush aside. It would haunt him all day long, leave him tossing under his blanket at night.
Once, he tried to explain to his father what was happening to him, but the colonel just smiled sadly, as if he had expected as much. There was resignation in that smile, as if one had just heard a death sentence pronounced on a loved one, a sentence with no appeal.