by Crazy Horse
But there was a shadow on the horizon, one that Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull watched the way they would watch the advance of a tornado’s funnel. The bluecoats were pushing deeper into the Yellowstone country. With them were surveyors who were busy plotting the next stretch of track for the Northern Pacific.
Scouts kept track of them, and the two leaders spent several days planning their response. The best approach would be an ambush, and Crazy Horse made two surveillance trips, looking for the perfect place. It was obvious that the surveyors wanted to plot a track that would require as little trouble with the mountains as possible, and once that was clear to him, Crazy Horse found the perfect place.
In early August of 1873, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and three hundred and fifty warriors crouched in wait as the bluecoats set up their camp at the mouth of the Tongue River. Looking down on the camp from the top of a bluff, Crazy Horse saw the commander dismount, unsaddle his horse, and proceed to remove his red shirt, then bunch it up to cushion the hard leather of the saddle which he used for a pillow. While Crazy Horse watched, the officer lay down to nap in his long underwear.
Through a spyglass, he watched the sleeping man for a moment, then handed the telescope to Sitting Bull. “The long-haired one does not seem to be afraid of the Sioux,” he said.
“Maybe we can teach him,” Sitting Bull answered, as he peered through the glass.
Crazy Horse took back the glass and scanned the terrain ahead, on the far side of the sleeping officer and his camp of eighty-five cavalrymen. A stand of timber, easily large enough to conceal all three hundred and fifty Sioux, was the best place from which to launch the attack.
The cavalry mounts were grazing, unsaddled, and ambling through the lush grass. The timber stand was upstream, and Crazy Horse suggested that a small party of warriors try to stampede the horses. The bluecoats would have to follow to get them back. If all went well, they would chase their animals into the trees, where the advantage of their new rifles would be neutralized to a degree.
It took some time to maneuver the warriors into the trees after a long detour, and when they were ready, it was early afternoon. The unrelenting sun was hot and the air filled with dust and swarms of flies. Crazy Horse led five warriors on a dash toward the American horses, but one of the half-drowsing pickets spotted them as they neared the herd, shouted the alarm, and opened fire.
With surprise lost, and the fire heavy, the decoy party was forced to fall back. Most of the soldiers, even though they were on foot, rushed toward the Sioux, and their repeating rifles made any approach hazardous. Even the sleeping officer, still dressed only in his long underwear, woke up, grabbed a rifle, and sprinted toward the herd.
The Sioux returned fire, but they were few, and had only ancient weapons. Crazy Horse had a newer rifle than most of the others, but even it was no match for the new guns of the bluecoats. When the decoy held its ground, the officer dressed quickly, then detailed twenty men to chase down the Sioux, and led them in their chase.
The decoy team rode confidently, never allowing itself to get too far ahead of the pursuing bluecoats. The closer they came to the trees, the more wary the soldiers became. Three of them sprinted out ahead while the rest of the detail watched. The decoys moved a few dozen yards, then stopped. The three soldiers stopped, too. When the decoys moved, the soldiers moved. By this point, it was obvious to Crazy Horse that the plan would not work. The bluecoats were either too nervous to follow him, or they suspected a trap.
For several minutes, the two parties stared at one another. There was no exchange of insults, as was usual in such confrontations.
The warriors in the timber included a few Cheyenne. One of them recognized the officer, and whispered to another, “Remember him? From the Washita? It’s Long-Hair! The one they call Custer.”
The word spread rapidly among the Cheyenne. Many of them had been at Black Kettle’s camp. Some had even been there as children with Black Kettle at Sand Creek. That massacre burned in their guts like water from an alkali spring. And memories of the Washita attack stoked the fire. There was no holding them back as they broke into the open, firing their guns and launching a shower of arrows.
If the ambush had had a chance, even for a few of the bluecoats, that chance was gone now.
Custer wheeled his horse and galloped back toward the rest of the pursuit detail, looking over his shoulder. He wasn’t watching the Cheyenne, though. His gaze was locked on the pale Sioux with a single hawk’s feather in his light brown hair. We’ll meet again, he thought. I can feel it.
Chapter 26
July 1874
CUSTER LED AN EXPEDITION into the Black Hills in the summer of 1874. There were rumors of gold and, in the aftermath of the Panic of 1873, whites were desperate for more of the precious metal. Despite warnings that the Black Hills were sacred to the Sioux and that any entrance would provoke hostilities, Custer had been ordered in, to accompany a geological team. It didn’t seem to occur to anyone in Washington that the Black Hills had been declared permanent Sioux territory by the treaty of 1868, and that by its terms, no whites were permitted to enter the region without Sioux permission.
The column consisted of ten cavalry and two infantry companies, accompanied by one hundred Indian scouts, mostly Arikaras. The supply train was one hundred and ten wagons long. Smoke signals filled the air along the route of march, a sure sign that the Sioux knew he was there.
But if Custer was worried, the natural beauty of the region more than assuaged his fears. He wrote reams of letters to his wife extolling the perfection of the Hills. He hunted every day, doing more than his share to supply fresh meat for the command, and he fell in love with the region. And when gold was discovered in unimaginable volume, all fears of the Sioux, and any concerns about violating the treaty’s terms, were forgotten.
But unexpectedly, Custer and his command encountered only a small band of Sioux, and they were peaceful residents of the Red Cloud Agency, under the leadership of Red Cloud’s son-in-law, Stabber. Custer tried to enlist Stabber as a guide, but he was refused, and that was the last he saw of the Sioux during his three-week exploration.
The one the Sioux now, like the Cheyenne, called Long-Hair gathered animals for his traveling zoo, while the troopers roamed through the valleys gathering flowers by the armful. So smitten was he with the Edenic riches that he had the company band play a concert in the middle of a valley filled from ridge to ridge with flowers.
Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull were far to the west, in the Powder River country. If they knew of Custer’s intrusion, they made no attempt to stop it. Crazy Horse was so wrapped up in his family, spending hour upon hour with They Are Afraid of Her, that he was seldom away from the village for more than a day or two to hunt.
Sitting Bull spent the idle time making speeches, trying to rally the hostiles for another war on the white soldiers, but Crazy Horse paid little attention to politics, preferring to stay in his lodge and play with his daughter. She had brought him a serenity he had never known, and he relished it.
In early July, he stirred himself just long enough to lead a small war party westward to raise a little havoc among the Crows. On his return, he found that the village, near the Little Bighorn River, had moved after he left. Pointed sticks on the ground at the village site led him toward its new location on the Tongue, and he pushed his pony and his men hard. He wanted to get home, to resume the tranquillity that increasingly absorbed him.
The next two days seemed to take forever, and he drove himself harder and harder, desperate to cover the last few miles. Finally, the smoke from campfires came into view, and Crazy Horse lashed his pony into a full gallop.
Slipping from his pony as he entered the village, he raced toward his lodge, but Worm intercepted him, grabbing him by the arm and holding on, despite Crazy Horse’s attempt to pull free.
He knew then that something was wrong, and searched his father’s face for some clue.
Worm lowered his eyes and shook his head.
Clearing his throat, he whispered, “They Are Afraid of Her …”
“What? Tell me, Father …”
Worm sighed, then shook his head once more. “The white man’s sickness, the one they call cholera. She …”
Crazy Horse ripped loose then and dashed into the lodge. Black Shawl looked at him and her face was a mask of grief. Her eyes were red and swollen, and she fell apart as he rushed to her. Kneeling on a buffalo robe, she reached up to her husband, and Crazy Horse sank to his knees beside her. He wrapped his arms around Black Shawl and she buried her face in his shoulder. Sobbing uncontrollably, she tried to tell him the details, but couldn’t stop the quavering of her voice. Crazy Horse patted her back and stroked her hair, but she continued to tremble, the sobs wracking her body again and again.
“Where is she?” he asked.
Worm had come into the lodge, and he reached out to touch Crazy Horse on the shoulder. “You can’t go to her scaffold, son. It is too far from here, deep in Crow country now.”
“Where is it?” Crazy Horse said, without looking around. “I want to know.”
“If I tell you, I know you will go there, and …”
“Where is it?” Crazy Horse snapped. It was the first time he had ever used such a tone with his father. Both men seemed to recognize it, and Crazy Horse turned then to look at his father, tears streaming down his face. “I have to know.”
Worm started to speak, then thought better of it. He knew that he could not forbid his son to go. They were way past that. And he knew that he could not ask his son for a promise that Crazy Horse would be unable to keep. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “But you must promise to take someone with you. Don’t go alone, please.”
Crazy Horse nodded. He said nothing, but the shake of his head was enough. He had given his word.
He left in the morning. With him was Frank Grouard, the old white scout. The two were friends, and Grouard knew enough about Sioux customs, and about his friend, that he made himself invisible on the seventy-mile ride. Crazy Horse said not a word on the two-day trip.
Near sundown on the second day, they found the scaffold right where Worm had said it would be. Etched against the darkening sky, solid black as if drawn with a piece of charred wood on gray paper, the scaffold frame trembled when Crazy Horse climbed up, wrapped himself in a buffalo robe, and lay down.
For three days, he lay there. Grouard moved a mile away, to camp near a small creek. Each night, just before sunset, he would climb the hill. But when he drew close enough to hear Crazy Horse sobbing, he would turn and head back down the hill.
Lying there motionless, except for the quaking of his body during the fits of weeping, the great warrior stared at the sky. It reminded him of his vision quest, how he had lain so long on the rough rock overlooking the lake, how the blue seemed to grow deep and still, how the clouds drifted slowly across his field of vision, changing shape like magic creatures from some other world and, at night, how the stars had seemed so cold and far away.
His serenity was gone now, as distant as those stars, and replaced by a rage as deep and dark as the night sky. They Are Afraid of Her was so tiny, and she had brought him such peace, and now she was gone, a victim of the white man every bit as much as if she had been killed by a soldier’s gun. She had never hurt a soul, never done anything but give him joy, and she had been taken from him.
Someone would pay for her loss, and pay dearly.
Crazy Horse ate nothing and drank nothing for those three days. Instead he fed on the rage that tormented him, even as it fed on him, burning its way toward the surface from someplace deep inside, a place where nothing and no one except They Are Afraid of Her had ever been able to touch before, and no one would touch again as long as he lived.
On the morning of the fourth day, he climbed down from the scaffold. His eyes were dry, and his face was made of stone. Only the scar above his lip, whiter than usual over the clenched muscle of his jaw, betrayed what he was feeling.
Leaving the buffalo robe on the scaffold, he looked once more at the platform where his daughter lay, then at the sky as if giving it one last chance to explain the unexplainable, then he turned and walked downhill. Behind him, still almost black against the pale blue sky, stood his daughter’s burial platform, like a grim monument to his tranquillity. That tranquillity was dead, too, a thing of the past, and only the willow poles and small, frail body of They Are Afraid of Her remained. Soon they would be gone, too.
He saw Grouard waiting for him, saw his pony, Grouard’s horse, the pack horse, the small fire, but most of all he saw Grouard’s skin, darkened by the sun, but still white. For a moment, the rage boiled up inside him and he wanted to hurl himself on the old scout, wrap his fingers around Grouard’s throat and throttle him until his tongue lolled, turned purple, and his eyes protruded from their sockets.
But he caught himself. Grouard had done nothing to hurt him, or to hurt They Are Afraid of Her. He remembered seeing the little girl, even smaller alongside the tall, lanky white man, her little hand wrapped in Grouard’s gnarled fist, as they walked to a creek to go fishing. And he understood then that it wasn’t the whiteness of a man’s skin that made him an enemy, but the blackness of his heart.
And there was no way to tell that until you gave him a chance to get close, close enough to do you damage. That only made the hurt worse. And he thought then of No Water, who had hurt him, too, and No Water wasn’t a white man. The secret then was not to make choices on the color of skin, but to keep everyone at arm’s length, to hold them far enough away that they couldn’t reach you at all, couldn’t touch you in the only place that mattered.
Grouard nodded. He said nothing as he looked up at the warrior, and only then did Crazy Horse notice the twin strands of silver filigreeing the old man’s weathered cheeks. The tears laced and interlaced as they wound their way down to his chin and dripped onto the buckskin shirt, making patches of dark wetness on the pale beige of its chest.
Crazy Horse felt his own eyes well up, and made no attempt to stop the tears as they ran down his cheeks. Neither man spoke, neither made a sound. But the grief was shared, and Crazy Horse knew again that Frank Grouard was a friend.
They broke camp in silence, and rode the seventy miles in silence, stopping only twice, neither time for more than a few minutes. Only the steady clop of the horses’ hooves broke the stillness, and it seemed to Crazy Horse that it was like a drum beat, or the beating of his own heart, some inescapable rhythm that would be with him until the day he died.
When he returned to the village, Black Shawl greeted him warmly, but there was a reserve about her now, as if the place where They Are Afraid of Her used to be was now some unbridgeable chasm, a great void across which they could see each other but where even shouted words were swallowed by the yawning silence.
He returned to the old ways, going off alone for days, even weeks at a time. No one knew when he would leave and, once he had gone, no one knew when, or if, he would come back.
The people started to hear stories about miners found in the Black Hills, dead, a single arrow stabbed into the ground beside their stiffened corpses, their hair still intact. Most Sioux took scalps. But Crazy Horse did not, and the people all seemed to understand, without one of them saying a word, that this was the revenge of Crazy Horse, his way of exacting payment for the incalculable loss of his little girl.
Black Shawl tried to get him to talk, to tell her if it were he who was leaving the bleak reminders strewn across the holy ground of the Paha Sapa, but he said nothing.
While Sitting Bull tried to rouse the people, Crazy Horse kept to himself. He made plans when there was a war party, but said nothing more than was necessary to make those plans understood. The rest of the time, he kept to himself, alone in his lodge with Black Shawl and her mother.
Red Leaf accompanied him on hunts once or twice, but felt isolated, even when riding beside the man he idolized. After the second time, Crazy Horse went alone. No one knew where he went. They k
new only that when he came back, he had food for the old ones.
And they saw that in battle he was a different man. More reckless, they said, worse than Little Hawk. Worm heard the stories from He Dog and Red Leaf and Little Big Man, and he knew what drove his son. It was not vengeance so much as the unspoken wish that something would put an end to his pain, that a white man’s bullet or a Crow arrow would send him off to be with Hump and Little Hawk and Lone Bear again. And, most of all, where he could sit under a tree beside a perfect stream, with They Are Afraid of Her curled in his lap, her tiny head on his shoulder.
And Worm lived in fear that that wish would be granted.
Chapter 27
June 1876
IN LATE 1875, the government in Washington, aware of the huge potential of the gold fields in the Black Hills, decided to induce the Sioux to sell them. Custer’s preliminary enthusiasm had proved to be well-founded, and the rush of prospectors into the forbidden territory was proving difficult to stop. Once again, a commission was appointed in an attempt to gain concessions from the Sioux without telling them the true worth of the land they were being asked to surrender.
But the chiefs were no longer so gullible. They had been through a number of treaty negotiations, and they had seen how willing the white men were to lie and cheat and, when neither of those options worked, to take by force what the Sioux would not give up. Spotted Tail took a tour of the Black Hills, and while there, talked to several miners and the new agent for the territory. All the whites he spoke to told him the same thing—the Black Hills were worth at least thirty to fifty million dollars, possibly more. But they also told the Brule chief that such a figure was more than the government in Washington was likely to pay.
Red Cloud did some figuring of his own, and came up with seven million dollars, which he wanted put in an account to generate interest, which would be distributed annually without ever drawing on the principal. At the same time, he asked for a number of regular goods distributions, everything from food to the erection of houses, for seven full generations.