by Judd Cole
Several warriors had been at that battle, when Black Elk had only eighteen winters behind him. Now one of them said, “You did, Black Elk, I was there!”
Wolf Who Hunts Smiling rose beside his cousin and addressed himself to the junior warriors whom he had recently trained.
“Little brothers, some of you too have seen your fathers and mothers slain by white devils as I have! Tomorrow you give your enemies a war face. If you must die, and some will die, know it will be the glorious death! And when you fall, fall on the bones of a white dog! These are the murderers who exterminate the red man! Little brothers, at first light show the blooded warriors among us that you are eager! I want to see my warriors racing to count first coup!”
Wolf Who Hunts Smiling’s eyes had held Touch the Sky’s as he said this, issuing a challenge. Touch the Sky held his face impassive, but gave a slight nod—the challenge had been accepted.
Though few would sleep soundly that night, the warriors drank much water as was the custom. Thus, aching bladders would waken them early for the attack. Well before dawn, Touch the Sky was running his weapons and equipment through one final check. Then, as the newborn sun streaked pink the horizon, he rode his dun to the long, curved battle line forming just below the crest.
His last act, as he waited, was to don his magic mountain-lion skin.
The junior warriors were nervous, eager to prove themselves, and more experienced braves held them in check with stern glances and remarks. Wait for the signal was the command passed up and down the line.
Black Elk took in a mighty breath, ready to scream the war cry that would signal the attack.
Wolf Who Hunts Smiling met Touch the Sky’s glance, his quick eyes mocking the tall brave. Then, before Black Elk could signal, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling dug his knees into the flanks of his pure black pony. His mount leaped forward, already a half-dozen paces downhill when Black Elk’s shrill “Hi-ya, hi-i-i-ya!” sounded.
The curved line surged forward, the war cry filling the air. Their enemy had been prepared for attack for two days. Now the best sharpshooters knelt out front of the others, waiting for the Cheyennes to ride into maximum effective range.
The attackers knew that their best defense across open territory was the agility of the ponies. Riding in a straight line provided an easy target, as did predictable patterns. Now the lead warriors zigzagged in crazy patterns as they rode close enough to send in the first bullets and arrows.
The sharpshooters were amazed—the Cheyennes were so skilled as riders they seemed an extension of their ponies. They bounced with perilous ease, seeming always on the verge of flying off the horse, as they strung their bows or reloaded their rifles. Several sharpshooters fell in that first volley, yet only one Cheyenne pony was hit. The rider leaped up behind another warrior and they escaped.
The success of the first wave heartened the second. While the scattered marksmen were hurrying back further behind their breastworks, the fighting Cheyennes rode close and fired a second fatal volley.
So far, though, no attacker had penetrated the breastworks to count the first coup of the battle. Despite his lead in the attack, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling had been kept busy outriding bullets. Now, as the second wave of Cheyennes fired into the whites, he and Touch the Sky both urged their ponies closer to their enemies.
An opening appeared between the points of two breastworks and Touch the Sky spotted the deck of the keelboat. And his heart leaped into his throat with sudden hope: He couldn’t tell if they were dead or alive, but two figures lay staked out on the deck near the plank cabin.
Then his attention returned to the breastworks closer at hand. At the same moment he and Wolf Who Hunts Smiling watched Sam Meeks, the Bluecoat deserter whose testimony had sealed their fate, leap from a rifle pit. He fired at a junior Cheyenne warrior, knocking him from his pony with a fatal hit to the chest.
Touch the Sky dug heels into his pony and leaped over the pointed breastworks from the left; Wolf Who Hunts Smiling kicked his pony into motion and sailed in from the right. The dun was quicker, and Touch the Sky brought his lance down hard on Meeks just a moment before Wolf Who Hunts Smiling tapped him with his rifle.
It was Wolf Who Hunts Smiling who got the kill on his second pass, firing point-blank to avenge their fallen comrade. But as Touch the Sky raced on, toward the Sioux Princess, he exulted in the knowledge that Black Elk and others had seen him count first coup.
Behind him, as he deserted his pony now and moved forward from tree to tree on foot, the Cheyenne warriors covered their tribe with glory. Wave after wave assaulted the breastworks now, emboldened by the success of the first attacks. Several more warriors lay dead or dying, but even more white militiamen had been sent under, and more were dying in the unexpectedly fierce attack.
A group had been held in reserve to fight from the keelboat. Touch the Sky couldn’t spot Munro, but there was Hays Jackson and Fargo Danford and Heck Nash. All crouched behind barrels and crates, their weapons at the ready.
In the corner of his eye, Touch the Sky saw Wolf Who Hunts Smiling sneak up to a tree beside him. Heck Nash, his attention distracted by the main battle at the breastworks, did not notice the Cheyennes closer at hand. He moved from behind cover to see better.
Wolf Who Hunts Smiling unlashed the throwing tomahawk secured to his legging sash. He had been waiting for this opportunity to avenge himself on the white dog who had made water in his face. He stepped from behind his tree and threw his tomahawk hard. It caught Nash high in the chest and brought him down hard, still alive but blood spurting high from his wound.
“Behind the trees!” shouted Fargo Danford, snapping off a round at Wolf Who Hunts Smiling. But a moment later Danford’s hands flew to the hole Black Elk, just now charging the keelboat with several warriors at his heels, shot through his forehead.
Under cover of Black Elk’s charge, Touch the Sky and Wolf Who Hunts Smiling also charged the boat. Touch the Sky sent a bullet from his Sharps into the face of a militiaman, then tossed his rifle aside and strung his bow, dropping a second mercenary. He and Wolf Who Hunts Smiling reached the boat at the same time. As Touch the Sky leaped aboard, Wolf paused to scalp Heck Nash while the wounded man, still alive, screamed hideously.
More Cheyenne attackers leaped aboard, and screams filled the air as the bloody fight was reduced to knives and tomahawks. Slashing furiously, his face and hands covered with enemy blood, Touch the Sky fought his way toward the two prisoners staked out on the deck on the far side of the cabin.
He reached them and felt a tight bubble of joy rise into his throat—they were both alive. Battered and bruised and filthy, but alive.
“The hell took you, sprout?” demanded Knobby in a show of bravado. “This deck plays hell on my rheumatic!”
Touch the Sky knelt and sliced through their bonds. But neither one moved at first, muscles locked into position.
“Where’s Munro?” Touch the Sky asked Little Horse.
“Hiding in the cabin with his pistols and his talking papers!”
With a mighty victory cry, the Cheyennes at the main battle had routed the last of the militiamen. These were fording the river in retreat. But now a surprise lay in store for them: At a command from Etienne, who until now had kept his men out of the battle, the rearguard of Creole voyageurs was cutting the mercenaries down.
Knobby and Little Horse were finally sitting up, making their first efforts to stand and find better cover. Touch the Sky, intent on reaching the cabin, didn’t notice when Hays Jackson suddenly swung one of the swivel-mounted blunderbusses full around and aimed it at him point-blank.
“Brother!” screamed Little Horse, but he was too late. With a deafening roar the blunderbuss fired its eight-ounce ball.
Only Little Horse and Jackson saw a hole appear in the plank wall of the cabin behind Touch the Sky. But instead of falling to the deck, a hole punched through him, Touch the Sky only stared in bewilderment at his unharmed mountain-lion skin—the same skin which Arrow Keep
er assured him had strong medicine.
Jackson’s jaw fell open in astonishment, and for a fatal moment he was surprised into immobility. The ball couldn’t have passed through the Indian; his aim had to have been off.
Little Horse, limping badly on the leg Jackson had ruined with the belaying pin, hobbled to another blunderbuss. Knobby joined him and put a sulphur match to the touch hole. The gun spat fire, and there was a sound like a water bag bursting as the ball tore out Jackson’s ample stomach. For a moment he stood rooted, the river behind him visible through the hole in his body, before his ruined carcass collapsed.
Wolf Who Hunts Smiling had already approached the cabin and been sent sprawling by a near-fatal blast from one of the dueling pistols. Now, with the last of the militiamen dead or routed, Touch the Sky called out, “Hold! The white dog cannot go anywhere.”
The horses and mules had already been moved to a safe spot downriver. Using hand signals, Touch the Sky cleared everyone off the boat, helping Little Horse ashore. The last thing he did was smash a coal-oil lamp and trail the flammable oil in a line from the boarding ramp to the powder cache just aft of the cabin.
Knobby struck a match with his fingernail and flipped it in the oil. A fast, snaking trail of flame covered the deck, reached the cache, fizzled for a moment. A heartbeat later a deafening explosion obliterated the deck and the cabin, sending planks and ropes and tattered pieces of canvas sail—and fluttering sheets of “private treaties”—sailing off high into the sky.
~*~
The Cheyennes held an impromptu scalp dance that night beside the river, thanking Maiyun for this important victory. Only four Cheyenne braves had died, while five times that number of enemies had been slain. Tomorrow they would spend the day helping the Creoles, now their unlikely battle allies, build a crude flatboat so they could return to New Orleans. For their part in helping the Cheyennes, they were given a share of the captured horse herds in addition to their weapons.
Touch the Sky was elated with the victory. But while he was still rejoicing, watching the last smoldering embers of the Sioux Princess sink into the river, he was momentarily sobered. As this battle proved, their homeland had been permanently invaded. And as his vision at Medicine Lake had so painfully made real, for the red man, the fighting had just begun. Word of this Tongue River battle would eventually reach the Great White Council and their blue-bloused soldiers. Each victory spawned more bloody battles.
Nor were his personal battles within the tribe over. It wasn’t enough for Black Elk that he swore to respect his marriage vows. The war chief also insisted that Touch the Sky somehow give up his love for Honey Eater. That would never happen. Nor would Wolf Who Hunts Smiling be content until one of them crossed over. So let the battles come, he was ready.
Arrow Keeper had spoken the straight word: Touch the Sky would face many trials and much suffering before he raised high the lance of leadership. But Arrow Keeper had also said he was the son of a great Cheyenne chief. That it was his destiny to find greatness just as his father had.
A shadow limped across from the dancers circling the huge victory fire. Touch the Sky turned to his friend.
“Come dance for me, brother,” Little Horse said. His leg had been splinted, and he used a hickory-limb crutch. “I would dance with the tribe, but I cannot. I need your legs.”
Touch the Sky knew what his friend was doing. He was telling him that it was the white man’s way to brood after a great victory. A Cheyenne celebrated with his people.
“Then let us dance, brother!” Touch the Sky said. A moment later a tall Cheyenne warrior took his place among the dancers kicking high about the fire. The others made room as was his due. Something about his manner suggested that none had better challenge him. And none did.
For they had seen him count first coup in the day’s great battle, and though he was clearly marked for trouble, all agreed that Touch the Sky was no warrior to trifle with.
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