As Crazy Horse was led toward the guardhouse, the crowd grew restive. “Rescue him!” someone shouted. A group of northern Lakotas began edging closer to the guardhouse, cocking their rifles and revolvers, when a body of mounted scouts rode up, hands raised in admonition. The warriors fell back.53
The movement toward the guardhouse was general. At least two hundred Indians were swarming around the building as Crazy Horse approached. In the half hour or so since Crazy Horse had arrived, the situation on the parade ground had changed significantly Supporters of Crazy Horse were pressing forward on foot and horseback. Behind the two buildings, Oglala spectators were spilling up from the agency trail on foot, on horseback, and even in wagons. To meet the new tactical situation, American Horse had moved his Loafer warriors from behind the adjutant’s office. With Red Cloud’s Bad Faces, they formed a new line, extending out from the guardhouse front deep across the grounds. As Crazy Horse neared, the line was assailed by the press of his supporters. Men shouted at one another across the closing gap, waving cocked revolvers.54
Some supporters surged toward their war chief. A line of guards formed across the space between the two buildings as the little procession approached the guardhouse. In the lead was the Brule scout Turning Bear. Between Crazy Horse with his two captors and the crowd was Wooden Knife, a Miniconjou. Leaper walked behind Crazy Horse, while a few other scouts, including Big Road, Iron Hawk, and Long Bear, brought up the rear. Pausing briefly at the door, the group conferred. Manning guard post number one, a red-bearded infantryman walked back and forth in front of the building, his bayoneted rifle held at slope. At the approach of the party, he stood to attention and lowered his rifle. Turning Bear walked past him into the guardhouse. A few other scouts entered the building. Then, by sudden volition, Crazy Horse walked through the doorway. First Captain Kennington, attended by four soldiers of the guard, then Little Big Man and a few of Crazy Horse’s friends, Horn Chips among them, followed the war chief into the building. At Kennington’s order, the rest of the guard remained outside, facing the open door. The sentry resumed his position. The crowd quieted.55
Several Brules, including Swift Bear, Black Crow, Crow Dog, and Standing Bear, stayed outside the guardhouse, but Lee and many of the Brule scouts began to walk away, toward the line of officers’ quarters. Bordeaux and fellow interpreter Billy Garnett continued to watch the open door of the guardhouse. Touch the Clouds, attended by his son, joined Swift Bear’s group, as did Fast Thunder, just then drawing up and alighting from his wagon. The group tried to quiet the vocal protestors, but suddenly, some thirty seconds after the last of the party had entered the building, “something happened in there. I could hear the noise inside,” remembered Garnett. The noise rose to an uproar, and suddenly Turning Bear ran outside, shouting, “This is a guard house.”56
Inside the door, Crazy Horse had found himself in the main guardroom. Immediately to his right, a log wall divided the guardroom from the prison room proper. A single inner door, placed within two feet of the outer doorway, connected the two rooms. The guardroom quickly filled with twenty or more Lakota scouts and soldiers of the guard. Crazy Horse still expected only to be kept securely overnight—not to be imprisoned: Frank Grouard, watching him enter the building, saw that “he did not know that he was to be placed in confinement.”57
Just as in the morning council, he had seized on Turning Bear’s example and followed him into the guardhouse. Now for the last time, Crazy Horse’s childlike capacity to trust fell through its characteristic vertigo into alarm, suspicion, and mistrust. Scanning the room, he saw the small grated window on the inner door and asked Turning Bear, “What kind of a place is this?”58
But the impetus in the crowded room was thrusting him toward the inner door. It swung open. Pressing behind Crazy Horse, Horn Chips heard Turning Bear offer to “be locked up and stay with him.”59 On either hand, Little Big Man and Captain Kennington continued to draw Crazy Horse forward. Suddenly, Turning Bear stopped in the open doorway, saying that “it was a hard place they were going into.”60
Momentarily, Crazy Horse stopped. “Let us go back,” concluded Turning Bear and started for the outer door. Amid a confusion of shouted orders, the forward impetus thrust Crazy Horse toward the prison room. Behind him, he could hear Turning Bear run onto the parade ground, yelling, “It’s the jail! It’s the jail!” The crowd clamored. Through the inner doorway, Crazy Horse could see walls hung with shackles, and seven wasicu prisoners sitting or standing around the cell, several bound in manacles or leg irons. “I won’t go in there,” Crazy Horse said flatly. Behind him, the hammers of rifles clicked.61
Suddenly, he wrenched his arms free and flung them up, snatching at Little Big Man’s face. His hand closed on a braid and pulled away his enemy’s hair ornaments. “I wouldn’t do that!” hissed Little Big Man. Crazy Horse thrust his arms forward. Bracing his outstretched hands on either side of the prison room door, he swung his body back against the guards. The men fell back. In the crush, the red blanket knotted at Crazy Horse’s waist came undone, revealing a white-handled revolver holstered at his hip. He reached for his belt. Just then, scout Plenty Wolves snatched the revolver from its holster. “Go ahead!” shouted the scout, “Do whatever you want with him! I have got the weapon—the gun!”62
Crazy Horse drew his only other weapon, a butcher knife with its blade ground down for cutting tobacco. With his left hand, he snatched Little Big Man’s knife from its scabbard. Crazy Horse turned and darted for the outer door. Guards presented bayonets but too late to confine the agile war chief. Captain Kennington, backing down the room, had drawn his sword and blocked Crazy Horse’s exit. Brandishing both knives, Crazy Horse sprang at Kennington. The captain skillfully parried the thrusts and would have stabbed Crazy Horse had not another Lakota leapt between them. Crazy Horse darted for the gap. “Nephew, don’t do that,” yelled Little Big Man. “Don’t! Don’t do that!”63
As Crazy Horse bounded into the open doorway, Little Big Man sprang forward and seized him from behind, forcing the two blades against Crazy Horse’s body. For a moment, Crazy Horse’s impetus dragged Little Big Man on, but in the open doorway, their joint momentum braked. “Let me go! Let me go!” cried Crazy Horse. In plain sight of the baying crowd, the pair struggled briefly for mastery; then, with a surge of strength, Crazy Horse freed his right hand. With an adroit snap of his raised wrist and arm, he slashed his knife across Little Big Man’s left hand, cutting the flesh between the bases of the thumb and forefinger. A second time the blade flashed down, opening an ugly gash in Little Big Man’s forearm. The scout cried out and loosened his grip. Not pausing to consider the guards, Crazy Horse bounded onto the parade ground. He grunted “h’gun,” the warrior’s cry for courage. The crowd surged toward him.64
The guards facing the doorway sprang toward Crazy Horse, bayonets thrusting. Beyond them Oglala and Brule scouts were hurrying through the crowd, ordering bystanders back as they shouldered carbines or cocked revolvers. Red Cloud and American Horse roared at their followers, “Shoot to kill!” American Horse aimed his gun, but other Lakotas got in the way, and he lowered his weapon. Beyond the scouts, Crazy Horse could see his followers, many mounted, yelling defiance. He started to run, his blade bluffing a gap through the guards. He lunged at one of the scouts, as if to cut his way through. To Crazy Horse’s right, Swift Bear, Black Crow, and Fast Thunder rushed up, seeking to stop the furor.65
Soldiers and scouts were streaming out of the guardhouse. Brandishing his sword, Kennington ran between the fugitive and the crowd, crying, “Kill the son of a bitch! Kill the son of a bitch!” Kennington momentarily blocked Crazy Horse’s retreat, but the rush of Lakotas reduced him to impotently circling the throng, still crying, “Kill him! Kill him!” The swarming Lakotas forced Crazy Horse to check his run. Little Big Man, bounding outside in renewed pursuit, caught hold again of Crazy Horse’s wrist. Swift Bear, Black Crow, and Fast Thunder raced up to grapple the war chief, one man managing to tackle
him around the waist. With another violent effort, Crazy Horse tore himself free, but the impetus of the struggle threw him backward.66
Against the wall, the guardhouse sentry stood, moving his bayonet forward and back in prescribed drill. To the scout Yellow Horse, exiting the guardhouse, the butt of the rifle seemed almost to touch the wall. The sentry moved up just as Crazy Horse surged back toward him. He prodded forward with the bayonet. The blade tore through the back of Crazy Horse’s shirt, on the left side above the hip. Without Crazy Horse’s own reverse momentum, it might have done no more damage: Yellow Horse saw no more than a prod, “just enough to make him feel the bayonet.” But Crazy Horse’s own weight drove the bayonet deep between his kidneys, piercing the bowels and angling down toward the groin. The sentry tugged his rifle backward, the butt banging against the wall. Without pause, he delivered a second thrust smartly to the righthand side of the war chief’s lower back. Piercing the lower ribs, the blade ranged upwards as Crazy Horse’s body sagged, puncturing the right lung. The sentry withdrew the blade as Crazy Horse straightened. In the first rush of agony, his weight involuntarily bore down on his left heel, causing him to pivot right.67
Circling the wounded man, the sentry thrust at Crazy Horse from the front, but this time the bayonet lodged only in the guardhouse door. Little Big Man caught hold once more of Crazy Horse’s arm. “Let me go; you’ve got me hurt now!” breathed the war chief. Just then, an uncle of Crazy Horse—perhaps the Miniconjou Spotted Crow—pushed through the crowd. He drove the butt of his rifle into Little Big Man’s stomach, upbraiding the scout: “You have done this once before.” Little Big Man reeled backward to sit in the dust, his hands braced to support himself. “You are always in the way!” roared Spotted Crow. A trumpeter sounded the urgent peal to arms.68
As Crazy Horse staggered backward, Swift Bear and his two comrades caught him, scolding, “We told you to behave yourself.”69 Groaning, Crazy Horse fell to his knees. For a moment he crouched, then the upper part of his body sagged, and he lay in the dust. The crowd, momentarily hushed, watched the wounded man begin to writhe on the ground. “I stood there, ready to drop,” recalled He Dog.70 Then people surged forward again. Frank Grouard heard cartridges being chambered and gun hammers clicking, expecting at any moment a shot that would start a battle. Infantry soldiers were hurrying from barracks. Mounted cavalry appeared from the barracks and stables behind the lower end of the parade ground.71
A knot of Lakotas quickly formed around Crazy Horse’s body. Touch the Clouds knelt and tried to raise Crazy Horse’s head. Caught in the crowd, his son Charging First shouted a warning and pushed aside the gun as an angry Lakota aimed at the Miniconjou chief. He Dog warned away another warrior who drew aim on Crazy Horse. He Dog was about to spread his own blanket over him when Crazy Horse gasped, “See where I am hurt. I can feel the blood flowing.” He Dog bent to pull aside Crazy Horse’s shirt. He viewed the two wounds. A lump was rising on the war chief’s chest above where the second bayonet thrust had ended. Blood frothed at his mouth and nostrils. His breath came in gasps punctuated by grunts—. “more from anger than pain,” thought He Dog.72
When Closed Cloud, a Brule, came out of the guardhouse carrying Crazy Horse’s blanket and knelt to lay it over him, a spasm of fury seized the war chief. He snatched at the Brule’s braids and jerked his head weakly from side to side: “You all coaxed me over here,” he scolded, “and then you ran away and left me!”73 He Dog took the blanket from Closed Cloud and rolled it into a pillow for Crazy Horse. Then he covered his friend with his own blanket, reassuring him that he would “take him home.” He Dog hurried across the parade ground toward Lieutenant Clark’s quarters.74
Surgeon Valentine T. McGillycuddy wedged his way through the cordon of guards to kneel beside the war chief. A bloody spittle filmed Crazy Horse’s lips, and he ground his teeth in agony as McGillycuddy turned over his body. Blood was trickling from the wound at his hip, and his pulse was faint and irregular. These were mortal wounds. McGillycuddy advised Kennington of the situation. Kennington ordered four guards to carry Crazy Horse back into the guardhouse. Barely had the men positioned themselves around the body when a powerful northern Lakota laid a hand on McGillycuddy’s shoulder. Another older man leapt from his pony, clutching a bow and arrows in one hand and aiming his revolver at Kennington with the other. scouts threw him to the ground, wresting away his weapons.75
A row of thirty mounted men, supporters of Crazy Horse, kneed their horses through the crowd. Several Brules urged the party to stop: Crow Dog clubbed his carbine and forced the line to rein in. Bat Pourier had just appeared on the scene from Clark’s office, and he pleaded with Kennington, “For God’s sake, captain, stop!” As the mounted warriors paused, Pourier began talking in Lakota. Crazy Horse was badly hurt, he said, and must be examined by a doctor. He suggested that the wounded man be carried into the adjutant’s office.76
Deep in the crowd, Pourier’s words found a response. Lakotas of both factions began shouting at Kennington and McGillycuddy. Puzzled by the sea change in the crowd, unable to tell friend from foe, and without an interpreter, the two men were momentarily confused. Pourier translated the shouts: “Don’t take him in the Guard House, he is a Chief.” Kennington stood silent, so McGillycuddy asked, “What shall I do with him?” Pourier translated, and the crowd shouted, “Take him there,” pointing down the parade ground at the adjutant’s office.77
Kennington demurred, but McGillycuddy volunteered to speak to Bradley. As he hurried across the parade ground, elders consolidated the mood of calm. The two factions agreed to withdraw from the scene, and the northern Lakotas moved down the parade ground toward Bradley’s quarters. The scouts and agency Oglalas shifted up the grounds to Clark’s quarters at the upper end of the officers’ row. Crazy Horse was left on the ground, still surrounded by the nervous cordon of the guard, his body writhing in occasional convulsions.78
Outside Clark’s quarters, the lieutenant stood talking to Billy Garnett, but he was still unwilling to take charge of the situation. He Dog angrily reproached the lieutenant, then stalked away.79 Clark authorized Garnett to have Crazy Horse taken into the adjutant’s office, adding, “You can go with him.” Then, as Garnett turned to talk with the chiefs, the lieutenant returned to his quarters.80
At the lower end of the officers’ row, McGillycuddy was having no more luck in trying to win Bradley’s involvement in the crisis. Since Lee’s visit a half-hour before, the commanding officer’s resolve to simply follow orders had only deepened. The surgeon was dismissed and made his way back to the parade ground.81
The situation had changed again in the brief minutes since McGillycuddy had left the scene. The two Lakota factions remained suspicious of one another. In the absence of an officer competent to take charge of the situation, American Horse ordered his scouts to have some blankets ready on which to carry the wounded man into the adjutant’s office. The scouts managed to surround the guardhouse, forming a cordon around the wounded man and Kennington’s guard. In the line, Woman Dress could hear Crazy Horse moaning repeatedly, “Father, I want to see you.” Other scouts threw a second cordon, several ranks deep, across the gap to the adjutant’s office. As the northern Lakotas ran up, American Horse kneed his pony forward into the space between the factions.82
McGillycuddy hurried through the crowd and outlined Bradley’s orders to Kennington, who once more ordered his detail to carry Crazy Horse into the guardhouse. Immediately, the crowd began to shout again, this time united in their disapproval of the military action. Through Johnny Provost, McGillycuddy explained to American Horse that Crazy Horse was badly hurt, and that Bradley’s orders were for him to be carried into the guardhouse. There, the surgeon insisted, he would take personal care of the wounded man. Still on his pony, American Horse declared loudly for all to hear, “Crazy Horse is a Chief and can not be put in the guard house.” All Lakotas approved this neat encapsulation of their mood. McGillycuddy hurried back to Bradley’s quarters.83<
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Still unprepared to take personal charge of the crisis, Bradley at last “reluctantly consented” to McGillycuddy’s proposal of the adjutant’s office solution.84 The surgeon wasted no time. He told American Horse of Bradley’s approval, and the Loafer chief announced, “Maybe the man is badly hurt, and maybe he is not; we will take him into the same place where they had the talk, and see how much he is hurt, and probably the Indian doctors can save him. It will not do to let him lie here.” American Horse sprang from his pony and spread his own blanket beside Crazy Horse, ready to take personal command.85
He Dog interposed, “No! I wouldn’t have anything to do with him.” Just then Little Big Man bustled up, his left arm bandaged. He shouted some orders. Standing Bull, the Hunkpatila akicita, and another warrior came up and spread their own blankets on the ground. In the pause, American Horse motioned up his own akicita, Red Shirt and Two Dogs. He helped them lift Crazy Horse onto the blankets and supervised their carrying him into the adjutant’s office. The Loafer warriors bore Crazy Horse to a cot in the corner, but Crazy Horse indicated that he would not lie there. The pile of blankets was formed into a rude pallet on the floor and Crazy Horse laid upon it. American Horse stepped coolly back onto the porch.86
“We have been wrangling over this Crazy Horse,” he shouted to the northern Lakotas,” we have got him in the house now and you can’t touch him.”87 No challenge followed American Horse’s taunt. Already many of Crazy Horse’s supporters were slipping away down the trail to the agency. It was about 7:00 P.M., and darkness was gathering. Lights had begun to come on around the post. Troops by now lined the parade ground. Outside Bradley’s quarters, the demoralized northerners passed the file of Spotted Tail Agency scouts. Blaming them for his nephew’s arrest, Crazy Horse’s uncle rode up to their line and pointed his revolver at Louis Bordeaux, but two Oglalas caught his bridle and led Spotted Crow aside.88
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