And in the next few moments he was not sure why he did what he did, but he remembered helping the wounded man behind a large bundle of lodge skins, then sprinting toward his horse and leaping atop it bareback, joining a handful of the rest who were charging out to break through the cordon of attackers.
The yelling grew faint in his ears as the animal carried him into the growing light of dawn, all rose and blood orange to the east, the ground a hammering thunder of noise—
—when suddenly the earth shook and came upon him, driving the breath from his lungs. Beneath his bloody cheek he heard the riders coming. Dragging his heavy head from the soil where it was warm and wet with his blood, he saw the young Cheyenne warriors bearing down on him. He did not stand a chance, he thought, his eyes rolling back in his head as he slipped away.
Two Pawnee horsemen fired their rifles again and again at the approaching Cheyenne. Then both leaned off the bare backs of their ponies and scooped the white man from the grassy sand at a full run.
Jonah started to come to, his eyes struggling to focus as his toes dragged the ground, bouncing off tufts of bunch-grass, suspended between two men and their heaving, sweat-slicked horses. He tried to look up at who carried him helpless as a newborn, hoping they were Pawnee. Then blacked out again from the pain in the side of his head.
Wondering if the Cheyenne warrior who had knocked him off his horse had been Shad’s half-breed son.
Blessed, merciful blackness …
Porcupine looked over the young warriors as they dismounted with him, back among Turkey Leg’s people.
Women and children surged forward, old ones too—each one looking for any who were missing among the war party gone to the hills beside Plum Creek where the Cheyenne had abandoned their belongings.
There were three missing. Three more carried in wounded. Women wailing anew—knowing the Pawnee would surely mutilate the bodies of their men left on the battlefield.
Porcupine looked at Turkey Leg, then walked on past the old man, leading his pony through the crowd.
“Porcupine!”
He turned, not really wanting to talk with the chief. Slowly, the warrior faced about.
“You tried, young one. Sometimes—that is all that counts.”
“I could not hold the rest long enough to see what the scalped-heads would take, what they would leave behind,” he said with bitterness. “They were too anxious to fight.”
“In some the blood of revenge runs so hot it knows no control.”
“We failed—and paid a mighty cost for it,” Porcupine sighed. “There is one among us who is without control, Turkey Leg. He rides without thought into the muzzles of the white man’s guns. He taunts the others because of it—and so brings danger to the rest of our war party because he is without fear—perhaps because he is crazy.”
“The half-breed? Son of the Cheyenne woman who married the tall white man?”
Porcupine nodded.
Turkey Leg gazed into the distance a moment. “I remember the man well—as if it were yesterday. More than twenty winters ago, he came among us and would have no other for his wife. Now his son pays for the transgressions of his father.” He looked up at Porcupine. “I fear that High-Backed Bull will one day die at the hands of the white man—perhaps his own father.”
“What I fear most is that he is so crazy, so hot for blood, that he will cause the deaths of many of our finest warriors.”
“If it is something that is to come to pass—it is not for us to change the will of the Grandfather Above.”
Porcupine sighed. It was so. Not for him to decide who was to live. Who was to die. The recent journey of the sun and moon had brought death to this camp, which meant many left without husbands, without fathers.
“And still, Turkey Leg, the scalped-heads hold three of our people prisoners and sit on almost all that we owned.”
“But there are small victories, Porcupine. Small, but most meaningful. No more do the scalped-heads hold three Shahiyena. One has escaped.”
“Your mother?”
Turkey Leg shook his head, moistness coming to his eyes in the midday light. “No. It is the girl of ten summers. Somehow she escaped the scalped-heads as they were crossing the great river. She hid on an island from her captors. Because of this, the people have renamed her Island Woman. After our enemies gave up their search for her, she turned about and walked north onto the prairie. From what she told me of the time she heard horsemen coming, I believe she made herself small and hid from you and your warriors when you rode south to Plum Creek in the darkness.”
“Island Woman! This is good news, Turkey Leg!” He clamped a hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Now—we must free the last two.”
The chief tried to smile, then sucked on a lower lip in thought before he replied. “I have little hope for the boy and woman to escape like the girl. Better that I send word to the white man that I will trade for them.”
“The white children?”
“Yes.”
“You will give two back to the white man?”
“I will return all six to the soldiers—if they will only free the boy and the old woman.”
“You are a good son, Turkey Leg.”
“No,” the old chief answered finally, gazing up at the tall warrior with moist eyes. “If I had truly been a good son, my mother would not now be a prisoner of the scalped-heads and the white pony soldiers.”
At the beginning of the third week of September, Major Frank North gathered his four companies of Pawnee scouts at the thriving community of North Platte in western Nebraska. It was there on the twenty-first that a commission was assembled to discuss peace terms with the various bands then roaming the central plains. Over the next three days, chiefs of some of the strongest warrior bands rode in at the invitation of the commissioners: five professional soldiers and three civilian representatives who sat at their tables, looking down at those chiefs they had called together.
Man That Walks Under the Ground, Spotted Tail, Young Man Afraid of His Horses, Pawnee Killer, Standing Elk, and others of the Sioux. The Cheyenne came as well.
Turkey Leg motioned Shad Sweete to the doorway of the crowded Sibley tent where the peace-talkers held court. The old mountain man was there to help translate for the Cheyenne when needed.
“You are the father of High-Backed Bull?” asked the Cheyenne chief.
“I am,” Shad answered.
“Husband to Shell Woman?”
Shad had to think a moment, to remember her given Shahiyena name. “She is mother to High-Backed Bull, yes.”
Turkey Leg sighed. “I wish to speak with you, Indian-talker.”
Shad followed the old Indian out the open tent flaps stirred by the autumn breeze. Although he could not recall ever meeting Turkey Leg, Sweete knew of the man by reputation. His word was good. And right now the old trapper was figuring Turkey Leg was set on doing some wrangling over peace terms away from the soldiers.
“I don’t have any power to help you in your talks with the great father’s peace-talkers—”
Turkey Leg raised a wrinkled hand, silencing the white man. “I did not ask you to talk to me of peace with the soldiers. Years ago, when you came among Tall Crane’s village, to buy yourself a wife—I too lived in that camp.”
“We have met, Turkey Leg?”
The old man shook his head. “No. But I know of you.”
“I know of you as well. Among many honorable men—you are known as a man of honor.”
“You speak of me like I am some ancient man, Indian-talker. I cannot have more than ten winters of life on you.”
Shad liked the chief’s smile. “I remember Tall Crane’s camp. It was a good time in my life. A good time in our lives—before things got … mixed-up and confused.”
“It was a good time for us all, Indian-talker.” Now the chief’s old eyes gazed back into the tent. “You see that one at the end of the table, seated beside the one with much braid on his blue coat?”
Shad nodded. “Major Frank North. Leader of the scalped-heads. The army’s scouts.”
No emotion was betrayed in the old man’s eyes. “I know of him. He was leading the fight we had at Plum Creek Ford.”
“Yes. You wish to meet him?”
“No. It is not necessary. I only know that he is the man you must talk to for me. I have—” He bit his lip as if it were something difficult to discuss. “I have six children this North will want.”
“Prisoners?”
“They are white children. But they are no longer our prisoners. We were raising them to be Shahiyena.”
Shad sighed, trying to contain his excitement at the news. “Six children. Yes. What do you wish in return for the six children?”
Turkey Leg looked up at the scout, then back at Frank North behind the table some ten yards away where the commissioners were debating points of their peace plan through the various interpreters.
“North’s scalped-heads captured two of our people at that Plum Creek fight. I want them back.”
“A boy of ten summers. And another.”
“An old woman.”
“That is all you want?” Shad asked, not believing his ears.
“We want nothing more for the six children.”
Sweete was stirred. “They must be important to you, Turkey Leg.”
With moist eyes, the old chief gazed up at the tall white man. “All my people are important to me.”
As much as Shad wanted to touch the old man at that moment, suddenly understanding, Shad did not.
“I will see that it is done with Major North,” he replied quietly at the old man’s ear. “I understand how a man must do what he can to protect his family. It is this way with my own—this worry I have for my own blood.”
And in the old, rheumy eyes, there came a new moistness telling Shad Sweete that Turkey Leg was thankful to the white scout for his understanding about the old woman, but that the Cheyenne chief in turn sympathized about the white man’s half-breed son.
“Yes, Indian-talker. A man must always do everything he can to protect his family.”
38
Early October, 1867
AT A RAILSIDE eating house in North Platte, Nebraska, the formal exchange of the prisoners took place. Three young women, two aged nineteen and one girl seventeen years old, along with six-year-old twin boys and an infant.
The Cheyenne boy of ten summers was returned to his joyous people, who promptly renamed him Pawnee in commemoration of his capture by North’s scouts. In the end, Turkey Leg’s aged mother walked slowly from that eating house in North Platte, gripping her son’s arm, tears dampening both of their winter-seamed faces.
That exchange was the only productive thing to come of three days of haggling between the chiefs and the peace commissioners. As Jonah Hook and the other army scouts listened, the white men had again expressed that the Indians would be required to remain on their reservations south of the Arkansas River or north of the Platte, where the bands would be expected to settle down and become farmers, every bit as much as those white settlers moving onto the plains with their plows and spotted buffalo.
In turn, the chiefs listened attentively, but refused to budge from their trust in the old life as lived by their people for as long as any old man’s memory—season by season following the migration of the buffalo.
But the problem was, said the chiefs, the white man was crossing the buffalo ground with the iron tracks for his smoking wagons. And the buffalo would no longer cross those tracks. Instead, the great herds that once roamed the extent of the central plains were now kept far to the south, while another herd stayed far to the north.
“Our people will starve if we cannot hunt the buffalo,” Spotted Tail told the peace commissioners.
“We will go where the buffalo are,” said Cut Nose.
“Even if the buffalo graze where the white man settles, cutting at the earth and raising his spotted buffalo,” Whistler added.
“No, you must stay far away from the white man and his settlements,” General Alfred Terry warned.
“Any time your young warriors steal or kill, the soldiers will follow,” said General William Tecumseh Sherman. “We will chase your villages and find them, wherever you hide.”
“You make life hard on us,” said Cold Face.
“Yes,” agreed Turkey Leg. “We must go where we can feed our families. Doesn’t the white man understand that? Doesn’t the white man now go where he goes to settle on this buffalo ground so that he can feed his family?”
“If our two peoples stay away from one another,” General John B. Sanborn said calmly, “we will not have reason to fight.”
Standing Elk took the speaking fan from Turkey Leg. It was his turn to add words so the peace-talkers might understand before war once more erupted. “All things are good for the white man. But our people were here first. You are not wanted here in our land. Go away, and all things will be better once more.”
“We will not be leaving,” Sherman sputtered. “You will have to make room for all the white families yet to come from the east. They are as plentiful as the stars in the sky. And if you do not move aside and allow them room, the army will round you up and put you on the reservations, where you will be forced to raise your crops—or starve. There will be no more buffalo when the white man finishes pacifying this land.”
Young Man Afraid rose, taking the speaking fan made from the wing of a golden eagle. It carried not only great power, but responsibility as well for the man who spoke while holding it. “We have never been like you white men. Ever since I was born, I have eaten wild meat. Not one bite have I taken of your spotted buffalo.”
“You will grow to like it, I am sure,” said General William S. Harney, smiling benevolently.
“I think not,” Young Man Afraid continued, his face taut as a hand drum at the white soldier’s rude interruption. “My father and his father, and his father before him all ate wild meat. It is not for me to change our way of life now. It was good for my ancestors. It is good for my children, and their children, and the children to come after them.”
“Times are changing,” Sanborn said. “We must all realize progress is coming to this new land.”
“I know nothing of this progress,” Young Man Afraid said. “All I know is the taste of buffalo in my mouth, the sweetness of cold water on my tongue, and the way the clouds touch the earth as I look far away at everything the Grandfather Above has placed here for his children. No! Listen and heed me—it will not be my generation that will give up to the greedy white man all that has been given us by the Grandfather Above!”
The discussions, debate, and heated exchanges droned on and on for most of three days in that tent on the outskirts of North Platte. In the end, the commissioners said they were calling an end to the inconclusive hearings, but were asking the bands to attend another treaty talk, scheduled for later that same month, near the end of the Falling Leaf Moon.
“There we can come to agreement on the terms of our new peace treaty,” explained General Terry as he disbanded the conference.
“You put too much hope in things changing between now and the next time we come together,” Turkey Leg said as the white men rose from their chairs behind the tables.
“I put a lot of hope in each of you tribal leaders doing what is best for your people,” General Harney said.
“That is for us to decide,” Pawnee Killer growled. “Not you white soldiers and peace-talkers.”
Fully a mile away, the young riders were gathering along the hilltops, watching Shad Sweete and the rest of his party approach along the meandering path of the creek bottom. From what the old mountain man could tell, the horsemen were mostly young boys, very likely carrying bows and quivers of arrows. No sign yet of older warriors brandishing rifles as they watched the small group of white men ride toward their village nestled among the cottonwoods and plum brush.
Sweete wondered … then caught himself hoping. It would be too great a gif
t, he figured, to find his half-breed son among those young men dippled along the hilltops, swirling away one by one on the off side of the knolls where the tall grass waved in the wind. Was he here? Shad wondered. Or was he still out with the Dog Soldiers of Tall Bull and White Horse, roaming and riding and raiding?
The old scout glanced at Jonah Hook riding beside him, finding the younger man most attentive to the distant spectacle, his eyes squinting into the bright autumn light this Indian summer day as the dried cottonwood leaves rattled in golden splendor, birds calling out in warning as the horsemen approached. Overhead a cloudless blue sky stretched everlasting to the far horizon in all directions. Sweete was adrift, as were these dark-skinned nomads he had come to visit, here on an inland sea of rolling, grass-covered surf.
More like paying homage, this visit was. To beg the attendance of the mighty Cheyenne of the central plains.
After the old mountain man had arranged the prisoner exchange at North Platte, General Phil Sheridan himself, that banty Irishman who commanded this part of the frontier, had personally asked Shad Sweete to lead this effort to assure that Turkey Leg and his headmen would come to Medicine Lodge Creek when the new moon had grown to half its full size. That’s when the white peace-talkers would once more assemble with the chiefs, to forge some kind of lasting agreement with the bands roaming Kansas and Nebraska—where the white man was pushing harder than ever, bringing his plow and raising sod houses and laying his iron rails.
Shad knew exactly how the bands felt. When the stench of human offal and waste in their camps grew too much to take, the bands simply took down their lodges and moved to a new campsite. Once more allowing the land and the wind and the rolling rhythm of the seasons to cleanse the breast of the mother of all things.
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