Such beauty, simplicity, he thought. So simple that its beauty continued to escape the white man. For only the white man squatted and never moved on. Continuing to live where he took a shit. A quarter century ago as a nomadic fur trapper, Shad had learned a better way. Man truly was not meant to live long in one place. Better that he took his shit, and moved on. Like the buffalo.
Dogs barking among the horses’ hooves announced the coming of the four white men—civilians all.
Women rose from their work at new buffalo hides that had been taken in the weeks before the village was required to move for its safety away from the white man and his Pawnee trackers. Each woman, young and old, holding an elk-handled scraper, with only the power of their resolve and muscle slowly working the flesh from the great white-and-red hides staked out like huge squares demarcating the outskirts of Turkey Leg’s village.
Old men rose from their places in the warm sun that afternoon. They had been talking of days gone by when the meat was good and fleet were the ponies a man could steal from the Pawnee or Crow or Ute. Then the young horsemen were among the lodges, making a show of themselves, more weapons in evidence now. Bows, yes—but many more rifles than Shad had expected he would see.
“This bunch been raiding to get them guns?” asked Hook from the side of his mouth as the four white men entered the outskirts of the lodge circle.
The air was strong with smoked hides and grease, pungent with wood smoke and boiling meat. Fragrant with the incense of white sage. Far better were those perfumes than any meal of boiled potatoes and red whiskey and a cigar smoked after a man had himself a full belly. Shad thought of Shell Woman, then worried for their son.
With warriors and headmen spread out from him like the sides of an arrow point, Turkey Leg waited for the white men to approach, halt, and dismount. The old chief motioned forward some young boys, who took the reins to the four horses and led the animals away.
“It is always good to see you, my friend,” Shad said, smiling at the old chief.
Turkey Leg smiled in return. “How is life for you, Indian-talker?”
“Some things could be better, I suppose. But, what life is worth living if it is not filled with lessons to be learned?”
“You always pose questions that this old man cannot easily answer.” The chief motioned for the other three white men to follow, taking Sweete by the arm as he turned toward his lodge erected at the center of the camp crescent. “Come. We will eat. Then smoke. And only then will we hear why you have journeyed here. I suppose you want me to go listen to words of the peace-talkers once more.”
“My belly talks now,” Shad said, grinning. “It is so empty. Yes—we will eat, then with the pipe speak of the peace-talkers.”
More than two hours passed in that lodge filled with white man and red alike. Eating first the jerked meat passed among the circle while the main course came to a boil. After every man had licked his fingers clean and finished his coffee flavored with generous heapings of sugar, the pipe was lit. It was the first time, Sweete knew, that Jonah had been witness to such a conference, held at the leisurely pace of the plains Indian, with no artificial timetable to be satisfied. Only the dictates of the old men themselves.
Turkey Leg cleared his throat. “Black Kettle comes to this talk planned for Medicine Lodge Creek?”
“Yes, he and Medicine Arrow.”
The chief nodded, looking at the faces of his headmen. “The one who was once called Rock Forehead. He is a powerful chief.”
“Three from the Southern Cheyenne will come. Those two and Little Robe as well.”
“And of the Kiowa?”
“We believe White Bear and Lone Wolf will attend with their warriors to talk of making peace on this part of the plains,” Sweete answered.
For a long time the pipe passed among those seated in a grand circle in that lodge. No man talking, only the noise of the pipe as air was drawn down through the bowl, only the music of camp life outside the lodge. Children playing, dogs barking, and ponies coming and going through the browned cones raised against the autumn sky.
“We are going south with the coming of winter,” Turkey Leg began after a long, considered silence. “It is there that winter will not arrive as soon, nor will it last as long. Yes, perhaps we can raise our lodges beside Medicine Lodge Creek with the others who will speak with the peace-talkers.”
“You will be there by the time the moon is half-full?” Shad asked the old chief.
Turkey Leg looked about the lodge at his headmen. No man spoke, no man gave signal that he disapproved. “We will come talk this one last time to the white soldier chiefs. Perhaps we will hear something that is good in their words.”
“They want all the bands to live in peace with the white settlers.”
“But the white man fails to understand that we do not want to live in peace with his people. We do not want to live with the white man at all.” Turkey Leg sighed.
The expression on the old chief’s face spoke something to Sweete, as if Turkey Leg understood more of what was in the scout’s heart than what the white scout had ever spoken.
“There are some among us who believe we can live near your people,” the chief went on. “Yet there are a few among us who will never hold anything but a bad heart for the white man.”
“It is the same among my people,” Shad replied. “While some want to put an end to your way of life forever, there are still many who would try to find a way for both white man and red man to live side by side, each in his own way.”
“In some men,” Turkey Leg came to the point, “there are both bloods at war.”
Shad saw the meaning more clear in the old man’s eyes than in his words. “You would mean a young warrior who has in his veins the blood of our two peoples?”
Turkey Leg nodded. A few of the older men grunted their assent. “You have been among our people for many winters. You came among us when there were few white men. Now I am told the numbers of white men in the east are greater than the stars at night.”
Shad smiled. “Sometimes I think there are more white men than there are buffalo chips on this great prairie.”
Most of the old men chuckled at the analogy. Shad felt the lightening of the mood within the lodge as the sun fell headlong into the west.
“Where is it I might find word of High-Backed Bull?” he asked bluntly.
“You worry about your son, don’t you?”
“As any father would, Turkey Leg.”
“This is good. A son must protect his parents. And a man must care for his children.”
“Your mother?”
“She is well. Thank you again.”
“We speak the same heart when we talk of family, Turkey Leg. There is nothing more important than family.”
The old chief knocked into his palm what ash was left in the pipe bowl after its fourth circuit of the lodge. The burnt residue he tossed into the fire pit at his feet before he removed the red stone bowl from the ash stem. Only then did he seek to fill the silence in that lodge.
“Your son, he has cursed his white blood. You must know this before you go searching to find him.”
“He curses the blood I gave him?”
“Yes. He swears his desire for vengeance on any white man—even if that white man is his father.”
Shad swallowed hard, as if the news were something foul. “My son, where would I find him?”
“He rides with the young warriors of Porcupine.”
“This Porcupine,” Shad began, careful not to sound too anxious, “he is war leader in your village?”
“He is of this band. But Porcupine is gone from us for now. He rode north to join the Dog Soldiers of Roman Nose.”
Sweete glanced at Hook, who was fervently trying to follow the sense of the discussion, even if he could not understand the words being spoken.
“I know of that one.”
“Yes. Many white men have heard of the Nose. But no white man has ever set eyes on this great w
arrior—and lived to tell of that meeting.”
“Tell me, Turkey Leg—where would I find Roman Nose?”
“Where one would find Tall Bull and White Horse—the Dog Soldier bands. That is where a man could find Roman Nose.”
39
October, 1867
“YOUR NAME’S HOOK, isn’t it?”
Jonah looked up from his coffee-making chores. The tall, handsome soldier came to a stop on the far side of the small fire where supper was beginning to roast. Jonah spotted the clusters on the collar.
“Have we met, Major?”
The soldier held out his hand as Jonah rose, dusting off his own.
“Not official, mind you. Joel Elliott. U.S. Seventh Cavalry.”
They shook, Hook suspicious. “I see. To what do I owe the honor of your come to call, Major? This go back to that time I was ready to shoot Tom Custer, don’t it? Go ’head and have you a set, where you can,” he said, waving at a nearby spot.
Elliott settled on a hardtack box, one by one slowly undoing the buttons on his tunic. As if he were searching for an answer.
“Suppose I only wanted to meet you—especially after that incident with your cousin—”
“He’s dead,” Jonah interrupted sharply, his suspicions confirmed.
The major appeared brought up by that, something short. “I see.” Then he cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. Hook.”
“Jonah.”
“As much as you created a stir that day on the South Fork of the Republican … as much as Tom Custer has hated you ever since for holding him at gunpoint, I’ve got to say, and will admit this to any man who asks—I admire your sense of family. Your loyalty to family in the face of overwhelming odds.”
“Not overwhelming, Major,” Jonah said, dusting coffee grounds from his hands after he had dumped them into the boiling water. “It was just Tom Custer and me.”
Elliott smiled. “There were at least a dozen soldiers there, ready to put holes in you.”
Hook smiled in return. “Important thing was that Tom Custer understood that there was only one important hole—and that was the one I was fixing to put in him if he didn’t let my cousin go.”
“Like I said, as much as Tom hates you, and as much as the general himself doesn’t quite know how to deal with your brand of courage—I figured it was time for me to shake your hand.”
“Still doesn’t figure that I done something so special that a cavalry major come look me up.”
“You pour me some coffee, Jonah?” Elliott asked, watching Hook pull up two tin cups. “Sounds to me like you’re selling yourself short.”
As Jonah poured the steaming coffee from the blackened pot, he listened to the nearby cherk-cherk-creee of the meadowlarks feeding among the tall dry grasses caressed by autumn’s cool nights. “Man who makes something big of himself is a man I wonder about, Major.”
Elliott accepted his cup. “How old are you—you mind me asking?”
“Thirty, this last spring.”
“You been out here long?”
He hoisted his cup in the fashion of a toast. “Just since the Yankees brought me west to keep telegraph wire up and follow General Connor to the Powder River.”
“Back a little more than two years then.” Elliott sipped at his coffee. “You figure we got a chance making peace with these bands?”
“Major—you’re asking the wrong fella. That’s for certain. I’ve fought the Injuns, bedded down one winter with a Pawnee gal who taught me a bit of her tongue … and I’ve tracked around a good chunk of this territory with North’s Pawnee Battalion.” He speared a thick slice of buffalo hump and turned it over in the cast-iron skillet. “None of that makes me no great shakes when it comes to knowing if the army can make peace with these bands.”
“I’ve been trying to find out if there is really much cause to hope.”
“Hell—it’s hard enough for most men to make peace with themselves, much less have to worry about making peace with each other.”
“Let’s pray the chiefs of the warrior bands aren’t as cynical as you are, Jonah.”
Hook smiled, liking the open, ready good humor of the soldier. “Glory be—but we might have a chance to make peace between the Cheyenne and the army yet. If all the Injuns was like Turkey Leg—and all the soldiers like you, Major.”
In that second week of October, the bands had begun gathering for the great peace council along Medicine Lodge Creek, not far from Fort Larned in Kansas.
Miles to the south down on the Cimarron River were camped the bulk of the Cheyenne bands, more than 250 lodges. They waited, skeptical of the white man’s good intentions and promises of presents. On Medicine Lodge Creek itself Black Kettle’s 25 lodges of Southern Cheyenne camped. Below them were more than 100 lodges of Comanches. And below them stood the camp circles of some 150 lodges of Kiowa, along with 85 lodges of Kiowa-Apache. Closest to Fort Larned were 170 lodges of Southern Arapaho.
A great and impressive gathering of more than 800 lodges, all in a joyous mood, for recent hunting had been good, and word had it the soldiers at the nearby post had just received shipments of the goods soon to be brought out to the great encampment in wagons: coffee, sugar, flour, and dried fruits; in addition to blankets and bolts of colorful cloth, and surplus uniforms from the white man’s recent war among himself, uniforms the War Department had in the last few months turned over to the Interior Department. And on its way was a sizable herd of the white man’s cattle to feed the gathering bands.
When the white commissioners arrived at the scene on the fifteenth, they and their military escort of the Seventh Cavalry camped across the creek, on the north side of the Medicine Lodge. Row upon row of tents housing the troopers spread in grand fashion across the prairie. Next to those tents stood a long line of the freight wagons bulging with the presents for those making peace with the Great Father back east, and closest to the creek were the tents erected for the commissioners themselves. In that flat meadow between their tents and the streambank, the great council had begun its informal sessions on 17 October. Yet it had not been until the nineteenth when the chiefs began making their formal speeches.
Behind the commissioners, both military and civilian, hung a large canopy beneath which the many clerks and stenographers sat, recording the proceedings, word for word. There too sat the many newsmen here to record for their readers back east this momentous gathering with the warrior bands of the Great Plains.
On each morning the council assembled, the Cheyenne and Arapaho chiefs seated themselves on the right hand of the white men, or on the west. On the left-hand side sat the Kiowa and Comanche leaders. And in a broad crescent behind these chiefs sat the old men, councillors and leaders all. Beyond them along the stream itself the young warriors moved about in all their finery—feathers and bells, paint and totems, not shy in the least of showing off their weapons. Eager young boys at times attempted to mingle with the warriors, but only with caution, for youths were never allowed to attend councils as important as this.
That first day Senator John B. Henderson had proposed to the assembled chiefs that the Cheyenne and Arapaho bands be moved south to the Arkansas River while the Kiowas could settle on land farther south along the Red River. As soon as the head men would agree to this proposal and formally touch the pen, the army would distribute the promised goods. First the Kiowa, then the Comanche, followed by the Arapaho, and finally—after many days of debate—the Cheyenne agreed to the white man’s terms.
Two days it took them to decide, two days as well after Jonah spoke with Major Elliott at that little fire beside the gurgling music of Medicine Lodge Creek, beneath the wide autumn black canopy with an egg-yolk moon rising off the horizon to the east.
Their job done after much debate and political posturing, the commissioners informed the chiefs they were leaving now, heading east to inform the Great Father of their success. In leaving, they were ordering the issuance of the promised presents. Tall side-walled army freight
wagons rumbled into the meadow, emptied of everything in three huge piles: on the west, a pile for the Apache and Arapaho; on the east, a pile for the Kiowa and Comanche; and in the middle, a pile for the great Cheyenne of the plains.
There was so much there, and the celebrating was much greater than anything Shad Sweete would have ever expected, more than he had ever seen among the Cheyenne.
Little Robe, Black Kettle, Medicine Arrow, and Turkey Leg each sent their warrior societies forward to be in charge of a fair distribution of the presents among their bands. One by one the women were given kettles and axes, blankets and clothing, flour and sugar and coffee and more. Never before had any of them seen anything like this.
Perhaps the white man does number like the stars in the sky, Shad heard them whisper among themselves during that day and a half it took to distribute all the gifts placed on the prairie for the Cheyenne bands.
No man, no woman nor child rode from that meadow back to their villages. Every pony and pack animal they put to use to haul their new riches, stacked high and cumbersome and wobbly on animal backs or on swaybacked, groaning travois. Many times the poorly tied packs fell off ponies and burst open across the grass trampled with the pounding of many moccasins and hooves. Just as many travois poles snapped under the great weight required of them.
Women muttered, complaining of their plight, having to pack and repack and struggle along with their newfound wealth. But they smiled all the same. And no woman among them complained all that much.
With the days growing shorter and the nights colder, Shad watched with the other scouts as the bands moved out onto the mapless prairie, slowly marching into the four winds. Along the bank of Medicine Lodge Creek that last morning, the old mountain man found the water slicked with a thin, fragile layer of ice scum. Winter was due on the high plains. Winter would not be denied.
With the presents distributed, the women happy, and the chiefs satisfied that their hunting grounds had been somehow preserved by touching the pen to the white man’s talking paper, the civilian scouts found themselves out of a job for the coming cold that would one day soon squeeze down on the land.
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