Ghost Dance

by John Norman

  The revolver shot was abrupt, decisive, point-blank, half muffled in the flesh and blanket of the chief.

  The body of Sitting Bull, dead, had not fallen to the ground when through the circle of stunned Sioux, past Chance, there hurtled a shrieking, dark shape that leaped on the Indian policeman, bearing him to the dirt.

  It was Drum, unarmed.

  A policeman turned to fire, and a shot exploded in his ear and he spun backwards, the blue circle broken. The other policemen opened fire at the range of inches into the bodies that pressed against them, and other weapons, those of the Hunkpapa, fired into the segments of that shattered cordon.

  Drum had wrested the policeman's pistol away and knelt on him, screaming, firing the last five shots into the man's face.

  Suddenly Chance saw Running Horse grappling to his right with an Indian policeman. Running Horse, like Drum, carried no arms.

  One of the Indian police shouted to his fellows, "Inside!" and turned to enter the cabin of the dead chief, but now Old Bear raised his rifle and fired once, and the man jerked and clutched at the door of the cabin, trying to get in, and then in the time it takes to try to breathe his hands froze on the sides of the door barring the entrance.

  There were more shots, both from the police and the Hunkpapa.

  The man in the doorway was torn from the opening and pitched aside by the other Indian policemen, who swarmed in the door. Chance heard a shot from inside the cabin. He learned later that one of Sitting Bull's sons had been shot by the police.

  The door closed and rifle barrels poked out the windows firing at the crowd that now scattered, Chance running with them, getting back to the shelter of Running Horse's cabin. Running Horse himself was nowhere in sight. The policeman with whom he had been grappling was dead, though whether Running Horse had killed him, or someone else, Chance did not know.

  An Indian to the left of Chance stumbled, caught in the back by a bullet, his hands flying back over his head, and pitched into the dirt.

  Then Chance was at the cabin entrance, and inside. He swung the door open, and knelt inside the opening, his weapon drawn. He would not kill with it, but he was willing to fire on the cabin, to keep the police penned inside, to keep them away from the windows, to save as many lives as he could.

  Chance squeezed off a shot at the cabin wall, chipping some bark from the wall, about a foot from the right side of the window.

  To his amazement he saw Drum, still in the line of fire, not more than ten yards from the cabin, kneeling over the body of the Indian policeman. He had taken a knife from the man and Chance did not care to watch what he was doing.

  But the young fool was mad. He would be killed.

  Drum worked calmly, the bullets flying about him, bullets from both sides.

  Drum was on his feet now, the scalp, wet and red with blood in his hand, held over his head, and Chance, from where he knelt inside the cabin door, could see the blood running down Drum's arm, staining the sleeve which had fallen ripped to his shoulder.

  Drum walked slowly away from the cabin, holding his trophy high.

  The rest of the Indians had drawn back. Chance could see them here and there, firing from cabin windows, from around the edges of cabins, from behind boxes and a wagon, firing on Sitting Bull's cabin.

  And from inside the cabin rifles thrust forth from the windows, and the Indian police, crowded in the cabin, besieged, fired as they could, where they could, trying to answer the ring of encircling snipers, trying to answer the sharp, sporadic cracks of the miscellany of weapons beneath whose sights they found themselves.

  And through this cross fire, unscathed, walked Drum, the scalp held high over his head, looking neither to the left nor right.

  "Get down," yelled Chance to Drum as he passed the cabin.

  Drum turned and looked at him.

  "I wear the feather of an eagle," said Drum, quietly.

  "Get under cover," yelled Chance.

  Drum turned to face the cabin of Sitting Bull. Still the bullets tore about him. The rifle muzzles in the windows of Sitting Bull's cabin jerked and discharged their fire, and more bullets pelted the cabin from the fire of the Hunkpapa.

  It was as though Drum lived a charmed life.

  The young Indian, facing the cabin of Sitting Bull, lifted the scalp even higher over his head and shook it. He called out to the police in the cabin, "It is I who have done this, Drum, the son of Kills-His-Horse, your enemy."

  The scalp was wet in Drum's angry fist, the blood appearing between the clenched fingers of his fist, moving down the wrist.

  "It is I," he cried, "Drum, the son of Kills-His-Horse, one who wears the feather of an eagle, one who is your enemy, one whose feet are set upon the warpath."

  Then, angrily, Drum thrust the scalp in his belt and turned and walked from the line of fire, going behind the cabin, perhaps heading for his own lodge, to gather his weapons.

  Running Horse moved swiftly along the side of the cabin and pressed inside, past Chance.

  "My brother," said he.

  "My brother," said Chance.

  Winona handed Running Horse his weapon, and he worked the bolt, seeing that the girl had loaded it, slid the bolt forward, locked it. Then she gave him a handful of bullets. Most he put in his medicine bag; five he held between his teeth. Then he slipped out of the cabin, moving behind it, to take up some position out of Chance's view.

  Chance thought of following him, but supposed it didn't much matter.

  He was aware of activity behind the cabins, the neighing of horses, the sharp cries of women.

  With the first shots the squaws had unpicketed the animals and where skin lodges stood, they had been struck.

  Already the poles of travois, loaded, were being lashed to the sides of ponies.

  There were more shots.

  Across the way he could see Old Bear firing from his cabin door.

  There were some Indians on the roofs of some of the cabins, firing.

  Suddenly through the sporadic shots and the sudden splintering and chipping of wood about him Chance heard, thin, but clear, in the distance, the notes of a bugle.

  This was the first it had occurred to him that there would be soldiers.

  They had been waiting in support of the Indian police, had heard the firing, and were now riding in.

  Old Bear, terrible in his enraged frailty, leaped into the dirt street, even in the line of fire, calling for the Hunkpapa to withdraw.

  It might have been planned.

  For all Chance knew it had been, at least in its general outlines.

  While a handful of Indians kept the cabin under fire the rest faded back, running to their lodges and cabins.

  Their horses and their goods were ready.

  Winona, the bundle of goods in the striped blanket on her back, slipped from the cabin and scurried along its side and behind it.

  Running Horse's pony was at hand, picketed behind the cabin. He did not own a saddle.

  Chance went to the corner of the cabin and picked up his saddle and saddlebags. He saw that Winona had rolled and bound his blankets across the back of the saddle.

  Chance slipped from the cabin, carrying his saddle and gear. No longer were the police in the cabin firing, though he could see a rifle muzzle projecting from one of the windows. He supposed they were finished fighting. They had heard the bugle. They would stay where they were. Perhaps even the rifle in the window was simply propped up. They would stay in the cabin until the soldiers came.

  The notes of the bugle sounded again, this time much closer.

  Now even the firing of the Hunkpapa was done, and Chance supposed that the rear guard had fallen back, to cover the retreat which must now be underway.

  The camp seemed fairly quiet now; even the dogs were gone. There would be some fires in the cooking holes, here and there, that would burn down to ashes in time. Near the wagon in the street behind which some men had earlier been firing, there was a sack of spilled corn, and a handful of sparro
ws had fluttered down to peck at it. It seemed very quiet. There were, of course, a number of Indian police, maybe twenty or more, hiding in the dead chief's cabin, too frightened or too wise to come out, probably both.

  Before the cabin there were a number of bodies, mostly Indian police, clearly recognizable by the short hair and the blue uniforms, and other Indians. One body Chance would never forget, a heavy body, stocky, old, with long black hair that had not yet been braided that morning, hair streaked with white hair that had never been cut. It lay wrapped half in a blanket, stained with red about the size of a saucer on the side facing Chance, twisted in the dust not far from the door of the cabin, the body of a man who had been kind to Chance, that of a proud man, a calm man, resourceful and wise, who had loved his people and their land, and council fires and antelope, and the giving of gifts and the hunting of buffalo, and the blue sky and the prairie and the feathers of eagles.

  Chance turned away and went behind the cabin.

  Running Horse and Winona were waiting for him.

  Running Horse helped him saddle his horse and then the three of them, Winona with her bundle riding behind Running Horse, joined the orderly retreat of the Hunkpapa, who by now had mostly disappeared in the brush along the Grand River.

  They would head for the ancestral retreat, called by the white men the Bad Lands, where the sudden arroyos and rugged hills might defy regiments of long knives.

  At the head of the long, ragged string of Indians, and ponies and travois and dogs, rode Old Bear, his eyes fierce and hard, the chief of the Hunkpapa.

  When the cavalry from Fort Yates, flag and pennon fluttering, thundered into the camp of Sitting Bull, shouting, brandishing their sabers, brave in the sound of their bugle, they found nothing, only the empty camp and, of course, some Indian policemen in one of the cabins.

  Needless to say, they also did not find Edward Chance, which proved to be a particular disappointment to two men who rode with them, Lester Grawson and Corporal Jacob Totter.

  Above the camp, on Medicine Ridge, watching, not moving, stood the solitary figure of Kicking Bear, medicine man, he who had brought the Ghost Dance to Standing Rock.

  The death of Sitting Bull would enkindle the Sioux and the Cheyenne.

  The news would spread like the sweep of a wind-driven burning prairie from Standing Rock to Pine Ridge, to Cherry Creek and throughout the departments of the Platte and Dakotas.

  The messenger would say, "Sitting Bull is dead." And the warriors would gather their ponies and take up their weapons.

  For the first time in years, the feet of the Sioux and their brethren, the Cheyenne, would be on the warpath. This would be the Holy War, the war of the Ghost Dance.

  It was wrong, for spring was the time, not winter, with the coming snows and the ice and wind, and the barren prairie and the lack of food.

  Kicking Bear stood on Medicine Ridge.

  He watched the soldiers and the Indian policemen milling about the cabin of Sitting Bull, hitching up a wagon for a body.

  When the soldiers and policemen had ridden away, when the wagon too was gone, Kicking Bear turned his back on the camp of Sitting Bull.

  There was nothing more to be done.

  Strange was the will of Wakan-Tonka.

  It had begun here, the Holy War, here on the muddy banks of the Grand River.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lucia Turner was up and about the soddy.

  She lifted off one of the range lids and stirred the fire. This morning she was using kindling in the range, rather than cow chips or twisted grass. Perhaps it would put Aunt Zita in a better mood.

  Lucia had been awakened that morning early, around dawn, by gunfire in the distance, coming from the direction of Sitting Bull's camp. She had hurriedly dressed and climbed to the top of the hill, on which the school stood, but she had seen nothing. Then, after a time, she had returned to the soddy, puzzled, a bit frightened, hoping there was nothing wrong. She had heard firing before, and usually it had been due, as it happened, to drunken Indians. But usually that sort of firing took place late at night, not at dawn.

  The pile of kindling behind the soddy had been diminishing rapidly. All that was left of it now was a coal bucket filled with it, sitting beside the range.

  Lucia, too, of course, preferred a meal prepared over a wood fire.

  Several weeks ago Lucia had purchased a cord of fuel for one dollar from a man in a wagon who did business with the agency, but he no longer came as far into the reservation as the soddy.

  If worse came to worse Lucia might hitch up the buck-board and drive down to the Grand River. There she might find a fallen cottonwood and get some of the dried branches. Perhaps she could hire Joseph Running Horse to cut the wood for her.

  He had come by the soddy yesterday to ask for Mr. Chance's medicine kit.

  She had given it to him.

  "I hope he is all right," she had said, pretending not to be too much interested.

  "Yes," had said Running Horse, "I hope so," and then he had taken the kit and left, leaving her.

  She would have liked to have kept the kit. He might have come back for it. She might then have seen him again, once more, to see him, to speak to him.

  She had only said, "I hope he is all right," and Running Horse had said, "Yes, I hope so," and then Running Horse had gone, taking the kit. It had been too quick, too simple, for the hours of remembering, for the not forgetting.

  Yes, Mr. Chance, she said to herself, I might have some coffee on. You've shaved, I see. You know, I never expected to see you again. Naturally I'm pleased that you dropped by. William is fine. What brings you back to the reservation?

  I'll never see him again, never, said Lucia Turner to herself, hurting in the saying of it, the empty knowing of it to be true.

  Never.

  Never.

  Never.

  "Where is my breakfast?" asked Aunt Zita.

  Lucia shook herself and puttered noisily about with the coffee pot, not answering.

  Aunt Zita had been in a vicious mood since yesterday evening, when she had returned with the buckboard from the agency to find a dead horse only a few yards from the soddy and the soddy itself flaked with bullets.

  Lucia had told her nothing.

  Yesterday Lucia had taken the saddle and gear from Chance's dead horse. She had then heaped dust over the animal. Today, hopefully, she would see some Indians and get them to take it away and bury it. If Joseph Running Horse passed by, he would help. Yesterday, when he had called for Chance's medicine kit, she had forgotten to ask him. She also supposed she should give the saddle and the rest of the gear to him. But the entire matter had, yesterday, slipped her mind. If William Buckhorn's father had returned from Fort Yates, he could probably be counted on to help Running Horse. The two of them could rig a travois. There probably wouldn't be too much work, except maybe for the digging.

  "You'll have to get that horse out of here," Aunt Zita had said.

  "I know," had said Lucia. "I'll get some of the Indians to help."

  "They'll probably eat it," Aunt Zita had said.

  "No," Lucia had said, rather firmly, "they will not."

  Actually, Lucia had thought to herself, if the horse had been fresh killed, they might. She had learned from Aunt Zita how the rations had not been distributed Saturday and she had supposed, rightly, that supplies might well be scarce in the Standing Rock camps. And one could eat horse meat. She had heard that. At any rate Indians could. She herself, of course, could not do so. The thought of it, for no reason that she could clearly understand, turned her stomach.

  "Indians will eat anything," had said Aunt Zita.

  Lucia grimaced. She had heard, and knew, that Indians would eat dog, too. She supposed they might indeed eat anything, or about anything. Of course they would have preferred buffalo. Or beef. Or mutton. Some of the younger Indians had never tasted buffalo. Lucia had had it only once, on a dining car on the way to Standing Rock. A rancher had shot it and given a shou
lder to the conductor, and the conductor had given the steward a cut for the schoolmarm. Its taste was difficult to describe. Not like beef. Not just like beef. She had liked it. Aunt Zita would not touch it.

  "Did you hear gunfire this morning?" asked Lucia.

  "No," said Aunt Zita.

  "I did," said Lucia.

  "From Grand River, I imagine," said Aunt Zita.

  "Yes," said Lucia, "it was."

  "I think I know what it's all about," said Aunt Zita.

  "Tell me," said Lucia.

  "I want to know what happened here when I was gone," snapped Zita.

  Lucia looked down, and continued busying herself with the breakfast. With a fork she turned a piece of bread on the wire toast rack sitting on the black iron top of the range. She used a wooden spatula to loosen Aunt Zita's eggs in the skillet.

  "Well?" said Aunt Zita.

  "All right," said Lucia, "a man came by when you were gone, and two men were after him, and wanted to kill him, and I helped him get away, with the help of a friend of mine."

  Lucia had said all this in one breath and stiffened inside her cotton dress bending over the range, waiting.

  "I want to hear a great deal about this," said Aunt Zita, and the words might have been spoken by the head of a stone angel.

  Lucia scooped the eggs on a plate with the spatula and quickly picked up the toast with two fingers and darted it onto the plate, not altogether displeased that she had left it too long on the wire rack.

  She put the plate on the kitchen table in front of Aunt Zita.

  "The toast is burned," said Aunt Zita.

  "I'll make you some more," said Lucia.

  "I want my coffee now," said Aunt Zita.

  "I'll get it," said Lucia, and, using her apron as a potholder, picked up the coffee pot with two hands and poured Aunt Zita a large cup of the fragrant, black liquid. She then poured some milk from a jug which she had brought up earlier on its string from the well into the coffee, and put in two heaping tablespoons of white sugar, the way Aunt Zita liked it, and then gave her the cup.