by Jory Sherman
"There are others who would have given horses, but they say this is enough and too much for a poor cow, slow with many miles and the burden of years."
Lieutenant Grattan scowled, kicked the sticks away. He pointed to Straight Topknot who stood at the flap of his lodge, leaning on his rifle, a bow and arrow in his other hand.
"I want that buck there," he said. "He's under arrest."
Wyuse translated.
"The Minneconjou must go with the whites. The soldier chief does not want your horses or mules. I warned you, Conquering Bear. The wagon guns will speak."
"Tell the soldier chief," said Conquering Bear slowly, persuasively, "that Straight Topknot is wondering what will happen to him if he goes with the white soldiers. Last year the soldiers killed three of his people when there was trouble over a boat on the Shell River. And this year, while some of them were sitting by the white man's road, a going-through white man shot at them and the bullet struck a child in the head. The little girl recovered but it was a long sickness and made the heart dark."
"What does he say?" Grattan asked of Wyuse.
"He says the Minneconjou hates whites and wants to kill some. He says Straight Topknot is afraid."
"Tell him I want to talk to the Minneconjou."
Wyuse told Conquering Bear what Grattan had said. The Brule turned and spoke across the earth to Straight Topknot.
The Minneconjou did not move from his spot.
"Conquering Bear," he said, "take the people away and leave me to the soldiers. I am alone now. Last fall the whites killed my two brothers. This spring my uncle, my only relative, died. Today my hands are full of weapons, my arms strong. I will not go alive."
"Hou," said Red Tomahawk softly, "the Minneconjou speaks brave words, sent straight as from a good bow."
"But Wyuse is not telling the words right. Look at the soldier chief's face," said He Dog.
Grattan's face turned red and he roared at Conquering Bear.
"Tell him to bring me that Minneconjou now!"
Wyuse again repeated the lieutenant's words.
"I will try," said Conquering Bear, "but I am a Lakota and I have no right to do this thing. So, I must go to Straight Topknot as an enemy and get his gun from him."
Conquering Bear and his brother turned to walk to the lodge of the Minneconjou even as Wyuse told Grattan that the Brule chief was going to get a weapon to fight the soldiers.
These were lies, of course, and some who knew the white tongue heard them.
But Wyuse had done his dirty work and it was too late to change the things that were about to happen.
And even though the sun was bright in the sky and it was hot, the day seemed to darken and grow cold.
CHAPTER SIX
As Conquering Bear took a step, Grattan shouted to the nearest soldier.
"Open fire!"
All of the soldiers started to bring their rifles to their shoulders.
One of them jumped to his feet, took aim and fired.
White smoke and flame billowed out from the rifle.
The brother of Conquering Bear fell. Blood gushed from his mouth. All of the other Indian chiefs scattered like prairie chickens flushed from cover.
Red Tomahawk grabbed for his pony's reins of woven hair. He felt a hand grip his shoulder. He turned, his legs turned to young willow branches, his belly full of the fear of death.
He looked into Curly's face.
"No. You must stay, my brother and see all of this."
Red Tomahawk looked over at Conquering Bear. The chief was jumping around like a tethered rabbit as if to avoid being shot. Warriors disappeared inside their lodges, scrambling for weapons. Others dashed for their ponies.
"Do not charge the soldiers," pleaded Conquering Bear. "Young men, stay back."
Soldiers rattled rifles, looked all around for targets. One of the walking soldiers looked straight at Red Tomahawk, fingering his trigger.
"They'll shoot us down as if we were turtles on our backs," said Red Tomahawk.
Curly's eyes looked like bright beads, hard and glittering with light.
"No, not yet. You must see this. I want it to be in your heart."
"Why?"
"Because some day I am going to need you to help me fight the white soldiers."
Red Tomahawk felt the hackles rise on the back of his neck. Curly's words were soft as dandelion down but they carried much weight. They drove into his heart like the hard spines of the locust tree. He knew they were spoken true, but he did not know why he believed the son of Crazy Horse.
He stayed, watching as Conquering Bear told his braves to stay back.
"Be cool, young men," he said, "the whites are probably satisfied now that they have hurt a good man."
"Yes," said Red Tomahawk, "Conquering Bear is wise. The soldiers have already drawn blood. Now, they will go away."
"Look at the soldier chief," said He Dog. "He has smelled blood, but he has not tasted it."
Grattan leaped from his horse and grabbed one of the wagon guns. He swung it, ordered the soldiers to fire into the knot of Indians who stood around the fallen brave. The cannons roared. Smoke and flame scorched the air. The grape shot ripped through the winged tops of lodges and rattled through the camp with the deadly hissing sound of poisonous snakes.
Conquering Bear fell to his knee, swayed there, blood pouring from a wound in his side.
Straight Topknot grabbed his rifle up, aimed it at Grattan and squeezed the trigger. He shot through the acrid clouds of white smoke and the soldier chief went down.
"Grab your bows!" yelled Curly, nocking an arrow. "This is a fight."
Red Tomahawk snatched his bow from the ground, his hands shaking with excitement. Almost before he could fire, he saw a swarm of braves rush up to Grattan and began hacking him to pieces with knives and hatchets. Their bloodthirsty screams of rage filled the air.
He Dog shot into the walking soldiers. Red Tomahawk took aim, loosed his arrow as streams of smoke blew over the ground.
Beyond the bank, Spotted Tail let out a war whoop and brought the hidden warriors up over the top. Arrows rained into the mass of soldiers. Those on the wagon guns tried to bring their cannon to bear, but the warriors surged over the banks with bloodcurdling yells. He Dog, Red Tomahawk and Curly, all screaming at the tops of their lungs, joined the rush.
A spear whooshed by Red Tomahawk's ear and he saw it sink into a soldier's chest, driving the wounded man back into the wagon. Someone knocked the boy down and he got up, his side and face smeared with dust. He saw a warrior snatch a soldier's rifle from his grasp and club the white man senseless. Other braves clubbed soldiers, impaled them with spears. The whites screamed in terror, fought back.
Red Tomahawk drove an arrow into a pony soldier's horse, saw the man pitch out of the saddle and go down under a hail of warclubs until his scream was shut off.
The young brave shouted a hoarse cry of victory and waded into the fray. He lost sight of Curly and He Dog. He smelled smoke and blood, the sour tang of urine. Some of the soldiers jumped on the cannon carriages and onto the wagon. They whipped the mules past soldiers who were trampled to death by horses and Indians, firing as they retreated toward the immigrant road.
Those few soldiers who were left behind, put their backs to one another as if to make a stand, but more Indians began swarming down on them like hornets, so these too, started running, shooting as they scrambled to escape.
Red Tomahawk looked up, saw that Wyuse and another soldier were riding away, a pack of mounted Brules chasing them.
Then, he saw them turned back as a half dozen Oglalas from the upper camp cut them off. One brave rode up close to the pony soldier, swinging his warclub. He knocked the white man out of the saddle, blood gushing from the soldier's temple.
The soldier struck Wyuse's horse. One of its legs crumpled and Red Tomahawk heard a snap as its weight struck the leg. The Iowa screamed and leaped out of the saddle. He ducked under the clubs and spears, ran back to
ward the camp, straight for Red Tomahawk. The young brave started running after him, but the Iowa zigzagged and dashed into the death-lodge of Bull Tail.
Red Tomahawk drew up, panting, not wishing to enter that sacred place.
"Where did Wyuse go?" asked Black Feather, one of the Oglalas chasing the drunken interpreter.
"In there." Red Tomahawk pointed.
The Oglalas went in after him.
Wyuse screamed. Seconds later, the braves brought him out, holding him up in the air by his ankles and wrists. He looked like a squealing pig as they threw him like a sack of bad meal onto the ground. His own brother-in-law rushed up and struck him with his warclub, then savagely ripped off his clothes until he was stark naked.
Wyuse, groggy from the blow, begged for mercy.
Black Feather spit in the Iowa's face.
The Iowa's brother-in-law cut long gashes in his legs, from ankle to waist, then stepped away, gazing at the piteous Wyuse with contempt.
"Let him die here and let no man take his filthy scalp," said the warrior whose sister Wyuse had married. "This is the man who would give the Lakotas new ears to hear with, who would cut out their hearts to eat."
Enraged, a dozen braves clambered over Wyuse and began beating him to death. They plunged knives into his quivering body and whacked his face to a pulp with their war bows.
But no man took his scalp.
Curly came up behind Red Tomahawk after the warriors had gone away. He took his friend's arm, led him over to the mutilated body of the Iowa.
"Look at this one," said Curly, his voice husky with outrage. "He is mostly Indian himself and he was accepted into the Lakotas. He was given a wife. He was supposed to be a friend to the Lakotas."
"He was a bad man," said Red Tomahawk, sick at the sight of the mangled man, his eyes bulged out of their sockets and fixed like a dead fish's on his own.
"He brought trouble to us this day," said Curly. "Big trouble after all the little troubles that no one thought would do much hurt."
"He is dead," said Red Tomahawk.
But Curly was not through.
"I am going to kill many whites," he hissed.
With that, he jerked his loin cloth away from his crotch and bared his genitals to the empty staring eyes of the dead Iowa.
This, Red Tomahawk knew, was the most powerful insult one man could give another.
Before he knew what was happening, Curly ran from Red Tomahawk as if ashamed to have done such a thing. The young pale-haired man caught up his pony and galloped off before Red Tomahawk could stop him.
He Dog came up, grinning. He had a soldier's bloody sac in his hand."I wanted to show Curly this bag I cut from between the legs of a dead white man. Where is he going so fast?"
Red Tomahawk looked at the dust spooled up by Curly's horse and watched it hang there, suspended, long after the little hooves stopped beating on the earth.
"I think he goes to be with his people and seek advice from his father, Crazy Horse."
"Why?"
"Because I think Curly knows that this fight today will bring war with the whites and he wants to lead them."
"The Oglala?"
Red Tomahawk fixed He Dog with a look.
"All of the Lakota," he said.
"You, Oglala boy, come help."
Red Tomahawk looked away from He Dog at the warrior who had spoken to him.
It was a Brule, Red Leaf, a friend of Conquering Bear.
The boy ran over.
"Bring Conquering Bear's mourning blanket, quick. Get it from his lodge."
Red Tomahawk ran. This was a great honor for him. He had seen Man Afraid, Big Patriot and some others helping to carry Conquering Bear over the bank and out of the way of the fighting, but he did not know how bad the Brule chief was hurt. He found the blanket inside the lodge and ran off to where he had seen Red Leaf walk. He Dog shouted to him.
"When you are finished, come with us. We are going to chase the soldiers back to the fort."
And then He Dog was gone.
Red Tomahawk's heart raced. So, the fighting was not over. He Dog caught up his pony and rode after a bunch of young Brules who were shouting loudly to build up their courage. He wished he was with them, but Red Leaf had given him a good job to do. This was more important.
He slid down the bank, saw the men gathered around Conquering Bear. He handed the mourning blanket to Red Leaf.
Conquering Bear had many wounds, he saw.
His arm was hanging by a threadlike sinew, shattered, useless. He had a big wound in the place where his liver and intestines lived and a bullet had gone through his knee. There were little holes peppered all over his body, and gashes where bullets had passed without stopping or making big holes. His eyes were closed and he seemed in much pain.
Man Afraid and the others laid him gently in his mourning blanket and stood about, talking quietly, waiting for the Great Father's peace chief to die.
"He fell as a great man falls," said Man Afraid.
"He used his body to save the rest of us," muttered Spotted Tail.
"Not a hundred whites had a heart as big as Conquering Bear's."
"He is not given up his spirit, yet," said Long Chin, to the one who had spoken, "so do not speak of him as if his fire has burned out."
Red Tomahawk slipped away.
He did not want to see Conquering Bear die. He knew that the whites themselves had made him a chief over all the Lakota. A peace chief. Why, then, had they shot him down like a camp cur? Did this mean that they no longer wanted peace with the Lakota? Had the soldier chief come to kill Conquering Bear as well as Straight Topknot?
He caught up his pony and looked for his bow and quiver. When he found them, he rode off through the breaks and up to the immigrant road. In the distance he could hear the young Brules whipping their horses to wind them, shouting out insults at the fleeing soldiers.
"Where do the rabbits hide?" they shouted.
"In the brush! Shake them out!"
When he rode up on them, he saw that the Brules had surrounded the whites at Bordeaux and were daring them to come out and fight.
This morning, Red Tomahawk thought, we were at peace with Jim Bordeaux and the whites here. Now we hate them.
This was what Wyuse had done. This was what the soldier chief they called Grattan had done.
And, now, the whites, all whites, were the enemy, and the past wiped out like the smoke from a pipe when the wind comes in, unwelcome and unbidden, through the lodge flap, like some angry unseen spirit.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Brules, half-naked, blood-spattered, stalked through the houses of the Bordeaux settlement, looking for whites to kill.
Jim Bordeaux was the only man they could find and he was related to them by marriage. Yet there were some who would forget that because his skin was white and he was not really an Indian.
He spoke in good Lakota.
"These whites have done you no harm," he pleaded. "They are not soldiers."
"Where are they hiding?" asked Beaver Tail, an aggressive young brave. "They are all the same. Cowards."
Bordeaux wrung his hands in anguish.
"They were hunting and went along with the soldiers for a way. That is nothing. They were curious. The white soldiers wanted me to come to Conquering Bear and make bad talk about his guest, Straight Topknot. I would not do this, but some of the whites here rode along to see what would happen. They did not want the soldiers to cause trouble. Man Afraid saw them. They have good hearts for the Lakota."
"Pah!" spat Beaver Tail. "They are white, so they are our enemies."
One of the braves swung his captured soldier sword through the air over Bordeaux's head.
Two Brules stepped up in Bordeaux's defense.
"Leave him alone," said one, named Swift Bear. "He is of our people. If he had come to the camp of Conquering Bear instead of the Iowa none of this would have happened."
He Dog came from inside one of the houses. He walked with
a Brule who had fresh soldier scalps hanging from his breechclout thong.
"There are no whites here," said the Brule with He Dog, a youth named Mud Tracks. "And I will talk for Jim as well, Beaver Tail. Jim is not our enemy. He did not come with the soldiers and they turned their faces against him."
"I turned my face against the soldiers," said Jim. "Conquering Bear will tell you. I would not go with the soldiers. I would not help them arrest Straight Topknot."
"Let us ask Conquering Bear, then," said Beaver Tail. "Maybe he will want to kill you and your white friends himself."
Red Tomahawk stepped forward. Although he was smaller than many of the young Brules, he already had a name. He had killed a Crow and some of them knew him.
"Conquering Bear will give up his spirit," said the young Oglala. "He has many wounds in his body. Even now he lies in his mourning blanket."
There was much talk and much arguing.
Jim Bordeaux looked worried.
"What do you know, Red Tomahawk?" asked Beaver Tail. "I do not see any white scalps on your belt."
"I have seen this thing. I brought the blanket for Conquering Bear to lie on. His breath is fainter than the mouth frost in the winter moons. His eyes are cloudy like the night sky. His body is broken from the white man's lead bullets and he leaks much blood from a wound that cannot be sewn up with the buffalo hamstring."
Beaver Tail started to say something, but Swift Bear shouted him down. He raised his arms so that the braves would open their ears and hear him.
"Look to the sky," said Beaver Tail, pointing in the direction of the Brule camp. "There is dust rising and I can hear lodge poles falling like trees before a big rolling rock. I say we leave this place and go to our people. We must paint our faces and put new arrows in our quivers."
Everyone looked at the sky and saw that there was dust in the air like smoke and it seemed that the lodge stakes had been pulled and the horses brought into camp to pull the travois. It was known, too, that Swift Bear was a good heart man among them, strong for his people and brave. He was one of the best catchers of the wild horses that roamed the sandy hills of the Running Water country.