A Cold Day in Hell (17 page)

Johnny tried hard to overhear the whispers of those old men who huddled their heads close to Sitting Bull, snarling angry advice to the chief, whispering their denunciations of the chief’s talk about killing the Bear Coat.

Bruguier started, “He asked me that—”

Miles interrupted, “Get those goddamned warriors back! Now!”

“Sitting Bull asked me if I thought he should kill you, but the others … they talked him out of killing you today.”

“Tell those horsemen to get back, or by Jupiter there will be blood on this ground today!” Miles snapped.

Johnny translated for Sitting Bull, and at long last the chief turned to wave the horsemen back to where they had been waiting when the conference began.

“See there?” Bruguier asked nervously, hoping the fuse had been taken out of the powder keg. “There is no danger now.”

“You tell Sitting Bull that even I entertained the idea of killing him by my own hand here today too. But I—Nelson A. Miles—knew it was not an honorable thing to do under a flag of truce. You tell him that. That I am an honorable man. Had I
killed him here, and my men shot the rest of you—the whole civilized world would have denounced the act as barbaric.”

“Sitting Bull does not think the white man truly wants peace with the Hunkpapa,” Johnny said on behalf of the chief.

“I told you: I am an honorable man.”

“But do you want peace with Sitting Bull?”

“Yes,” Miles answered. “But to have peace, I want Sitting Bull and his people to go to the agency where they can live in peace with the white man.”

“You are a soldier,” Johnny translated. “Like Sitting Bull’s warriors. He does not believe you are a man of peace. You have come to make war on his villages, on his women and his children.”

“No,” the soldier chief said quietly. “I want peace as much as Sitting Bull wants peace.”

More whispering hissed among the Lakota warriors at Johnny’s knee. As he watched and listened, he could see Sitting Bull stiffen with resolve. As much as the others might be trying their best to talk him into making some peaceful arrangement with the soldier chief, the Hunkpapa leader once more became resistant. His eyes went cold and his face became impassive for a long time as he listened and considered the words of the others. At long last he held up his hand, signaling the others that now he wished to speak.

“Big Leggings,” he said, his eyes boring into the half-breed’s, “tell the Bear Coat that my people do not intend to surrender. We will never go to the agency. I am born a free Indian and will die a free Indian. The soldiers will never change that. I will use my last breath to see that my people continue hunting buffalo and antelope in this country. You tell this soldier chief that we will continue to trade at the forts when we want to trade with the white man. Otherwise, the Hunkpapa want nothing to do with the white people. And you tell this soldier that we want his word of honor that he will take all the soldiers from our country—never to return!”

Licking his lips nervously, Bruguier began his translation, seeking the words that would show the fire of Sitting Bull’s oration, but not so much heat that it would be like slap across the soldier chief’s face. Even though the Hunkpapa chief might want that, there still existed a very real chance for tragedy and treachery in this small council held in the middle of this great buffalo prairie.

In the end Johnny translated as best he could the full force
of Sitting Bull’s declaration, the full impact of Sitting Bull’s deadly warning.

Miles stiffened only slightly with the rebuke, his face becoming set like stone as he listened to Johnny haltingly translate all the thoughts in the chief’s stern oration. Then the colonel considered his reply a few minutes before saying, “If Sitting Bull wants to continue hunting for this final season—to put meat up for this last winter his people are to hunt buffalo—I can understand. But in return for my allowing the Hunkpapa to continue their last hunt, Sitting Bull must leave these three men with me as hostages.”

“H-hostages?” Johnny repeated, scrambling to figure out what he was going to say to the chiefs as a lone warrior dismounted behind the council, shifted his blanket tightly about himself, and moved toward the ring of men squatted on the prairie.

“That’s what I said,” Miles snapped, watching the approach of that lone warrior. “These hostages will guarantee me that Sitting Bull will keep his word.”

The dark, chertlike eyes of all the Lakota leaders glowed with sudden hatred when Johnny translated the soldier chief’s demand.

“No,” Bruguier said when Miles repeated his demand for hostages.

“Sitting Bull says no?”

From the corner of his eye Bruguier saw the lone warrior kneel behind Sitting Bull, carefully parting his blanket so that he could slip a rifle from it. He slid the weapon beneath the buffalo robe the Hunkpapa chief had pulled about him, then rose slowly and moved back to rejoin the other horsemen as they continued to mill about, inching their ponies closer and closer.

Johnny declared, “The chief says he will never turn over his friends to the soldiers to keep while his people hunt. This is their land. These are their buffalo. You and your soldiers are not welcome here.”

“Those warriors!” Miles suddenly growled, rising from his knee and stuffing his hand inside the flaps of his coat. “Tell them to get back—
Now!”

Eyes wide with apprehension, Bruguier translated the soldier chief’s warning as more and more of the chiefs began to chatter excitedly as soon as Miles got to his feet. Almost as one, the rest of the soldiers all put their hands beneath their coats.

Furious, Miles said, “You send all these warriors away. Only the chiefs can stay. Only the men who were here when we began the talk. Tell them that! Tell them right now before there is bloodshed!”

Sitting Bull remained cross-legged on the ground, his face refusing to register the tensions simmering around him. Yet in his eyes smoldered the anger Johnny could not fail to recognize.

The chief said, “Tell the Bear Coat soldier that these are my people and I will not send them away. I want the soldiers to leave my country now, leave it for all time.”

As he listened to Bruguier’s translation, Miles shifted his hat on his head nervously. Then, pulling his hand from inside his coat, he slapped his gloved hands down on his thighs and replied stiffly, “That’s just about it, then.” He slowly turned rubbing his knees from having sat so long on the cold ground.

“Where is the white chief going?” Bruguier asked, confused.

“Clearly—there is no more use in our talking,” Miles replied over his shoulder as the other soldiers began to move off with him, all very wary and watchful. “We’ve been at this for many hours. Back and forth, with no good result. You tell Sitting Bull that we can continue our talk tomorrow.”

After asking the Hunkpapa chief for a response, Johnny said, “Sitting Bull says he will talk with you tomorrow.”

“Good,” Miles declared with a gush of finality. “I think it would be wise of you to tell Sitting Bull to consider his remarks overnight. Best for him to think on the sad consequences if he chooses to continue making war.”

By this time the sun had fallen halfway to the horizon from midsky. The day was rapidly growing old as Sitting Bull and the rest got to their feet, took up their blankets and robes, and turned away while Mile’s escort strode back to the soldier lines. When the soldiers turned about and began to march west, back toward Cedar Creek, most of those mounted warriors who had remained close during the parley chose to follow the soldiers at a distance. Along the crest of the nearby ridges the horsemen slowly shadowed the blue column, flanking the soldiers as they countermarched nearly five miles and eventually went into camp for the night.

“Are the soldiers leaving us be?” asked Black Eagle that night as all the Lakota leaders held an angry council.

“No,” declared Rising Sun. “They marched away in that direction
so they could be in a better position to charge us when we move north, following the buffalo on our way to Fort Peck.”

“Yes,” Sitting Bull agreed as the council fell quiet. “My heart cannot believe the soldiers are leaving our country as we told them to do. They are not to be trusted.”

“Perhaps we should consider going in to the agency when this hunt is over,” suggested Small Bear.

“The reservation holds nothing for me,” Sitting Bull said. “Only unhappiness and empty bellies. Here … here in the buffalo country is where our men hunt and our women cure the hides that shelter us. We can never do that living at the white man’s agency.”

For a long time that night the leaders argued back and forth on what to do until one of the camp police, the
akicita
, came in to report that a few of their ponies had broken away, and in going after them some of the young men had discovered that their camp was being watched by many soldiers who had secreted themselves in the surrounding hills and bluffs.

“We must attack those soldiers at early light!” screamed an infuriated Standing Bear.

Other voices took up the call. “These soldiers mean to make war on us!”

Still more urged caution, restraint—reminding the council that their camp no longer possessed the great numbers that had overwhelmed and crushed the soldiers at the Greasy Grass back in the summer moon.

Suddenly Gall arose and waited while the assembly fell to a hush. He looked at Sitting Bull a moment, then said, “If we do not attack first, as Crazy Horse did to Three Stars on the Rosebud, then we can expect the soldiers to attack us.”

Johnny Bruguier turned to watch Sitting Bull’s face. The great Hunkpapa visionary nodded once, nodded slowly, his hand signaling his war chief to continue.

“If we can count on the white man to do anything, we can depend upon him to do what is most dishonorable,” Gall explained. “When the soldier chief says he has come to talk of peace, it is only to make our senses dull, so that we roll over with our bellies to the sky.”

Now Gall’s voice rose an octave, sending a chill down the half-breed’s spine as this barrel-chested, iron-eyed man who had lost so many loved ones to soldiers at the Greasy Grass now laid down his warning to the leaders of that great village.

“Come tomorrow,” he barely whispered in the awful hush of
that huge council lodge, “when the soldiers come to attack our women and children … it will be their blood left to soak into this ground.”

“Remember the Rosebud!” one of the younger warriors suddenly cried out from the fringe of the crowd.

“Remember the Greasy Grass!” Gall shrieked, his face contorted in rage, flecks of spittle on his lips.

“Remember the Greasy Grass!”

“Y
ou fellas got to listen to this!” exclaimed trader Collins that chilly morning inside his store at Fort Laramie. “There’s been a heap of trouble down in the South.”

Seamus watched Collins smooth out the newspaper with both hands atop the counter cluttered with a shipment of soaps and lilac water directly up from Denver by way of Cheyenne City.

“What’s it say?” asked John Bourke.

“This here’s the official report of R. M. Wallace, United States marshal for South Carolina, addressed to Attorney General Taft—a letter read in the meeting of Grant’s cabinet a couple days back. He writes