A Cold Day in Hell (27 page)

M
ore than almost anything, he loved the smell of firesmoke on the cold morning air.

But then, he told himself, perhaps that was because he was getting to be an old man.

Young men loved most their fighting, loved their ponies, loved their women too. Oh, how a young man loved coupling with a young woman!

But as a man grew older, he found other things to occupy his thoughts, other matters to consume his days. As he put winters behind him, Morning Star had come to learn life was not all fighting and coupling. There was the silence of the mornings, that first smell of woodsmoke on the breeze, the murmur of a stream beneath a thin coating of ice.

He wrapped the blanket more tightly about his shoulders as he moved through the leafless cottonwood toward the creekbank to relieve himself. A pair of magpies jabbered nearby, noisy above the racks of red meat drying for the winter. A dog appeared suddenly, snapping and barking at the black-and-white thieves, setting them to wing. Too bad, he thought—for the dogs would get very little of that meat they protected, while the magpies would get much, much more by brazen theft.

Moving his breechclout aside, his hand brushed the knife he carried in a sheath at his waist. And Morning Star chuckled. Long, long ago some of the Lakota had begun to call him Dull Knife—because Morning Star’s own brother claimed Morning Star never had a sharp knife. It did not matter, he had decided
many a winter ago. Some men lived by a sharp knife, while others lived by sharp wits.

The first cold had come. Then the land had warmed again, as it always did before this freezing moon. But now the weather had turned cold once more, and cold it would stay until spring, when buds burst forth on the willow and the cottonwood leafed. So, so much had happened since last spring.

For last winter’s time of cold, Morning Star’s people had remained at Red Cloud Agency. As he looked back, it seemed the summer sun had barely warmed the land before they had heard the reports of that first big fight with the soldiers on the Roseberry River.
*

Then, no more than a few suns after that victory, word drifted in to the agencies of another, even greater fight. It was then Morning Star and the other Old-Man Chiefs decided they could no longer contain the eagerness of their people. They must go north, to join that great village living life in the old way—no more to settle for the white man’s flour and pig meat, his parchment-thin blankets that fell apart with the first hard rain.

What a celebration that had been, all those lodges and the People—starting north to join the others who had twice defeated the soldiers sent out to herd those winter roamers back to the reservations.

Then of an early morning, near a tributary of the Red Paint River,
†
the young warriors riding out in front of their great procession were attacked by a group of soldiers. Yellow Hair was killed by the long-hair scout called Cody, and the rest of the cavalcade whirled about on their heels, hurrying back toward the agency as many, many soldiers gave chase, nipping at their heels. Fortunate it was that they made it across the boundaries to the White Water Reservation
‡
with the women and children, with all the old ones who had been singing of once more seeing life as they had once known it. Now there was sadness, and weeping, and in Yellow Hair’s lodge there was no fire for many nights.

The next time they sought to slip away to the north, Morning Star’s people were much more careful. They did not boast among the layabouts that they were leaving. Those layabouts were satisfied to take the white man’s droppings and betray the People to the white man. To think that the layabouts even sold
Noaha-vose
, the Sacred Mountain, to the white man! It was not the white man s, and it was not the layabouts’, to sell. It belonged to all of
Ma-heo-o’s
children.

So that next time Morning Star’s people sneaked off the agency in small groups, leaving at different times, going in many different directions before they met up once more far to the north.

Then at last there was singing. The young and the old—oh, there was much singing. His people, the
Ohmeseheso
, were on their journey back to their hunting ground, no more to return to the reservation.

They finally reached the northern country not long after the great village had begun breaking up. Too many camp circles, too many bellies to feed, and too many ponies to graze. Turning their faces into the wind, the People left the
Ho-ohomo-eo-o
, the Lakota bands, to go their own way. For a time, the Crazy Horse people stayed close, many times camping in the same valley, hunting the same ridge, the wolves from both tribes keeping their eyes searching for the soldiers everyone was sure would come. Eventually. The soldiers always came.

Now that Morning Star’s lodges had rejoined the People, three of the Old-Man Chiefs were present. It was good to see Little Wolf again—for he had many stories to tell about the soldier attack on Old Bear’s camp along the Powder River during the Dusty Moon of last winter. And it made Morning Star’s old heart swell to bursting the first time he saw the Sacred Hat lodge that Coal Bear erected at the middle of every camping site.

The All Father had sent
Esevone
, the Sacred Buffalo Hat, as well as the Sacred Sun Dance, to the People through the Great Prophet Erect Horns.
Esevone
was the living, life-affirming channel of
Ma-heo-o’s
greatest blessings upon all the People. But especially did she bless the women of the tribe. The rest of that summer had been a time of feasting and good hunting, of celebration and dancing. Babies were born, and the old ones closed their eyes to begin their journey to
Seana
, the Place of the Dead beyond the Star Road. Everyone’s heart was filled, and all were sure it was to be a time of rebirth.

The fourth Old-Man Chief, Black Moccasin, and Two Moons’s band remained with the
Hotohkesoneo-o
, the Little Star People, who called themselves the Oglalla, throughout the warm months, preferring to camp with the Crazy Horse people. This was a good thing, for all of the
Ohmeseheso
had long been close to the Hunkpatila. To the village of Crazy Horse the survivors of
the Powder River fight had trudged through deep snows, finding open arms, warm lodges, robes, and blankets after the soldiers drove Old Bear’s people into the wilderness.

Then, as the summer wore on, Morning Star’s people moved slowly down the Powder River, eventually reaching the Elk River. It was there they discovered some bags of corn left by the soldiers who rode up and down the river on the smoking houses that walked on water.
*
Many of the People ate some of that corn, fed some to their ponies, then poured most of it out on the ground so they could take the bags with them when they marched back up the Powder. Far, almost to the forks of the Powder, they went before journeying over to the Tongue, from there to the upper Roseberry, then finally hunted along the upper branches of the Little Sheep River,
†
Antelope and elk, deer and turkey, and the hides were good! The ponies grew fat on the tall grass. Best of all, the soldiers were far to the east, chasing about on old Lakota trails.

Truly, it was a time of many blessings!

With the coming of the Cool Moon when the People had wandered back toward the Elk River, fear of the soldiers faded even further from their hearts.

Then came a report that the pony soldiers of Three Stars had killed many people in Iron Plume’s village of Lakota camped on the far side of
Noaha-vose
, beside the Thin Buttes.
‡
Although that meant the soldiers were far, far to the east, there was again that fear the white man was raiding, burning, and destroying. So the three Old-Man Chiefs directed that the village move south once more, toward the country of the Upper Powder.

They journeyed up Pole Creek over the White Mountains,
**
intent on finding buffalo and antelope in the land of the
Sosone-eo-o
, the Shoshone—to make meat and cure hides for the coming winter. Their journey was far from disappointing. By the time they recrossed the mountains to the east, the high places were beginning to freeze, the leaves on the trembling trees were turning gold, and the air had grown cool. As the days shortened, more and more lodges drifted in, fleeing the White Water Agency with rumors that the soldiers would one day be coming to steal their guns and their ponies. Leaders like Standing Elk, Black
Bear, and even Turkey Leg, partially paralyzed by accidentally sitting upon
Esevone’s
horn. The newcomers said the white man had stopped giving out rations, slowly starving the People on the reservation, threatening to force them south to Indian Territory.

Bravely, Standing Elk had told the government men, “You speak to me about another land, a country far away from this. I think you should not have mentioned this to me at all. My grandfathers and relations have lived here always.”

No matter that so many came to join that autumn. They did not want for anything.
Ma-heo-o
had blessed Morning Star’s people with plenty and with peace.

Here in the country of the Upper Powder they would be safe this winter, far from the soldiers to the south, far from the soldiers on Elk River, far from the soldiers to the east.

Here they would be safe.

“I suppose they’re still counting, for what it matters to us,” John Bourke grumbled.

Seamus looked up from his meal of bacon and biscuits, everything smothered in white gravy. “Counting what, Johnny?”

“The votes,” Crook’s adjutant replied with that tone a man took when he expected everyone else to know already what the devil he was talking about.

So Seamus went back to eating his late breakfast. Although he had missed morning mess because he was attending to the matter of reshoeing the big bay he was riding north, the army
cooks liked the big Irishman’s ready smile and his quickness with a kind word—so it wasn’t hard to get a hearty breakfast rustled up and set before him in nothing flat.

“You know, the goddamned votes,” Bourke repeated. “The votes for president.”

Around a slab of bacon Donegan mumbled, “Right, Johnny—the votes. I suppose that’s supposed to be the most important thing in our whole world right now.”

“By bloody damn, it is!” Bourke all but shrieked. “It’s been one of the toughest campaigns ever held. But then, you being from Ireland, I suppose it wouldn’t matter to you?”

“Not matter to me?” Seamus growled indignantly with a mouth full of food, fire in his eye. “I left the land of me birth because me mither sent me away from County Kilkenny,” slipping back into a peaty Irish brogue the way he did when he grew angry. “But I’ve damn well stayed here in America—John Bourke—because this is me adopted home. So don’t ye go getting off so high-and-mighty with me, Lieutenant!”