Black Hills (15 page)

—
Does it speak to you?

—
It speaks to… itself. Especially at night, when I hear it best.

—
What does it say?

—
I do not know
, Tasunke Witko.
It uses many words and all in a harsh rush, but the words are all in the tongue of the
Wasicun.

—
You do not understand any of them?

—
No
, Tasunke Witko.
I am sorry.

Crazy Horse shakes his head as if angered by Paha Sapa’s apology.

—
Are there any words that the ghost whispers more than once?

Paha Sapa licks his lips and thinks hard. Outside, thunder rumbles from the direction of the Black Hills. Somewhere a child laughs and two women squeal as if they are playing a game. Paha Sapa smells horseflesh and horse manure heavy in the thick summer air.

—
There is the word
… Li-BEE… Tasunke Witko.
The ghost says it over and over.
Li-BEE.
But I have no idea what it means. It is as if he is saying it in pain, as though it were the source of a wound.

Crazy Horse turns to Run Fearless, Long Turd, and Loud Voice Hawk, but neither the chief nor holy man has heard this
wasichu
word before. Angry Badger also shakes his head while looking irritated at Paha Sapa and this entire conversation. Crazy Horse’s fierce glance moves to Paha Sapa’s
tunkašila
, but Limps-a-Lot only shrugs.

Crazy Horse barks to Run Fearless.

—
Go bring in the Crow.

When Run Fearless returns, he is shoving and dragging along a Crow captive. The man’s hands are tied in front of him and his legs are hobbled like a horse’s. Paha Sapa guesses at once that this is one of the Crow scouts for the Seventh Cavalry whom Crazy Horse’s warriors captured and kept alive at the Greasy Grass; he has heard in campfire talk that there were three, but only one has been kept alive. This man is wearing torn and bloody clothes. His face is swollen with bruises, one eye looks to be permanently battered shut, and someone has been playfully torturing him—three fingers on his right hand are gone, two fingers on his left hand, and one ear has been cut away.

Not for the first time (or the last), Paha Sapa feels a strange reaction deep inside—a wave of disgust or disapproval, perhaps—but it is not
his
reaction. The Paha Sapa of almost eleven summers feels no compassion for this captured enemy. And it is certainly not his ghost’s reaction—Paha Sapa receives no emotions or thoughts from his ghost, only talk, talk, talk in the
wasichus’
language. No, it is more as if there is another, perhaps older, but definitely a
different
Paha Sapa within Paha Sapa, always watching and reacting to things somewhat differently
than does the boy named Paha Sapa. The effect is disconcerting.

Crazy Horse is speaking.

—
This is one of Long Hair’s scouts. I only wish we could have captured those four who were closest to Long Hair—Curly, White Man Runs Him, Goes Ahead, and Hairy Moccasin. This one’s name is of no importance.

The Crow grunts as if in recognition of the other scouts’ names. Paha Sapa sees that all of the man’s front teeth are missing.

Crazy Horse turns to Run Fearless.

—
Ask him in Crow language if Long Hair knew anyone called…

He looks back at Paha Sapa.

—
Did you hear a
wasichu
name in your ghost dreams? What was it?

Paha Sapa’s heart is pounding wildly.

—
Li-BEE.

Run Fearless asks the question in Crow. Paha Sapa recognizes a few of the words—the languages of the Lakota and the Crow are not so dissimilar—and then Run Fearless repeats the question in different words.

The Crow slowly smiles, showing the dark gaps and broken stumps of teeth. He speaks a short sentence that leaves Run Fearless looking dissatisfied.

Crazy Horse is impatient.

—
What did he say?

—
He says—Why should I tell you anything about Long Hair? You will just continue to torture me and then kill me.

Crazy Horse removes his long knife from its beaded sheath.

—
Tell him that if he answers truthfully and with everything he knows, he will die quickly, like a man. If he does not, he will have no manhood to die with.

The Crow’s smile disappears as he listens. He barks a sentence, and Run Fearless repeats…

—
Li-BEE.

Seemingly despite his pain and position, the Crow smiles again. Through his swollen lips and gums, he mushes out several sentences.

Run Fearless stares at the man for a second before translating.

—
He says that this word was heard a lot at the fort and on the march. This Li-BEE was Long Hair’s woman… his wife. Elizabeth Bacon Custer. Long Hair called her Li-Bee.

All the older men in the room, including the Crow, are silent for a long moment. They are looking at Paha Sapa in a new way.

Long Turd breaks the silence a second before renewed thunder rolls across the village. The noise is so deep and so loud that the tipi hides vibrate like the skin of a drum.

—
Black Hills carries the ghost of Long Hair Custer.

Crazy Horse grunts and speaks softly to Run Fearless.

—
Take the Crow out and kill him. One bullet. In the head. Tell him that his body will not be mutilated but left in a proper burial scaffold. He has earned a warrior’s death.

The Crow appears to have understood Crazy Horse’s words and is mumbling his Death Song to himself as Run Fearless leads him hobbling out.

Limps-a-Lot motions to speak.

—
Surely you do not believe that man, Tasunke Witko. The Crow has every reason to lie to you. Why would a lesser scout know the name of Long Hair’s woman?

Crazy Horse merely grunts at this. From outside the tipi there comes the short, flat sound of a single pistol shot. The constant noise of the village—as common and reassuring and unheard as the inevitable buzz of grasshoppers in late summer here on the plains—silences itself for a moment. Crazy Horse continues to stare at Paha Sapa.

—
The rest of you go outside now. I want to talk to the boy alone.

Paha Sapa sees Limps-a-Lot’s reluctance to leave and notes the look his grandfather gives him—he
sees
it but cannot understand what the holy man is trying to say with the look—but Long Turd, Angry Badger, Loud Voice Hawk, and Limps-a-Lot stand and file out, closing the tipi flap behind them.

Paha Sapa looks into Crazy Horse’s eyes and thinks—
This man may kill me.

Crazy Horse slides closer and grabs Paha Sapa by the boy’s upper arm. The grip is ferocious.

—
Can you see into a man’s future, Black Hills? Can you?

—
I do not know
, Tasunke Witko.
I believe so. Sometimes…

Crazy Horse shakes the ten-year-old until Paha Sapa’s teeth can be heard rattling like seeds in a gourd.

—
Can you, damn you?
Do
you see a man’s fate? Yes or no?

—
I think sometimes
, Tasunke Witko,
that I can
…

Crazy Horse shakes him again and then grabs Paha Sapa’s bare forearm so fiercely that the boy can feel the bones bending.

—
Fuck “sometimes”! Tell me now one thing I must know. Will I die at the hands of the
wasichu?
Just yes or no, Paha Sapa, or I swear to
Wakan Tanka
and the Thunder Beings whom I serve that I will kill you this very day. Will I die at the hands of a
Wasicun,
of the wasichu? Yes or no?

Crazy Horse pulls Paha Sapa’s open hands up toward the warrior’s scarred, heavily muscled chest and sets the palms of those small hands hard and flat against him.

Paha Sapa shakes as if lightning has struck him. The air inside the tipi suddenly stinks of ozone. The boy’s eyes roll back under his fluttering eyelids, and he tries weakly to pull away from the man, but Crazy Horse’s grip is too strong. From a great distance Paha Sapa hears the roll of actual thunder and the equally low growl of Crazy Horse’s demanding voice….

—
Will I die at the hands of the
wasichu?
Will the white man kill me? Yes or no!

I
T IS LIKE THE OTHER VISIONS
Paha Sapa has had—flashes of images, explosions of sounds, a strange lack of color, lack of context, lack of control, lack of understanding of what is happening when or where—but this black-and-white image is stronger, faster, and more terrifying.

Paha Sapa tastes Crazy Horse’s fear and desperation. He recognizes faces and remembers names through Crazy Horse’s careering, terrified, defiant, leaping thoughts.

They are in some sort of
wasichu
compound—a fort, a camp, an agency—but Paha Sapa has never been in such a place and does not recognize it, nor do Crazy Horse’s increasingly desperate thoughts reveal the location. The heat is that of summer or very early autumn, but Paha Sapa cannot guess the year. He sees through Crazy Horse’s eyes, but he also is above the shoving crowds, looking
down
on Crazy Horse and the others as if he, Paha Sapa, were staring through the
eyes of a soaring raven or sparrow, so he can see that Crazy Horse looks much the same age as he does at this very instant, as he continues shaking Paha Sapa and pressing Paha Sapa’s suddenly freezing-cold palms flat and hard against the warrior’s chest and…

—Am I a prisoner?
That is Little Bordeaux Creek, fifteen miles out, where the scouts joined the rumbling, rocking ambulance; there is stock grazing at Chadron Creek. Lakota on horseback. Now they are
in
the camp, amid the log buildings, two hundred, three hundred Indians, Lakota but also Brul´e and others: Big Road, Iron Hawk, Turning Bear, the Minneconjou Wooden Knife, a
Wasicun
—the sounds Cap-tain Ken-ning-ton thud into Paha Sapa’s brain like tomahawk strikes—and more Brul´es: Swift Bear, Black Crow, Crow Dog, Standing Bear—Bordeaux, the interpreter Billy Garnett—and Touch the Clouds and his son there with Fast Thunder—Crazy Horse is being led, men are shouting, Crazy Horse is being pulled into one of the
wasichu
fort structures—where blue-shirted soldiers stand guard….

—What kind of place is this?

Is it Crazy Horse shouting? Paha Sapa cannot tell. He whirls above the masses of heads; black braided hair; wide-brimmed, sweat-stained hats; feathers; and now he is down behind Crazy Horse’s eyes again as Little Big Man and Cap-tain Ken-ning-ton keep pulling Crazy Horse forward, toward and into the little house.

—I won’t go in there.

Shoving. Shouting. A scout screams
Go ahead! I have the gun! Do what you want with him!
Crazy Horse is pulling away from grasping hands, leaping forward, away from the darkness, toward the opening and the light. Little Big Man is screaming
Nephew, don’t! Don’t do that! Nephew! Don’t! Don’t do that!

—Let me go! Get your hands… Let me… go!

Blades are rising; rifles are rising. They are
wasichu
bayonets on rifles held by
wasichus
. Crazy Horse pulls out his blade for slicing tobacco, cuts Little Big Man’s flesh between the thumb and forefinger. As the older man shouts, Crazy Horse slashes Little Big Man’s forearm while he imagines cutting long strings of flesh away from a deer’s white bone.

—
Kill the son of a bitch! Kill the son of a bitch! Kill the fucker! Kill him! Kill him! Kill the son of a bitch!
It is Ken-ning-ton screaming. It is the language of Paha Sapa’s ghost, and Paha Sapa still cannot understand it. But he sees and feels and understands the spittle striking Crazy Horse’s face as the
Wasicun
continues to scream at the blue-coated soldiers and guards with their rifles and bayonets raised.

Perhaps the
wasichu
soldier-guard behind Crazy Horse only means to prod with the bayonet, but Crazy Horse is pulling violently backward at that second, losing his balance, and the blade possibly meant to prod tears through Crazy Horse’s shirt just above his left hip and keeps moving forward, piercing the war chief’s lower back, Crazy Horse’s own weight and movement driving the long steel blade deeper between his kidneys and into his bowels. Crazy Horse grunts. Paha Sapa screams but still hovers both as a bird above, beneath the roof but hovering, but also behind Crazy Horse’s own eyes.

Redness descending, Crazy Horse grunts in pain. The
wasichu
guard pulls the bayonet out, the butt striking the log wall of the inside of the guardhouse, then—as terrified as all the others but gifted with terrible action—by the drill—
one, two, and three
, but silently—thrusts the rifle and bayonet forward again, the point going deep into Crazy Horse’s lower back, between ribs, up into Crazy Horse’s wheezing left lung—depriving the chief of wind and words for a moment—then the guard is grunting and pulling the long blade free again, the steel sliding slickly and obscenely out of Crazy Horse’s bleeding flesh.