Black Hills (16 page)

—Let me go now.

It is Crazy Horse, speaking softly amid the shouting and bedlam and shoving and screaming.

—Let me go now. You’ve hurt me.

The
wasichu
sentry circles, rifle extended, and lunges again, from the front this time, toward Crazy Horse’s belly. But the steel misses under Crazy Horse’s arm and embeds itself in the wood of the door frame. Little Big Man is holding Crazy Horse’s other arm and is screaming for the
wasichu
to do something—to stab him again?

Crazy Horse’s Minneconjou uncle Spotted Crow grabs the stuck rifle, pulls the blade free, and drives the butt of the long gun into Little Big
Man’s belly, sending the short traitor whoofing into the dust on all fours.

—
You have done this before! You are always in the way!

It is Spotted Crow screaming this as Crazy Horse falls backward into the arms of Swift Bear and two others. One of those three is saying haughtily, insanely, to the wounded warrior—

—
We told you to behave yourself! We warned you!

Crazy Horse groans and finally leans, sags, and falls. The motion seems to take long minutes. Cartridges are being chambered and hammers clicked back on
wasichu
rifles all around. Crazy Horse holds both his bloody palms out toward the men around him, Indian and white man alike.

—See where I am hurt? Do you see? I can feel the blood flowing out of me!

Closed Cloud, a Brulé, brings a blanket to spread over the dying chief, but Crazy Horse grabs at the Brulé’s braids and shakes the warrior’s head back and forth even as Crazy Horse jerks his own head back and forth in agony and fury.

—You all coaxed me over here. You all told me to come here. And then you ran away and left me! You all left me!

He Dog takes the blanket out of Closed Cloud’s hands, crumples it into a pillow, and sets it under Crazy Horse’s head. Then He Dog takes his own blanket from his shoulders and spreads it over the fallen man.

—
I will take you home
, Tasunke Witko.

Then He Dog walks away across the parade ground toward a building there.

P
AHA
S
APA SHUTS HIS EYES
, inner and outer, so that he cannot see more. But he does see more. He screams so that he cannot hear what he is hearing.

He awakens to Crazy Horse bending over him on one knee, just as he did at the Greasy Grass—the warrior’s face even more fierce than that time yet similar to the expression of disgust he showed weeks earlier. Crazy Horse is flicking water from a wooden bowl into Paha Sapa’s face.

—
What do you see, Black Hills? Do you see my death?

—
I don’t know! I can’t… It isn’t… I don’t
know.

Crazy Horse shakes him harder, snapping Paha Sapa’s teeth together with the violence of the shaking.

—
Will I die by the hand of the
wasichu?
That is what I need to know.

Crazy Horse’s shaking and slapping have hidden those final memories from Paha Sapa in a way that closing his eyes and covering his ears failed to do. The boy feels like sobbing. It’s not enough that he has become infected with a ghost that gibbers and mumbles all through his nights; now Paha Sapa knows that the flood of sensations and twice-removed memories that have poured into him during the contact with Crazy Horse almost certainly constitutes all of that weird warrior’s memories, from his earliest childhood perceptions to those of his death just moments or seconds beyond what Paha Sapa has just witnessed. There is no doubt that the white soldier’s wounding of Crazy Horse by bayonet thrust will be mortal.

—
I don’t know! I did not see the… the final… the ending
, Tasunke Witko.

Crazy Horse throws Paha Sapa back into the hides and robes and jumps to his feet. His killing knife is in his hand and his eyes are not sane.

—
You are lying to me, Black Hills. You know, but you are afraid to tell me. But you will tell me, I promise you that.

The warrior turns and stalks out. Paha Sapa does sob now, weeping into his forearm so that Limps-a-Lot and the others outside the lodge will not hear him. He did not see how long it will take for Crazy Horse to die from the bayonet wounds—and the glimpses
of
Crazy Horse he was able to catch showed a warrior not much older than the man who just left the tipi, a year perhaps, no more than two—but Paha Sapa
did
see an absolute conviction in the heart and thoughts of Crazy Horse when the war leader forced him to use his gift.

Crazy Horse is going to kill Paha Sapa whether the boy tells him his future or not.

P
AHA
S
APA HAS BEEN ASSIGNED
a lodge separate from the village. Limps-a-Lot visits him there that night, late. Crazy Horse and his men
have ridden away to their own
tiyospaye
, but the chief said that he would return by midday the next day, bringing Long Turd and other
wičasa wakan
to identify the
Wasicun
inside the boy and then to drive the ghost out, even if the ghost-driving-out ceremonies take weeks. Paha Sapa has been told to fast and to purify himself in the sweat lodge that has been erected near his isolated tipi.

—
Grandfather, I have seen that Tasunke Witko intends to kill me.

Limps-a-Lot nods and sets his huge hand on Paha Sapa’s thin shoulder.

—
I agree, Black Hills. I do not have your gift of forward- or inward-seeing, but I agree that Crazy Horse will kill you if you tell him that the
wasichu
will someday kill him and he will kill you if you say that they will not or even if you keep silent. He is certain that the ghost within you is Long Hair’s ghost, and Crazy Horse is afraid of it. He wants the ghost to die with you.

Paha Sapa is ashamed of his girlish tears earlier. Now he only feels empty and very young.

—
What shall I do, Grandfather?

Limps-a-Lot leads him out of the tipi. Hundreds of broad strides away, the northernmost campfires of the village glow. A dog barks. Two young men on guard duty out among the horses grazing across the stream call softly to each other. An owl hoots in a cottonwood along that stream. Low clouds have moved in like a gray blanket to hide the moon and stars. Thunder continues to rumble from the south, but no rain has fallen yet. It is very hot.

Paha Sapa realizes that there are two horses standing there in the dark. One is Limps-a-Lot’s favorite, the good-running roan he calls Worm, and the other is the broad-backed white mare belonging to Three Buffalo Woman. That mare is now piled high with carefully tied robes and gear, and Worm has Paha Sapa’s own blanket, bow, quiver of arrows, lance, and other items on his back.

Limps-a-Lot points to the south.

—
You must leave tonight and take Worm and the mare that Three Buffalo Woman calls
Pehánska.
You are to ride
itokagata,
south, past Bear Butte to the Black Hills. Go all the way into the Black Hills, deep into them, but travel with care—Crazy Horse’s and Angry Badger’s scouts say that white men have poured into our sacred hills during the past few moons and even built
new cities there. Crazy Horse has vowed before everyone to go to the Paha Sapa next week and to kill every
wasichu
he finds there.

—
Grandfather, if Crazy Horse and his warriors are going to the Black Hills soon, why are you sending me there? Would I not be safer if I rode north, toward Grandmother’s Country?

—
You would be, and I will tell Crazy Horse that I loaned you my horses so that you could go to Grandmother’s Country.

—
He will kill you for helping me
, Tunkašila.

Limps-a-Lot grunts and shakes his head.

—
No, he will not. It would set the bands to fighting, and Crazy Horse wants to kill
wasichus
by the thousand this year, not other Lakota. Not yet. And you must go to the Black Hills because there you must have your
hanblečeya….
Your Vision must come to you there and nowhere else. This I know. Do you remember all that I have taught you about purifying yourself, building the sweat lodge, and singing to the Six Grandfathers?

—
I remember, Grandfather. When may I return?

—
Not until after your successful
hanblečeya,
Paha Sapa, even if that takes weeks or months. And in both going south and coming back north, travel carefully—keep the horses off ridgelines, hide in willows and streambeds when you can, act as if you are in the middle of Pawnee country. Both Crazy Horse and the
wasichus
will kill you on sight. Our village will be somewhere between Slim Buttes and Arikara country to the north, but be careful even to the coming in when you return…. Hide and observe the village for a day and a night and a day to be sure it is safe.

—
Yes, Grandfather.

—
Now go.

Limps-a-Lot swings the boy up and onto the back of Worm and hands him the hide rope for
Pehánska
, White Crane. The holy man peers into the midnight-black south.

—
I think it will begin storming tonight and rain for many days. This is good. It will be very hard for Crazy Horse to track you, and he was never that good a tracker. But head west to where the stream runs south from Slim Buttes and stay in the river for as many hours as you can, then try to stay on the hard, rocky land. Hide during the day if you have to. Good-bye, Paha Sapa.

—
Good-bye, Grandfather.

—
Toksha ake čante ista wacinyanktin ktelo, Paha Sapa.

I shall see you again with the eye of my heart.

Limps-a-Lot turns and walks as quickly as he can back to the lighted village. Clucking the horses into silence, Paha Sapa turns their heads southwest and rides into the night.

L
ibbie, my dearest
.

I have been lying here in the healing darkness thinking about how you looked that first time I met you—formally met you, since I had seen you as a little girl and even worshipped you from afar years before in Monroe—in 1862 at that Thanksgiving party at the girls’ finishing school. Your dark hair, all in perfectly formed ringlets, fell down over your bare shoulders that night. Your pale face and exposed skin glowed like ivory in the candlelight. I remember how I was stunned by the dark slashes of your eyebrows above your daunting, expressive eyes, and by how even your slightest and most demure of smiles brought out those dimples. You were twenty-one years old that autumn, and your body had ripened far from the stick-figure girl in the blue pinafore I had glimpsed on Monroe’s main streets in earlier years. The gown you wore that night to the Thanksgiving party was cut low enough for me to see your ample bosom. I could have set my hands fully around your slim waist and felt my fingertips touch.

Do you remember last autumn, when we spent our leave from Fort Abraham Lincoln in New York? We were so poor—in all my years of service and, some might say, of fame, I have never chosen to profit from my service to my country—so poor that we had to stay at the dreadful boardinghouse and take the freezing, drafty horsecars to the various receptions and dinners to which we were invited because we had no money for a cab. I had my one civilian suit. Only one. You had several lovely dresses for those balls and receptions, but they were dresses you had used and mended and made small changes on for many seasons and carried back and forth in your trunk across the prairie and continent with you many times.