Joseph M. Marshall III (12 page)

On a pretense of agreement, Spotted Tail sent Little Thunder back to the camp to warn the people and tell the warriors to prepare for a fight. At the first sight of the soldiers, some of the women had become frightened and took down their lodges to flee to the hills. But it was too late. While Spotted Tail and Harney had been talking, another large column of soldiers had moved into position around the camp. They attacked before Little Thunder could deliver his warning.

Spotted Tail, Iron Shell, and the other leaders were trapped with Harney’s soldiers, but they tried, nonetheless, to defend the camp. They had ridden to the meeting unarmed. Spotted Tail, a tall and powerful man, wrenched a long knife from a soldier and fought on a captured horse. With only the long knife, he killed over ten soldiers, but in the end he fell, weakened from two bullet wounds. Iron Shell fought valiantly as well.

There were too many soldiers. They overran the camp with a mounted charge, killing anything in their path and then setting fire to the lodges. Many of them paused to mutilate the dead, especially the women. They quickly gathered over a hundred captives and headed up the Shell, and the few people who had managed to hide when the soldiers were first seen gathered the wounded. They had to leave the dead behind, unable to perform even the last acts of respect because they were so afraid the soldiers would come back. Among the dead was one of Spotted Tail’s daughters and one of the captives was Iron Shell’s beautiful young wife.

Light Hair remained with his uncle’s people to help guard the camp and hunt while the wounded ones recovered. Eventually they moved northwest, closer to the fort, knowing that messengers would come looking for them once news of the killing had reached the Oglala and Mniconju camps to the north. Word did come. Harney had stopped at Fort Laramie. Since he was the leader of the soldiers, he declared an end to trading with the Lakota, still demanding the surrender of the killers of Grattan. When the story of the attack on Little Thunder’s camp on the Blue Water was carried north to other Lakota camps, General Harney was given a new name. To the Lakota he would always be Woman Killer.

In the middle of autumn, Light Hair returned to the Hunkpatila camp. His mothers and his father saw a deeper quietness in him. His shoulders seemed broader, his voice deeper. He didn’t talk of his rescue of the Sahiyela woman, though they had heard what he had done from others. But he did tell of his uncle Spotted Tail, how he had fought without weapons until he took a long knife from a soldier, then killed him with it. Only grievous wounds had stopped him.

Light Hair went out to hunt alone and took his turn guarding the horse herd with Lone Bear and He Dog. But even to them he told little of the attack on Little Thunder’s camp. They noticed that his eyes hardened at the mention of whites or the fort or the Holy Road.

One evening he returned from a long outing with High Back Bone and waited for his father in their lodge. When Crazy Horse returned, the boy held out a bundle of tobacco. It was a gift, an offering to a holy man when one needed to speak from one’s heart. Light Hair needed to tell of a dream—a dream that had come to him the second night he had spent alone on a sandstone bluff. It had been with him every day and night for these many months, he told his father.

Dreams were important, Crazy Horse said, as he took the offering of tobacco from his oldest son.

Eight

Waves of heat would roll through the small, enclosed space each time Crazy Horse poured water over the glowing hot stones in the center pit. There was only the darkness and the heat. Crazy Horse sat to the right of the door inside the low, dome-shaped structure of red willow frames covered with hides. Light Hair sat across from his father.

“All my relations,” said Crazy Horse in a low and respectful voice as he pushed aside the door cover. In came the welcome cool air and light. Light Hair sat quietly, the sweat running off his body as though it was water from a pouring rain. Both he and his father were completely naked.

They had ridden away from the great gathering at Bear Butte, only the two of them and a packhorse. After a few days, they finally made camp below the crest of a grassy butte above a narrow little valley with a little stream, though its flow was only a trickle in this early autumn. The father watched his son and knew that the words and the ways and the lessons of High Back Bone had taken root in the boy. He was still slender but his arms and legs were thicker, his voice deeper, and his movements were those of a man rather than an impulsive boy. His younger brother did not resemble him at all in appearance or in action. Where Light Hair was calm and deliberate and given to long moments of quiet introspection, young Little Cloud was always darting about and busy. He was still far from adolescence, while Light Hair was on the verge of manhood.

Everything happens for a reason, many of the old ones liked to say. The ash stave used to make a bow could be cured and seasoned over five years as it hung below the smoke hole of the lodge—or it could be tempered quickly over a bed of hot coals. In either case, the bow made from it would perform well. Crazy Horse knew that his light-haired son had a purpose beyond fulfilling his roles as a hunter and a warrior. His light hair and skin had made him the object of taunts and teasing, but not once had he seen the boy’s lips tremble in response, nor did he resort to anger. He had taken the teasing in stride as though sensing he was being held over the fire, being tempered by the difficult moments.

Crazy Horse had been expecting something to happen. Then came the offering of tobacco from Light Hair. There was a change in the boy, the kind caused by more than passing time. Reflected in the boy’s eyes was something that the medicine man’s experience and insight told him was prompted by a memory rising out of a dream.

Along the banks of the little stream, they built the low, dome-shaped lodge, working together to cut the red willow poles. Together they dug the outside fire pit and the inside pit for the hot stones. They spent most of day on the crest of the butte, sometimes talking but mostly sitting in silence and watching the land and the sky. Hawks, eagles, butterflies, grasshoppers, ants, antelope, elk, and even a lone buffalo in the distance passed by them in one direction or another. A coyote peered over the edge at them and scurried away. As the sun slid lower toward the western horizon, the boy finally told of his dream.

The dream was not difficult to remember, only to tell. It had been a part of the boy since that late summer night near the sand hill country when old Conquering Bear lay dying in the Sicangu camp after the incident with the soldier Grattan and his men. He was almost embarrassed to describe it.

The dream began at a lake, a small still lake. Bursting upward from the blue calmness, a horse and its rider broke through the surface and rode out across the land. The rider was a man, a slender man who wore his hair loose. A stone was tied behind his left ear, a reddish brown stone. A lightning mark was painted across one side of his face. On his bare chest were blue hailstones. Behind them to the west as they galloped was a dark, rolling cloud rising higher and higher. From it came the deep rumble of thunder and flashes of lightning. The horse was strong and swift and it changed colors: red, yellow, black, white, and blue. Bullets and arrows suddenly filled the air, flying at the horse and rider, but they all passed without touching them. Close above them flew a red-tailed hawk, sending out its shrill cry. People, his own kind, suddenly rose up all around and grabbed the rider, pulling him down from behind. And the dream ended.

There seemed to be a warning in the dream. The glorious warrior in the dream was grown, but still young. The faces of the enemies that had sent bullets and arrows at him were not visible, but the people who had pulled him down were like the rider himself. They were easily seen, as was the horse, the hawk, and the Thunders.

The Thunders. They were the powerful beings that lived in the West, perhaps the most powerful of all beings anywhere.

Rarely did anyone dream of the Thunders, and anyone who did had a special calling to be a “sacred clown,” the one who did the opposite of what was expected. Light Hair had described the lightning mark on the dream rider’s face, as well as blue hailstones painted on his chest. Lightning and hail were both strongly associated with the Thunders.

Crazy Horse closed the door and began singing again, another gathering song to call in the spirits. He poured water on the stones, sending steam and new waves of heat rolling inside the tiny enclosure. Light Hair endured the heat even as he held the dream in his mind’s eye, as his father had instructed him to do.

Dying gloriously, making the ultimate sacrifice in defense of the people, was the secret dream of every Lakota fighting man. It was the warrior code, repeated in all the honoring songs. The dream seemed to suggest that the dreamer would gain honor and immortality by living and dying as a warrior. But perhaps there was more to the dream—perhaps there was a warning of a path that could not be avoided.

After a final prayer and a song of thanksgiving, Crazy Horse threw open the door flap for the final time and ended their ceremony. The cool evening air rushed in, bringing instant relief from the heat. They sat unmoving, both reluctant to leave the comforting confines of the sweat lodge. The man motioned to his son and they emerged and walked into the stream. It was only ankle deep so they sat, splashing themselves with its icy water without feeling the bite of its deep coldness. And when they finally did they stood and stepped to the graveled bank and back to the stone altar in front of the lodge door. Crazy Horse offered his pipe to the Sky, the Earth, to the West, North, East, and South, and finally to Grandfather. He lit it and they smoked.

They passed the evening talking and eating in the orange glow of a low fire. The next day they would find the reddish brown stone that Light Hair must wear, and the father would show his son the plants he would need to prepare to make the colors for the blue hailstones and the yellow lightning mark. They would trap a hawk while the weather was still warm and dry out its body. And in the days and seasons to come they would talk about the dream and all its meanings. But for now, for this evening, they would enjoy the solitude.

High Back Bone was one of the first visitors to the lodge of Crazy Horse after the father and son returned. He brought a seasoned ash stave as a gift. The final worth of the gift was in the hands of the boy, he was gently reminded. It would be the first bow he would make entirely on his own.

The time spent with High Back Bone was now even more important. Light Hair had all the requisite skills to be more than an adequate hunter, and experience would mold him even more. Likewise, he had all the skills to ride into battle, because they were the same used by the hunter. But combat was different. Going into battle was not the pursuit of life by taking life; rather, it was the defense of the life of the people by putting one’s own life on the line. Those who saw only the glory of being a warrior without seeing the reality of the commitment it required rode behind those who did. High Back Bone, like Crazy Horse, sensed that there was something about Light Hair that would set him apart, something that had to do with the quiet nature and the shyness. Still waters were almost always deep. So the influence of the older warrior went from the hand more to the heart and the mind—for, as every good warrior knows, the deadliest weapons a man carries into battle are not in his hands. Rather, the boldness in the heart and the willingness of the mind are always the difference between winning and losing.

High Back Bone saw something else in the boy. Crossing the threshold from boy to man came with its burdens. Now and then there was hardness in the boy’s eyes that hid something behind it. Every warrior remembered that part of his own life, the last vestiges of boyhood burdened with doubts and so many questions. But then, he had not dreamed of the Thunders. In truth, all of the various parts of the boy’s dream were a sobering burden. The hidden implications in it would cause any mature man much concern and turn anyone’s eyes into a hard façade. Given the boy’s already established habit of spending time alone, High Back Bone guessed that he would think about the dream almost constantly now. He expected that the boy would be even more introspective.

Even in the company of He Dog and Lone Bear, Light Hair laughed and smiled less often and didn’t participate in their banter as much as he usually did. His friends knew that Crazy Horse had taken Light Hair off somewhere for several days, and that since returning, their light-haired friend was less communicative. But they also knew that he always tried harder to win the games the boys played to emulate warriors. In fact, he rarely lost. He was not always the fastest or the quickest or the best shot, but he simply kept trying. And though he didn’t tell them what to do, they still followed him because he didn’t hesitate to take the lead. He seemed to know instinctively the best trail to follow or the best way to do something.