Lakota (14 page)

"He is brother to Tatanka," Hokala Huste claimed.

Even Hinhan Hota was surprised to hear of such success. And when the people feasted on the tasty hump meat, they spoke proudly of how the boy born to them as Mastincala had proven his was the true heart of the people. He'd fought well at the battle of the hundred slain, and he was a proven hunter. Tacante was a man to follow.

Following the success of the spring buffalo hunt, Tacante turned his thoughts once again to the wasicuns traveling the stolen road and the soldiers in their walled forts. Waawanyanka and Sunka Sapa had stayed that bitter winter, watching the bluecoats at the middle fort. Now, with the sun shining again, they came to visit their relatives.

"New soldiers have come," Sunka Sapa told Tacante. "Wagons move through the heart of our good hunting lands. Who will fight them? Sunkawakan Witkotkoke calls for the young men to return. He said that I should say to you that the brave hearts must lead. Will you come?"

Tacante glanced around him. Those days had been good. He had raced his horse against the neighboring bands of Oglalas and Sihasapas, winning every time. Often he walked out into the hills with Itunkala, teaching his brother how to track game, to shoot the large bow, and even which herbs could heal wounds or ease the stomach's pains. Still the sting of Wanbli Cannunpa's refusal scarred his heart, though. Tacante knew the Pipe would look favorably upon a young warrior who rode into battle with the Oglala's strange one.

"I'll come," Tacante said.

And so the Heart followed his two friends back to the Big Horns. With them came Cehupa Maza and a mended Hokala. Though both of the wounded Sicangus suffered from the hard riding, they never complained. For war was a young man's duty, and no Lakota hid when the call came to take the hard path.

The five young men joined Sunkawakan Witkotkoke near where the stolen road passed the hill of the hundred slain. Crazy Horse welcomed them warmly. He and his Oglalas prepared a feast, and all filled their bellies. Then the horse spoke of a band of wasicuns stealing their way by darkness north toward Yellowstone River.

"These thieves who would steal our land walk in the shadows, thinking they are smart. Tomorrow we will punish them gready,"

"Hau!" Hokala shouted. "They will die hard."

"I will strike them down," Sunka Sapa added.

"Ah, each thing in its time," Sunkawakan Witkotkoke replied. "We leave at first light. They have many good guns, and the danger is great. Be invisible to their eyes and ears, Lakotas. Let's stalk diem as our fathers taught us to trail the deer. Use the bow. Let your silent arrows kill these thieves as the thunderbolts might."

The Lakotas whooped their agreement. Then the warriors took to their beds, for morning would begin early.

Tacante passed a rather resdess night. He wrapped himself in a heavy buffalo hide, but still a chill wind blended with the moist, damp ground to send spasms of cold through his weary frame. Nearby the other young men suffered, too. A pair of Oglala boys brought along to tend to the ponies shivered with misery. To make matters worse, a flurry of snow greeted the dawn.

"Winter's come again," Hokala complained as he tried to straighten his stiff leg.

"It's a bad sign," Waawanyanka added. "Our medicine has gone bad."

"When has snow been a bad sign?" Cehupa Maza asked. "The world was white as moonlight when we slew the hundred wasicuns. Hau! We will kill these others, too."

Hokala continued to argue, but the others took Cehupa Maza's good words to heart. All the young men hungered for batde. Some had never counted coup, and others hoped to take some of the new rifles the wasicun travelers carried.

"Come," Sunkawakan Witkotkoke spoke as he appeared among his followers. "It's time to fight."

"Hau!" the young men answered. "It's a good day to die"

"Better we should live," the Horse said, drawing them close. "Here's how it can be done."

Tacante listened attentively. It was a simple plan, but it should work. Sunkawakan Witkotkoke and the Oglalas would encircle the wasicuns on one side, and Tacante and his Sicangu companions would close the gap from the other direction. The Lakotas would wait for the wasicuns to light their cook fires. That would be the signal to attack. If all the warriors moved suddenly and with determination, the fight would surely be a short one, and no Lakota would be hurt. The warriors didn't fear death themselves, but the loss of a friend or relative cast shadows over any personal glory. Better all should survive. That was the best kind of victory, Tacante knew.

The Indians set off alone or in pairs toward the wasicun camp. These thieves traveled on horseback. They brought no wagons, no band of women and little ones to slow their movements. As Tacante approached the circle of blankets, he saw two wasicuns stacking sticks to make a fire. Another one mixed flour in a bowl. It was strange to see white men cooking, for always it seemed they brought women along to do such work. These wasicuns weren't the lazy kind Tacante had known at Fort Laramie. They also kept a guard, for two of them stood together atop a rocky hill overlooking the camp. The other two wasicuns remained in their blankets.

Ah, it was a good moment to strike, Tacante told himself. If only the fire builders would strike a spark! But in spite of two tries, the spark wouldn't fly from the small flint onto the dry grass spread over the kindling twigs. Finally, after issuing a string of curses, one of the wasicuns managed to light the fire.

"Best get the skillet greased, Tom" one of the fire builders said. "I'm hungry."

He wouldn't be for long. Two arrows flew out of the nearby trees. Both struck the hungry fire builder in the back, and he fell forward, smothering the fire.

"Lord, it's Indians!" the cook yelled.

Before a second alarm could stir the camp, the Lakotas charged. Knives and hatchets cut and slashed, and the four remaining wasicuns in the camp fell in the same instant. The two guards fired their rifles wildly and retreated to a wall of boulders.

Tacante had observed the attack, but he had been a step slow rushing the camp. He now followed the Horse up the hill, then crawled along the rock wall. Just on the other side of those stones were two wasicuns armed with rifles. A false move meant death. But when Sunkawakan Witkotkoke hurled himself over the wall and plunged his blade into the first guard, Tacante jumped the second. The wasicun managed to slap the knife away, but Tacante had separated the guard from his rifle. For a moment the two of them rolled across the hard ground, grappling for the knife. Then the wasicun gripped a rock and slammed it against Tacante's chest. The young Sicangu rolled away, momentarily stunned. The guard picked up the knife and shouted triumphantly. But when he pounced, Tacante jumped away, and the drawn knife struck only rock.

Tacante now pinned the wasicun's arms and dug a knee into the intruder's back. The white man screamed in pain.

"Your friends are all dead," Tacante told the wasicun. "See how Wakan Tanka punishes those who cross our country, stealing the game which feeds the hungry children in winter."

The wasicun strained to twist his head around to look at the man who held his life, who was lecturing him in his own language. Tacante's voice was ghostly, haunting, and he saw the terrifying effect it had.

"Don't finish him," Sunka Sapa suggested. "Leave him for the Sahiyelas."

The wasicun must have understood the Lakota word for the tribe he knew as Cheyenne. He shouted loudly and shook one arm free. But before he could escape, Tacante forced his victim's face into the ground. The wasicun struggled vainly. Tacante recalled the cutting done on the spectacled wagon boy and felt a chill grip his insides. He took his knife and made a single quick thrust into the wasicun's vitals. There was a gasp, and then the life went out of him.

"Hau!" Hokala howled, showing off the scalp he had earlier taken.

"Hau!" Tacante echoed as he cut a square of hair from the wasicun's scalp. He then took a cartridge belt, a small pouch of gold coins, and the wasicun's fine new rifle. Waawanyanka stripped the rest of the clothing, for all the people were in want. After collecting every useful piece of equipment, the Lakotas gathered the seven wasicun horses, together with ten pack mules, and headed back to the warrior camp near the middle fort.

Such fights proved the value of a good plan. Not all raids ended with such success. Many of the wasicun wagon parties now carried the many-firing Winchester rifles, and ten men so armed were as good as a bluecoat army. Other times some young warrior riding to his first fight would give away the trap and expose his companions to murderous rifle fire.

The Lakotas continued to make the wasicun travelers pay a dear toll for crossing Powder River, though. Warriors died, but so did the wagon people. As for the bluecoats, the woodcutters and supply trains suffered worst. But by late summer the soldier chiefs had grown smarter. Now the woodcutters went in large bands, and cavalry never left them undefended.

Mahpiya Luta took note. These wasicuns were no longer fools. They fired often at the decoys, but now they never followed into the jaws of a Lakota trap. The fort was too strong to attack. Only the woodcutters remained vulnerable. So it was decided to attack the next group that ventured beyond the shadow of the fort's walls.

The opportunity was not long in arriving, for the wasicuns needed wood for cooking. They sent a party out early in the morning, and Tacante was among the hundreds of Lakotas who followed Mahpiya Luta to a grassy clearing encircled by fourteen wagon boxes. The wheels were being used to move logs. The boxes had been used for a horse corral.

The woodcutters had formed a train of these log-carrying wheels and started for the fort. It was the chance Mahpiya Luta had hoped for. He motioned toward the log people.

"Hau!" a band of young Oglalas shouted. In an instant the young men rode down on the woodcutters. They cut the mules from their harnesses and drove the animals off in triumph.

The rest of the warriors guarded the trail in hopes the bluecoats might try to get their animals back. They didn't. Now the woodcutters hurried from the pines to the box corral. Some had seen the many Lakotas and spread the alarm. Surrounded in the open, with no mounts, they must certainly perish.

"Look!" came a cry. "Wagons!"

Mahpiya Luta beheld a train coming from the fort. Instantly a band of warriors charged, and the wagon soldiers turned and desperately fought their way back to the protection of the fort. Now there were only the woodcutters to finish.

"Hau!" Hokala shouted as he raced ahead of Tacante to join a band of Sihasapas. Tacante glanced around until he saw Sunkawakan Witkotkoke. Crazy Horse stood beside his pony, hurriedly painting his hailstone medicine on his chest. Tacante held his captured rifle high in one hand and urged the Horse to lead the fight.

"Come!" Hokala screamed from the direction of the boxes.

"Tacante," Cehupa Maza pleaded. "We must go!"

Tacante saw Sunka Sapa join Hokala. Now there could be no more waiting. Already the first warriors were closing in on the wagon boxes. He could not delay. His place was with his brother Sicangus.

Waawanyanka arrived moments after Tacante, and the five friends howled fearlessly as they whipped their ponies into motion. The wasicuns were hiding in the boxes or behind sacks of supplies or oxen yokes. It mattered little. Tacante had often jumped his pony over taller objects than a wasicun wagon box, and the thin-skinned boxes had no power to hold back a bullet.

"Hau!" the warriors cried as they charged. "It's a good day to die!" And then, as if thunder had split the heavens, the wasicun bullets struck the charge.

Two Sihasapas were the first to fall. Then a young Oglala's horse went down. Waawanyanka's pony fell, too, and the Watcher only barely avoided being trampled.

Tacante turned away and hurried to where Waawanyanka stood helplessly watching bullets tear at the nearby earth.

"Hau, Waawanyanka!" Tacante shouted as he raced by. The Watcher managed to grab Tacante's extended hand and pull himself up behind him. A howl of approval followed the rescue.

The attack against the boxes was going badly, though. The Lakotas had failed to penetrate the circle, and now the warriors raced back and forth firing arrows and bullets toward the boxes. Their hidden enemies returned the fire, striking down horses and riders. Even when the Lakotas hung off the sides of their mounts, wasicun bullets could find their ponies. Drawing fire might work if others were preparing to charge from another side, but most of the warriors collected on the nearby hills and watched the murder.

Sunkawakan Witkotkoke then appeared. His was a skill unseen in others, for his power was great to inspire the young men. He called out his war cry and urged a fresh attack.

"Ride hard at the wasicuns," he said. "Then stop and let them shoot. They will stop their shooting and reload. Then we will strike."

Tacante left Waawanyanka safely out of rifle range before turning to follow the Horse. There was a great feeling among the young men. The Horse had thought of a good plan, and the young Oglalas and Sicangus had the courage to follow it.

The plan didn't work, though. First the wasicuns shot many of the lead warriors. The survivors waited for the shooting to halt, but it never did. A steady torrent of bullets struck down one after another of the brave hearts.