Lakota (20 page)

Tacante's heart warmed to know Hehaka was among her family once more. Eagle Pipe would not ride to battle, but he knew how to keep a camp in order, and the little ones would be safe under the watchful eye of their grandfather.

That was a comfort, for the soldiers soon tired of chasing the miners from Paha Sapa. It was foolish to try, one bluecoat told Tacante. Once among the wasicun villages, the thieves were set free.

"We'll punish them," Tacante swore.

It was a grim business, and dangerous, too. The wasicun miners carried rapid-firing Winchesters like the one Hinkpila had given Tacante. Many were good shots, and often a reckless young man charged a wasicun camp and was shot dead. Sunkawakan Witkotkoke drove bands of wasicuns from the hills as he might have driven hares from a thicket.

Tacante preferred caution. These thieves didn't deserve the brave heart fight. No, it was best to catch the miners off alone or perhaps eating their food.

Tacante and Hokala took several young men with them one morning. Waawanyanka, always the keen-eyed one, had spotted miners digging along a nearby stream. The Heart watched carefully as two hairy-faced wasicuns kept guard with rifles as several barebacked companions scooped sand out of the stream with flat tin pans.

It's a bad day for you, wasicuns,
Tacante thought as he stared at his black-faced companions. Hokala silently pointed to the right-hand guard, and Tacante chose the one on the left. He then signaled Itunkala and the other young men to wait.

Tacante and Hokala dismounted and wove their way through the tall pines toward the stream. They were still many paces away when an old man suddenly shouted and tossed his pan in the air. He held a large yellow rock in his hand. The guards rushed down to the stream to join the crazed wasicuns.

"Ayyy!" Hokala cried, jumping atop his man and killing him with a single knife thrust.

"Ayyy!" Tacante answered, raising his rifle and shooting the other guard through the back of the head.

Now the young men screamed and charged the stunned miners.

The older wasicuns immediately splashed across the stream in a frantic effort to lose themselves among the thick trees beyond. One escaped. Two others were cut down by arrows. A younger wasicun threw Sunk-manitu Tanka, the Wolf, from his horse and fought to capture the fleeing animal. Tacante gave a howl and fired his rifle again. The wasicun fell sideways, clutching his side. Wolf fell on the man and put an end to him.

Of the miners, only a few boys remained. Three were scarcely as old as Itunkala, and two others had yet to grow whiskers on their chins. All five fell to their knees and pleaded for mercy.

"Was Uncle Ben made us come," a youngster sobbed. "We knew this was Injun country, but they said we could get rich. Lord help us!"

The boys were frozen in terror by the sight of the Lakotas scalping their companions.

"Tacante, what do we do with them?" Itunkala asked.

The other young men were equally confused.

"They're young," Tacante said. "Perhaps they'll learn."

"My brother, who died at Blue Creek, never had a chance to learn," Hokala argued. "Wasicuns only learn when they are dead."

Tacante looked deeply into his bad-hearted friend's eyes. They both knew, handed Winchesters, these same boys might easily slay a Lakota. Still, it was a bright day, and Wakan Tanka had given a victory into Tacante's hands.

"We'll do as on the stolen road," the Heart declared. "Take their clothes, their shoes, all their belongings. Leave them to walk naked from this place."

The young men laughed at the thought, but Hokala objected.

"They will come back," Badger complained.

"Then they'll die," Tacante said. He then translated his decision, and the young wasicuns stared fearfully at the surrounding warriors.

"We'll freeze, if we don't starve first," a red-haired boy answered for his friends. "It's thirty, forty miles. Can't expect us to walk all that way naked."

"It's for you to choose," Tacante said, drawing his knife from its sheath. "We can end the pain."

The redheaded youngster stared hard at the sharp blade of the knife. He then slid his suspenders off his shoulders and dropped his trousers. The others followed his example, and soon there were five naked wasicuns splashing along the stream, their pale, skinny bodies drawing laughs from men who moments before might have brought their death.

"I'll watch them," Hokala said as Tacante turned toward his horse. "I, too," Sunkmanitu Tanka added.

"Then you should take the wasicun rifles," Tacante declared, motioning for Itunkala to hand over the prized guns. "When we find their horses, you shall have the pick."

"Hau!" Wolf shouted.

"Next time I decide," Hokala said, grabbing the offered rifle and turning away.

Winter fell on Paha Sapa early that year, and the cold sent most of the thieves hurrying back to the towns springing up on the fringe of the hills. The snows were deep, and many of the Lakotas camped in Wanbli Cannunpa's village left for the agencies. Sunka Sapa and Waawanyanka both had small ones not used to hardship. They departed. Tacante remained, though it tore at his heart to see his children shivering in their elk and buffalo hides when the icy wind swept down from the north. Often the Heart huddled with one or the other of the boys, filling their ears with brave heart tales or stories of Coyote or Rabbit. Itunkala sometimes blew his flute or sang in his gentle, soft voice.

"It's not so cold," Cetan Kinyan whispered as he clung to his father's side.

No, Tacante told himself. No pain was great when shared.

Spring promised better days. As the snows melted and the cottonwoods and willows greened, game returned. Men set out in threes and fours to shoot deer and elk. Tacante often brought plump geese or fat squirrels for the kettle. Then one morning Itunkala brought grave news.

"Sunka Sapa will not ride with us to hunt the buffalo," the Mouse explained.

Tacante felt an icy dart stab his heart. Always the Black Dog had been at his side, whether hunting or fighting bluecoats. Itunkala's contorted face told of grave news.

"Where?" Tacante asked.

"On Goose Creek," Itunkala explained. "Sunkawakan Witkotkoke is there now."

Tacante mounted his horse and rode off at a gallop. It was a half day's riding to Goose Creek, but Tacante crossed the hills and streams in half that time. What he saw there blackened his heart. The remains of Sunka Sapa's lodge lay in ashes. The small charred skeleton of his daughter lay wrapped in a buffalo hide. The Dog lay beside the creek, his body stripped and many bullet wounds attesting to the fight put up. Pehan, whose grace had earned her the name Crane, had been dragged into the underbrush. Her head had been crushed with a rock, and the killers had cut a ring from her hand.

"I had only a buffalo hide," Sunkawakan Witkotkoke said, pointing to Sunka Sapa. "I would have covered him."

"It's for me to do," Tacante said, laying his coat over his bloody friend. "Did they leave a trail?"

"A good one," the Horse said, pointing to muddy tracks in the creek. "Your brother will gather a war party. For this, many will die."

Tacante drew his knife and began slashing willow limbs to make a scaffold. There were rocks nearby. Sunka Sapa always liked high places. So did the girl he'd named Wanahcazi, Yellow Flower. But as he worked, Tacante found himself slashing not willow bark but wasicun throats. He stumbled to the creek and stared at his wild-eyed face. It might have been Hokala demanding the deaths of the boy miners. Badger wouldn't be the only one to speak for killing now.

Tacante finished the scaffolds that afternoon. Hehaka and her sisters bathed the bodies and dressed them in the finest garments possessed by the band. Finally Wanbli Cannunpa spoke prayers, and Tacante danced, hoping whatever power he possessed might salve the tortured souls of his slaughtered relatives.

For three days the Lakotas mourned. On the fourth Sunkawakan Witkotkoke led a dozen warriors along the trail of the killers. The faces and hands of the Lakotas were blackened with ashes. It would be a bad heart raid, and much blood was certain to be shed.

The Horse was little changed. He sang warrior songs and urged the sharp-eyed boys to watch for sign. Tacante and Hokala rode on relentlessly. They'd seen in Pehan's silent face her sisters, and the burned child might have been their own.

The wasicuns might have escaped had rain come to Paha Sapa. Many times their trail grew faint, but the rocky ground told its tale, and the Lakotas at last came upon a party of wasicuns gathered around a cook fire.

"It's a good day to die," Hokala declared as he filled his new rifle's magazine.

"A bad day to be a wasicun," Itunkala added as he pointed out three children skipping flat rocks across a pond.

"We kill them all," Hokala growled, angrily turning to Tacante.

"Even them?" Itunkala asked, pointing to the children.

"Is Flower forgotten?" Hokala barked. "All!"

"All," Tacante echoed, hardening his resolve.

The Horse then screamed out a war cry and led the charge. The dozen Lakotas spilled out of the trees and fell upon the surprised miners like a cyclone. Rifles exploded, and lances struck hard. A woman screamed as Hokala fell upon her. Itunkala raced to cut off the fleeing children, two boys and a girl. They stumbled into the pond, then gazed up silently as Mouse notched an arrow.

"My face is black with death," Itunkala chanted, but he could not release the arrow. Tacante struggled to free himself from the grasp of a huge, red-bearded wasicun who was wearing the silver ring Sunka Sapa had given Pehan.

"Billy, run!" the red-beard shouted.

Tacante managed to turn his knife and cut into the big-bellied thief. The wasicun screamed in agony as the blade penetrated deeper, opening him up like a gutted deer. Tacante pulled back as the dying giant rolled away.

"Papa!" one of the boys shouted as he raced from the pond.

Tacante turned toward the frightened child, but three quick shots from a revolver downed the boy. The Heart didn't glance toward the shooter. He didn't want to know who had spared him the task.

Hokala took charge of the other two little ones. The Badger grimly covered their faces with his big hands and stopped their breathing.

"It was for me to do that," Itunkala said when Tacante reached the pond. "But they were so small."

"It's good you couldn't blacken your heart to them," Tacante declared. "Soon I fear we'll all have bad faces, and there will be no softness left."

As the brothers gazed back at their companions angrily slashing the corpses, they shared a muffled moan.

It wasn't possible, as Hinhan Hota had warned, to stem the flood of wasicuns pouring into Paha Sapa. More and more of them came. Mutilated bodies only made them quicker to fire at the first sign of a bronze-skinned rider.

Word came that the wasicuns were sending chiefs to Mahpiya Luta's agency to make peace. Sunkawakan Witkotkoke and Wanbli Cannunpa agreed such peace talk should be heard, and the camp was packed up.

Red Cloud spoke for most of the Lakotas when the peace commissioners offered to buy Paha Sapa.

"Why buy what you are already stealing?" he asked.

Others declared the land was already lost and suggested asking a high price.

But when the warriors gathered, angry voices rose,

"What of the treaty?" some cried.

"You steal our land again and again, kill the buffalo, and now you speak of peace when we fight back?"

Sinte Gleska, Spotted Tail, rode forward to urge calm. His was a voice to be heard, for he, too, had fought as a brave heart youth. Now he had seen too many things to dream of winning a war against the wasicuns.

"Ah, we can never sell the heart of the earth!" Hokala shouted.

"Hau!" the Oglala Little Big Man cried. "It's a good time to begin a war!"

Begin? Tacante asked himself. When did the fighting stop? He'd been born in a time of trial, and it had never ceased.

Blue-coated soldiers now lined up to protect the peace speakers, and it seemed more blood would stain the earth. But again Sinte Gleska spoke, and peace prevailed at Red Cloud Agency.

As was proper before all great undertakings, Tacante built a sweat lodge and underwent Inipi. As the heat burned away his sadness and restored him to the sacred way, he tried not to think of the stolen heart of the country, the hungry-eyed Long Hair, or the peace speakers who couldn't understand there were things which a man didn't sell.

Half a moon later Tacante rode slowly along Platte River toward where the sprawling buildings of Fort Laramie rose from the grassy plain. Itunkala was at his side, babbling a hundred thoughts at once.
Soon,
Tacante thought, /
must find another name for this brother who is growing to be a man.
His dark, bare shoulders were now broad and powerful, and if his voice still cracked and grunted, well, Tacante remembered his own had done the same.

A few paces behind, young Tahca Wanbli rode. A boy of seven snows should ride his own pony, and Tacante had cut out a fine pinto for his firstborn. Hehaka followed the pony drag that carried the younger boys. Hokala and his family came next. Then a few young agency men trailed their elders.