Reap the Whirlwind (37 page)

“Maybe need a whole lot of cannon to blast ’em out, eh?” asked one of the old miners.

“Lots of artillery and grapeshot’d do the trick,” echoed another one of the fortune seekers.

The whole group fell silent for a few moments, most turning their head this way and that to study the countryside.

“Got to admit, the going’s been getting tougher ever since we left Goose Creek,” the first old miner observed.

“Yeah,” the second agreed, “Injuns get in rough terrain like this—be hell for any army to pry ’em out again without that artillery.”

“There’s a place called Dead Canyon, not far up yonder,” Grouard informed the group.

“Dead Canyon?” Reshaw asked.

“Only heard of it. Never been there myself,” Grouard replied. “Heard tales of it being deep, and dark.”

“We ain’t marching in there, are we?” growled a miner.

Grouard shrugged. “We can only tell Crook what he should and shouldn’t do. The rest is up to him.”

“Sonofabitch!” one of the miners grumbled. “Sounds like that Clifford fella was right. The red bastards are probably laying for us right up there in that Dead Canyon.”

Another of the civilians grew animated. “Yeah! Crook marches this army in there—ain’t none of us coming out!”

Still, those fears were not generally shared by those come here to the valley of the Rosebud. Here and there, up and down the gentle slopes, the soldiers and civilians laughed and lounged in the sun, talked and told stories, smoked their pipes, or played cards and checkers. Another ten minutes passed as some of the Crow challenged a few Shoshone to race their ponies in sport.

Now a full half hour gone, spent here waiting for the Crow scouts to return with a report. Not far away Captain Andrew Burt was raising his talented voice in song, fragments of the tune carried to Donegan sounding familiar. Crook himself sat down for a rousing game of whist with Bourke and Nickerson at the spring about four hundred yards back from the head of the column.

To the Irishman as he looked over the whole assembly, all in all, the morning’s halt seemed more befitting of a summer outing than a military campaign.

It was closing on half past eight.

Seamus lay back in the grass, feeling its cool, tickling caress on the back of his neck when he swept his long hair aside. He thought of Samantha. To enjoy her here, oh—to see the look in her eyes as she took in the rugged beauty of this valley.

Distant, scattered echoes of gunfire drifted over the ridges to the north.

Donegan rose on one elbow, straining to listen over the laughter and chatter, over the singing and the clamor of the allies’ pony races nearby.

“Them damned Crow again,” someone grumbled behind Seamus.

Another voice replied, “Yeah—shooting more buffalo.”

A third added, “Red bastards gonna go and scare off the goddamned Injuns before we can pitch into ’em.”

More gunfire interrupted the talk. Concentrated shots this time. Seamus sat up.

That was not the sound of a buffalo hunt.

He glanced over at Grouard—found the half-breed gazing at him, his eyes half-lidded. They nodded together as they rose from the cool grass. Nearby Pourier and Reshaw were getting to their feet as well, and some of the curious packers and miners were beginning to mumble among themselves.

One of the civilians asked, “What the hell’s going on, Donegan?”

Another pried a louse from his beard and inquired, “Something wrong?”

Closer … steadily closer … came the gunfire reverberating from the ridges and hills immediately to their north.

“Something is wrong, boys,” Seamus declared almost too quietly to be heard. He turned, finding the piebald gelding on some good grass a hundred yards away. He hadn’t taken its saddle off, only loosening the cinch and dragging the bit from its mouth so that it could graze more easily.

“Frank—what say you and me go take a ride?”

Grouard nodded, acting every bit as calm as the situation demanded of them both. “Let’s go have us a look, Irishman.”

As the sun had reluctantly weaned itself from the sky yesterday, the hundreds upon hundreds of warriors began to stream from the village on Sundance Creek. In large bands, in small groups, pairs, and some men on their own—the painted horsemen mounted up and tore south into the night behind their war chiefs.

Vowing to protect the great encampment filled with their women and children.

They would stop Three Stars’s soldiers.

Wooden Leg rode with the Shahiyena following Young Two Moon, son of Beaver Claws, as well as his uncle, Two
Moon himself, and Spotted Wolf, the hero of their fight on Powder River. With them rode one woman, the sister of Chief Comes in Sight. Among them were the six-times-ten, warriors chosen by Charcoal Bear and the other shamans to don the powerful buffalo headdresses that would make their wearers bullet proof.

Some of the riders carried new rifles, the .44-caliber repeaters white men preferred to call “Winchesters.” Others had only old one-shot rifles, smoothbores, and fusils. Some brought their Spencer repeating carbines and old Sharps military guns. In addition, most carried war clubs and quivers on their backs, filled with the short bows and the reassuring rattle of arrow shafts.

After making a grand procession that extended around the perimeter of that entire encampment, groups of Lakota warriors started out by different paths to the south while the Shahiyena war leaders chose to push on into the twilight via the banks of Trail Creek, striking the Rosebud eleven miles north of the Big Bend. There the hundred Shahiyena rested awhile, making medicine for the coming fight.

One of the older warriors had carried an ancient lance point with him from the village. On one side of the pink stone, a shaman had scratched the figure of a man wearing a hat with its brim turned up and his head pointed down. A small group quietly sang to the pink stone as they waited for sunrise. During the special prayer, Wooden Leg clutched his eagle wing-bone whistle in both hands and sang his own war song. Next to him swayed another warrior, a man who hummed his own medicine chant. His name was Black Sun, and he wore nothing but his moccasins and half of a blanket lashed about his waist, a stuffed weasel skin tied to his unbraided hair.

The air smelled sweet here before dawn: the perfume of the rosebuds, the heady wildflowers of blue and purple, orange and white, all in bloom across the slopes, the dawn scented by blossoming crabapple and sweetplum.

The Lakota who followed Crazy Horse out of the camp selected another route: marching up the south fork of Sundance down to Corral Creek, which would eventually feed
into the Rosebud. Strictest with his group, the Hunkpatila war chief resurrected an ages-old practice from the buffalo hunts by assigning his
akicita
to ride along the flanks of the mighty column as a means of preventing any hot-bloods from charging ahead and thereby alerting Three Stars’s soldiers.

Still another, but smaller, force of Lakota chose to reach the upper Rosebud by moving over Sioux Pass. In this group rode the great Hunkpapa shaman, Sitting Bull. Weakened by his recent four-day ordeal and loss of blood, the medicine man struggled to stay atop his pony during the furious night ride to confront the soldiers. Time and again others suggested Sitting Bull turn back, that he had no business riding into the coming battle.

Steadfastly, he refused.

“My body may be too weak for me to fight the enemy,” he told his companions beneath those clouds hovering over Sioux Pass as the sky began to drizzle a cold rain. “But I will come so that I may pray during the battle. So that I can offer my words of encouragement to our young men as they slaughter Three Stars’s soldiers.”

Yesterday Wooden Leg had followed the admonishment of that proven warrior, Spotted Wolf, and kept his war pony near at hand.

“Young one, better to tie up your pony near your lodge. Be sure you do not let him eat too much grass. If your pony’s belly is not full, he can run a long, long way. But if you let him eat his fill, he will grow tired on you when the battle is but half-finished.”

“Thank you, Spotted Wolf,” Wooden Leg replied.

The older warrior smiled. “I tell you this because I like you. Because I want you to take a leading role in the coming fight.”

“I will,” Wooden Leg said confidently. “Many scalps will be mine.”

The sky to the east turned gray in the passing of the storm, and the morning’s stars winked into life behind the dissipating clouds. Now the various Lakota and Shahiyena warrior bands flowed together once more just north of the Big Bend of the Rosebud. All the smaller groups approached
with caution, coming in with the warning hoot of the owl to let the others know.

The hundreds. Maybe as many as ten-times-ten-times-ten again. Who could count for sure? Many of them had been hardened in conflict with the Raven People and the Snake, had experience riding into battle against the soldiers. Some of these, however, had fought only with the white agents on the reservations, struggling for rations and allotments to feed their families. Now that the white man’s promises rang hollow, with as much weight as a hollow caterpillar’s cocoon, these men had brought their families north to the land of the free tribes. For perhaps the first time, they would fight in earnest.

It made Wooden Leg’s heart swell with such fierce pride as he rode along with the many while the sun rose in the east. Not far to go now—and they would hurl themselves into the teeth of Crook’s cavalry. Horse soldier against horse soldier.

Among the Hunkpatila waiting beside the creek for the sun to arise there arose some quiet talk in a tongue that Wooden Leg did not understand, although he was made very curious by the tone of the voices.

The one who was known as Jack Red Cloud was making a great show of removing something from a large, special pouch tied over his shoulder. From the soft skin pouch he unfurled a magnificent headdress so long that when he put it on, the double-trailer of eagle wing-feathers still dragged the ground. Wooden Leg wondered how so young a Lakota warrior could have earned so many coup-feathers. Wondered why this Oglalla with the shiny, silver-mounted Winchester wore the headdress of a mighty chief.

Even the young man’s fellow Oglalla and Hunkpatila appeared in sympathy with Wooden Leg’s feelings, so it seemed. Many turned away, refusing to give Jack Red Cloud his admiring audience, every veteran warrior clucking his tongue in grave disapproval that Jack should dare to wear a headdress clearly not won with his own exploits in battle.

It was here in this meadow near the Rosebud that the Shahiyena camp police told the hundred that the war chiefs wanted everyone to wait a while longer. Little Hawk, the
discoverer of the soldier column, advised everyone that the soldiers must be close by, not far down the Rosebud. Acting on that advice, the Lakota and Shahiyena chiefs selected two young men from each tribe to ride forward and inspect the country immediately to the south from a high hill Wooden Leg could see off in the distance.

“If you spot the soldiers, do not allow them to see you,” Crazy Horse instructed these forward scouts. “Return to me and report how many soldiers you have found. How many of the Raven People and Snake horsemen you count.”

Before those scouts had gone but half the distance to the far hill, a few of the remaining warriors began to slip past the Lakota’s
akicita
and Shahiyena Dog Soldiers. The excitement grew contagious, more than any man could bear. In a matter of heartbeats all the hundreds were urging their ponies forward at a walk. Wooden Leg rode among them, sensing the sharp tingle of anticipation like the coming of prairie thunder that would raise the hairs along his arms. His breath grew short, the thrumming of his heart at his ears—exactly as the rest of these young men must sense their own rising hunger for battle.

Far ahead the chosen four reached the slope of the distant hill about the moment Wooden Leg thought he saw a wavering along the skyline.

Two … then three … perhaps more figures. Horsemen!

They swirled in the wavering shafts of heat as the morning’s new light warmed the earth.

The distant horizon swam with liquid figures darting this way and that.

Try as he might, squinting and rubbing his eyes—he could not make out the objects. Perhaps only more of the buffalo herd that blanketed this country.

Then there arose a murmur among the warriors around him. Rising voices. Louder talk and pointing.

Then the first, distant shots.

Gunfire!

The immediate cry of war songs from the front of their wide procession.

And the instantaneous, mad pounding of heels against pony ribs.

The hammer of thousands of hooves against the ground.

Their great battle had begun.

Hopo!

Moon When the Grass Is Up

H
e was the last to turn and flee in the face of the bullets
the Sioux flung their way.

Just staring down the slope at those hundreds upon hundreds of onrushing horsemen would be enough to make any man’s heart falter.

That sight only gave Plenty Coups the resolve to stay long enough so that he could cover the retreat of the others as they began their race back to Lone Star’s soldiers.