Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866 (11 page)

Without turning to his adjutant, the colonel inquired, “Any civilians in Templeton's party?”

The German cleared his throat. “Yes, Colonel. Two women. A child. Plus an infant and a colored servant girl. Along with a Captain Samuel Marr—retired—Missouri volunteer regiment in the war. Two others traveling north to the goldfields with Marr. Along with a surgeon assigned to our post, named Hines. And a chaplain.”

Carrington turned, his face brightened. His eyes closed as if in momentary prayer.
Margaret will have her clergy at long last, here in the heart of the wilderness.
“A chaplain, you say?”

“David White,” Phisterer answered, again studying his papers. “And … this is interesting—a photographer. Name of Glover.”

“Tell me of the fighting men.” Carrington turned back to watch the sun settle on the Big Horns.

“Only…” He looked up at Carrington, waiting for the Colonel to turn around, “… fourteen.”

Eventually Henry dismissed his adjutant with a nod of his head. Not a word more spoken. Both sensing the dread shared between them. Carrington brooded.

My god. These civilians scurrying north to the goldfields at Alder Gulch like hungry ants. Civilians sent to the slaughter. What are those fools at Laramie thinking of? They heard Red Cloud's threat with their own ears!

The women. Children. And … and a baby. Every last one of them offered in sacrifice.

*   *   *

Louis Gazzous had spent enough winters here on the high plains to understand Indians. But the way Black Horse and his warriors had acted when they drew up to the Frenchman's camp was something altogether different. And more than a little unsettling.

After leaving the conference at the soldiers' camp and climbing north over Lodge Trail Ridge, the Cheyenne had bumped into their old friend French Pete, as Gazzous was widely known from Montana and to Dakota Territory. His years of talking straight and dealing square gave French Pete and his men a degree of safety as they made the annual rounds of villages along the Tongue, Rosebud and Little Bighorn. East to the Powder and west to the Wind River, season after season, Gazzous pulled his creaky wagons into Sioux and Cheyenne camps, trading for furs and hides. Some years he could afford more help than others. This season, French Pete fed five drivers. It would be a good year for trading, Gazzous told himself. Five wagons burdened with buffalo hides would give him the stake he needed to open a small post down along the Belle Fourche. Maybe on south to the Republican.

So many seasons of struggle and hope. Now he had five wagons and a future. So, why did the somber mood of the Cheyenne make him edgy?

Black Horse, Red Arm and Dull Knife did most of the talking around the campfire at twilight when all had finished their supper and Gazzous presented every warrior a tin cup of steaming coffee. Yes, French Pete knew, coffee always loosened tongues.

The chiefs spoke of trading and of wandering south before the season turned cold and the great honkers pointed the way. Gazzous agreed. He felt it in his bones. This would be a winter of cold like no man alive could remember. “A winter in a hundred,” the Cheyenne called it.

With pride, Black Horse and the others showed French Pete their gifts from the commander of the new fort. And as the sun sank with a purple ache beyond the hills, the Cheyenne told his old friend the trader of his new friend the soldier chief. Again and again Gazzous had his Sioux woman brew pots of coffee, dumping sugar in each cup before she handed them to the Cheyenne chiefs. Coffee loosened tongues, Pete knew. And sugar sweetened the talk.

As stars came out, the Cheyenne began trading with Pete in the time-honored way. Hours had been spent in socializing, sharing both talk and coffee. They had retold old stories heard many times before. Now they could trade. But as the Cheyenne laid out a handful of dressed robes for Pete's inspection, a pony's snort crept through the trees. The
crik-crik
of many unshod hoofs trampling across the rocky bed of Peno Creek burst through the sudden silence fallen over Pete's camp.

They were surrounded by Sioux.

A party of more than eighty warriors drew their ponies to a halt, ringing the campsite. Pinning the Cheyenne in with the Frenchman and his drivers. As the flickering tongues of yellow light danced off the high branches of the pines, one warrior kicked a leg over and dropped to the ground.

Man-Afraid strode into the light at the edge of the fire and settled to his haunches, his short bow held loose before him. A slash of a smile on his wolfish face. Without a sound he nodded to French Pete. Then to Black Horse. And Dull Knife. After acknowledging Two Moons, the Sioux chief looked back at the trader.

Pete motioned his wife forward. She poured a cup of the thick coffee, dumped some sugar into the liquid, and set it before Man-Afraid. He drank noisily, slurping those last few swallows most heavily sweetened. With a finger he dug at the soggy sugar trapped at the bottom of the cup. Then wiped the back of his hand across his wet lips.

No Sioux had stirred from their ponies. No Cheyenne had taken his eyes off this feared war-chief who had appeared from the darkness.

“Trader!” Man-Afraid bellowed as he glared at French Pete. “You bring me the mirrors you promised your last visit?”

Gazzous signaled one of his men to the wagon. With his gift in hand, the trader set the heavy burlap sack at the warchief's feet. Hoping the expensive presents would mollify the fiery Sioux leader. “The mirrors you wanted, my friend.”

Without a reply, Man-Afraid opened the top of the sack, pulled one mirror out and inspected it, finally smiling. “They are good, trader. You have done well to bring them to us.”

Pete cleared his throat and wiped his brow, still not sure the gift would appease Man-Afraid. “T-Tell me … do all the Sioux admire themselves—to look at themselves in those new mirrors?”

He was startled as Man-Afraid rared back his head and laughed loudly, the sound of it harsh, like a knifeblade grating across a stone. The rest of the warriors laughed with him. Suddenly the warchief gripped the trader's shirt.

“We do not look at our beauty, trader. These mirrors are for something more important than Sioux beauty.”

“W-What is that, Man-Afraid?”

He smiled, with the look of the badger come to call on a man's hen house. “We learn to use our new mirrors to talk to one another.”

“Talk? You say talk?”

“Yes. From hill … to hill … to hill.”

“Talk?”

“Yes, trader!” His voice showed his impatience as he glanced down at Black Horse. “Our mirrors will talk, using the sun to signal our attacks on the soldiers at the new fort.”

“Signal … signal mirrors. Ahhh, yes,” Pete replied, licking his lips nervously, relieved as the warchief let him go and turned toward the Cheyenne leader.

“Tell me, Black Horse,” Man-Afraid said, beginning the conversation between Indians without the social amenities of a smoke and story telling, “tell me of your visit to the white soldier camp beyond Lodge Trail Ridge. When will the soldier chief take his men south to the old mud fort?”

Black Horse removed the hat he had received from Carrington, feeling Sioux eyes on him as never before. His skin burned under their appraisal.

“The soldier chief, he will not take his men south from our hunting grounds, Man-Afraid.”

The Sioux chief spat into the fire and placed his bow across his folded arms. “He will not leave, is it? I think Black Horse failed to convince this soldier chief that his men will die—every one—if he does not leave our land.”

“He was told.”

“But he was not told with strong enough words. He was not told by Lakota!”

From that ring of ponies and warriors encircling the camp sprang yelps and hoots as the Sioux chided the forty Cheyenne. For the first time Man-Afraid allowed his warriors to heap insults upon the warriors of Black Horse. After several minutes Man-Afraid raised his hand. His warriors fell silent.

“Tell me, Black Horse—of the presents the soldier chief gave you.”

“We had all we wanted to eat—”

“Did they give you the funny hats to eat, Black Horse?”

Like a spring flood over a beaver dam, laughter roared over the Cheyenne seated in the flickering light of the trader's fire. Gazzous wiped his sweaty palms down the front of his greasy blouse, watching in silent terror. When the Sioux warriors had their fill, Man-Afraid went on, at the same time signaling one of his men to his side. Curly moved beside his leader.

“Your bellies were filled? And your heads were covered, eh, Black Horse? Did the white men also fill your heads with silly words and your heart with fear?”

“No.” Black Horse said it as calmly as his old, trembling heart would allow. “The soldier chief said he wanted all Sioux and Arapaho—all Indians in this country—to go to the fort at Laramie. There we should sign the treaty Spotted Tail has put his mark to. There, we can get our presents.”

“We want nothing the white man has to give us!” Man-Afraid roared as he bolted to his feet. That sudden move caused an anxious shift in the Cheyenne round the fire. More Sioux dropped from their ponies. Tightening their noose on the fire-ring.

Deliberately, slowly, Man-Afraid marched round the fire to stand before Black Horse. He bent to spit his words into the Cheyenne chief's face.

“Tell me, Black Horse—mighty chief of the Cheyenne—why is it you take the gifts of the white soldiers when all the Sioux want is soldier scalps?”

Black Horse calmly wiped the spittle from his cheek, aware that the Sioux gathered round his Cheyenne chiefs had unstrung their bows. He sat powerless to stop what was about to happen.

More important, the ancient code of honor among Plains warriors mandated that he take this abuse without the slightest show of pain. He would instead suffer this indignity in silence, robbing his tormentors of much of their pleasure.

“For winters beyond count, the Cheyenne and the Sioux have stood together. We will—”

“You will
what,
Black Horse?” Man-Afraid shrieked, raising his bow overhead. “You will turn your back on this land and its people? You will join the white man in his war on us?”

Savagely he brought the elkhorn bow down along the cheek of the stoic Black Horse. Unflinching, the old chief suffered the brutal blows in silence. In the eyes of the Sioux drawing close, Black Horse saw that his silent, stoic bravery was admired above all else.

Blood oozed from the skin laid opened across the old Cheyenne's cheekbone. That signal released the fury of the Sioux warriors on the Cheyenne chiefs. Curly stood guard over French Pete and his five white teamsters, rifle at ready should they move to help the Cheyenne. Again and again the short, stout bows thumped shoulders, heads, and backs. With savagery the Sioux struck the helpless chiefs, two or more warriors beating each Cheyenne as they shouted their oaths and taunted with vile names.

From the mouths of the Cheyenne rose no protest. No whine. No cry. Nothing but quiet grunts of pain. Black Horse's men suffered their indignity in silence.

“Enough!”

Man-Afraid jerked round. Finding French Pete standing, his hands empty, imploring. The muzzle of Curly's rifle pressed into the trader's chest.

“They … they have had enough,” Gazzous pleaded in Sioux.

Man-Afraid looked down at the bruised and bleeding Black Horse. “Perhaps, trader. Perhaps they have had enough shame. For now.” He motioned his warriors back. They restrung their bows and leaped atop their ponies. Curly backed off, his rifle still pointed at the knot of shaken white men.

At that moment French Pete understood why only he and his drivers had a gun pointed at them. The Cheyenne would suffer their beating in shamed silence. The Sioux knew that. And likewise the Sioux believed only the white man capable of trying something stupid. Like pulling a knife. Or a gun. Only the white man was a treacherous creature that had to be watched. Perhaps exterminated, if he could not be driven from this land.

Man-Afraid circled the fire quickly to stand before the short Frenchman. “Trader, you should be careful of who you choose as friends.”

“All Indians are my friends.” Gazzous tried out a weak smile, running his hand across his dry lips.

“You are wrong, Trader. Man-Afraid has no white friends!”

“We have smoked together many winters, great war-chief of the Sioux. I remember when you were a young—”

“Man-Afraid has told you, trader! I have no white friends.” He wheeled on Black Horse. “You would be wise to choose your friends more carefully, old one.”

Without another word, Man-Afraid and Curly were on their ponies, turning into the darkness at the creek. Gone into the night.

“You must take your woman and the others,” Black Horse whispered to Pete when the Sioux hoofbeats had faded into the darkness. “Bring them with us to our village. We are going to the mountains of the wind. A bad thing—for Red Cloud and Man-Afraid will not be turned away from war.”

Gazzous shook his head. “I cannot go, my friend. My family … these men—they depend on me to trade. To make my living.”

“Then take them all now to the new fort.”

“Tomorrow.” Louis tried out a weak smile.

“Tonight!” Black Horse pleaded. “These Sioux will kill you. Don't you see? You are a man in-between now. Not with the soldiers. Not siding with the Sioux. Man-Afraid holds your life in his hand.”

“It is late.” Pete kicked at the dying coals. “We will go to this new soldier camp in the morning. Soon enough, old friend.”

Black Horse hobbled to his pony, his beaten body protesting. Without another word, the Cheyenne disappeared into the night.

Shivering with a sudden chill, Gazzous reached for his blanket capote. Wondering how he could feel so cold standing near the fire. He turned to gaze into the trees along the creek where the Sioux had disappeared. Then he realized the cold came not from the night air. The cold Louis Gazzous suffered lay at the very pit of him.