Wolf Mountain Moon (36 page)

Just as Spotted Elk watched Crazy Horse.

What were they to do as leaders? Because the hunters could find too few buffalo that winter, their people were hungry. There weren't enough hides to make lodges where every man, woman, and child would stay warm. And because this was the coldest winter any of the old ones could ever remember, many of the Lakota were sick.

Not just the red, raw noses sore and cracked inside because of the cold, dry air … but more and more were becoming truly sick. Even Black Shawl—the wife of Crazy Horse. In her chest rattled the dry rasp of death-coming. Spotted Elk never saw her without a piece of cloth she would use to cover her mouth each time she coughed, bringing up flecks of blood and tiny pieces of her lungs.

So Spotted Elk watched Crazy Horse, feeling sick in his spirit for the Shirt Wearer—for both of them knew it was only a matter of time before the woman took her last, painful breath.

Then no one knew for sure just what the Strange Man of the Oglalla would do.

Would he find himself another wife, who would be like a balm to soothe his mourning? Or would he be so consumed with grief that he would abandon his responsibility to his people and finally wander off from the village for good? So consumed with hate at the
wasicu
and his diseases that he would single-handedly attack the soldier column because he no longer wanted to live?

There really was no telling, Spotted Elk decided—because Crazy Horse was not acting like himself these recent days of endless cold. At one time Spotted Elk would have declared he knew what was held in the heart of Crazy Horse … but no longer was he so sure. Never before would he have thought Crazy Horse the sort of leader who would keep his people in the village by force. This was a strange thing for Crazy Horse to do: ordering his
akicita
to kill the ponies of those who tried to sneak back to the agencies, to cut up their lodges, break their lodgepoles, steal their powder and bullets.

Aiyeee!
This was a strange and terrible time for the Lakota
people who tried hard to remain steadfast in their loyalty to the great mystic of the Oglalla.

Maybe it was as Crazy Horse tried to explain. “You see,” he told the other camp leaders, “I make it plain what will happen to any who attempt to return to the agencies.”

“What are you so afraid will happen to those who go in?” asked Long Feather.

“The
wasicu
will shoot them,” Crazy Horse declared.

Many clamped their hands over their mouths in amazement.

“This is not a strange or silly notion,” Crazy Horse argued. “Just look what happened to our chiefs who went to talk to the Bear Coat about surrender.”

“Perhaps Crazy Horse is right,” He Dog said to that hushed council. “There is no life in surrender. Only death—death from the white man's diseases, from the starvation, perhaps even from the
wasicu's
bullets once the soldiers and agents have robbed us of our weapons and we can no longer protect our families.”

For a time there even the Shahiyela wanted to break away. When Crazy Horse decided the village should head on up Hanging Woman Creek toward the eastern divide, Little Wolf, Morning Star, and the other chiefs stood their ground and declared that it was better to find game for their starving people if they continued due south, up the Buffalo Tongue River, as fast as possible to get as far as they could from the Bear Coat's soldiers.

Those had been hard days for Crazy Horse, with his friends wanting to desert the struggle, and hearing no word from the Sitting Bull camps. And now the Shahiyela were going their own way. Yes, Spotted Elk ruminated: it must have made Crazy Horse feel very lonely. With all the bands deciding to take their own trail, no more were they a powerful people able to withstand and even defeat the finest pony soldiers sent against them, time and time again.

They had watched Morning Star and Lone Wolf take the Shahiyela south along the leafless cottonwoods bordering the Buffalo Tongue. For three sunrises the Crazy Horse camp had moved up Suicide Creek while the great chief brooded more and more. Eventually, Crazy Horse turned his people around and went south in search of the Shahiyela.

Once rejoined, he told the
Ohmeseheso
that they would all continue up the Buffalo Tongue River to the warm spring near the mouth of Prairie Dog Creek. There they would choose the place where they would make a stand. Here among the bluffs they would await the soldiers.

Hunhunhe!
Shameful the things that so strong a leader as Crazy Horse must do to hold together his fragile confederation at the moment the Bear Coat was marching his soldiers toward their village! What torment for a proud man to swallow his pride for the sake of a thankless people.

Enough shame and torment that even the strongest of Lakota hearts would feel small, cold, and on the ground.

Chapter 22
30 December 1876-3 January 1877

O
n Saturday the thirtieth the column was forced to cross and recross the frozen Tongue more than ten times. The order of the march issued by Miles dictated that the column begin its journey for the day shortly before or at first light. Each morning a new company would take its place at the head of the march in rotation, while other companies moved along the flanks, and a rear guard protected the wagon train.

That afternoon they forded Pumpkin Creek, which flowed in from the east, and made their bivouac for the night in a spot that not only offered water and wood, but was easily defensible if the Sioux should decide to turn about and attempt an attack. At each camp the colonel established a tight ring of pickets, allowed the animals to graze the best they could until dark, then brought the horses, mules, and oxen within the corral of wagons for the night, where the men continued to feed the animals on strips of cottonwood bark.

During their march on the morning of the thirty-first they found the valley growing wider, the spare, naked bluffs on either side of them now topped with stunted pine and cedar. Nonetheless, the twisting path of the Tongue required Second Lieutenant Oscar F. Long's engineering detachment to work far in advance preparing the banks for the supply wagons to cross the frozen river several times throughout that short winter day. Along the trail they passed more than a dozen dead cattle before finally catching up to Captain Dickey's and Lieutenant Mason Carter's battalions. At this point they had put forty-six miles behind them since leaving the Tongue River Cantonment.

That New Year's Eve there was little to celebrate, and most of the weary men were asleep well before midnight, quietly wrapped in their two blankets, back-to-back with their bunkie not long after dark had gripped the land. About all that any of them had cause to rejoice in before they fell into a cold, fitful, exhausted stupor was the fact that they were all together again—seven companies of infantry—along with those two
pieces of artillery, a handful of scouts, and a hot trail left behind by the cattle thieves.