Wolf Mountain Moon (40 page)

Very late in the afternoon, after a grinding march of some fifteen miles at the mercy of a drenching rain, the column went into bivouac about the time the wind began to quarter around, for the first few hours of that night blowing out of the west. But just before dawn on the sixth the wind pounded at their backs, howling directly out of the north again, with the steely tang of snow in its bite.

Chapter 24
Hoop and Stick Moon 1877

W
ooden Leg watched the soldier column through those first fat flakes of snow as dry as alder leaves became in late autumn. The wind caught them, spun each one in a whorl, then scutted them along the ground. At times there was no sense in trying to shade one's eyes to peer into the downriver distance. But for a moment, perhaps no more than a heartbeat or two, the wind dance of the snow stopped as if the sky suddenly held its breath … while the young Shahiyela
warrior could see clear enough to make out the shapes of the soldier scouts, walk-a-heaps, and wagons plodding out of the first pale light this stormy dawn.

“They won't give up,” Yellow Weasel said dolefully.

Wooden Leg wanted to turn to the older warrior and tell him just how much of a fool he was for ever thinking the white man would give up.

But instead of angering Yellow Weasel, Wooden Leg swallowed down his youthful impulse and said quietly, “With my own eyes I have seen what the soldiers did to Old Bear's village on the Powder last winter. Understand that there is something that does not let these
ve-ho-e
soldiers give up their chase of our villages. No matter the distance. No matter the cold.”

Wooden Leg would know. Born in the Black Hills near the Sacred Mountain, this was his nineteenth winter—having matured in many ways over the last three seasons of fighting the white man. Now a member of the
Hemo-eoxeso,
the Elk-horn Scrapers warrior society, he cast a long shadow upon the ground: there were only two
Ohmeseheso
warriors who stood taller than Wooden Leg.

How he would have loved to ask Yellow Weasel why any man could think the
ve-ho-e
would ever give up following the villages … but instead Wooden Leg bit down on his tongue. Sometimes it was more honorable not to say something than to show the foolishness of another.

“Go on now—
vo-ve-he,”
^*
Sits in the Night ordered Beaver Claws, one of the younger scouts in his pack of wolves. “Ride back to our village to tell Crazy Horse, to tell the chiefs. The soldiers come on this morning!”

They all watched the youngster leap onto the bare back of the spotted pony, then pull his blanket about him. Beaver Claws kicked the animal in the flanks and leaned far forward as it spurted off into the snowstorm. Wooden Leg breathed deep of the sharp air. He hadn't been able to sleep all that well last night wrapped in his one blanket and buffalo robe, cold as it was. They made themselves no fire, even after the whole long day of rain. Instead, the wolves had huddled in a cottonwood grove through the night as the winds shifted and the rain changed to an icy snow.

As soon as it grew light enough to see the far bank of the river, they moved out—quietly on the soggy, sodden, snow-covered ground. Watching the veil of snow and foggy mist until they saw signs of the
ve-ho-e
fires, listening until they heard the white men laughing, grunting, talking in their camp before they would continue their pursuit of the village for the day.

The weather this morning would slow the soldiers down even more, Wooden Leg thought. It was good, because the chiefs had calculated that the Bear Coat's men should be within attacking distance of the village by that very afternoon. But while the ponies and travois could disappear quickly over broken ground, up the mouth of a coulee and into the far reaches of a distant canyon, the
ve-ho-e
soldiers were invariably held back by their slow animals, by the sheer bulk of those wagons hidden beneath the dirty, oily canvas stretched tight over iron bows.

All the wolves had to do today was stay just out of sight, but right in front of the army in its worming march. Close enough to keep track of the Bear Coat's progress, but far enough away that they would not be discovered again as they had been a few days before. Those were their orders from Crazy Horse. In fact, Sits in the Night's wolves were instructed to build the fires in those campsites the soldiers had come across the last two days: let the scouts find the fire pits still warm; leave behind a few old ponies ready to die anyway … all those sorts of enticements that would draw the Bear Coat farther and farther into their trap.

The white man always went for the bait.

Wolf Tooth, another leader of their scouting party, threw up his arm just ahead of them. They all halted. Listening, straining their eyes into the snowy middistance. A thin layer of wispy fog clung to the leafless willow, surrounding the copse of cottonwood. They waited. Then suddenly Wolf Tooth pointed. And Wooden Leg saw.

There, not very far away, came the three, no four … now five horsemen—their animals with their heads bowed, plodding slowly into the fog and surging snowstorm.

“Go back,” Sits in the Night ordered sharply.

The others turned their ponies quickly at the command. But Wooden Leg was the last. He wanted to get himself a little
better look. After all, he hadn't seen such creatures since last winter on the Powder River.

Out of the swirling, wind-whipped gloom they appeared again. Just as they had on the southern edge of Old Bear's camp that morning only heartbeats before the soldiers had charged in with their pistols drawn.

Army scouts.

“Hotoma!”
Wooden Leg whispered into the wind, calling upon the mysterious bravery medicine of a
Tse-Tsehese
warrior.

Oh, how he yearned for the trap to close!

Wooden Leg hoped that this time the ones who led the soldiers to the villages would be the first to die.

By the time it was light enough to see on that sixth day of January, it was plain there was a prairie snowstorm in the process of working itself into a lather up and down the Tongue River Valley.

Snow whirled in this direction and that—up, down, and sideways on a cutting wind that made it all but impossible to keep the fires lit. Men stood about in their blankets at breakfast fires—grumbling, stomping cold feet back into frozen boots that had never fully dried out, never come close to warming, snowflakes readily clinging to the damp weave of their wool coats or matting on the wet, stringy buffalo hair of their winter overcoats and those heavy leggings lashed to their belts. At least it warmed the blood to curse a man's officers, his commander, and perhaps even the unseen, taunting enemy who kept on disappearing farther and farther up the valley.

An enemy who was always just out of sight. Just beyond reach. Nothing more than a wisp of smoke—like that smoke needling off the puny fires they had eventually abandoned early that Saturday morning.

From time to time just below the hulking clouds Seamus got himself a glimpse of those distant gray-and-purple-shaded Wolf Mountains once more being dappled in white with the approaching storm. Throughout that morning and into the afternoon the column was again forced to cross the Tongue several times as the sandstone buttes closed in on one side; then a mile or so farther they shoved themselves close to the other bank. Hours were consumed with excruciating physical
labor as relays of men were ordered up to join Lieutenant Oscar F. Long's engineering crew in chopping away at the frozen mud of the banks, to lay down as much deadfall as they could find to corduroy the approach, and to hack away at the creaking, splintering ice before the mule and ox teams were able to trudge through the shallow water of the Tongue with each crossing.

First one, then a second, and finally a third Indian camp they passed through. That dreary afternoon in the midst of the icy snowstorm, the scouts came across some gaunt, wolfish, half-starved Indian ponies the village had evidently abandoned. Nearby in the midst of some lodge rings a half-dozen small fires still smoldered in the driving snow.

Late in the day Donegan halted and stared south into the dance of white against the ever-changing background of leafless bush and striated sandstone butte. He watched the Crow trackers and Buffalo Horn disappear ahead of them in the white smear.

“Luther, there's a reason they're letting us get this close.”

Kelly stopped beside him, for a long moment staring into the swirl of snow as he raked the hoarfrost from his mustache. “We're catching up with 'em, that's all. And they surely know we're on their tails.”

Wagging his head, Seamus continued, “The ground … what Crazy Horse has chose to make his stand—it can't be all that far now—”

The sharp crack of carbines shattered the snowy stillness of the air, answered by a half-dozen yelps, cries, and squeals of surprise.

No more had Donegan and Kelly kicked their mounts into motion and yanked pistols from their holsters than two horsemen appeared in front of them, heading straight for the white scouts. Both the Irishman and Kelly raked back the hammers on the pistols as the two warriors started screaming while they kept on coming.

“Hold it!” Seamus hollered. “It's Leforge's boys!”

“Damn if it ain't,” Kelly growled.

The pair shot past, crying out in their tongue, their long hair flapping out from beneath the wool hoods of the blanket coats.

Kelly shook his head, asking, “Where the hell's—”

Another shot, this time a pistol … then a second.