Wolf Mountain Moon (63 page)

T
ioheynuka Wi.
Moon of Frost in the Lodge.

They had barely survived the Moon of Hard Times. With no buffalo to be found and very little game, and with the way one winter storm followed on the heels of the last … the Crazy Horse village had been limping from one place to another after packing up and leaving the Buffalo Tongue River country in a hurry.

He Dog reined up his pony, turning to look down the slope into the valley where the long procession trudged through the snow and wind. Warriors dotted the hillsides along their route toward the White Mountains,
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keeping a wary eye trained on the distance for any army columns prowling through this broken country. At each camp it seemed there were fewer lodges to come down and start away on that day's journey toward the foot of the mountains, where they hoped to find buffalo for meat and hides. And hope.

To find buffalo for hope.

So many had already given up all hope of living in the old way with the Hunkpatila of Crazy Horse. Most often they slipped away late at night, taking down their lodge if they had one, gathering their few belongings, leading their skinny ponies
away from the camp circle in the dark and the rain or snow, sneaking off toward the agencies.

The village was not a grand cavalcade any longer.

The Shahiyela had buried their war chief, Big Crow, in the rocks. The Crazy Horse people had left behind two bodies upon the scaffolds they had erected high in the forks of the great old cottonwoods. He Dog knew one of them well—a friend named Runs-the-Bear. A brave Oglalla who had stayed to fight until the last. Both of the dead were very brave men who gave their lives in that fight at Belly Butte, their bones now resting high in the trees, resting for the ages—for the wild animals to pick apart, for the sun to bleach, for the winds to sigh over for all seasons to come.

And there were the wounded. Many wounded. How they must be suffering with the cold, with this journey the chiefs ordered. Then two more died. Two more high scaffolds. More women and children left without a man to protect them. Yet the others healed. For the rest of their days they would carry scars of their fight in the winter blizzard, but they had healed.

Like the pony belonging to the young Shahiyela named Medicine Bear. Struck by one of the big iron balls fired from one of the wagon guns, the hair along one flank had been completely scraped off in a long streak, right down to the bare hide. But now, as the raw abrasion healed, the track of the iron ball on its flank began to grow white hair. A white as brilliant as sun-struck snow.

The Great Mystery had protected both horse and rider during the battle and had gone on to mark that pony with a sign.

The warriors of the Hunkpatila and the Shahiyela could do no less than protect the shrinking village.

After watching from the hills He Dog hesitated returning to the camp at the end of each day's march. The children would be crying from empty bellies. Women would be wailing for their dead, their faces tracked with tears and ashes, their arms and legs gashed in mourning. There was little hope left in the people.

Even in the eyes of Crazy Horse.

This strange man, He Dog's good friend, no longer had the special light behind his eyes. No longer seemed to carry a fire in his belly. Crazy Horse surely heard the same sad crying,
the same wails, He Dog thought—the same mourning all the rest of us hear.

Eight suns after the soldiers had started north with their prisoners, scouts for the village finally ran across a small herd of buffalo high up on the headwaters of the Buffalo Tongue River, near the foothills to the White Mountains draped in a thick winter white. Hunters killed all they could before the rest ran so far away, the tired ponies could not fight the deep snow to follow.

Wearily the women and children had stumbled through the icy drifts, doing their best to follow on foot in those paths beaten by the warriors' ponies to reach the fallen beasts. There were not many—but enough that the people ate well that night. There was more talk around the fires too, and even a little laughter. Laughter! For once in a long, long time the faces showed more than the shadows of death-approaching.

They all saw that the most seriously wounded warriors got the choice cuts, sucked at slivers of the heart dipped in gall to build their strength, thicken their blood. Next to be fed were the old ones and the children. And finally the strong women and warriors ate their fill. What was left they wrapped in the green hides and tied to the travois when the village moved on the next day.

Would they ever find a place where they could rest in peace? He Dog wondered. Or would they have to keep on moving, endlessly moving? Attempting to stay one step ahead, a half day ahead, of the soldiers?

Those people who had slipped away to sneak off to the agencies—he wondered how they were faring now. Was there ever enough pig meat, enough moldy flour, to fill all the bellies, ever enough of the paper-thin trader blankets to keep all the bodies warm against the cruel bite of the wolfish wind?

And for the first time He Dog truly hoped there was enough at the agencies to take care of his people who had given up and gone in. Because there wasn't enough buffalo left anymore. And what blankets the village had not been forced to abandon, what blankets the army had not captured and burned, surely those were not near enough to keep the little ones, the sick ones, the women warm as they trudged on through the winter snows beside the skinny ponies pulling the near-empty travois.

More and more he found himself praying there would be enough at the reservations for all who fled there.

Much of the rest of each day He Dog brooded about his friend. Was Crazy Horse like the rest of the
Titunwan
and
Tse-Tsehese
warriors? Was he finally tired of all the fleeing, the fighting, the running and the killing … enough to take his own family in to the agency?

Was Crazy Horse ready to surrender?

Would their battle with the Bear Coat at Belly Butte really be the last fight for Crazy Horse?

Was it to be the last fight of the once-mighty Lakota warrior bands?

The thought caused He Dog to shudder. How could any fighting man ever turn over his guns, give away his ponies, sit in the shade of agency buildings, and wait for the
wasicu
to hand out the rations?

He Dog hung his head as the people below went into camp along a little treeless creek. There would not be much shelter from the snarl of the wind this night.

He felt like a plum that had its juices squeezed from it: hollow, dry. Dying.

Oh, how he wanted to hope, wanted desperately to believe that Crazy Horse would never be anything less than a warrior.