Ashes of Heaven (10 page)

Then Seamus realized just what a bone-headed idea that was. For a full year now she had been reading those brief newspaper accounts of the army's campaigns, just like the officers' wives who stayed behind each time their men went off to fight with Crook or Mackenzie or Miles. A year ago now he had marched off to the Powder, and the Rosebud after that. Then Donegan traipsed all the way to Slim Buttes, and back to Camp Robinson, before trudging his way north again to the Red Fork of the Powder where the Fourth Cavalry jumped the Cheyenne. Donegan had rounded out this last year in hostile country when he marched up the Tongue, only to run into Crazy Horse again.

Looking down at the newsprint rattling in his cold hands, Seamus realized this wouldn't be the first story his dear Samantha would read on this war with the Sioux and Cheyenne. He swallowed hard, knowing it wouldn't be the last story she would read about this dirty conflict either.

He straightened his back, dragging the back of his hand beneath his nose, and started for officers' quarters and that room where Samantha always waited for him to return from his campaigns, the room where she and their son held on and … waited.

From the big pocket on his blanket-lined canvas mackinaw, the Irishman drew out the small, tin, penny whistle. Laying his big fingers over the holes as he neared the snow-covered porch, Seamus gave the fife a tentative blow. Slowly dancing his fingertips off and on the holes, he surprised himself by making sounds with the thing.

He smiled and stomped onto the porch, kicking snow from his tall boots. He happily carried the newspaper and some hoarhound candy for Samantha this morning. And the penny whistle to play for Colin Teig while he bounced the boy on his knee.

What child wouldn't be fascinated by the sound of that tiny tin flute? Why, maybe with a couple of months' practice, Seamus could pipe a few songs for his son before riding north again to rejoin Miles and his Fifth Infantry for their spring campaign.

For this farewell, Colin Teig might just be old enough to have some limited understanding that his father would be away for some time, that his father was riding north into enemy country to finish a long and bloody war.

Finish it at last.

*   *   *

Esevone
*
sat protected in a newly constructed lodge of buffalo hides that stood at its prescribed place, here at the center of the great, curving crescent of the camp circle.

While it was not as grand a lodge as the one destroyed by Three Finger Kenzie's troops on the Red Fork, this was nonetheless the finest place the Sacred Buffalo Hat had resided in the two moons since Coal Bear had escaped that doomed village and fled into the mountains with the powerful religious object.

Coal Bear laid another limb on the fire and sighed in satisfaction. He watched the thin tendrils of smoke climb toward that place where the newly peeled lodgepoles were joined with the tight wraps of rope. The buffalo hides the women used to sew together the lodgecover were so new, so white, they hadn't begun to darken with countless fires, as had the old Sacred Hat Lodge the soldier destroyed.

The frost-stiffened doorflap was pulled back and his wife ducked inside, carrying a small armload of firewood she had gathered along the banks of a nearby creek the Lakota called the Rotten Grass.
†
She dropped her wood to the left of the door, bent briefly to lay her hand on his shoulder, then left the lodge to continue her search for wood. Coal Bear scooted the small iron kettle closer to the burning limbs, then dropped some chunks of red meat into the steaming water.

Days ago they had stumbled across some buffalo. Thanks be to the Everywhere Spirit! They had found enough of the beasts to feed the village.

But not before some of the Lakota had decided to part company with the
Ohmeseheso.
Four Horns and his small band of Hunkpapa departed for the Elk River, hoping to find Buffalo Bull Sitting Down before the great chief crossed the Medicine Line into the Land of the Grandmother. All the Sans Arc and the
Mnikowoju
under Lame Deer had started away to the northeast, intending to wait out the rest of the winter in that country around the Antelope Pit River.
*

People said even Crazy Horse was thinking of having his Little Star People tear down their lodges and strike out for the Little Powder River.

“Maybe the buffalo have returned,” Crazy Horse had declared. He was trying to explain to the headmen of both the Lakota and the
Ohmeseheso
why he was considering a return to his beloved Powder River country.

For Coal Bear, any country where there wasn't a white man, where the army did not march, that was good country.

Hunting had grown better the closer the camp drew to the foothills of the White Mountains. But the village was large, with far more than a hundred lodges, many mouths to feed, and all those ponies to graze. The headmen had begun to consider that perhaps it was time to part company now that it appeared the soldiers were no longer dogging their trail. Perhaps now there would be some security for the villages for the rest of the winter.

They had killed far too many of their ponies before they ever stumbled across the buffalo herds. Poor, gaunt, starving ponies butchered at every camp as the
Ohmeseheso
marched south, then west after their fight with the Bear Coat. For a long time they camped at the mouth of the Prairie Dog where it flowed into the Buffalo Tongue River. But with each new day the hunting grew more and more disappointing.

Now that the other Lakota bands had dispersed to the four winds, Crazy Horse's Little Star People and Coal Bear's Shahiyela had finally stumbled onto a few buffalo. Not in the numbers the old priest remembered from his youth, but enough bulls and cows that his hungry people would no longer worry about starving that winter. Perhaps there might be enough hides for the women to scrape and tan to replace those lodgeskins left behind, burned and destroyed by the soldiers.

In the days that had followed, the Lakota-Shahiyela camp traipsed after the herds from the mouth of Rotten Grass Creek, upstream from the Sheep River,
†
as the buffalo slowly migrated toward the Little Sheep River. There in that protected valley, the shaggy beasts appeared content to stay as winter continued. The
Ohmeseheso
were content to stay with the buffalo on the Rotten Grass, buffalo that were a sign that
Esevone
Herself was continuing to bless Her people. Day after day, the women raised a few more new lodges against the sky, their whiteness like brilliant cones flung against the pale, winter blue.

Besides Coal Bear and Box Elder—that old, venerable, blind prophet who had foreseen the attack by Three Finger Kenzie—all four of the Old Man Chiefs gathered here in this village that formed a great crescent: Little Wolf, Morning Star,
*
Old Bear,
†
and Black Moccasin. This north country was land the Ohmeseheso believed was their hunting ground, granted them from the time of the Great Treaty at Horse Creek.
#
Here they were not disturbing any white people. Perhaps, just perhaps, the fighting was over.

But, Coal Bear scolded himself: only a stupid man would believe that the soldiers wouldn't be marching come the spring grass. If the Bear Coat marched when the winter winds howled, then he would surely have his soldiers marching once the ice in these rivers and streams began to groan and creak, breaking up as the weather warmed.

But for now Coal Bear's heart was strong. His people were exactly where
Esevone
had led them—to the buffalo that would sustain them until spring.

His heart warmed with that thought, Coal Bear smiled and decided he would venture out to help his woman bring in more wood. Emerging from the lodge, he gazed into the sky at the pewter-colored globe obscured behind the thickening, gray clouds. Perhaps there would be more snow before nightfall. As he took those first steps away from the door, a loud voice stopped him in his tracks.

Coal Bear turned at the cry.

A second voice shouted in alarm.

Now some were pointing in the direction of the Little Sheep River, wagging their arms toward the low hills at the eastern fringe of the valley. Could they have sighted soldiers?

Protectively, the priest stepped back to stand directly in front of the lodgedoor. Here again he would guard
Esevone.

Then, out on the flat prairie, he saw them. Two riders coming slowly toward the village. Straining his old eyes, Coal Bear tried to focus behind the pair, but there were no others. Only two. One rode a saddle with stirrups, the other without. Perhaps bareback.

By now three young warriors had leaped atop their own ponies and were dashing toward the strangers. As Coal Bear watched, the two riders spotted the trio and suddenly kicked their big horses into motion. The animals burst into a gallop. As the horses raced toward the village, it became easier to see that the strangers did not ride on poorly fed, winter-gaunt Indian ponies. This pair rode on big American horses.

Horses so fast that they managed to race past the young warriors. Big horses picking up speed as their riders pointed them right for the middle of the village crescent.

They were coming straight for Coal Bear's lodge!

In the space of three pounding heartbeats the riders were nearly upon the Sacred Hat Keeper. Even before his horse stopped, one of the strangers leaped to the ground, landing no more than the length of two bows from Coal Bear himself. The priest stepped back, gazing up at the other rider who brought his big horse to a halt. The animal snorted and pawed at the icy crust of snow.

“Coal Bear!” that rider called out in the tongue of his people. “My heart is full of song to see you!”

Then the stranger pulled back the blanket from his face and Coal Bear now saw that the rider was a woman.

“O-Old Wool Woman?”

How was this? She was a prisoner of the Bear Coat—

“It is me!” she cried with happiness, her wind-burnt cheeks wet with tears.

Rocked with confusion, Coal Bear suddenly turned to stare at the other rider. His dark skin, something about his eyes—was he Lakota? If so, he was wearing the strangest clothing, white man's clothing to be sure.

“It really is you!” a female voice called out. The speaker lunged to a stop at Old Wool Woman's knee.

“Antelope Woman!” Old Wool Woman blubbered, reaching out her hand to the younger woman who held up her hands to the returned captive.

Without warning the dark-skinned stranger stepped right up to Coal Bear, yanked off his horsehide mitten, and held out his empty right hand to him. Coal Bear stared down at it a moment as the village grew noisy around them. He looked back into the stranger's face, then glanced quickly at Old Wool Woman's face, finding her happy eyes crying, before gazing behind the stranger. Warriors, women, and other head men raced up on foot.

In confusion, Coal Bear turned back to the dark-skinned man a moment before the stranger suddenly withdrew his hand. How quickly the man's black-cherry eyes narrowed in fear as they darted across all those people rushing toward them. Just as Coal Bear turned to Old Wool Woman, about to ask who her companion might be, he saw her stab her head toward the lodgedoor. A signal for the stranger.

In that instant the stranger ducked to the side, scooting behind Coal Bear to plunge into the lodge before the old man could twist around to stop him.

“Old Wool Woman?”

Coal Bear wheeled around again at the sound of Little Wolf's voice. The Sweet Medicine Chief had reached Old Wool Woman's knee, looking up at her astride the back of the tall American horse.

She was crying hard now, sobbing so hard she was unable to utter a word. Yet at the same time she was laughing as she sank from the saddle and touched the ground. Arms stretched out for her, countless arms. Other happy, wet faces emerged from the crowd, all of those eyes as teary as hers, their cheeks rubbing together in welcome as the many cried together.

“One who was lost has now returned!” Morning Star hollered above the tumult.

“One who we thought dead,” Coal Bear croaked with a shaky voice, feeling the tears sting his own eyes as he stepped forward to embrace Old Wool Woman, “has come back to us alive.”

She stepped into the old priest's arms, laying her leathery cheek against his chest where she sobbed and laughed, then laughed some more. Around the two of them women sang in tremolo and trilled their tongues, while children cried out and men sang their courage songs. Such happiness Coal Bear's people hadn't had in a long, long time.

In the midst of that joyous reunion, the Sacred Hat Priest bent his head, putting his lips beside Old Wool Woman's ear, and whispered, “Who is this stranger who takes refuge in our sacred lodge?”

Chapter 8

Big Hoop-and-Stick Moon
1877

Old Wool Woman could not believe it—how she could cry and laugh at the same time.

Antelope Woman would not let go of her hand from the moment Old Wool Woman dropped to the ground. Patting that bony hand, stroking it, squeezing it while so many others pressed close, all of them chattering like a flock of noisy magpies.

She could barely speak, hardly get a sound out, there was something thick clogging her throat. She could not remember ever feeling this way before, at least not since that warm night when her family heard a young man playing his flute outside their lodge and her father told her she should go out to listen because the flute-player was a brave, honorable young man. No, he was not wealthy, nor would he be able to bring many ponies to a young bride's father, but her father said that the young one was a good man. Old Wool Woman hadn't felt this way, hadn't sensed such utter and exquisite joy since that night when she ventured outside her family lodge and let Black White Man play his love songs for her.

Oh, how she wished he were here for her to return home to. How she wished her sons and daughter were here to welcome her among her people. But her sons were dead, and Fingers Woman was a captive at the Bear Coat's fort.