Ashes of Heaven (25 page)

“White Bull is the most handsome scout the Bear Coat has working for him!” Hump stepped up to cheer in the Shahiyela tongue. “Perhaps I should stay with him now and get a uniform of my own.”

“I will stay with White Bull and my brother too!” cried Horse Road, Hump's younger brother.

Turning to Old Wool Woman, the holy man said, “Tell the Bear Coat that he will need more soldier uniforms for his new scouts.”

“More scouts?” the soldier chief echoed in surprise at the translation as several more of the delegation stepped forward, all offering to stay with White Bull, offering themselves as scouts.

While more of the men came forward to present themselves to the soldier chief, White Bull glanced to the left where the three captive women stood, looking on. Fingers Woman was the daughter of Old Wool Woman, and Crooked Nose Woman was Old Wool Woman's niece. But the holy man felt his heart flutter when he caught the third one watching him with special eyes. Twin Woman she was, the young widow of Lame White Man who had been killed in the fight with the soldiers at the Little Sheep River.

A woman such as her should not have to live without a man, he thought. She would make a good wife for him, and a good friend for his first wife. He could provide for two women, White Bull decided, feeling her eyes locked on him, admiring his new blue soldier clothes.

Then suddenly he became aware of another man who had been watching how Twin Woman's eyes remained fixed on White Bull. Little Chief strode out of the crowd and stopped before the Bear Coat.

“I too will be a scout for you,” the war leader declared. “I will wear your soldier uniform and fight your enemies for you.”

It was plain as the winter sun that Little Chief, half-
Ohmeseheso
and half-Lakota, who was leader of his own independent band of people from both tribes, was equally taken with Twin Woman and was not about to let White Bull claim the widow without a contest.

“Very good,” the Bear Coat said. “Big Leggings tells me your name is Little Chief. I will make you a scout like White Bull.” He added with a sweep of his arm, “I will make you all scouts for me.”

It was a good thing, White Bull thought as he looked over the eight others who volunteered to stay with him at the fort. Then he slyly sneaked another glance at Twin Woman, hoping that someone like Old Wool Woman would explain to the widow how he had been the first to volunteer to scout for the Bear Coat, the first to say he would stay behind when the others left for the village.

He hoped Twin Woman would come to know that he had been the first to offer up his life for the good of his people.

Chapter 20

Light Snow Moon
1877

BY TELEGRAPH

DEADWOOD.

More Indian Raids and Fighting.

DEADWOOD, D.T., February 26.—A courier from the military camp forty miles north of this city to-day reports that Lieutenant Cummings, Fifth cavalry, attacked a small Indian camp on the 23rd. The Indians fled through the ravines, leaving seven ponies and all their property. Lieutenant Cummings captured a large herd of sheep, a small number of cattle, sixteen ponies and Indian robes and blankets. After the soldiers had gone into camp at night, the Indians returned and made an attack, which was promptly repulsed. One Indian was killed, no whites injured. Indian signal fires were seen in all directions. The command is moving southward to-day to meet the supply train which has been ordered from Camp Robinson and has not yet arrived.

Those who had volunteered to stay behind at the soldiers' fort, those who had offered to act as scouts for the Bear Coat, stood now with Old Wool Woman as the rest of the delegation mounted up, preparing to leave for their journey south to the village.

Besides White Bull and Little Chief there were five others. Hump, the Lakota chief, and his brother, Horse Road, and three more of Old Wool Woman's people stood with her, gazing upon those who sat atop their ponies around Old Crow and Crazy Head.

She felt Crooked Nose Woman brush her elbow as she sadly turned away. Old Wool Woman watched her niece trudge off, her shoulders slumped as if she refused to tear her eyes from the ground. Ever since that day the delegation had arrived at the fort, Crooked Nose Woman had grown increasingly despondent, pining in that broken-hearted lover's way. She was still so young, only twenty-two summers, Old Wool Woman thought. Too young to believe she would never love again.

True, ever since their capture by the soldiers, Crooked Nose Woman had grown deeply depressed. Held prisoner at the Elk River fort, she had despaired of ever seeing her people again. But when the delegation from the village appeared, she perked right up. Then as soon as she learned that her suitor had not joined the group coming to talk with the Bear Coat, Crooked Nose Woman began to sink again.

The old one felt sorry for Crooked Nose Woman, but realized they would all be back among their people very, very soon. All things would be better then. There would be shelter from the remaining snows, and food enough to fatten the little ones. There would be blankets for the old ones, and at long last there would be an agency for the Northern People.

But while Old Crow and Crazy Head were the acknowledged leaders of the group who would return to the village, it was Two Moon who shook the Bear Coat's hand and spoke through Big Leggings. “Do you see that trail up the Buffalo Tongue River?”

The soldier chief stared into the distance a moment. “Yes, I see that trail my soldiers took to fight at the butte. I see the trail your people followed in coming here.”

Two Moon nodded, saying, “That is the trail I will return by. I have picked out a camping place for the village, there—in the thick timber above your soldier fort.”

“I wish you God's speed, Two Moon,” Miles replied.

“I shall not make a crook in my trail coming back here,” Two Moon concluded, “but will come straight.”

Moments later, Old Wool Woman stood watching the delegation disappear among the trees in the mid-distance.

She raised her left arm, holding it aloft. Praying they would hurry back here with the village—

The gunshot surprised them all. And it scared Old Wool Woman down to her roots.

For a moment, she thought White Bull's group was under attack by the soldiers. Then she feared for the departing riders. But in an instant, Old Wool woman realized only one shot had been fired. A sharp crack—unlike the boom of a rifle.

Immediately White Bull and the others whirled on their heels and sprinted toward the sound. Soldiers were coming from everywhere, guns adorned with those long knives clutched in every pair of hands. A sudden shrill scream erupted from the same direction they had heard the shot.

The crowd surged to a stop right in front of the log and canvas hut where the Bear Coat kept his prisoners. Inside, that shrill scream was growing. It sounded like Fingers Woman, Old Wool Woman's daughter.

Pulling at the soldiers' arms, jabbing with her hands, shoving with shoulder and hip, Old Wool Woman fought to pierce the cluster of soldiers milling outside the prisoners' hut. The moment someone shouted English words, the soldiers moved back, parting to allow her through. Leaping through the open doorway, she discovered Fingers Woman on her knees, crouched over Crooked Nose Woman.

Her daughter screamed, clutching Crooked Nose Woman against her as she rocked. Old Wool Woman collapsed to her knees beside Fingers Woman. She took her daughter in her arms and stroked her head.

“You aren't hurt?”

Fingers Woman sobbed. “No. But Crooked Nose woman is dead.”

That much was plain to see. The dead woman still clutched an old pistol in her right hand. The bullet hole in the middle of her forehead oozed a trickle of blood.

“Is this her gun?” Old Wool Woman asked.

“Yes,” Fingers Woman croaked.

“Where did she get it?”

“From her brother, Wooden Leg,” she explained. “Some time ago—when we left for our journey to Tangle Hair's band on the Pretty Fork.”

Old Wool Woman could not believe it. “She's had that gun all this time?”

“Yes—she kept it hidden from the soldiers under her dress, inside a legging—”

Turning, Old Wool Woman recognized the loud voices. The soldier chief and Big Leggings were pushing their way against the door where they stopped suddenly and stared at the scene below them.

“Is the woman dead?” the half-breed asked.

“She is dead by her own hand,” Old Wool Woman explained. “This is her pistol, which she had on her when we were captured.”

The Bear Coat's eyes narrowed as Big Leggings translated her words. Old Wool Woman was sure the soldier chief realized what danger he had been in all that time one of the prisoners had concealed a pistol. He said something to the half-breed.

Bruguier nodded, then knelt and retrieved the pistol from the dead woman's hand. He turned it over to the soldier chief who spoke again.

The interpreter said, “Why would she kill herself? If she had this gun all this time, and she didn't try to break free with it—why would this woman kill herself?”

Old Wool Woman turned to her daughter, holding Fingers Woman there in her arms. “Can you tell us anything that will solve this mystery?”

She nodded her head once, then swiped her hands across both cheeks. “Crooked Nose Woman wanted a lover to come for her. She did not want to be a prisoner any longer and when he did not come for her with the others … she knew he did not love her.”

“Her husband?” Bruguier asked.

“No—a man she hoped she would marry. A man she hoped would love her the way she loved him—more than life itself,” Fingers Woman replied. “She asked the other peace talkers who came to see the Bear Coat, asked them about her lover. But they told her the man did not seem to care for her, that he went off hunting instead of coming to see her.”

Bruguier asked, “This is why she killed herself?”

Fingers Woman nodded. “Since the man did not come for her with the others who came to talk to the Bear Coat, she said life was not worth living any more.”

“When did she tell you this?” Old Wool Woman asked.

“Yesterday afternoon when White Bull became a scout and the Bear Coat gave the rest some food to take with them to the village,” Fingers Woman explained. “Then she talked about it again last night when we laid here in the dark and all the rest of you were asleep. And finally … she said she would kill herself again just moments ago when she walked in here crying, lifted up the bottom of her dress and pulled the gun from the top of her legging—”

“I will go catch up with the others,” Old Wool Woman said as she started to get to her feet. “It would be good for me to ride back to the village with them, so I can tell her family what has happened here.”

“She killed herself because the man she loved did not come for her?” Bruguier asked again, apparently having trouble understanding the senseless suicide.

This terrible winter had claimed one more life, Old Wool Woman thought as she stepped from the cabin door onto the noisy snow.

With a cracking voice she turned back to the half-breed and said, “So many of my people have died in this war … I pray this peace we are making with the white man will put a stop to the killing.”

BY TELEGRAPH

THE INDIANS.

A Band of Sioux Surrenders.

CHICAGO, February 27.—A dispatch received at military headquarters from the Cheyenne agency says that 230 Sioux arrived there yesterday from the hostile camp on Tongue River. They surrendered their arms and 300 ponies.

The Shahiyela called him Long Knife.

His wife's people gave him that name more than twenty winters before, back in 1851 when William Rowland came west along the Great Platte River Road, a young man hungering for adventure. When the west was still wild and free—and so were the warrior bands. Back when more than ten thousand of them came to Horse Creek near Fort Laramie to make a treaty with Broken Hand Fitzpatrick. That very same autumn the Cheyenne split into two bands: one that lived south of the Moon Shell River,
*
and the other that roamed the Northern Country.

Not long after he had hooked up with that half-breed French trader named Bordeaux, Rowland took a shine to one of the Cheyenne girls who always seemed to be hanging around the trader's canopy, smiling at him. She was the daughter of Old Frog, one of the chiefs who had refused to sign the treaty.

Rowland made the young woman his wife, and took to the blanket with relish. Because of the huge “Arkansas toothpick” he had come by back along the Mississippi, his wife's people gave him that proper Shahiyela name—Long Knife. Oh, all that he had seen in his years out here: even happened to be in a nearby camp close to Laramie when that stupid Lieutenant Grattan marched in, aching to show some bluster and bravado, and got his entire detail wiped out.

Rowland took up the wandering ways of the Shahiyela: hunting buffalo, trading robes with the civilians who set up shop on one creek or another in western Nebraska, or what was then called Dakota Territory. His large extended family was close at hand in the autumn of 1858 when his woman gave Rowland his first son. They named the boy Willis. Two winters later, James came along.

Things had been pretty quiet during the War of Rebellion back east. None of that mattered a lick to William. He didn't have anything left back there anyway. Not any family. Not a piece of ground. Nothing more than dim memories before coming west to this new life.

But when that war ended, the white man got interested all over again in the west. Like most of the northern bands of the Shahiyela, Rowland managed to stay out of the army's way for the past ten years. Then one terrible day last winter, word came that the pony soldiers had attacked Old Bear's camp. With soldiers starting to stalk the north country, the lone white man somehow managed to convince his wife's relations they would be safer living on Red Cloud's reservation. He took his family south where he began to pay for his keep with odd jobs around the agency, even interpreting when the agent or the army needed to understand a little of the Cheyenne tongue.