Ashes of Heaven (27 page)

“He can surrender if he wants to!” Wooden Leg shouted, his eyes glaring in anger. “But when he offers to help the soldiers go in search of killing our old friends, then White Bull has a bad heart!”

Left-Handed Shooter, an older man, clamped his hand on Wooden Leg's shoulder and said, “Perhaps White Bull is still grieving the loss of his only son.”

Antelope Woman knew no one would mention Noisy Walking by name. He was now among the dead—ever since that afternoon the pony soldiers came riding down upon that great encampment beside the Little Sheep River.

“Perhaps you are right,” Iron Shirt agreed. “But White Bull seems very much at peace about his decision.”

“I think White Bull wants a new wife,” Roan Bear said. “I saw how he looked at Twin Woman while we were at the soldier fort.”

“Twin Woman?” Antelope Woman asked. “My brother wants to make a wife out of Lame White Man's widow?”

“Yes,” White Thunder answered. “Both he and Little Chief have eyes for her.”

“Then White Bull is guided only by what is stuffed in his breechclout!” Wooden Leg sneered. “Not by what is in his heart!”

She started for the young warrior, her eyes narrowed into slits, her hands brought up like claws. “You take those words back and swallow them again!”

But Roan Bear and White Thunder caught her, held her so she could not fling herself upon Wooden Leg.

“This is strange,” Wild Hog said. “What White Bull has done to help the soldier chief is very, very strange.”

Oh, how Antelope Woman wanted to believe that White Bull truly had done the right thing. How she wanted to believe that her brother's powerful medicine was still as strong as the day the
Ma-heono
raised him out of that hole in the ground without moving that huge boulder. In this terrible time when the
Ohmeseheso
had nothing more than one leader or another to believe in, Antelope Woman wanted so badly to believe in her brother.

But Old Wool Woman had returned with even worse news for many in that village. “I was not going to come back with the others,” she explained as a large circle of women gathered around her. “Instead I was going to wait at the soldier fort with those who became scouts.”

“Your daughter, Fingers Woman—she is healthy?” a voice asked.

“Yes, but my heart is heavy and cold because Crooked Nose Woman has killed herself.”

“Killed herself!” Antelope Woman shrieked. “Aiyeee!”

All around them women began to wail and pound their breasts, pulling at their hair while Old Wool Woman told the story. “I caught up to the peace-talkers headed back here. To tell them the story. I thought it best to come tell all of you the sad news from my own lips.”

“Shahiyela do not kill themselves!”

“This is an evil omen!”

But Old Wool Woman tried to console the terrified crowd, “She was an unhappy woman only because her suitor did not come with the others to the soldier fort.”

Like so many others at that moment, Antelope Woman wanted desperately to believe that such a terrible thing was not an evil portent of things to come.

But—as if all of that news wasn't enough, as if the spirits had arranged recent events to shake her faith and trust in both White Bull and his bedrock faith that things were bound to get better—the following day seven
Ohmeseheso
horsemen showed up at their camp. These riders had come all the way north from the White River Agency! Like Spotted Tail, the seven emissaries bore gifts of tobacco for the Council Chiefs; they had come to tell their people they should surrender only at their old agency. Not at the Elk River fort. Not at the Spotted Tail Agency either.

“No one there has been punished for fighting the soldiers,” one of the couriers declared.

“You have nothing to fear!” explained a second rider.

Crazy Mule asked, “They are not taking away your ponies and your weapons?”

“See here!” a messenger cried, holding up his rifle in one hand, the reins to his pony in the other. “Do you see a man before you with no weapon and no pony to ride?”

The crowd laughed, but it was a good laughter—one washed in relief. Many began to murmur that perhaps Little Wolf and Morning Star had been right all along to want to go south to the White River Agency. Far better than surrendering at the Elk River fort, it would be a place they already knew. In addition, the Little Star People would be sharing the agency with them. The
Ohmeseheso
had many friends and relations among the Little Star People, had even intermarried with them. Yes, it would be good to be close to them once more.

“But we should see if the Bear Coat will promise us as much!” Sleeping Rabbit declared.

“Yes,” echoed White Thunder. “If he will give us what Three Stars Crook will give us, then we do not need to go south any farther.”

Two Moon offered, “I will go back to the soldier fort with some other chiefs. We will see if the Bear Coat will give us all of what Three Stars promises.”

One after another the chiefs and headmen and warrior society leaders declared they would accompany Two Moon to the soldiers' fort to see what concessions they could wrest from the army there. Soon there were more than ten leaders for every one of Antelope Woman's fingers who said they would go north to talk to the Bear Coat.

They would surely get the soldier chief to give them what the Three Stars had offered them in the south.

But if the Bear Coat could not … then all of the
Ohmeseheso
would have no better choice than to march for the White Rock Agency together, abandoning the Northern Country.

Leaving her brother a prisoner on the Elk River.

Chapter 22

18-23 March 1877

BY TELEGRAPH

THE INDIANS.

General Sheridan Coming West.

OMAHA, March 6.—General Sheridan, accompanied by Colonel Sheridan, of his staff, arrived here today, and proceeded west on the Union Pacific train to Cheyenne, whither the general goes to perfect the spring campaign against the hostile Indians. The river at this point is rising rapidly.

“Who's that white man with the chiefs?” Nelson Miles roared at his officers. “Could he be a renegade mercenary?”

Minutes ago the cantonment's soldiers were put on alert with the arrival of more than 160 Cheyenne and Sioux from the wandering village located somewhere in that country between the Tongue and the Powder. Outside the log hut that served as his office and private quarters, the situation was tense as nearly all those warrior horsemen remained on the backs of their ponies, while only their chiefs dismounted to stride purposefully toward the crude log headquarters hut.

White Bull suddenly burst from his wall-tent, quickly shoving the big brass buttons through the holes in his tunic as he prepared to meet old friends.

“General Miles!” the white stranger cried as he came to a halt with the chiefs and held out his hand.

“Yes, I'm General Nelson A. Miles,” he said guardedly as his officers flowed up on either side of him protectively, watching every movement made by the stranger's hands.

“I'm William Rowland, General,” the man declared. “Come north from the Cheyenne agency down on the White River to talk the bands into surrendering.”

“That makes you an agent of General Crook.”

The man smiled, finally dropping the hand he had been holding out. “No, I came north with Spotted Tail on my own. I'm married into the tribe. Got Cheyenne relatives—my wife's people and all. Our son came with me too.”

Now he really felt a prick of anxiety. “Spotted Tail? The Sioux chief?”

“Yeah, that's the one,” Rowland agreed, and went on to explain how the Brulé leader had marched north from the reservation with 250 warriors and all those gifts from the agents for the Sioux and Cheyenne holdouts.

“Gunpowder too?”

“Yep, powder for their guns, General. But it weren't the army sent that powder with Spotted Tail. And it weren't the agents neither. It was the traders—”

“Damn those traders!” Miles roared. “They're always going to make sure these war chiefs come in close enough to trade for more, aren't they?” Then the colonel whipped his arm in a wide arc across those chiefs arrayed right before him. “So, what brings you with these men to my doorstep?”

Rowland rubbed a red eye, irritated by the glare of sunlight glancing off the bright snow. “When these leaders wanted to see if you could give 'em good as Crook offered 'em, I figured I'd come north to translate … if you want me to.”

Miles glanced at Bruguier. The half-breed shrugged and went back to chewing on the piece of hard-bread he held.

“All right,” Miles replied. “Let's have us another talk with these chiefs and see just what it is Crook's using to bribe them.”

After the ceremony of smoking the pipe and offering some food to his visitors, Miles slowly wagged his head, growing exasperated as the squawman explained just what the hostiles had been offered to surrender with the Sioux down in Nebraska.

“And Spotted Tail told them they wouldn't have to give up their ponies or weapons?”

“That's what they was promised.”

“How can Crook really offer them an agency here in the northern country?” he grumbled, turning to his cadre of officers who stood against the walls of the hut. “This isn't his department—so it damn well isn't his land to commit!”

Taking a step closer to the colonel's desk, Rowland explained, “General Miles, these leaders don't know nothing about that. They only come to see if you can give 'em good as they was offered to surrender down south.”

“I know, I know,” Miles declared, waving a hand at the white man. “It's perfectly understandable that these chiefs should want to go where they think they will be best treated. I can't blame them.” He pounded a fist into his open palm. “But it's plain as thunder there's something else afoot here.”

For the next few moments, Miles gazed over the Cheyenne and Sioux chiefs who had come to wrestle more concessions out of him, after he had unequivocally spelled out the army's terms of surrender. On their last visit, these leaders had led him to believe they were going to return to effect their surrender!

Now that elation soured like milk left out in the sun. Anger roiled inside him, but not so much an anger at these chiefs. His was a deep, abiding resentment for George C. Crook, for Alfred H. Terry back in St. Paul, for the quartermaster corps downriver who, all winter long, had seen to it that Tongue River Cantonment was deprived of nearly everything it took to provision a post of such strategic importance.

Finally his eyes fixed upon White Bull, sitting there among the others in his army uniform, his braids topped with a black slouch hat. The Cheyenne holy man looked grave.

I'll bet he understands the seriousness of the dilemma I'm facing, Miles thought. He's turned himself over to me as a hostage, and sworn in as one of my scouts. Now he finds his people might not surrender here to me, after having given their word they would.

Miles felt a sudden flush of sympathy for White Bull.

“Rowland,” he said suddenly, “tell these chiefs I will talk with them again in a couple days.”

“Couple days—”

“Two, maybe three. Explain that I want time to consider the import of what they've asked of me. I've already spelled out terms of surrender, but I will nonetheless reconsider their case. Tell the chiefs, while I will not feed or house the warriors who accompanied them here, I will provide tents and food for them while they are waiting for our next parley.”

After angrily brooding on the situation that had been dropped in his lap, Miles met with the chiefs three days later. In that time some of the warrior society headmen had become surly, growing indignant at being made to wait by the Bear Coat.

“They say they're free men, General,” Rowland translated as everyone in the tiny office settled in for the conference, after the pipe made its rounds. “Most of them young bucks don't figure they've got to hang around waiting for you to come up with something as good as what they was already promised down south.”

“You tell them they will not dictate terms of surrender to me!” Miles snapped, feeling the first fracture in his restraint. “Tell them they are a defeated people, and as such,
I
am the one who will dictate terms to them!”

It was plain to see how Rowland's translation affected the leaders. The warrior society headmen began to murmur and shift about outside the log hut as those at the doorway passed on what was being said between their leaders and the soldier chief.

Miles glanced over at George W. Baird. “Lieutenant, I want you to calmly, and without showing alarm, excuse yourself and alert the units that we may have ourselves some trouble coming to a boil.”

Rowland started, “Go slow at this—”

“What're your orders, General?” Baird interrupted the interpreter.

“Ready their weapons, and prepare to surround the Indian camp at a moment's notice. Now, move calmly, and don't give any of these Indians a reason to be alarmed by your departure.”

As the adjutant slipped from the hut and made his way across the open ground, threading his way through more than 150 warriors, the squawman continued to translate, “General, they said maybe they won't go in either place. Maybe they'll go on hunting. Winter's going to be over soon and Spotted Tail told 'em your soldiers aren't going to be up here much longer—”

“Won't be here much longer!” Miles bellowed like a branded calf. “Where the hell did they get that idea?”

Rowland admitted, “Someone down at Red Cloud told Spotted Tail this isn't a fort, that your soldiers are here for a short time, and they'll be gone come spring—”

“You tell them that if they don't start south for Red Cloud's Agency,” the colonel growled between gritted teeth, fuming, “and they won't surrender here—I'll come looking for them! And we'll have ourselves another fight like we did in January. You tell them I'm ready to be mean to them in war … or I'm prepared to be nice to them in peace.”