Ashes of Heaven (31 page)

“Is that truly you, Uncle?” he called to the old man.

“Are you truly White Bull?” he yelled back. “I see a soldier, dressed in a soldier uniform!”

As he halted his pony beside that of Black Moccasin, White Bull said, “I am a soldier scout now. Didn't the others tell you?”

“Yes,” he told his nephew as the spotted buffalo milled on either side of them. “I am very proud of you. But what are these creatures you are following?”

“These are gifts from the Bear Coat! Call up the young men,” White Bull turned aside to tell Crazy Head. “Get the hunters to take out their bows. They should kill these animals just the way our people kill buffalo!”

“This is a good place to camp,” Old Wolf declared. He waved his arm at Fast Whirlwind. “Tell our people to make camp here. Our hunters will kill these strange animals, and our women will butcher them as soon as the shelters are up.”

That evening White Bull sat with his relations near the center of that noisy camp beside the Buffalo Tongue River. It had been a long, long time since he had seen this much happiness in an
Ohmeseheso
village. Not since they had defeated the soldiers on the Little Sheep River. Even though some young warriors like his own son had been killed in that fight, there eventually was an unheralded celebration.

So when had the tribe's unhappiness begun?

Not until the morning Three Finger Kenzie destroyed nearly everything the Shahiyela owned. Since that day, nearly five moons now, White Bull's people had teetered on the brink of disaster, starvation, freezing to death. Five moons of growing despair: watching family and friends slowly die. With little game and no time to cure the hides, everyone dressed poorly. On and on they had limped through the winter in their tattered shreds of clothing. Their bellies pinched in hunger, their limbs blackened with frostbite, their wounds festering.

But for the first night in a long, long time, White Bull heard laughter. Lots and lots of laughter. There was drumming and singing that night, but it was the laughter that made the wings of his heart unfurl and take flight.

This was a good thing, he reminded himself. No more war now. Tomorrow they would surrender to the Bear Coat. These people would have enough to eat, enough blankets and tents and shelters. And the
Ohmeseheso
would have their own agency here in their own country. Not simply adopted orphans taken in on the Oglallas' White River Agency.

This was the last night of true freedom—with the war behind them, with surrender yet to come. This was the last night of greatness for the
Ohmeseheso.

“The sad days are behind us, Nephew,” Black Moccasin said as White Bull settled beside him at a fire in front of the Old Man Chief's lodge. “Are you happy to again sleep among your own people tonight?”

“Yes,” he sighed, content in this one last moment for his people. “After so many, many nights, I am among my own again.”

“With the
ve-ho-es'
meat, White Bull, you have brought these people happiness.”

“Look around you, Uncle,” he choked with sentiment. “Look at their faces. Not only are their bellies full tonight, but I think their hearts are full again too.”

Chapter 25

25 April 1877

“Tell them to raise their right hands,” Nelson Miles instructed Johnny Bruguier. “Have White Bull tell them they will swear on their honor just as he did weeks ago.”

He waited while the translations were made in that stuffy room with the door flung open wide to admit as much of the spring breeze as possible. His headquarters staff and a gaggle of Fifth and Twenty-second infantry officers stood with their backs pressed to the wall in that crowded office. More curious soldiers stood staring in at the open door, along with at least a half-dozen faces gathered at that solitary window.

Waving his arm at the eight others who had stayed behind at the post with White Bull to become scouts, Miles said, “All of them have already given their oath, Bruguier. Tell the warriors just in that, like these eight, they too will get their uniforms, weapons, and supplies when they have been properly sworn in.”

Again there were translations given, both in Cheyenne and in Lakota because Hump, his brother Horse Road, and a few of their relations were now standing among more than a dozen of Black Moccasin's men, all of them volunteering to become the Bear Coat's scouts.

Once the arms were all in the air, Miles snapped the crisp page of foolscap before him and cleared his throat. This was a truly momentous occasion. Weeks before he had sworn in White Bull and eight others as scouts. And here this afternoon, three days after they had formally surrendered to the army, thirty more had requested to be enlisted into the army.

“Rowland, Bruguier—tell them to repeat their names for me,” Miles instructed.

That took a few minutes in itself, but he waited patiently until the room fell quiet again.

“I do hereby acknowledge to have volunteered this twenty-fifth day of April 1877 at Tongue River Cantonment, Territory of Montana, to serve as auxiliary scout in the Army of the United States of America—” Miles wondered how in hell the half-breed and the squawman were going to translate
auxiliary
for the Sioux and Cheyenne, when neither man likely understand the term.

“Better you tell them this,” he explained when both interpreters' brows knitted; it was plain enough now that they were having trouble with that word. “Just say: to serve as warrior scout in the Army of United States of America.”

And he waited while the two nodded, turned away, and continued their translations.

“For a period not to exceed six months,” he said, and then thought better of it. “Instead, tell them, for no longer than six moons, unless sooner discharged by proper authority. That will be me, fellas. Unless sooner discharged by me.”

After waiting until the translations were done, Miles continued. “I do also agree to accept such bounty, pay, rations, and clothing as are, or may be, established by law for volunteers … er, for such warrior scouts.”

He went on reading from the page he held before him in the afternoon light, “And I do solemnly swear that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the United States of America, and that I will serve honestly and faithfully against all her enemies or opposers whomsoever; and that I will observe and obey the orders of the President of the United States, and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the Rules and Articles of War.”

Phrase by phrase, line by line, sentence by sentence—they had gotten through it again. He, Bruguier, and Rowland, along with these thirty Cheyenne and Sioux warriors.

Chances were good that among these volunteers were fighting men who had stymied Crook at the Rosebud. Warriors who had crushed Custer's command. Among these thirty were enemies he himself had fought at Battle Butte while a blizzard descended upon them all.

But now they were his. They had seen that resistance was futile. To carry on the war would only mean the destruction of their people. They must have realized that to flee to Canada with Sitting Bull was to abandon their homeland. In the end, they had heard the honor in his words, and decided to surrender to him.

Five days ago, exactly four weeks after his first council with the peace delegates at the cantonment, the half-breed Bruguier brought in the
Mnikowoju
leader Hump along with his clan's warriors. They had come to give themselves up, and surrender their arms to the soldier chief.

Then two days after, when the weather again turned cold, blustery, bearing an icy snow in its bite, forty-five lodges of the Cheyenne limped in with their chiefs Old Wolf, Crazy Head, and Two Moon. What a sad, sad scene that procession had made: those three hundred men, women, and children, dressed in rags, many in nothing more than bloody, bare feet, trudging painfully along behind their leaders, sitting proudly upon their emaciated ponies. Behind them all young boys wrangled a herd of several hundred more of the ribby, winter-gaunt horses.

It was plain to read the despair and hunger in the eyes of every one of those who now turned their lives over to him.

Miles had immediately ordered that some cattle be handed over to the newcomers as they erected their camp near the mouth of the Tongue. He had watched the faces of the hundreds as they moved past him, those dark, black-cherry eyes ringed with fatigue and hunger—understanding why every last person among them wanted to get a good look at the Bear Coat. He had defeated them, commanding respect from these powerful warrior bands of the Northern Plains.

Near midmorning the following day, the twenty-third of April, squawman William Rowland and his son Willis escorted the Cheyenne males from their camp to the parade where Miles had formed up his companies. There, in a ceremony painful for any old warrior to witness, the Cheyenne dismounted and watched soldiers lead their ponies away. Then one by one by one, the warriors laid their rifles, carbines, and pistols on the cold, soggy ground.

No more were they warriors who would fight for hearth and home against the army. No more were they men free to follow the great herds of buffalo and challenge any who might usurp their claim to this hunting ground.

Now the Cheyenne belonged to him.

Even these thirty-some warriors who had just enlisted as scouts belonged to Nelson A. Miles. Exactly as George Crook had first used Apache against Apache down in Arizona Territory, just as Ranald Mackenzie had used Sioux and Cheyenne to hunt down and locate that Cheyenne village on the Red Fork, Miles was now going to use these warriors to find the last of the holdouts.

He was sure they were out there. Those north of the Yellowstone surely had already scampered across the Missouri with Sitting Bull, and would likely reach Canada in safety now. And White Bull said the majority of the Northern Cheyenne were pushing south to surrender to Lieutenant William Philo Clark, one of Crook's damnable protégés.

So it would be up to his department to sweep the country clean. His men—these Indian scouts and his campaign-toughened doughboys—they would be the broom Miles would use to sweep up the last of the stalwarts. There wouldn't be a coulee those hostiles could hide in, not a tree or rock to hide behind, once Miles turned his scouts loose on the trail—

“General!”

Miles looked at the door where Charles J. Dickey had called. “Yes, what is it, Captain?”

All around him at that moment his staff and other officers were shaking hands with every one of the newly sworn-in scouts. Lord, how these Indians took to ceremony!

Dickey turned away a moment, and flung his arm to the south as voices from the parade grew louder. “A rider approaching, sir.”

“Rider? One?”

“Yes, General. Only one.”

“By the stars—is it another Cheyenne coming in?”

Then Dickey laughed. Deep and lusty. “No, it isn't a Cheyenne! Not an Injun, sir!”

More voices were calling outside. Singing out their happy greetings. Hallooing and huzzahing. A damned celebration going on right outside as he stepped toward the doorway. Then he glimpsed the rider—

It couldn't be, he told himself. Although something tried to convince him otherwise. No, it simply couldn't be. Even though the man had vowed to return …

Miles reached the door, peered into the distance, anxious to know for sure. “If not someone surrendering—who's coming, Captain?”

“It's that by-God Irishman, General! The one what went south to Laramie after our fight,” Dickey roared. “Raised right up from the dead himself, sir! Raised right up from the blessed dead!”

BY TELEGRAPH

Manifesto of the Czar–Intense Excitement.

Two Men Killed in a Deadwood Street Fight.

New Complications Arising on the Rio Grande.

DEADWOOD.

Seven Men with Six-Shooters—Only Two of Them Killed.

DEADWOOD, D.T., April 23.—This afternoon a dispute arose in which seven persons engaged, concerning the title of a town lot in South Deadwood. After some harsh language all hands drew six-shooters and commenced firing. The result was that Dan O'Bradovitch, of Eureka, Nevada, was killed, Steve Corsich, of the same place, mortally shot, and N. Millich slightly wounded. Another disturbance, caused by town-lot jumping, occurred to-day, during which several shots were fired, but nobody hurt.

“By the stars above—it really is you!” Miles roared, bolting from the doorway just as Seamus dropped to the ground, the reins still in his glove.

All around Seamus jostled those officers who he had guided up the Tongue in January until Crazy Horse stopped retreating. Those men he had joined at the base of the butte, where gallant soldiers had run out of ammunition and their officers ordered them to fix bayonets.
*
The crowd parted in a wave as Miles lunged up.

“In the ever-livin' flesh, General!” Donegan cried.

“I was afraid some war party would have eaten you alive before you got anywhere close to Laramie,” said Miles, holding out his hand. As they shook, the colonel pounded Donegan on top of the shoulder.

“Didn't see a feather,” Seamus admitted. “Colder'n a Welsh miner's lunch bucket, it was—but had me no trouble with Injuns.”

Captain Poole jumped in to ask, “You got back to your family?”

“Aye,” he said, grinning hugely in that full, bushy beard. “Even christened me boy too.”

“What'd you name him?” asked Lieutenant Cusick.

“Colin Teig Donegan.”

“That's a fine name, Mr. Donegan,” Miles replied with approval. “Strong and sturdy.”

“A good Irish name!” Captain Butler roared. “Can I get you something wet and we'll drink to your lad's christening?”

“Something wet? By the Virgin Mary!”

“It is that homely Irishman for sure!” a familiar voice called out.

Seamus turned to watch Bruguier step up, holding out his hand. “Good to see you're still here, Johnny.”