Lakota (10 page)

Tacante laughed at such an old woman's tale. Monsters that spit smoke and fire were for scaring little ones. Tacante had seen the blue-coat thunder guns!

When not hunting or admiring maidens, the two young men joined in the many contests. Often in the evenings Tacante would join his Oglala friends as they displayed their horsemanship. Warriors would ride beneath the bellies of their horses or on one side. Some would stand on the back or rump of an animal, or even set one foot on each of two galloping stallions. Others jumped on and off their mounts, displaying amazing acrobatic talents. The peace speakers shouted their astonishment and proclaimed that surely the Indian was the most masterful of horsemen.

The tribes warmed under such praise, and with their women satisfied with shiny-looking glasses and strings of trade beads, there was much good feeling for the wasicuns. The post traders exchanged new rifles for buffalo hides, and even the pitiful Arapahos, whose camps had been so recently destroyed, had fresh lead and powder for the summer hunting.

"See how the wasicuns pay for their misdeeds?" some asked.

But when the terms of the new treaty were revealed, those same voices spoke with bad hearts. The wasicuns, who had cut their road across the people's land, had killed so many Sahiyelas and Arapahos, now demanded a permanent road with forts full of soldiers in the heart of the Big Horn country.

"You ask us to touch the pen to this paper?" Red Cloud asked. "You promise us presents and say these other lands will be ours forever. Many of us touched the pen before to a paper saying you would never come to Powder River, that you would make no roads and build no forts there. These promises you have broken. Your word is worthless. I will never give up these lands. Already the buffalo is gone from Platte River. You would take our last good hunting grounds. Some will fight you. I will lead them!"

Red Cloud wasn't the only Lakota to speak. The warriors mounted their horses and rode around the fort, raising a great cloud of dust and frightening the peace speakers. Then, even as the tribes waited for blankets promised as presents, a large column of bluecoats appeared.

"They've come to build the road and garrison the new forts," Louis told Tacante.

"Then they've come to die," Tacante said, his heart sour with bitterness. "Never before have so many seen and heard the bad words of the wasicun. Here, while some speak of peace, others come to steal what they cannot buy!"

Red Cloud and the other chiefs said much the same thing to the wasicun peace speakers. Only a few loaf-around-the-fort Lakotas agreed to touch the pen. The Crows signed, but they had no reason to object to the treaty; it wasn't their land.

Soon the great encampment at Fort Laramie broke up. Bands went north or west, onto the plain or into the mountains. Some made a summer camp in some place of safety, then sent the warriors to Powder River. Red Cloud's Oglalas headed for the wasicun fort built near where Powder River's forks flowed into the main stream. Hinhan Hota followed the Cloud. Tacante rode at his side.

"I want to be with my people," Tacante told Louis.

"There is no use fighting so many," Louis argued. "I hoped we would hunt the buffalo this summer. Kolas should not be so far parted."

"No," Tacante agreed, gripping his brother-friend's hands. "We should visit the maidens on their water walk by the river, wrapping ourselves in blankets with the pretty ones."

"Yes. Maybe it will be a short war, and there can be peace again soon."

"Maybe," Tacante said, not believing it for a moment. They both knew that soon the Heart of the People must be shooting arrows at blue-coat soldiers. And Hinkpila, whose high cheeks and brownish flesh marked him as his Lakota grandmother's kin, would sell goods to the new wave of wasicuns traveling Platte River, many of them headed up the stolen road toward the Yellowstone country.

Soon the wasicun soldiers moved west. There were too many of them to fight at one time, so scouts kept watch, waiting for a chance to strike. Among the young men sent to look were Hokala and Tacante. They rode with a clever Oglala called Heca, the Buzzard. Heca possessed a yellow powder that he smeared on his bare chest before approaching the wasicun camps. The powder was powerful medicine, for it blinded the wasicuns from seeing Buzzard. He could come and go but never be seen. Hau, that was strong medicine, Tacante thought.

Soon other scouts appeared to watch the wasicuns, and Tacante joined his father and a band of warriors sent to get meat for the starving moons of winter. Hunting was good, and by midsummer the wasna pouches were full. The Owl then joined his Oglala friends on Powder River. Tacante and Hokala rode to spy on the wasicun fort, for all the bluecoats had gathered there. A trader had left his horses to graze on a nearby hill, and the young Lakotas gazed upon the ponies with big eyes. In an instant they were riding up that hill, and before the foolish trader could raise an alarm, his ponies were running off to join the Lakota herds.

A small party of bluecoats set out on Tacante's trail, but they soon halted. The Lakotas watched them from atop a ridge and shouted insults. An Oglala bared his backside in disdain, for here were wasicuns wearing war shirts who could not fight an old woman!

The bluecoats paused but a short while at this fort. The half-starved soldiers already there went back down the road. Others replaced them. Then the rest of them moved north, into the Big Horns.

For a time the Lakotas satisfied themselves with stealing a horse or raiding the wasicun gold seekers. Sometimes a few wagons crept up the road alone. They made fine fires. If the men escaped, it was not so bad, for they found the soldiers and told terrible tales to spread fear.

On a place called Piney Creek, the wasicuns built a second fort. These forts were peculiar, for always before the wasicuns had put up rows of buildings in their crazy squares. Unlike the sacred circle of lodges that made up a Lakota camp, there were always big lodges and small ones, their size speaking of the importance the wasicuns placed upon the owners. The forts on the stolen road were different, for around the lodges the bluecoats built high walls of pointed sticks. It was hard to come and go, and the Lakotas laughed.

"See how the wasicuns build their own cages!" Hokala exclaimed.

Yes, Tacante thought. For soon these forts were jails. The Lakotas made it hard for even the small wood-cutting parties to leave. And not long after the wall was finished, the Oglalas made a raid on the pony herd, stealing a hundred horses and many mules.

"Now they will stay here!" Hinhan Hota declared angrily. "Our helpless ones will be safe in their camps. When the snows come, these wasicuns will freeze here. There is not enough meat to fill their bellies, and we won't let them hunt. Hau! They will suffer like my brother."

Such was the talk among the Lakotas. Even Tacante, who often watched the fort from the high ridge nearby, was eaten up with anger. Why had the wasicuns come into the Big Horn country, driving out the elk and the deer with their great noisy wagons? Why had they forgotten their promises? If all of them died, even the smallest child, no Lakota heart would sadden. For their hearts had turned bad toward the wasicuns.

Tacante and the other young Sicangus occupied themselves watching the wasicun fort. Many bluecoats slept inside the high walls, and Hinhan Hota warned of the folly in attacking such a strong place. Better to let the wasicuns come out and fight in open country.

Mahpiya Luta, Red Cloud, was of the same mind. The Oglala chief was now looked upon as war leader, for he spoke with wisdom and determination. It was nothing to let the wasicuns sleep in their wooden cage. Let them grow cold and hungry with the approaching snows. But whenever the bluecoats emerged to cut wood or hunt game, the Lakota watchers sent word. Soon a war party was snapping at the soldiers' heels.

Tacante, Hokala, Cehupa Maza, and their old friends Sunka Sapa and Waawanyanka were among those who joined in the raids on the wood-cutters. Tacante felt proud that five young men from his father's camp should strike at the hated wasicuns. A large group of Oglalas came as well, led by a light-skinned young warrior known as Sunkawakan Witkotkoke, the Confused or Crazed Horse. The Oglalas already sang of his bravery, for he had fought well against the Crows and the Snakes.

He was a strange one, Tacante observed. Unlike his companions, the Horse wore few decorations into batde. He stripped himself naked save for a modest breechclout, and other than wearing a red-tailed hawk in his hair and painting numerous hailstones on his chest, he was little different from the untried boys who came along to look after the spare ponies.

Once in a fight, though, Sunkawakan Witkotkoke was a man to notice. Often he led the charge, and he was always the last to leave the enemy. His medicine bent the paths of bullets so that he could ride unharmed, and those who followed such strong medicine enjoyed success.

All this Tacante learned from the young Oglalas who followed the strange one toward the ridge where bluecoats were felling cottonwoods. Once the Lakotas grew near, the Horse called for silence.

"Who will follow me to decoy the soldiers?" Sunkawakan Witkotkoke asked. "Hau! It's a good day to die!"

The others shouted eagerly, and the Horse chose three Oglalas for the decoys. While the rest of the raiders hid themselves in a ravine and waited, the decoys cautiously approached the woodcutters and called out a challenge.

These wasicuns knew little about fighting, for they quickly abandoned their work and began firing their rifles. The Horse was clever. He rode just beyond the rifles' range, shouting and taunting the soldiers. When five of them at last mounted horses and set off in pursuit, Tacante felt his blood rise.

The big, grain-fed American horses were no match for plains ponies, and Crazy Horse often had to slow his pace so that the pursuing wasicuns would not lose heart and turn back. Then when the decoys passed the ravine, their companions emerged, firing arrows or bullets at the astonished wasicuns. One bluecoat fell immediately, and Hokala hurried to count coup on him. Another wasicun then turned and raced toward the unsuspecting Badger.

"Hau!" Tacante screamed, charging to intercept the wasicun. The bluecoat heard Tacante's galloping horse and managed to fire a shot. The bullet sliced a path through Buffalo Heart's ankle, but the young man swallowed his pain and raised his captured pistol. He fired at the wasicun, and the bluecoat's head snapped back. For a moment powder smoke obscured the scene. When Tacante broke through the sulfuric haze, he saw the soldier lying on the ground, his face bloody and his eyes frozen in death.

"Hau!" Tacante's companions shouted as he jumped to the ground and counted coup on the corpse.

"Take his scalp," Hokala advised, holding up the scalp lock of the first dead soldier.

"Hau, mark him in the Lakota way!" Sunka Sapa added.

Tacante gazed down at the lifeless soldier. He wasn't old and hairy-faced like the ones at Fort Laramie. His glazed eyes were blue like summer sky, and his hair was almost yellow. Two medicine stripes marked his shirt. Ah, he was a minor chief, and yet so young! Hau, it was a brave heart who could kill such a wasicun.

Tacante knew what he now must do, but the cutting didn't come easily to him. The anger in his heart born at Blue Creek wasn't strong now. He found himself wondering about the dead wasicun. Was there a wife and children? Perhaps he had a young brother to show the manhood ways.

"More are coming!" Waawanyanka cried. Watcher was always the keen-eyed one, and he'd spotted a column of bluecoats riding hard from the fort. Tacante swallowed hard, drove his knife below the hairline, and cut the small square of scalp from the bluecoat's head. He then held the yellow hair up for his admiring companions to view. Sunka Sapa pounced upon the corpse and opened a gash on the soldier's thigh. It was the way Lakotas marked their enemies. When such men's shades limped on the other side, all would know it was a brave heart Lakota who made it so.

"Tacante, Hokala," Sunkawakan Witkotkoke called. "Follow me!"

The young men scrambled atop their ponies and rode after the Horse. The three of them became decoys now, but the soldiers had chased enough. Two of them were dead, and another was struck in the hip by an arrow. The bluecoats recovered their dead and turned back toward the woodcutters.

Many would have been satisfied with the victory, but Crazy Horse turned his attention again to the woodcutters. He left his horse with the boys and led the young men up the hill where the soldiers were chopping cottonwoods. Soon a cutter howled out in pain as an arrow bit into his neck. Another cutter was pierced through the heart and fell dead. It was as if the hillside had come alive with silent death. Lakotas could stand, fire an arrow, and hide again before the dull-eyed wasicuns took notice. Silent death struck again and again until the woodcutters threw down their axes and fled.

Hokala and Cehupa Maza hurled insults at the escaping cowards. Sunkawakan Witkotkoke knelt beside Tacante's foot and examined the wound, which was now bleeding freely.

"Little brother, there are few brave hearts. It's not good to count coup and bleed to death the same instant!"

It was Crazy Horse's way to make light of a wound, to scold in a friendly manner. The Horse cut a slice of fresh elk meat he carried in his food bag and placed it over the gash. Then he bound the wound with rawhide strips.

"See it is tended," Sunkawakan Witkotkoke advised. "Soon we'll teach the wasicuns another trick."