Stone Song (29 page)

The Arapaho barked laughter.

“The toy soldiers were shocked,” said Bent, “shocked. The soldiers prong our women, but
the very idea
…” He rolled his eyes.

Everyone laughed and they moved on. Crazy Horse unfolded his blanket and snapped it in the air as though scaring the ponies to make them run. They all laughed. In this mad way they proceeded toward the fort
until the gate swung open and the pony soldiers rode out fast and clattered across the bridge. The wagon guns followed.

Crazy Horse pointed and shouted to the others and, when the soldiers were still out of range, lifted some foolish arrows into the sky. Then he said a few soft words to the gopher, which lives by trickery, and to the wind, whose power is to confuse the enemy. The four decoys began their retreat.

Bent and Crazy Horse made little stands, until too many bullets began to churn up the dirt around them. Little Hawk and the Arapaho pretended to whip furiously at their horses to get them up the hills and out of there.

When the soldiers fired their wagon guns, Crazy Horse was sure it was going to work. The pony soldiers’ blood was boiling.

He quirted his pony down the side of a hill and up the far side. He turned to look. The pony soldiers were charging hard. A little closer, a few arrow flights, would do it. Then he heard something odd and looked at the top of the next ridge.

Lakota jostling each other for position to see. Hundreds of Lakota looking down at the soldiers and bristling to fight.

So he stopped his pony and sat and watched the soldiers stop and point and turn around and head back.

When he got to the ridge, Big Road was yelling at the warriors who had broken by the
akicita
men and spoiled the ambush, “Idiots! Fools!”

Red Cloud was staring at everyone in his haughty way.

Hump trotted toward his
hunka
wearing a forlorn expression.

Crazy Horse was too furious even to look at him. They rode off by themselves. Crazy Horse wanted to think and throw rocks at the empty prairie.

They did run off the herd of new ponies the soldiers had gotten. High Back Wolf, a Sahiyela fighter of repute, got killed doing it.

The next day about twenty-five soldiers tried to make their way to the west along the Holy Road, led by Caspar Collins. Collins was a young officer the Lakota liked. He’d spent time in the camps and learned their language. So when he rode into an ambush, Lakota on one side and Sahiyela on the other, Red Cloud and others yelled at him to go back.

Collins ordered a retreat. Then he came back alone to help a soldier who was down. Admiring him for this act of courage, most of the Indians held their fire. But Collins’s horse, a fine-looking gray, took the bit in its mouth and ran off into the Sahiyela. Still angry about High Back Wolf, the Sahiyela swarmed on him.

As they rode back to their villages, Little Hawk said what a shame it was Caspar Collins had gotten killed.

Crazy Horse didn’t have his mind on that. He was thinking that the three brother tribes, Lakota, Sahiyela, and Mahpiyato, had sworn to avenge the outrage against Black Kettle’s village at Sand Creek. They had gotten together over a thousand warriors and marched against an important white station, Platte Bridge. And accomplished absolutely nothing.

The Society of White Horse Riders asked all the villages of the Oglala people to come together in late summer, at the fullness of the Moon When All Things Ripen. They did not need to say that they would name four shirtmen, four owners of the people. Nor did they need to say that the shirtmen would help provide what the warriors had lacked at the Platte Bridge, discipline.

When the Bad Faces and the Hunkpatila got to the camping place, two bands were not yet in: the True Oglala and the Oyukhpe. But the politicking about who would get the shirts was at full boil. The men of the society had the choice—establishing the bands’ young leaders was their duty—but they would be influenced by their families and friends. The talk was that the Bad Faces were insisting on the selection of one of their own. Four bands, four shirtmen, one from each band, said the Bad Faces. If this was not to be, the Bad Faces would take down their lodges and leave.

It was awkward. Not only was there the old enmity between the Hunkpatila and the Bad Faces because of the Bull Bear killing, there was the dispersion: Some Oglala lived below the Shell River, some around Fort Laramie, and some in the northern hunting grounds. Earlier this year the soldiers had moved the
wasiyuta el unpi
, literally “those who live among the whites,” whom the interpreters called the loaf-around-the-fort Oglala, downriver to Fort Kearny, those who would go. The Oglala seemed hardly to know each other anymore.

The awkwardness came most of all from wondering who would be the new shirtmen. But that, Crazy Horse told himself, was something he didn’t care about.

He scratched at the door flap, bent low, and slipped into his parents’ lodge. With Little Hawk behind him, he circled sunwise behind the seated men to his place. He had been surprised when his father asked him to come to the lodge to share supper with Red Cloud and was more surprised to see Horn Chips here.

The five men ate in companionable silence and then smoked over good talk. Not talk of matters of substance, but smaller things—whether winter would come early, where the buffalo would be this autumn, where the whites might be vulnerable to a man who saw in his medicine that he must lead a raid.

The closest they got to matters of controversy was to tell a few funny stories about the soldiers led by the foolish Connor, who that year had come into Shifting Sands River country, which the white people called Powder River country. Connor was clearly afraid. Afraid of Indians? Afraid of the country? Afraid of being out on his own? Whichever, his campaign had been a joke, and they had driven him out easily. Still, that was the untouched hunting grounds of the Oglala. Regardless of how much the whites wanted a road through to the goldfields in what they called Montana, the Oglala would not have Shifting Sands River country violated, all were agreed on that.

Red Cloud was an observer of people. He noticed everything. Divining their true thoughts and feelings from the expressions on their faces and the small movements of their hands and especially the way they held their bodies—all this seemed to him a straightforward matter, if you were observant. For many winters it had struck him as odd that other people did not practice this habit faithfully, as he did. It was advantageous.

He noticed, for instance, that Little Hawk joined the talk easily and even spiritedly. Though he was the man of least repute here, he was in his parents’ lodge, and his way was to be impulsive and speak his mind simply. A naked and naive way to behave. Maybe it would change when Little Hawk got older, maybe not.

Worm played the host impeccably. What might be truly on his mind—what he might say to his elder son after everyone had left—Red Cloud could not see on his face. But he was sure that Worm would not advance Red Cloud’s cause. Worm still resented the Bad Faces and had taught his sons to do the same. What a waste. An impediment to Red Cloud’s goal: To bring the Hunkpatila and Bad Face bands closer and closer until they were as one. Under his own leadership.

Horn Chips simply kept silent. A complicated man, Horn Chips, dark and obscure even to Red Cloud. Some of these men of strong medicine … No matter. All you had to do was assure yourself where Horn Chips stood. Which Red Cloud had done.

Which left Crazy Horse, Our Strange Man indeed. Red Cloud was intrigued by the young man. He wore shabby clothes, accumulated no belongings, did not marry, seldom fraternized, collected no scalps, performed prodigious deeds in war, and refused credit for them…. What could a wise man make of such behavior?

Red Cloud did not believe what it suggested, that Crazy Horse was without ambition. Nor did he believe that this behavior had been dictated to the young man in a vision and that the revelation was being followed unswervingly. Red Cloud did believe that people had visions—he knew it for a fact. But he also knew that interpretation was everything, and interpretation often suited the ambitions of the dreamer.

He had a peculiar notion about Crazy Horse. He thought the young man was trying to take the subtlest and most audacious route to the leadership of the Oglala. He thought the warrior, in forswearing all honor, was making a covert bid for the highest honor. For who could claim to be nobler, truer, purer, than a man who sought nothing for himself, nothing at all? Who more likely to become the grandest of heroes?

It all gave Red Cloud a chuckle. It was clever. But it was unnecessary, roundabout, painful, and perhaps misguided. A pretense, like the father’s choosing the name Worm to signify commonness, a humble station. Others knew, as Red Cloud did, that human nature was not so ideal as all that. Which would enable the people to see through the ploy. Red Cloud intended to help them see through it.

Now Crazy Horse was in his mode of false humility, contributing nothing to this conversation. Red Cloud knew he made the young man uneasy. And he would take whatever advantage was available. This was just good sense.

The Bad Face war leader was an orator, a man given to words that were each as beautiful as one of the many eagle feathers in a full-length warbonnet. The words made a fine sound, there was no denying that. But Crazy Horse was distrustful of words and of men who relied on them. Besides, Red Cloud wore a ponderous dignity, like a buffalo robe that covered him all the way to the eyes. Crazy Horse would never rip the dignity away and felt he couldn’t talk through it.

It was an odd conversation, propped up by a voluble youth, a deferentially quiet host, a man who spoke only oratorically, and two men of no words, Horn Chips and Crazy Horse.

So it was Red Cloud who finally spoke to Crazy Horse. “Who will the White Horse Riders choose?” He looked straight at Crazy Horse as he spoke.

Crazy Horse shrugged lightly, saying it was a matter of indifference to him. Until right now he hadn’t thought of wanting the shirt. “There are many candidates,” he said.

“What do you think?” Red Cloud looked at his host, then Horn Chips, and both shook their heads. Then he turned to Little Hawk.

“The fathers will choose the sons,” put in Little Hawk bluntly.

That was what everyone was saying. Man-Whose-Enemies-Are-Afraid-of-His-Horses
would use his influence to see that Young Man-Whose-Enemies was nominated. Brave Bear of the Oyukhpe would do the same for his son Sword, and Sitting Bear of the True Oglala for his son American Horse.

Most people thought that was good. Though chieftainship was not hereditary, the sons of chiefs would have inherited good qualities and would have learned at their fathers’ knees. The only son who caused any doubts was Pretty Fellow, the son of Bad Face. People didn’t want him as a shirtman and probably not as a Big Belly. He was too vain and self-absorbed. But not even Little Hawk would say that in front of Red Cloud of the Bad Faces.

“What do you think, His Crazy Horse?”

It was almost rude, asking a second time. Crazy Horse kept his eyes down, so Red Cloud wouldn’t see the offense.

Sore points stuck up everywhere here. Red Cloud himself had never been a shirtman. Maybe that was because he was suspected of having killed Bull Bear or because his father had been a loaf-around-the-fort drunkard. Red Cloud had everyone’s admiration now. He was probably the most admired war leader among the Oglala. But he was not a shirtman.

He was a politician, Crazy Horse remembered. He had helped maneuver Black Buffalo Woman toward No Water.

Crazy Horse raised his eyes to Red Cloud.

“I think the fathers will choose the sons,” he murmured.

“They say you are being considered,” Red Cloud pushed on. “Will you accept?”

So now it was in the open. Horn Chips hated all this. He despised Red Cloud’s incessant maneuvering, his obsession with things of the world rather than things of spirit. He did not like coming here and lending silent support to Red Cloud’s request. But Red Cloud was his relative. He could not refuse Red Cloud this favor. And regardless of this odious politicking, he wanted his protegé to know what he thought: A man who listened to the wisdom of Inyan had no time to involve himself deeply in the daily affairs of the people.

Crazy Horse knew what Chips thought. They were waiting for his answer: Would he accept?

Finally Crazy Horse said in his soft way, “A man who owns nothing and has no status. A man who has his own calling, apart. I do not think this responsibility would come to such a man.”

Such a self-effacing answer. And one that would drive Red Cloud mad. Horn Chips felt proud of his protegé.

Crazy Horse kept his face still. He refused to let Red Cloud see his tumult. Here it was, the conflict he was afraid of. The warrior fought, an exercise of spirit, and was a guardian of the people. A beautiful and useful way to live, and his calling. The shirtman was a warrior with heavier responsibilities to the people and less latitude for seeking his own way—his life belonged to the people. Later he would probably become a Big Belly, with still more responsibilities and the duty of maneuvering through talk. A Big Belly spent his time dickering instead of doing—anathema to Crazy Horse.

Yet. Yet. He felt the honor of it, the recognition. It was like some ice in a cave on even the hottest day and the sweet trickle of cold water on a parched throat. Besides, now that he didn’t have Black Buffalo Woman, maybe being a shirtman lay on his path. A shirtman did not have to become a Big Belly. And with the decisive conflicts with the
wasicu
approaching, this was a time for a warrior to think of all the people.

What twisted his gut was that it was Red Cloud who was asking him to step aside, to decline another honor. Red Cloud, who had maneuvered to help Black Buffalo Woman from his arms into No Water’s.

It was intolerable to be asked, and he intended to give only this ambiguous answer.

He stilled himself and tried to pay attention to Hawk. Right now he couldn’t feel her.