Stone Song (31 page)

“Sir, I respectfully request command of this mission!” snapped Lt. Col. William Judd Fetterman.

Carrington thought,
There’s nothing respectful about almost roaring at your superior officer
. But he didn’t say so. He looked at Capt. James Powell. Carrington had sent for Powell, but Fetterman had pounded in practically on the captain’s heels. Carrington had calmly started telling Powell that the wood train was under attack again and forty-nine infantrymen and twenty-seven cavalrymen were mustering for the rescue. These rescues had gotten to be nuisances. Though the Indians couldn’t do any real damage, they swooped down on the woodcutters a couple of times a week.

“Sir, I respectfully request this command!” Fetterman looked apoplectic, but then he always did.

“We’ve had this discussion, Colonel.”

“Sir, I joined the army to fight.”

Yes, to whet your sword, to win glory and rank and the moist eyes of maidens
, thought Carrington.
Such soft eyes moisten only for fighters, men afflicted with the boyish yearning to be heroes and short of common sense. Like you
.

He looked at Powell, who also wanted a chance and showed more good sense than his senior officer.

Carrington turned away from Fetterman. “Colonel,” he said, “they tell me you have a favorite boast, one you make when you think your
fellow officers won’t hear. They say it’s: ‘Give me eighty men and I’ll ride through the entire Sioux nation.’ ”

Fetterman was visibly taken aback. He hesitated and blurted, “By God, sir, I would.”

Carrington looked wryly at Powell. So Fetterman didn’t even have sense enough to pretend to be prudent.

Carrington let his breath out in a rush. Well, he supposed so. He didn’t even want to look at Fetterman when he said it. “All right, Colonel, go rescue the wood train. The Eighteenth and Second,” the infantry and cavalry units, “must be nearly ready. I’ve assigned you two other officers, Captain Brown and Lieutenant Grummond, and the two scouts.” He reviewed the strategy briefly for the younger officer, still with his back to Fetterman. Carrington was thinking surely the scouts, former officers, would help him stay out of trouble.

Now he turned to Fetterman. The man looked so gleeful that Carrington wondered whether he’d heard a word of the instructions. “Colonel, your job is to rescue the wood train, not to engage the Indians unnecessarily.” Carrington was mindful of the possibility of ambush. “You may run them back a little, but not beyond Lodge Trail Ridge.”

From the look of him Fetterman was off rambling in his boyish fantasies of soldiering.

“Do you hear me, Fetterman? In no case beyond Lodge Trail Ridge.”

Fetterman nodded.

“Dismissed.”

Fetterman had trouble keeping his legs to a walk as he left the room.

“Colonel,” said Powell, “do you realize? Forty-nine men of the Eighteenth, twenty-seven of the Second, two officers, and two civilians. You’ve given him eighty men exactly.” Powell chuckled at the irony.

Carrington didn’t think it was funny.

Crazy Horse rode for his life, his quirt popping, the pony digging hard up the hill.

When Crazy Horse started, the others did the same. “We will be like a flock of birds scared up,” he had explained to them, “flying for our lives.”

He thought they were brave men with good sense. His brother, Little Hawk, and his friend Lone Bear, fellow Hunkpatila. Three Bad Faces, two Mniconjou, one each of the visiting Itazipicola and Sicangu.

He looked over his shoulder. The pony soldiers were coming at a gallop, whooping and hollering. They paid no attention to the wood train
behind them, headed back. So maybe it was working.
Yes, yes, we are like wounded animals!
cried Crazy Horse in his mind.
Come shoot at us and laugh
.

He gave a moment’s thought to his medicine of the wind, asking it to confuse these enemies.

The pony soldiers stopped. Maybe they were waiting for the walking soldiers to catch up.

Crazy Horse rode back toward them, shouting, calling English-word insults he’d picked up. Spurts of snow burst up from the ground, but the fire was short of him. He rode closer and yelled louder and more mockingly.

The other decoys did the same. Some of them exposed themselves. Others yelled taunts. Others stood on their horses to offer conspicuous targets.

Now the pony soldiers came on at a canter. The decoys retreated to the top of the hill, circled around waving blankets, and trotted toward the next hill.

The pony soldiers stopped on the crest.

Now Crazy Horse rode badly, his weight too far forward and fighting the mouth of his pony a little, so that the pony slipped and squirreled its way down the hill. He was falling behind the others.

The pony soldiers came on. The pounding of the hooves of the big American horses sounded like one of the rolls of their drums.

Crazy Horse quirted his warhorse to the crest of the hill. He judged he was too far ahead of the soldiers. The other decoys were out of their sight. From the next hill they would follow Lodge Trail Ridge into …

He charged the soldiers. The picture of Rider sustained him. Closer and closer he got. He heard bullets kicking dirt and rock and snow all around him. He pictured them evaporating into the air.

The soldiers charged him. He spun his pony and scrambled up the hill.

Fetterman stopped on the crest of Lodge Trail Ridge. The Indians were scooting around below like spooked sage hens, birds without brains.

That nervy one came back once more, not as far this time. The bugger was pushing his luck. The U.S. Army was going to put an end to all that luck in just a few minutes.

Fetterman thought of his orders. He was at the limit. But there were command decisions in the field. Even a strutting cock of a constipated colonel had heard of command decisions in the field.

“Lo, the poor Indian!” Fetterman shouted. It was his battle cry. The scout Wheatley and Captain Brown grinned at Fetterman. Fetterman wondered if that was fear hiding behind their flashing teeth. He couldn’t tell and he didn’t care.

Orders were for followers. In the War between the States he had learned that if nothing else. A soldier saw his destiny and he seized it. See and seize. That was it.

Over and over he shouted it as the other cavalrymen came up. “Lo, the poor Indian!” he would roar, and stand up in his stirrups and wave his pistol like a flag. He had heard the ridiculous and sentimental phrase all his life. Today he would make some Indians poor, very damned poor.

He would show that coward Carrington. And put something on his record that would mark him down for the future, yes. Now he felt the wind in his face, he smelled burnt powder, he saw his quarry, and his blood was up.

The head of the infantry column, his particular command, was getting close now.

He wanted to get that Lo who was strutting about showing off, thumbing his nose at the whites. He would make that son of a bitch pay.

“Is that him, Wheatley?”

“Yessir.” The scout claimed that Lo was the one named Crazy Horse, a man who stood tall among them.

Well, Lt. Col. William Judd Fetterman was about to make that Injun stand shorter by the height of his scalp.

Orders were for cowards.

He put his spurs to the horse. His heart quickened to the rhythm of horseflesh between his legs. Oh, LordJesusGodAlmighty, wasn’t it all fine, so fine!

Crazy Horse looked back at the soldiers. Over the ridge they swarmed and down toward the forks of Peno Creek, the pony soldiers first and finally the walking soldiers in their column like ants. His decoys were riding straightaway along the creek now, a file on either side, as he had instructed.

He looked back and he looked around. Soldiers back, snow and sagebrush to the side. Snow and sagebrush and death.

He put his eagle-bone whistle to his mouth and blew the call. With his breath he cried out to his decoys, “We have done it.”

The two lines of the decoys simply crossed, making an
X
.

That was the signal. Fifteen or twenty hundreds of Lakota and Sahiyela and Mahpiyato warriors rose as one, twenty warriors against each soldier. Feathered arrows made the whistle of eternity in the air.

The decoys turned and sprinted back into the thick of the fight. The walking soldiers were firing their long guns to little effect. Quickly the warriors would be among them, and they wouldn’t even have to use their
little powder and lead. Arrows would be enough. And then clubs and tomahawks and spears and knives.

The fighting looked fiercest in the midst of the pony soldiers crouched behind their horses or behind rocks, where the two
wasicu
who weren’t soldiers were shooting with their many-times-firing rifles. As Crazy Horse came up, he saw the Mniconjou Eats Meat gallop straight into the white line. As he tried to bolt out the other side, he went down.

Crazy Horse felt his medicine rise in his chest again and quirted his warhorse straight at the
wasicu
. Hawk’s wings thrummed in his chest to the beat of the hooves of Rider’s horse, and he felt his invulnerability. Over his head Hawk screamed primally, “KEE-ur-r-r, KEE-ur-r-r!” He sailed straight over one kneeling soldier and through the line and out the other side.

As some of the Sahiyela tried to ride through the line, Crazy Horse used two of the only four shells he had and sent one trooper rolling down the icy slope.

He saw that the soldiers were starting to use their guns as clubs. He smiled grimly to himself. The warriors would have plenty of firearms after today, but no ammunition.

He turned his horse and cantered over the battlefield, surveying. He felt that he flew like Hawk over the snowy plain far below. He saw everything. He swooped down where he pleased. When he liked, he wheeled high and watched.

They had done it.

He flew down to earth.

He looked at bodies, mere corpses now, no longer men. They were ugly. The positions of arms and legs were ugly. The wounds were ugly. The expressions on the faces were ugly.

He murmured, “Human beings without spirit are ugly.”

He dismounted. He wanted to walk the killing field, smell the bloodletting, stroll among the deaths.

We did it
, he thought.

Next to the body of an infantryman he bent down. Blood was dribbling down from a gut wound. He touched the liquid on the uniform, still warm. He touched it on the snow, congealed, icy. He shook his head regretfully.

Yes, we did it
.

THE WAGON BOX FIGHT

After they killed the hundred in the hands, the Lakota kept the big camp together. The Midwinter Moon, when the days are shortest and the snow deepest, was no time to be moving the villages. The hunters went out every day, but there was not enough game in one area to feed so many people. This was one of the hungry winters.

In the Snow-Blind Moon the camp split into smaller villages. The village of Crazy Horse, which people now called the Long Face camp after Worm’s brother, went up to the headwaters of Shifting Sands River. The living there was hard, but Crazy Horse told his uncle Long Face he wanted to keep an eye on the soldiers in Fort Reno, which was nearby. Maybe the
wasicu
would fill their Shifting Sands River forts with many more soldiers. Maybe they would get out of the country. He wanted to know which.

He and Little Hawk rode long and cold every day, hunting for meat. They wore moccasins with the hair on and thick blanket coats and as always rubbed soot mixed with fat on their cheeks to prevent snow blindness. Crazy Horse had the joy of the hundred in the hands to keep him warm.

These were his days. Hardship, yes, that was a warrior’s life. The fighting wasn’t the worst for him, or the hunger, the bitter cold, the exhaustion. The loss of friends and relatives was painful. Lone Bear had died at the fight of the hundred in the hands, and that death hurt him. All deaths hurt him, Lakota, Sahiyela, even
wasicu
. But this was a warrior’s time, and he chose to glory in it.

One day when they were going up toward Crazy Woman Fork, their ponies played out. The brothers put on pine-bough snowshoes and kept going. Finally, in some broken country, Crazy Horse spotted a herd of about a hundred elk in a little canyon. They got downwind and crept as close as they could. When the elk finally smelled them, the beasts thrashed through deep drifts toward higher ground. Before they got away, the brothers killed eight stragglers.

When the fire was built and some meat roasted, Crazy Horse cut off a piece and held it out. “To the west,” he said, “where the
wakinyan
live. To the north, home of the white giant. To the east, home of the sun. To the south, where we are always looking.” He made this gesture not only in thanks for the eight elk that would feed his family and some of the village’s poor ones, but for the herd that would feed the village. “Father Sky, Mother Earth,” he said, “
pila maya
.”

He had other reasons in his heart for gratitude. Now he wouldn’t have to hunt food anymore this spring. He could turn his mind to war.

He also had a thought he didn’t dwell on. He would give the teeth of
these eight elk to Black Buffalo Woman. Nothing decorated a ceremonial dress more beautifully than elk teeth. It would cause talk, but he didn’t care—he had a right to make a woman a gift, even another man’s wife.

He thought of her every day. The Hunkpatila and the Bad Face camps had been together this winter, and she had always been in his eye. She had teased him about being so old and such an important man, yet having no wife. No Water even kidded him about living with Grandmother Plum. “Hey,” he gibed, “why isn’t the woman in your lodge young and eager? Why aren’t you making sons who have your courage?”

They were acting like cousins, sort of. Black Buffalo Woman meant him well and seemed still to feel guilty about the way she’d acted. No Water would probably sleep better if he felt sure Crazy Horse was dreaming about another woman. But he wasn’t dreaming of another, and never would.

Yes, he would give her the elk teeth.

He spent his days watching Fort Reno and his nights in cold, lonely bivouacs. Now that his family was fed, he acted homeless. He built no fires and ate only pemmican. He watched for the couriers, the men who went out hunting, those who made trips for water or wood. He approached them as silently and as fiercely as Hawk attacking from the air. Swiftly and mercilessly, he killed them.

He left their bodies to the ravens. He didn’t scalp them. He didn’t leave any kind of signature. His people would know well enough who slew without scalping. And it didn’t matter if anyone knew. To their companions the dead men simply disappeared.

These killings were for Lone Bear, who had died because
wasicu
came into his country, where they had no business being. It didn’t matter that the hundred in the hands died. They offended, so they died. Lone Bear had been defending his home and deserved to live.

Crazy Horse didn’t count his kills, because it didn’t matter. The days of watching in silence, waiting with meditative patience, approaching in a warrior’s way, and attacking with Hawk soaring—these mattered.

At the sun dance, in the fullness of the Moon When the Chokecherries Ripen, the talk was of the forts in Shifting Sands River country.

Man-Whose-Enemies-Are-Afraid-of-His-Horses had gone in to talk to the whites at their request. He told them the Oglala didn’t want peace—they just wanted the Shifting Sands River road closed. Plus guns and ammunition. When could they trade for more guns, he asked, and more ammunition?

The warriors smiled as they told it. It was good to see the whites’ faces when their headmen stood up to them.

And that
, thought Crazy Horse,
is what comes of giving the
wasicu
a good whipping
.

The whites said a hundred weren’t killed on Peno Creek, but only eighty-one. Crazy Horse and others answered that the soldiers were a gift from Spirit, a realization of the dream of the
winkte
, and when Spirit gives you something, you don’t count the number.

Red Cloud went in to the talk also, but he kept his mouth shut. People nodded approvingly. This was good. Though the whites were treating him like an important man, Red Cloud was not a chief but just a war leader and should have nothing to say in council with the whites. But some people muttered that he was working to make himself a big man with the officers and Indian agents. Maybe he wasn’t thinking of kicking them out of Shifting Sands River country, these people said, but only of seeing how much he could get for giving the country away.

Crazy Horse held his tongue. No one could give the Shifting Sands River country away.

He heard that some headmen agreed with whatever the whites said about this or anything else. His uncle Spotted Tail seemed to be one of these. Last summer Little Thunder had given up leadership of his band of Sicangu to Spotted Tail. He was a big man now and all for living on a reservation, hunting where the whites told him to, trading only at the agency, and in general acting obedient. He was willing to sign away the hunting grounds of Shifting Sands River, where he didn’t live anyway.

Crazy Horse wondered if Spotted Tail would even sign away Paha Sapa, the special hunting country of the people, which the whites called the Black Hills. No, he decided, that place belonged to all the Lakota. More than any other place, it was where Lakota men and women went to seek visions and to raise their dead on scaffolds. It was sacred.

Crazy Horse tried not to think about it. Spotted Tail was his mothers’ brother. The teenage Curly had loved the man. He had taught Curly hunting and war and much about life. A shirtman, he had shown himself willing to throw down his life for the people. He had seemed to vibrate with aliveness. Yet since he had come back from captivity, he had acted like a dog hanging around the whites’ camp hoping to be thrown scraps.

The rest of the talk among the warriors was of how they would run the whites out of Shifting Sands River country this summer. No whites from Paha Sapa to the Shining Mountains, from the Elk River, which the whites called the Yellowstone, to the Shell River! Lots of warriors had a plan, and the war leaders consulted closely. The warriors wanted to know what Crazy Horse was going to do—many of them wanted to follow him, whatever he did. The war leaders kept talking, but no one decided anything.

Worm watched his elder son light the
canupa
and accepted it from his hands. He drew deep, puffed the smoke out, and watched it rise toward the center hole of the tipi and Father Sky beyond. He handed the
canupa
to his younger son.

He was honoring his sons by coming to their lodge, making them hosts, and they knew it. He looked at each of them and their friend Buffalo Hump obliquely, not directly in the eyes unless they invited it. The ropy, slender Crazy Horse with his light hair always had his eyes on something no one else could see. The bigger, huskier Little Hawk, a contrast to his older brother, was impulsive, impatient of nuances. The handsome Buffalo Hump, tall, beautifully muscled, was quick to laugh, quick to flirt, quick to fight.

Worm had encouraged the setting up of this lodge, where his two sons lived with their grandmother Plum. Neither of them was married, the younger twenty-one winters old, the elder nearly thirty and a shirtman. Men of that age didn’t belong in their parents’ lodge. For an old woman to take care of their lodge, that was the best way. By good luck their grandmother needed a home and had always had a special connection with Crazy Horse.

Worm glanced at her in the shadows of the lodge, her hands working slowly at making moccasins. For a moment he thought she was looking straight at him and smiling impudently. True, old Plum was far past the age when she needed to deflect her glance downward, away from men, and mostly she was expressionless. But she had been improving recently. Maybe he hadn’t imagined that smile. He knew her well—she’d lived with him for twenty years. He wondered whether she could speak if she wanted to. He suspected she could. What would she say? Since people talked as though she wasn’t there, she knew everything.

He had a funny thought. How nice to have a woman in the lodge who never said a word. His wives, who were sisters, were magpies.

The
canupa
had made its circle and came back to him. He took a moment to puff and watch the breath of Maka, Earth, rise ethereally. Then he said, “Little Big Man and two other Bad Faces came visiting today.”

Crazy Horse nodded.

Worm wondered if his son knew the trouble simmering. “Many of the Bad Face young men are among us,” he said.

Since the sun dance a dozen young warriors of other bands had made their wickiups with the Long Face band of Hunkpatila. Or, as most of the young men called it, the Crazy Horse band. They were waiting to see where Crazy Horse wanted to fight and when. Evidently they’d rather follow him than their own war leader, Red Cloud.

“It will cause hard feelings,” said Worm.

“Red Cloud is still the first war leader of the Oglala,” said Crazy Horse. “Or Buffalo Hump.” He glanced deferentially at his
hunka
.

Crazy Horse never liked to talk about what people would think or how they would feel. Politics, he called it. He just wanted to do what seemed right, without considering what other people would think of his actions. Worm thought this was the young man’s nature and to be respected. It was also naive. Naivete had cost his son the woman he wanted.

Little Hawk spoke sarcastically. “Red Cloud isn’t thinking about how to run the soldiers out of the country.”

Worm interrupted his younger son with a look. The youngster was about to blurt out what many of the people were thinking but shouldn’t be said. Maybe Red Cloud wasn’t looking to kick the whites out but to get a good deal for giving in. Little Hawk’s way, in war and in council, was to rush in first and think later. Even now he went on a little. “The warriors know that my brother will fight forever,” he said less noisily.

“Red Cloud will remember this,” said Worm. “Like the elk teeth.”

Crazy Horse looked away fast at that one, and Worm saw Hump suppress a smile. So his eldest son had thought Worm didn’t know about the elk teeth. Worm knew Hump disapproved—Hump had always thought his
hunka
’s attachment to the woman was excessive.

Yes, it was foolish, making presents to another man’s wife, even stupid. Which Worm had said as clearly as was polite.

He sighed. This business of the warriors coming to follow Crazy Horse was troublesome, and Worm foresaw more of it. It was his son’s vision to be a warrior and his medicine to be a powerful one. Yet Worm’s son’s destiny seemed to be always to look to his own medicine and his solitary glory. Which wasn’t the way of a leader.

Worm addressed Buffalo Hump. “What do you think should be done against the forts?”

Hump shrugged lightly. “We’ll make them think their hair is on fire,” he said. Despite his easy tone, Hump meant it and would do it. But he evidently didn’t want to say what he thought the strategy should be. He would save his thoughts for the council, with the other war leaders.

“What do you think?” Worm asked his elder son.

Crazy Horse scraped the ashes out of the
canupa
, thinking. Finally he said, “I don’t know. I don’t decide such things.” He did not add, “And I seldom go to council and never speak.” “For myself,” he said, “I will go against the Psatoka tomorrow.”

Little Hawk smiled broadly. “Me too.”

Hump said nothing. His job was to stay and help with the planning.

Worm looked at his elder son. Crazy Horse had as much as said, “I’m going to fight the Psatoka. When the chiefs make up their minds where
and when to fight the soldiers, they can let me know.” Which would have been rude.

He saw a difficult course for his elder son. Then he looked into Little Hawk’s face. Yes, it was easier just to act and not think.

Soon the Lakota went against the woodcutting detail at Fort Phil Kearny again. It didn’t go the way Crazy Horse wanted.

Everyone wanted to free-lance. Hump did lead some decoys, but the young warriors from the north, the Mniconjou and the Hunkpapa, rushed down and ran off the horses near the wagon boxes. Some of the soldiers fled into the timber, but most of them forted up behind the fourteen wagon boxes set on the ground. The warriors circled the boxes and fired arrows from under their ponies’ necks, but the soldiers were well shielded by the boxes and answered with the many-shooting rifles. Hump and Crazy Horse didn’t want to get good men killed attacking such a position. There had to be a way to make the whites use up all their ammunition.