The Endless Sky (Cheyenne Series) (45 page)

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Chase did not return until the snows had almost melted and May was perfumed with fresh pine and wildflowers. The mountains were warmed by sunlight. The small band of Elk Bull grew restless and eager to rejoin their Cheyenne brothers and Lakota cousins in the great summer hunts. But the news the White Wolf bore made them wary.

      
While they remained hidden securely in their valley this past March, General Crook had led his Blue Coats on a desperate winter campaign out of Fort Fetterman, riding up along the twisting path of the Tongue River, only two days from their stronghold. Fortunately Crook had been deterred by the fury of late winter blizzards and did not venture into the mountains, but now Long Hair, the feared and hated George Armstrong Custer, headed a great invasion force out of Fort Lincoln in Dakota Territory. Along with General Terry and Colonel Gibbons, he was ordered by the White Father in Washington to round up all the Indians along the Upper Yellowstone. That great river and its numerous tributaries comprised the hunting grounds guaranteed to the Horse Indians by the Treaty of Fort Laramie back in 1868 “for as long as the buffalo should run.”

      
Of course, the army, along with the railroad, the miners and the buffalo hunters, were making sure that would not be long by decimating the great herds with systematic ruthlessness. Nevertheless, the time was ripe for another hunt and tens of thousands of the great shaggy beasts still populated the vast open reaches of the river valleys. Elk Bull's warriors were eager to race across the plains in pursuit of them. That night the leaders sat in council to hear all the White Wolf had learned.

      
“If we leave the mountains, I think it would be best to join Sitting Bull's Lakota to the northeast in the Powder River country,” Chase said. “The Hunkpapa have drawn thousands to them—all the other tribes of the Teton Nation—Oglala, Sans Arc, Blackfoot, Brule, Miniconjou. And also our cousins the Arapaho and many other bands of Cheyenne.”

      
‘‘All are angry because the White Father has said it is all right for his settlers to seize our Sacred Hills and drive peaceful hunters from the land pledged to us in treaty,” Stands Tall stated, wanting everyone in the council to understand the extent of the danger they would face when they left the sanctuary of the mountains.

      
“Why do they not put all the Indians on wheels? Then they could move us about as they please,” Elk Bull said sourly to a chorus of angry agreement.

      
Chase briefly explained about the army units which would shortly be placed in the field against the various tribes. He ached to join the war parties already making their medicine to attack the hated Blue Coats, especially Custer. Nothing would have given him greater pleasure than to kill the fabled Long Hair—except to kill Hugh Phillips, the butcher of Wyoming Territory. But he could do neither, he reminded himself, for this band depended on him for its safety. He had a family now. First he must think of Stephanie, Smooth Stone and Tiny Dancer.

      
“We have supplied our Lakota brothers with many good Henry and Winchester rifles. Now they are nearly five thousand strong and growing every week as more people come to join them for the hunt. By summer they will number twice that. The Long Hair and other soldiers will chase the war parties but even Custer would not be so foolish as to attack the main encampment. If you choose to go, it is to that place I say we should travel. I will offer more presents to Sitting Bull from my stockpile of repeating rifles.”

      
Discussion ensued as each warrior with martial experience spoke his piece, as was the Cheyenne way. Finally a consensus was reached. They would join the summer camp of Sitting Bull. The great Lakota leader had never bowed to government dictates nor taken agency handouts. He steadfastly eschewed any contact with the whites, leading his people to live by the buffalo hunt on the open plains as they had for hundreds of years.

      
That night it was moonrise before Chase returned to their lodge. Smooth Stone and Tiny Dancer had been allowed to remain awake to greet their foster father. Stephanie stirred a steaming pot of stew, fragrant with chunks of mountain sheep and wild onions. During her years in the West she had become a competent cook, learning from the strikers on the army posts. Now she had mastered cooking over an open campfire under even more primitive conditions.

      
The sudden draft of cool air as he opened the tent flap alerted Stephanie to Chase's entry. He stood in the flickering firelight, so tall and dangerous looking, still dressed in the guise of half-breed drifter, hair unbound, beard bristling and clothes greasy and rumpled. An arsenal of weapons surrounded him, Winchester in his right hand, Navy Colt on one hip and a wicked Bowie knife on the other. A beaded Osage necklace hung around his neck where the open lacings of the worn buckskin shirt revealed a thick patch of black hair but concealed the telltale Sun Dance scars.

      
Stephanie knew they were there. How often in the nights they'd shared had she stroked them and touched her mouth to the ridged scars, signs of his savagery. She stood up, moistening her lips nervously. She had allowed them to part in anger, then worried herself sick that he would die alone in some dirty army outpost or wild frontier boomtown. The urge to throw herself into his arms and hold him almost overpowered her, yet she forced herself to wait, to gauge his feelings for her now that he had moved among his white enemies.

      
When Chase stepped inside the lodge, the sleepy-eyed children's faces lit up as they launched themselves at him, circling the fire pit to run into his arms. He knelt, hugging them both; then lifted one in each arm. All the while his eyes never left Stephanie's. She stood rooted to the ground, nervously clutching a bone spoon in her hand. He had felt her visual inspection of him the instant she became aware of his presence. He looked dirty and mean, contaminated by the dregs of white society with whom he had consorted. He'd ridden hard after leaving Bismarck, eager to return to her. Was she repelled by the stink of his unwashed clothes and body?

      
“You look very domestic, Stevie. That stew smells wonderful,” he said.
I missed you so much I couldn't think of anything else.

      
“You must be hungry.” She knelt down by the bubbling pot and began to dish up a bowl for him as Smooth Stone and Tiny Dancer chattered about what they had done while he was gone, interspersed with questions about what he had seen on his long journey.

      
When he squatted down by the fire and accepted the food their fingers brushed. He felt scorched by the light touch and heard her sharp intake of breath. She looked away, chewing on her lip, and began to fuss with her cooking utensils. So, she was not put off by his rough looking appearance. Then the insidious thought occurred—at least as Asa Grant he looked part white, but here in camp he looked wholly Cheyenne. There was no use pursuing that thought. He began to wolf down the savory stew.

      
“What did the council decide?” she asked at length after instructing the children to return to their pallets and go to sleep.

      
“We begin packing up to leave the mountains at first light.”

      
“You don't think it's safe, do you?”

      
He shrugged. “What place is safe anymore? We're being hunted down and exterminated just like the buffalo.”

      
“But if we stayed here, the army could never find us.”

      
“That's not an option. My people are horsemen used to living freely on the plains. We can't live indefinitely on deer and smaller game. We need the buffalo for its hides, bones and sinews as well as its meat. And we need to mix with other bands. You know about our laws against marriage within the same clans. We've always been part of a great nation among other allied nations.”

      
Stephanie had learned from Red Bead, Kit Fox and others about the complex clan system of the Cheyenne, as well as the interrelated tribal councils of the whole nation that met each summer during the great hunts. The Cheyenne, like their Arapaho and Lakota brethren, were a corporate society. “Where are we going?”

      
“To join Sitting Bull. If there's safety in numbers, the Cheyenne should survive surrounded by seven or eight thousand Lakota and their allies.”

      
She noticed he said “the Cheyenne.” Did that mean she was not going with them? Was he going to take her back to civilization? “Chase...” Her words faded away as he raised his head and studied her with glittering black eyes. “I—I'd best begin gathering our belongings for the long trip,” she said, refusing to even think of the plea she had been unable to voice.

      
He set aside his empty stew bowl and walked over to the. storage packs, extracting clean soft buckskin clothing. Then he turned to her and extended his hand across the glowing coals of the fire. “Before you start packing, there are a few wifely duties that I require, Stevie...beginning with a bath,” he said, grinning wolfishly.

      
Remembering all the times they had made love in the steamy waters, she felt her belly clench and a deep tingling ache build between her thighs. Her cheeks flamed and her breath caught.
Am I so obvious?
Trembling, she clasped his hand and he pulled her into his arms. Together they glanced down at Smooth Stone and Tiny Dancer, now sound asleep beneath their robes, then slipped silently from the lodge into the warm spring night, headed to the beckoning seclusion of the hot springs.

* * * *

      
The journey down from the mountains took them over a week, burdened as they were with old people and children. They followed the ridge above the swollen rushing waters of the Little Bighorn. Chase, along with several other warriors, scouted ahead and quickly located the still massing summer camp of Sitting Bull on the lower end of the river, which the Indians called the Greasy Grass. Finally the weary caravan of Cheyenne entered the long narrow valley and looked down on the most enormous encampment of Indians any had ever seen. The northernmost end of the long meandering lines of teepees were clustered just below the mouth of Sundance Creek, which flowed into the Greasy Grass. These were the lodges of the great Sitting Bull and his Hunkpapa. The other Teton groups were sprawled for over three miles downstream along the western bank of the river.

      
On the high bluffs at the edge of the valley, Elk Bull's band paused, looking down at the river below them, ice cold, brimming with the melted snows of the mountains from which they had come. Dense thickets of cottonwood trees rustled in the warm June breeze, clustered here and there along the banks, offering shade to many of the lodges. To the west side of the valley a series of low grassy hills undulated with pony herds grazing on the lush early summer grasses. There were thousands of lodges and countless more horses swarming across the level elevated benches in the west.

      
Stephanie reined in the small paint mare Chase had given her and sat uncomfortably on her wooden saddle, gazing down in awe on the encampment below. ‘‘It's incredible. The lodges stretch on for miles and the horses...” Her voice trailed away in incredulity.

      
Chase's eyes narrowed, studying the lay of the land. “They've chosen a good campsite considering the size of the group. The need for game for the stew pots, not to mention grass for the horses, will be huge. They've already moved several times since the convergence began in May.”

      
“Do you think General Crook will attack?” she asked worriedly, thinking more of her friends and family among the Cheyenne than of the soldiers.

      
“After the trouncing the Lakota gave him on the Rosebud last week, I doubt it. He was in full retreat last our scouts heard. But that still leaves Gibbon, Terry and Custer. It's Custer I'd worry about,” he added grimly.

      
“Only a madman would attack a village of this size without half a dozen regiments,” Stephanie said.

      
“From what the other scouts and I have learned, Terry's whole command is only around a thousand men and poorly armed except for the Gatling gun battery, which they'll never be able to move in this rugged terrain. Still, if Terry turns Custer loose, sooner or later there'll be trouble.”

      
“Is—is there any chance Hugh's command from Fort Steele will be involved in this campaign?” she asked hesitantly. The matter had been preying on her mind ever since the band's scouts had brought word about the soldiers from Fort Lincoln and Fort Fetterman taking the field.

      
Chase looked over at her with an unreadable expression on his face but before he could frame a reply Plenty Horses approached them, smiling broadly. “What do you wait for? Our Lakota brothers send their greetings and a site for our camp has already been selected to the south.”

      
Smooth Stone, who had been sharing a pony with another older boy, waved as they rode down the hill. Tiny Dancer, eager to be with Stephanie when they entered the new camp, jumped from the travois on which she had ridden with several other little girls. “May 1 ride with you, Eyes Like Sun?” she asked excitedly.

      
Smiling, Stephanie reached down and snatched the slender little body up onto the front of the saddle. “You must eat more. You still weigh next to nothing.”

      
Silently the cavalcade made its way down into the valley of the Greasy Grass where they hoped to find safety and companionship after the long winter's isolation. By that evening the newest Cheyenne arrivals had set up their lodges beside those of the other bands and the sounds of a great celebration could be heard up and down the vast camp.