Trumpet on the Land (33 page)

King's heart was thundering now, and his mouth had gone dry. He tried licking his lips with a pasty tongue as he turned back to the south. In the distance a hundred lances stood out against the summer sky, feathers and scalp locks fluttering on the renewed breeze. The horsemen watched
their own ride on down that ravine, ready to cut off the two unsuspecting couriers.

Again Charles glanced over his shoulder. Cody, White, the half-breed Tait, and a half-dozen men from his own Company K waited in the saddle atop anxious animals— tightening gunbelts, straightening clothing, tugging hats down on their brows. All of them with their eyes trained intently on King above them on the hill. Halfway down the slope Merritt, Carr, and their aides waited out of sight.

King was the only man left at the top now that the enemy was drawing dangerously near. Stretched out flat on his belly, he swallowed hard, wishing he had brought his canteen along. Instantly knowing there was no amount of water that would ever wet a man's mouth when it had gone dry with the anticipation of battle.

He could not give the word too soon, or the warriors would escape. And he could not wait too long—the couriers would be swallowed up before rescue could race round the hill.

Now he could hear the hoofbeats. Or was it the pounding of his heart? No, it was the hoofbeats of those war ponies.

No longer did he need his field glasses to watch the oncoming collision. Everything seemed to loom closer and closer, ever closer.

He turned and flung his voice downhill. “All ready, General?”

Merritt answered, “All ready, King. Give the word when you like.”

That thunder had to be his heart.

No, it was the hammering of those hooves as the warriors reached the last hundred yards of ravine.

Ten seconds.

God—but they were beautiful men: their dark skin made golden in the coming light.

Eight.

The new light reflected off the bright war paint, brass arm bands and bracelets, the silver gorgets.

Six seconds.

The way the wind whipped their hair, the scalp locks tied to fringed leggings and shields, fluttering beneath the jaws of the onrushing ponies.

Four.

What horsemen these, he marveled as he began to reach for the brim of his slouch hat he had laid on the grass beside him. Never again will there be any the likes of these.

Two seconds left.

In my hand I hold your fate. In my very hand, I hold vengeance for the death of Custer's Seventh!

Then, as the racing warriors burst from the mouth of the ravine, King bolted to his feet, waving his hat and bellowing as Cody exploded away in a blur.

“Now, lads! In with you!”

Chapter 20
Moon of Cherries Blackening

O
MAHA
, July 17—Telegrams received here yesterday are to the effect that the Indians are moving on Medicine Bow, a station on the Union Pacific, almost due south of Fort Fetterman, it is supposed for the purpose of capturing or destroying the supplies which have been stored there recently in great quantities by the government, there being 50,000 rounds of ammunition among other things. A small force of Indians could seize and destroy these stores, as Medicine Bow is a small station, and the country round about sparsely settled. Their destruction at this time would seriously impede military operations against the Indians.

H
is name was Yellow Hair.

Not because yellow was the color of his own. No, Yellow Hair's was as black as any Cheyenne's. His skin as dark as his red earth home.

Hay-o-wei.

Instead, Yellow Hair was named for the scalp he wore. The hair of a white woman he had killed, so went one tale.

But Yellow Hair knew better—it was the scalp of an important man. Hair he had taken seven winters before along the Little Dried River.
^*
Among his people a warrior was known by the coups he counted, by the ponies he stole, by the hair he took and the women left to mourn. Yellow Hair knew there must have been mourning when he took that scalp.

Instead of cutting it up to tie along the sleeves of his war shirt, instead of stringing small pieces of it around the edge of his war shield, Yellow Hair instead stretched the scalp on a small hoop of green willow and to that hoop tied a long thong. This he wore around his neck. It was the biggest victory he had ever won—this fight with the yellow-haired man.

A tough and worthy opponent. So he proudly wore the hair of that enemy around his neck ever since. They had called him other names when he was a child, when he was a brash youngster wandering with Tall Bull's band of Dog Soldiers raiding and stealing from Comanche country on the south, to Lakota country on the north.

Then Tall Bull was killed at the Springs on a hot summer's day, much as this one promised to be. The soldiers attacked without the slightest warning from their herd guard. Yellow Hair and the others stayed behind long enough to protect the children and old ones as they fled into the sandy hills and crossed the river
^†
to safety. The pony soldiers and their scalped-head scouts
^‡
did not pursue for long. He had learned the scalped heads would not—not when there was plunder among the lodges, not when there was something of a proud people to steal or destroy.

But Tall Bull was dead. And for weeks they had wandered aimlessly while some of the other war chiefs argued
as to just where they should go. Some families broke off and went their own way. A few bands even returned to the south that autumn, to live with relatives down on the southern agency.
^*
But not the true Dog Soldiers like Yellow Hair. They continued to raid on into that autumn. And early that winter he took his scalp down by the Little Dried River where five winters before the soldiers had attacked old Black Kettle's village of peace-loving Shahiyena. A lot of good it did the old chief to tie that white man's star flag from his highest lodgepole. Four years later Black Kettle was killed by Custer's men.

Now both Black Kettle and Tall Bull were dead. A man could die fighting, or he could die doing what the white man ordered him to do. To Yellow Hair's way of thinking, the old peace chief was a pitiful man, worthy only of scorn for his stupidity in believing in the white man's word. Black Kettle deserved to die for putting his trust not in his own people, but in what the white man considered truth.

But Tall Bull—it mattered little that he was dead, for he had died an honored man: a warrior who never shrank from the task at hand, a man who always thought of his people first, a fighter who went down defending his people, his home, and the land where he had buried the bones of his ancestors. That was the death of a true warrior and patriot of the People: to die with honor, to lay down his life fighting off the white man.

That autumn after the defeat of the Dog Soldiers at the Springs, Yellow Hair rode with three others for many days to the south, on beyond the Cherry River.
^*
There they came upon a camp of white buffalo hunters one cold, frosty evening. Slowly, the four warriors approached the white man's camp, asking for coffee, even a little tobacco for their pipes. Instead they were given nothing but the loud words and the muzzles of the hunters' guns, gestured away.

The next morning they killed the first as he crept into the bushes and settled over an old tree with his britches around his ankles to relieve himself. Then they slit the throat of the one sitting in the predawn darkness, watching over their horses and mules. After they had run these off into the hills, the four warriors waited for the five hunters to come for their animals. They did not have to wait long— for the white man is nothing without his animals. Especially these brave hunters who came to slaughter all the buffalo.

In their ambush all were soon killed except one who used the bodies of his friends to hide behind. It took a long time for the warriors to get close enough to that one whose hair seemed to shine like the white man's crazy metal, so much like the rays of the sun was it. That lone hunter killed two of Yellow Hair's friends that morning before Yellow Hair and the other warrior finally worked in close enough to hear the heavy breathing of the white man.

It had been a long time since the hunter had last fired a shot.

Carefully Yellow Hair crawled on his belly toward the bodies of the white men they had killed. Behind them he heard the quiet murmuring of the brave hunter. At last Yellow Hair raised his head over one of the bodies and was surprised to see the white man lying on his back, a bloody wound along the side of his head, an even bloodier and bubbling wound soaking the front of his greasy shirt. As Yellow Hair rose to his hands and knees, the white hunter looked at him with eyes as hard as river ice, then cursed him, growling something in the white man's language with his bloody tongue, pointing that pistol at the warrior, its hammer cocked.

The hunter pulled the trigger and laughed. Laughed very loud because the weapon he let drop at his side was empty. For a moment Yellow Hair stared at the hunter, not understanding—then decided the white man laughed because he had left himself without any bullets.

Yellow Hair knelt over his victim as the man tried to
push him off, but did not have the strength. Then, taking the white man's own knife from the scabbard on his belt, he took the hunter's hair. While the enemy was still breathing.

When he had finished, Yellow Hair had gotten to his feet, holding his trophy aloft, shaking it in the enemy's face. Then slashed the white man's throat, listening to him bubble and gurgle until he no longer struggled to breathe through the gaping, gushy wound.

“You have done a brave thing!”

Yellow Hair had turned to look behind him. His friend, Rain Maker, stood near, having watched it all.

“You have done a great thing!”

“He was a mighty enemy,” Yellow Hair said, holding out the scalp as if to show it off.

Rain Maker yelped, a low cry leaping from far back in his throat. Then he said, “From this day on your people will call you Yellow Hair!”

Ever since he had ridden a rising star among the Shahiyena.

In the late autumns most of the warrior bands wandered back onto one agency or the other, either at Red Cloud or over at Spotted Tail. Through the seasons his people remained closer to the Lakota than they did to their own southern cousins down in Indian Territory. And with the coming of the new grass that fed their ponies and made the animals strong, the warrior bands once more wandered west and north off the reservations.

It had been so this summer. He and the rest of his staunchest holdouts had been out hunting for scalps in the Paha Sapa,
^*
killing those white men who scratched in the ground for the crazy rocks near the sacred Bear Butte. It was there they learned of the rumors that a great fight had taken place far to the west. In the country of the Powder and the Rosebud, on a river where the Lakota traditionally
hunted buffalo and antelope—a place called the Greasy Grass.

In that country, the story was told, in the span of no more than eight suns, the warriors of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull had twice defeated great armies the white man had sent against them.

Now the word was being spread: Bring the people! Come north! Soon the white man will be gone forever!

Like some of his friends, Yellow Hair had family living with Little Wolfs band back there on the agency at Red Cloud. While most of the other warriors in that war party hurriedly rode off to the west to join the great chiefs in their defeat of the white man, Yellow Hair and a handful of his friends raced south to spread the word among their people still remaining on the reservation. Those women and children, the old ones and those too sick to help themselves, they would all need the courage of the warriors to flee from the soldiers of war chief Jordan at Camp Robinson.

So it was that they had finally gathered more than eight-times-ten-times-ten of Little Wolfs people and other stragglers behind the ridges north of the agency three days ago. And yesterday they had started north. The Shahiyena had a wide road to travel, a road wide-open as well! To travel so slowly, to bring their families along, these were warriors who had every reason to feel confident that no white man, no soldier would raise his hand to stop them from joining the Hunkpapa medicine man in the north. He was the one with power now—for hadn't he seen the white man's ruin in his vision?