Far as the Eye Can See (38 page)

We stay completely still most of that day. I don’t think I sleep more than a half hour or so, and when the sun begins to drop behind the high hills behind us, we start off again. We move slow and quiet most of the night. I watch for campfires, and around midnight we come upon a long slope and rising part of the country that runs up against scrub brush and small timber this side of the river. It’s still pretty dark, but I see a glow just over the rise. And then I hear it. A kind of soft rumble that’s too regular to be distant thunder. Ink comes up next to me and says, “It is a dance.”

“You don’t say.”

Little Fox looks out at the light with wide, watchful eyes.

“I don’t think it is a war dance,” she says. “I think it is just celebration.”

“How do you know that?”

“The drums,” she says.

I listen but now I don’t hear nothing but the tree frogs and crickets. “What drums? They stopped.”

She says, “It is just a social time.”

We start gently up the hill. When we get to the top I see a sight I never thought I’d ever see. Hundreds of fires light the sky, and there are lodges everywhere, all grouped together in a line of big half circles up that whole side of the river. All of them face east, and there must be a hundred of them, with thirty, forty, fifty tepees in each one. Ink stares down the hill in awe. I hear the drums again now, the voices of the dancers.

“It is all of them,” she says. “Cheyenne, Sioux—Uncpapa, Ogalala, Arrows All Gone, Assiniboines.”

“What is it, every Indian in the world?”

“I have never seen so many.”

“Well, we gotta get away from here,” I say. “I told you we shouldn’t come back this way.”

Little Fox pulls back on his horse and looks at us. Ink says, “If his people are here, he will know it.”

“What do you mean?”

“He will recognize his family’s lodge.”

I say nothing. Little Fox stares down that hill now.

“I will take him there,” Ink says. “Down there.”

“You can’t do that.”

“I must.”

“What if Hump is there?”

That stops her. She turns to Little Fox, points at the camp. He nods, and before either of us can say or do nothing, he kicks his horse and starts down the hill. We steady our horses, and then he stops and turns around to look at us—like he don’t believe what he’s doing and wants to remember us for all time. Then he raises his arm high, in a strong manly wave, and goes on down the hill.

“He don’t want to go down there,” I say.

Ink turns her mount and trots away and I follow.

We ought to put a lot of ground between us and that Indian camp, but with all the horses to manage and no help from Little Fox, we don’t get too far, maybe two or three miles. I can see Ink don’t want to get so far away Little Fox won’t be able to find us. We go back toward Rosebud Creek and find a place deep in the trees there to camp. It takes me a while to get the horses tethered out of sight. There is not much grass here and I know we cannot stay long. By now the sun leaks through the trees and scatters misty light everywhere. If we don’t make a fire, I don’t think we can be seen. When I get back to Ink, she is sitting in the shadows of the trees with her arms wrapped around her knees and her head down.

“You should maybe have stopped him,” I say. “You feel bad he’s gone?”

She looks at me. “I would not take him.”

“What do you mean?”

“I would not keep him if he didn’t want to stay.”

“But you’re still sad.”

“If it will make you happy, then I will say I’m sad.”

This really takes me down. I don’t know what to say. She puts her head back on her arms. I sit there for a minute looking at her, thinking about what I give up to stay with her and the boy all this time while the weather warmed and spring commenced. But all I say is “It wouldn’t make me happy at all.”

We don’t hear no more movements or see no more Indians for a while. It is already well into June. Little Fox is not coming back, and I decide we got to go on back to Bozeman anyway. I know Eveline is gone but I got to see for myself. I can leave Ink in Bozeman. She can go to Fort Ellis herself and start the rest of her life without me. She said that first day I met her that she wanted to go to Fort Buford because that was the last place she lived with her father. Maybe she’ll find some people at Fort Ellis that remember her.

I tell Ink we are leaving when the sun goes down and she says nothing. She starts packing everything up.

“I’ll go get the horses,” I say, but as I turn to do so, I hear horses coming. Ink stops what she’s doing and looks at me. I get down low and she does the same. I got my carbine off my shoulder and she has her pistol pointing back toward the noise. She lets out a little girlish sound in the back of her throat when Little Fox comes into view through the trees. He is mounted, leading our horses behind him.

Ink almost runs to him. He dismounts and stands there looking up at her. She says something to him and he says, “Ha-ho.”

Both of them look at me. “We got to get out of here,” I say. But I guess I’m smiling.

“His family was not in the camp,” Ink whispers later as we ride along in the dark. We are next to a creek that runs west from the Rosebud. The Bighorn River should be right in front of us if we keep going.

“So he’s come back to us,” I say.

“I am his family now,” she says.

“Of course. That’s what I meant.”

Toward morning, Little Fox shoots a deer with his bow and we decide to camp for the day a little early.

Ink guts the deer and cuts it up good and we cook it over a small buffalo chip fire. It makes more smoke than I would like, but we are hid away in a gulch that runs next to the creek and I don’t think no folks can see us unless they come down into the creek and ride up to us. After we eat the broiled meat, I settle back against my saddle and rest. I think to sleep soon. I watch Little Fox helping Ink tan the skin on the deer. He can creep through the brush as good as any Indian. It’s in his blood. I watch him and it gives me a start to think he will one day creep through leaves and brush so he can get close enough to kill a man. A chill goes through me.

“He’ll grow up and be a killer just like the rest of us,” I say out loud. I do that now—just speak out at the air and all—and if Ink thinks to answer, she will.

“Listen,” Ink says.

“What?”

“That sounded like a horn.”

“I didn’t hear nothing.”

“I think it is soldiers,” she says.

“I shouldn’t of built that damned fire,” I say. “We better put it out.”

“Is it soldiers?” Ink says.

“If it’s somebody I know,” I say, “I’ll probably have to shoot the son of a bitch.”

Chapter 27

Before we know it, we are surrounded by commotion and noise. Horses and I don’t know how many folks move along on the ridge above the gorge in the creek where we are crouched. I can’t see nobody, but I hear a lot of shooting and Indian yipping and hollering. We cover the fire with a soaked piece of the skin from the deer and then lay down against the bank of the creek, and Ink holds on to Little Fox. He ain’t afraid, and he already knows not to make no movement that might give us away. We lay there listening and the water starts to rise at our feet. The horses are tethered downstream a ways, in a darkly shaded coulee surrounded by pine trees and thick brush. Anybody riding along the creek can see them, but the slope of the ground on our side of the creek, and the low-hanging branches of trees on the other bank, should conceal them from folks not trying to find them.

I got my carbine and the Colt pistol. I huddle up next to Ink and watch the other bank. I can see the bank above us in the reflection of the water at our feet. I look for anything that moves. It seems like hours go by, but maybe it’s only a few minutes. The noise gradually moves away from us. Ink turns around and looks at me over the little guy’s dark head. I see fear in her eyes.

“It’s probably the soldiers rounding up Indians,” I say. “They ain’t seen us.” The noise is in the distance now. There’s as much yelling as shooting. The firing is irregular, but once it gets going, it goes very thick, each quick pop of hundreds of guns echoing in the hills.

“I ain’t heard noise like that since the war,” I say. “It’s a battle.”

Ink says, “We have to move.”

“It ain’t safe.”

Little Fox looks up at me. His mouth is slightly open. He signs to me about going to get the horses. “We got to stay here for now,” I say.

“Mo ache noch,” he says.

“That means ‘horse,’ ” Ink says.

“No,” I say. “Tell him we have to stay put. The sun’s got a long way to go before it’s down.”

I wish I could make him understand that we are safest here, in this near cave over the creek that keeps us pretty much out of sight. Only folks on the opposite side of the creek might see us if they cut through considerable underbrush to get to the edge of the stream.

And then I hear horses across from us on that other side behind the brush. A lot of horses. I turn and face whatever’s coming through the trees on that side. To our right, coming down out of the hills on that side, trampling through the brush, riding along at a trot, is more Indians than I ever seen at one time in my life. They just keep coming. Cheyenne, Arapaho, Sioux, Blackfeet. They ride together, they got paint on, and they mean business. Most have bows and arrows. I see a few spears and every now and then one of them carries a rifle. The go right by us, only a few yards away, and it takes a long time for all of them to cross the stream and head up the other side of the bank. They are so intent on where they are going, they don’t pay no attention to us at all.

“Something really big is going on,” I say. “I have to see what it is.”

“No,” Ink says.

“Stay here,” I say. “Nobody seen us.” I give her the Colt pistol and sling the carbine over my shoulder. I’m wearing a leather vest, yellow leggings, and moccasins. I got long hair, and I realize even with red hair I might be mistaken for a Indian, so I use a piece of leather to tie my hair back. I’m wearing my army-issue hat. It’s blue with a black visor and crossed rifles in the front of it, but it sits low on my head.

Ink says, “You look like a renegade.”

“Well,” I say, “I guess that’s what I am.” I take the hat off and hand it to her. I smile, but she only looks away. “Just stay here,” I say. “I’ll be right back.” I start to move away and the little guy grabs my arm. His eyes freeze me for a second. Then he says, “Tosend aus tearth?”

Ink says, “He wants to know where you’re going.”

“I’ll be back.”

Little Fox says something else I can’t hear. Ink says, “He told you to come back.”

“I will,” I say to him. “Don’t fret.” I pat his head and he almost smiles.

Ink puts her face against his head and watches me leave. The embankment is steeper than the one we come down to get here. I crawl up through wet clay, then prickly grass, until I reach the top. I lay on the ground at the base of a pine tree on the edge of a clearing and I see that the ground rises gradually in front of me. It’s covered in brush and green grass as it rises farther and farther. To my left the Indians scurry up the hill, moving pretty fast now. There’s a stand of trees over there, and I see lots of blue uniforms on foot, moving in the underbrush, firing on the Indians in front of them. Those fellows are cut off from the group on my right, where the hill slopes down a bit, then rises again toward the Little Bighorn River. There’s another crest over there, and I realize it is beginning to thicken with blue uniforms. I’m close enough that I can aim my carbine and hit one or two of them. I see the flag, and their colors fall. Further over to my right, beginning to ascend the hill on horseback, more Indians ride, lunging and screaming, weapons held high over their heads. Then I see smoke in the air and hear more gunfire. Some of the soldiers move back and forth on horseback, waving bright weapons, and the ones on foot begin to form a circle at the crest of the hill across from me. Horses fall and more men dismount. Now the sound of the gunfire increases. I see puffs of smoke, then seconds later hear the report of the guns. The Indians on my left wheel to their right and ride in front of me toward the hill on the other side where the soldiers have gathered. They are yipping and hollering to beat all, and now they’re riding in big circles at the bottom of the hill, around the group of soldiers who kneel on the crest, firing their guns.

I start to move back down toward the creek and Ink, but I see her coming up the other side of the coulee to my right. She’s got Little Fox with her and he’s got the horses. When she rides up to me she says, “We must go.”

“Get back down there,” I say. “What’s got into you?”

She has a look of panic on her face, and I see the boy, too, is terrified.

I wanted her to go back, but now I think that is not such a good idea. I see more Indians coming from below us, running on foot from where the others had come. They will cross right next to us and on foot they won’t miss us. I walk over and get up on Cricket. I reach out to Ink and take her by the arm. I holler into her ear, “The safest thing to do is go on down this stream toward that fight and wait in the trees down yonder until it’s over.”