Reap the Whirlwind (23 page)

F
rom Twin Creek, Frank Grouard, Baptiste Pourier, and
Louie Reshaw moved north by west that next morning, hugging the base of the Big Horn Mountains. They had reached the no-man’s-land where both the Lakota and the Crow hunted if they dared. This was contested ground, where any horseman spotted on a distant hilltop was likely an enemy out for ponies and plunder, or out for scalps.

They had gone but a few miles when Bat spotted a handful of horses tied in some brush down by the edge of a coulee not far off. The new day’s sun was just then beginning to brush the backs of the Indian ponies with golden light.

“A war party,” Bat declared.

“Out for ponies,” Reshaw agreed.

“Those Crow ponies—or Lakota?” Grouard asked.

Pourier shrugged. “From here, who knows?”

“I don’t want to go any closer—if those are Lakota warriors,” Reshaw said.

“If they are Crow—they will know you both,” Grouard said to Pourier. “What do the Crow call you?”

“They call me Left Hand,” Bat replied, holding it up. “If they are not Crow—then all three of us are in trouble.”

“Let’s don’t take the chance,” Reshaw suggested.

They rode wide to circle round the raiding party, hoping not to awaken the warriors and alarm the strange ponies.

Late that afternoon the three reached the Little Big Horn and made their crossing as the sun eased down behind the mountain peaks. It was nightfall when they reached the banks of Soap Creek where Grouard decided they would make another cold camp for the night, with only the icy water from the swollen stream and the dried buffalo taken on the Crazy Woman to fill their bellies.

The next morning rumbled in early, replete with threatening thunderheads clamoring noisily off the Big Horns. Gusts of icy wind swept down off the nearby slopes, carrying frigid air from those glaciers frozen across centuries in the shadowy crevices of the granite peaks. They hadn’t gone far when Pourier called out from the rear.

“Grouard! Pull off and hold up!”

Frank immediately reined into the trees that they had been hugging closely ever since moving out before sunup. He patted the neck of his mount as his eyes peered over their backtrail. “You see something?”

Bat nodded. “Something moved. Something not right.”

“Dust?” Reshaw asked.

“No. Something … just moved.”

Then they saw it at the same time. A good-sized war party in the distance breaking over the side of a hill, coming on the trio’s trail, moving along as if the leaders were keeping a close eye on the tracks the three half-breeds had made that morning.

“How many?” Reshaw asked, licking his dry lips.

“It don’t matter,” Grouard said flatly.

“It does too matter,” Pourier snapped. “We might have to make a fight of it.”

Reshaw glared distrustfully at Grouard, snarling, “And I like to know how many I’m going to fight.”

“It don’t matter to me,” Frank replied. “Because I’m not going to fight them here. I’m running for Crow country. You with me?”

Without another word Bat and Reshaw looked at one another, nodded quickly, and reined away with Grouard the moment Frank kicked his horse out of the timber.

They urged their mounts into an easy lope as Frank aimed for the broken country where they might not be so easily spotted by the war party racing down on their heels. For the rest of that morning and into the afternoon, the trio pushed their animals to the limit, ever closer to the Big Horn River, staying to cover as much as they could, when they could, but covering ground no matter what.

At the mouth of Black Canyon, Grouard told the others to wait while he pushed on to the brow of a nearby hill. In dismounting to look back across the broken country, Frank patiently waited, gazing across the immense, rolling land for sign of their pursuers. He waited, and waited some more. Still they did not show up.

“Maybe they give up,” Reshaw contended when Grouard returned to tell the pair at the bottom of the slope.

“Could be,” Pourier said. “Maybe they didn’t want to get no closer to Crow country.”

“We got lots of ground to cover,” Frank said, and again turned toward the banks of the Big Horn, breaking cover.

They hadn’t gone but a few hundred yards when Grouard spotted three horsemen on the gentle slope across the river. The half-breeds reined to a halt, and Grouard took his small signal mirror from a coat pocket to catch some of the sun that was playing dodge with the high thunderheads.

“Them Crow see this, they’ll know we’re not Lakota,” Pourier declared.

“Let’s just hope they know we’re with the soldiers coming to attack their enemies,” Reshaw added.

“I pray they remember you, Left Hand,” Grouard said when the three horsemen across the river suddenly turned on their heels and disappeared over the hill.

With nothing else to do but to press on, as warily as they could, the half-breeds set out once more, ever watchful of the far bank on their left. Across the Big Horn.

As they passed the site of the abandoned Fort C. F. Smith, Bat pointed to a pair of horsemen slowly moving north along the west bank of the river. Again Grouard took out his army signal mirror and caught the furtive sunlight, signaling the pair. He got their attention, but they whirled
and fled over the hills to the west, in the same direction the first three had flown.

“Damn,” Grouard growled in exasperation. “I thought these Crows were hospitable, Bat.”

“They don’t know who the hell we are,” Pourier grumbled.

Frank looked over his own dress and the clothing of the other two. “You mean we don’t look enough like white men?”

Bat started chuckling as he gazed down at his own dress. “Sure as hell don’t look like no Sioux, do I?”

“Let’s get across the Big Horn and find that Crow village those horsemen been coming from,” Grouard suggested.

“That river running pretty fast,” Reshaw said when they rode down to the east bank to the edge of the water. “How you figure we get these horses across without swimming them?”

Pourier agreed. “I don’t think I want to try that river—high and wild like she is.”

Frank shrugged. “I guess we build a raft and take them over on it—one at a time.”

All three dismounted in a copse of cottonwood and willow, deciding to have Reshaw cook up some stew with their dried meat while Pourier and Grouard attended to the felling of some saplings they would lash together for their raft. Reshaw had started his fire at the base of a cottonwood so the firesmoke would disperse through branches when Big Bat suggested they have a smoke before diving into their labors.

They sat on the bank of the Big Horn, cross-legged. Pourier took out his short pipe and charged it from a small tobacco pouch. He was just starting to light the bowl with a sulfur-head match when over his shoulder Grouard spotted a haze of dust rising beyond the hills.

He was on his feet, yanking on his coat and catching up his rifle as he hollered, “We gonna have company soon!”

Pourier wheeled at the moment the distant war party broke the skyline. “Sonsabitches did track us after all!”

Grouard hadn’t waited to listen but was instead sprinting
up the slope toward the other half-breed. He and Pourier were a long way from Reshaw.

“Louie! Get them horses caught up! We gotta skedaddle fast!”

Behind Frank, Bat was yelling.

“Frank! Frank!”

Grouard skidded to a halt and whirled. Pourier was not far behind, pointing back across the Big Horn to the west bank. Frank estimated there to be as many as six hundred horsemen making their charge down the far slope, all of them bristling for war.

Bat yelled, “Yonder come a lot more Injuns on the far side!”

“A lot more?” Grouard grumbled, angry with himself at getting caught in this trap. “That looks like the whole goddamned Crow nation!”

Reshaw was struggling to cinch his saddle on his mount as it pranced around, anxious at Louie’s excitement.

“Forget it—just ride bareback!” Grouard hollered as he caught up the reins to his own mount, slapping the rump of two of the spare horses for good measure to send them flying.

“Only thing we can do now is fight it out,” Grouard told the other two as they hammered heels to their horses and raced north for the banks of the Big Horn.

“Then let’s turn and fight it out!” Bat shouted.

“No good to fight here. Up there. On the flat,” Frank answered, pointing ahead where he figured they could make a stand of it in the open. “It’s the only place where we might hold them off at a distance.”

“Unless they wanna make quick work of us,” Reshaw snapped. “Unless some of them bucks wanna come in and get their coups real quick!”

“They got to be Crow, Bat,” Grouard said as they reached the flat piece of high ground and whirled off the backs of their horses.

“How the hell can you tell this far off?”

Grouard shrugged. “Can’t for sure. Only thing—they’re on the west side of the river.”

“If that bunch is Crow—what about
those
sonsabitches?” Reshaw demanded, pointing to a war party tearing
toward them from the south on the east bank of the river. “Gotta be Sioux.”

“Appears we’re smack in the middle of a little war, boys,” Grouard replied.

Another half-dozen heartbeats and the warriors racing up from the south along the Big Horn finally reached the top of a low hill where at last they saw the far bank of the river for the first time. Skidding to a dusty, ragged halt, the twenty-five or more whirled about in tight confusion, yelping in surprise, brandishing their weapons and shouting among themselves before they suddenly turned on their heels and hastily disappeared back over the hill.

“I suppose they decided against helping us fight off them Crow,” Grouard cheered, pointing at the far bank where hundreds of horsemen pushed their ponies down the edge of the Big Horn.

“Maybe the river will hold ’em back for a while so we can get a jump on ’em,” Bat said.

“Or just hold ’em while we tell who we are and why we come,” Frank replied.

“The bastards ain’t stopping!” Reshaw shouted.

It made a sight. Those braids and feathers and scalp locks and all that fringe dancing on the wind as the hundreds of horsemen spread out, not slowing their fierce charge a bit as they forced their ponies off the bank and into that cold, rushing river fed by the melting snowcaps above them all.

“Like they don’t give a damn about drowning!” Pourier grumbled.

“Horsemen like those ain’t gonna drown,” Reshaw growled in reply.

“You better figure on telling them we’re friends, Bat,” Grouard ordered, “or start telling me how you’re gonna talk our asses out of this fix!”

As some bullets began to whine over the trio’s head, the first horsemen into the river dropped out of sight beyond the east slope sinking sharply away to the Big Horn. All Grouard could see now were the rest of the hundreds still plunging into the icy torrent of the river, yelling their taunts, firing their guns at the three half-breeds on the far river slope.

“Goddamn—I said tell ’em who the hell you are, Bat!”

Shoving his horse aside, Pourier strode into the open, hollering for all he was worth above the clamor of gunfire and screeching warriors. He signaled with his arms—raising his left hand, striking it repeatedly with his right to make the ancient sign. Then the first horsemen across the river broke over the brow of the last rise, less than a hundred yards off, their ponies heaving at an ear-flattened gallop.

“If Bat can’t stop ’em, Louie,” Grouard instructed as he laid the barrel of his Springfield over the bare back of his horse, “get ready to take as many with you as you can before you go under.”

“Left Hand!” Pourier was yelling in Crow as the snorting ponies bore down on the trio.
“Left Hand!”

When they were less than fifty yards away, one of the leaders threw up a hand and began flinging his voice at the others. Gradually, the firing of the guns from the river faded as more horsemen broke over the lip of the hill. By now the warriors stretched across a half-mile-wide front, tearing along the slope that would carry them toward the trio.

“Left Hand!” Pourier continued to shout in the Crow tongue.

“Left Hand!” the warrior answered back, this time firing his rifle into the air. “Left Hand!”

“It’s Old Crow!” Bat yelled over his shoulder at Grouard and Reshaw.

“You know him?” Frank asked.

Bat was almost crying, tears of joy in his eyes. “Hell if I don’t!”

It happened all so quickly that Grouard could not quite take it all in at once: the first horsemen were upon them, swirling around them, fifty, then a hundred and more, each one shouting, laughing, leaping from their snorting ponies to come up and shake hands with Pourier, others who recognized Reshaw wrenching up his hand and pumping the arm for all it was worth in good white-man fashion. They were all running about, patting one another on the back in celebration—and laughing. Frank had never heard so much laughing from a bunch of warriors before.

About two dozen did not stop but instead rode on past in a haze of dust, pushing south at a gallop after the Lakota war party that had been dogging the half-breeds’ trail since that morning. That furious pursuit gave Frank pause, thinking on all that laughter. He could not remember ever hearing so much gut-busting good humor before.

Then Pourier was beside Grouard, pulling him around to introduce him to a string of Crow war chiefs, and Frank was at long last able to have Bat explain to the warriors why they had come. Who had sent them. To say that “Lone Star” Crook desperately needed their help in defeating the Lakota and Shahiyena once and for all time.

“To drive them from your hunting ground, for as long as time flows beneath the stars,” Grouard had Pourier explain to Old Crow and the other headmen.

The war chief shouted, repeating this momentous news to the rest, then set some of his warriors to work on a raft they would use to ferry the scouts across the Big Horn. In less than three hours the entire assembly was ready to push off as the sun began to fall behind the high peaks. While some of the younger warriors of the group swam the half-breeds’ barebacked horses across the river, the three scouts were told to climb aboard the raft with their saddles and trail gear.