Reap the Whirlwind (35 page)

It made the gall rise in his throat now to think of what his old friend of many winters ago was doing to betray the Lakota: joining with Spotted Tail in agreeing to sell the Paha Sapa to the white man. Still, it gave Crazy Horse a little spark of pleasure to imagine how the aging Oglalla chief must feel of late: Red Cloud’s own son Jack had abandoned his father’s reservation, had journeyed with Black Elk to join Crazy Horse’s free-roaming Hunkpatila this summer.

What a thing this was! Jack Red Cloud fleeing his father’s reservation, stealing away with his father’s rifle—a beautiful silver-mounted Winchester repeater the white man’s government had presented the Oglalla chief during one of his trips far to the east to the land of the great father, given Red Cloud for keeping his people at peace.

Now it seemed that special weapon with the white
man’s talking marks engraved upon it would be used to kill some of the great father’s soldiers when Crazy Horse led his warriors against them. Yes, he thought, he would lead the hundreds south to give a proper greeting to Three Stars’s soldiers who were guided north by Yugata, The Grabber.

Thinking of the one the white man knew as Frank Grouard made the Horse’s heart heavy with sadness. For whenever he thought on The Grabber, he immediately thought on his friend He Dog. The half-breed Yugata had married He Dog’s sister against her brother’s wishes. There had been bad blood between them until The Grabber finally fled. Where, no one knew.

Until a short time later in the Sore-Eye Moon, Yugata led Three Stars to the Powder River, where they destroyed Old Bear’s and Two Moon’s camp, where the half-breed called out for Crazy Horse and He Dog to come fight him with honor.

The Horse had not been there—or he would have gone boldly forward to rip the heart out of the one who betrayed the Lakota who had taken him in, asked him to become one of their own. No matter that Yugata had also betrayed Sitting Bull and the Hunkpapa’s whiskey and powder trade with the Slota, the Red River Metis. Mistakes can be made.

So much sadness for He Dog—his sister should never have married The Grabber.

The heart of Crazy Horse ached for his old friend, He Dog, for He Dog was also Red Cloud’s nephew. He felt truly sorry—for He Dog’s heart was made small knowing for some reason his uncle had lost the brave blood of a warrior. The old man clung to the white man’s reservation on the White Rock River, agreeing to sell away the sacred hills where the young men went to speak with the spirits and renew the strong blood of their people.

“Once the fighting starts, there is no stopping it,” He Dog said quietly, his words reaching out of the predawn darkness.

Crazy Horse turned suddenly, surprised at the disembodied voice.

He Dog stepped into view out of the murky starshine.

The Horse took a step toward him, feeling his face begin to smile. “I could not sleep.”

He Dog moved on past Crazy Horse slowly, staring at the ground. “No, there is no stopping it now, my friend.”

He paused by the magnificent animal and stroked Crazy Horse’s pony along the withers for a moment before he continued. “I thought I could get my family, the sick and old ones, away from the fighting.”

“And you learned that once this fighting with the white man starts, there can be no escape.”

“Yes. Everyone gets hurt by it,” He Dog replied. “Not just the ones who fight. Not just the ones who want the blood.”

Crazy Horse wagged his head sadly. “I cannot understand why it is—but the little ones, and the women—they are hurt when it is the warriors whose job it is to protect our families.”

He Dog nodded, then shuddered with the chill sweep of a breeze presaging the coming of dawn. “Many times I’ve thought on this since returning to the Hunkpatila after the Powder River fight. It seems I have but two choices: to take up the gun like all the others before me and I myself have always done. Or to join Red Cloud and Spotted Tail at the Soldiers Town—walking on their knees with the grease on their lips and the flour on their fingers.”

“A man might as well die and be no more.”

“Yes,” He Dog replied. “To live on the reservation would be worse than death.”

“So, my friend—is there really a choice?” Crazy Horse asked.

“No. For a man of the People. There is but one path to take.”

“
Hetchetu aloh!
This day we ride that path, He Dog!”

He smiled at Crazy Horse. “Yes. Today we ride that path together.”

“Don’t think for a moment that Crook would chance disciplining the Crow and Shoshone,” Seamus Donegan told the handful of newsmen gathered at his fire that evening of the sixteenth. “He can’t dare make them angry at him for
fear of them leaving us here on the doorstep of his great battle.”

“But all that shooting they did in the buffalo herd!” John Finerty exclaimed.

“Damned right,” echoed Reuben Davenport, reporter for the New York
Herald.
“If the hostiles didn’t know we were marching for their village before today, they know now.”

Seamus wagged his head and pulled the hump-steak from the fire to test its doneness. “Oh, them red h’athens know, fellas. Don’t doubt that Sitting Bull’s hostiles already know we’re knocking at their back door.”

“But to go and have a sporting holiday in that buffalo herd,” complained Joe Wasson, correspondent for not only the New York
Tribune
, but also the Philadelphia
Press
and the San Francisco
Alta California.

“I agree,” growled T. B. MacMillan, a soft-edged man, not the sort who should be sent out west as a correspondent for the Chicago
Inter-Ocean.
“They’re supposed to be scouting for Crook—not hunting buffalo. This fighting with Indians is something I’ll never understand.”

“Likely you won’t,” Seamus replied sourly as he poked a finger against the length of buffalo intestines he had coiled around a green willow wand, which he had suspended over the coals of his fire to roast slowly in the way of the warrior and plainsman. “Hard to understand, is it now? Well, boys—to the Crow way of looking at things, the more Sioux buffalo they can kill, the less Sioux buffalo the enemy will have to eat. To shoot all those buffalo like they did this afternoon, why—it’s just another way the Crow make war on their old enemies.”

“And those enemies aren’t far off, are they?” Finerty asked.

“No,” Seamus answered, pointing into the night with his long skinning knife, shiny with grease and the juices of warm flesh. “Grouard figures since them hunters took off to the north when he rode up with the Crow scouts, the village sits just up the Rosebud.”

As the half-breed had taken his guides to explore the trail ahead at noon, Crook temporarily dismounted the expedition to await Grouard’s return. Seamus had glanced
up the slope as they waited, finding Captain William Stanton heaving the shattered remains of his odometer-cart down the uneven creekbed. The terrain had grown exceedingly rougher as the morning wore on, until the engineer’s equipment finally could take no more and broke down.

“There’ll be music in the air now, for sure,” William Andrews had exclaimed prophetically to his fellow captain, Swiss-born Alexander Sutorious. “Wherever you see buffalos, there too you will find Indians.”

Donegan had turned back to find practically all the troops stretching out upon the tall grass to relax beneath the noonday sun. He had tried closing his eyes, but the chanting and thumping of the hand-held drums proved to be too much. With some of their number accompanying Grouard and Plenty Coups on a ride north, the rest of the Crow, and Shoshone as well, joined in holding an impromptu war dance, complete with drumming and screeching, which was interrupted only when a handful of Grouard’s trackers returned at a gallop to announce that they had spotted some of the enemy. As well as a herd of the enemy’s buffalo.

As soon as the scouts had delivered their news to the chiefs, it seemed nearly the entire auxiliary force hurled themselves atop their ponies and raced the animals back and forth across the slopes of the nearby hills to give them a second wind in expectation of bringing the enemy to imminent battle. When a handful of the Crow suddenly bolted away to the north without looking back, the rest took off at a wholesale gallop, wading into the herd, where they gleefully brought down as many as they possibly could until the buffalo stampeded, disappearing beyond the far hills.

“Steady, men!” came the command repeated up and down the line to deter any tempted white hunter. “Maintain your ranks!”

When the order came to remount after that noon break, Seamus climbed into the saddle near John Finerty. Grumbling about the heat, the Chicago correspondent carelessly clambered atop his horse, dragging back the hammer on his sidearm as he did so. When finally released, the hammer fell, the pistol fired, and its echo reverberated
from the surrounding hills as the newsman leapt to the ground, stumbling back a few steps in shock.

“You’re shot?” Donegan asked as he flew to the ground and rushed to Finerty’s side.

Here, then there, the newsman slowly pressed his hands over most of his body. “I … I suppose I’m not,” Finerty replied in utter amazement.

The soldier column pressed on once they discovered they were not under attack with Finerty’s accident, jittery as everyone was with rumors of hostiles spotted nearby. Inspecting the correspondent’s saddle as the cavalry troops passed by, Donegan and Finerty discovered the bullet had chipped part of the cantle, lodging in the earth near the horse’s hooves. The leather on the saddle still smoked slightly from the muzzle-flash.

“Sonofabitch—and Mother Mary!” the reporter hollered as he ran his hand over the damaged saddle. “To hell with George Crook and these red bastards he’s chasing. To hell with Wilbur Storey and Clint Snowden! To hell with their wanting to send me traipsing out here across this saints-infernal wilderness!”

“Damned lucky, you were,” Seamus grumbled.

“Lucky indeed!” cheered old Lloyd, Captain Alexander Sutorious’s black servant, as he rode up to satisfy his own curiosity. “My, my—but it appears you wasn’t made to be killed by bullets, Mr. Finerty—or that would’ve fixed you for certain!”

“I’m not talking about this stupid newsman shooting himself!” Donegan growled back at the gray-headed Negro. “I meant it’s damned lucky he didn’t kill his horse! A beautiful animal—why, it would’ve been a goddamned shame to kill a mere innocent bystander so thoughtlessly!”

“Go to hell, Donegan!” Finerty grumbled as he dusted off his clothing after stumbling out of the stirrup.

“Finerty!”

Donegan and the newsman turned to find Captain Guy V. Henry galloping up.

“Colonel!” Finerty called out, addressing the officer by his brevet rank.

Henry brought his horse to a sliding halt. “Good God, man! I heard you were wounded.”

“I don’t think so.”

Now the officer smiled, his eyes the sort that ignited with any merriment. “Well—by jove—if you don’t know for sure, it’s about time you found out!” Henry roared, chuckling lustily as he reined about and galloped off to rejoin his D Company.

Throughout that afternoon the command came in sight of no sizable timber to speak of. What stunted cottonwood and willow there was lay along the emerald streamers bordering the courses of every little brook tumbling down most slopes toward the many valleys resplendent in the delicate pink of the wild rosebud, the pale blue of the native phlox, and the radiant yellow of the ten-petal blazing-star. Snow-melt gurgled along every pebbled bed, a springtime melody given harmony from the brush by the multitudes of meadowlarks and wrens, as well as other songbirds piping their warning of the rattlesnakes the soldiers spotted from time to time slithering through the tall grass along the line of march.

After completing thirty-five miles, twenty-five of it in sight of those grazing, meandering buffalo, Crook had ordered his command into bivouac on the headwaters of the south fork of Rosebud Creek about seven-twenty P.M. while the sun continued to sink low beyond the Bighorns. As the first outfits to make camp, the cavalry formed three sides of a hollow square surrounding a small lake at the bottom of a natural amphitheater itself surmounted by low bluffs on three sides. When the first of the infantry began to arrive about eight o’clock to complete the fourth side of the general’s defensive camp, the horse soldiers quickly gathered to watch what they expected would be quite a show from what they had dubbed the “mule brigade.” Denied the chance to watch the foot soldiers-turned-mule-whackers put to the trail that morning at departure, the cavalrymen hungered as much for the evening’s entertainment as they did for a hot meal.

Coming up in good order behind Major Chambers, and Captains Burt and Luhn, with little difficulty, the infantry began to re-form along their side of the hollow square in admirable form.

The major bellowed his command, “Halt!”

As if on cue, and in most disharmonious unison, the 175 plucky pack-mules-turned-riding-stock blared their noisiest protest yet at the long day’s hot march, perhaps their impatient expectation of shedding the saddles so they could give themselves a good, hearty roll in the dirt and grass. At the noisy, unanimous braying of the mules and their sheepish, shaky handlers, the cavalrymen instantly filled the valley with their laughter.

“Sonofabitch!” the furious Chambers swore as he wheeled on the hundreds of cheering, laughing troopers. “I’ll not be humiliated again in this way by the likes of you ignorant bastards! Shut up!” he shrieked.

Stomping a foot when he found he could not get hundreds of horse soldiers to stop laughing, the major bellowed, “To think of it—me! Forced to ride these goddamned mules: the devil’s own creation! Shut up, I said. I order you! For Crook to treat me this way! Go away, damn your blue hides!”

Grown mortified at the laughter, Chambers whirled around and around, flinging his arms in the air, shouting at the horse soldiers for quiet, to disappear. Then of a sudden the major ripped his campaign sword from its clips at his belt and flung it to the ground in disgust.

Leaving the infantry in the care of Burt and Luhn, Chambers stomped off in disgust, muttering to himself.