Ashes of Heaven (13 page)

“Yes, the council,” he repeated.

“You are going to speak, aren't you?”

“That is why I was gone when you awoke this morning,” White Bull explained. “Sleep was elusive last night, so I finally dressed and took my pipe into the hills before sunrise.”

“Did my brother find the answer he sought?”

White Bull was a moment in answering. “There are many answers, Antelope Woman. And I thought on each one of them.”

“You are not so quick to speak and act as Last Bull and some of the others—”

“Let them be,” he interrupted his younger sister, a stern look of disapproval creasing his face. “If a man wishes to make a fool of himself, a wise person does not seek to stop him.”

“I think you are one of the wisest, brother,” she said contritely.

Shrugging at her compliment as they entered the camp crescent, White Bull said, “Sometimes … I do not feel so wise, young one.”

“But you will speak at the warrior society council this afternoon?”

“This is a very critical time for our people,” he explained almost in a whisper. “We stand at a crossing of trails: one black and one red.”

“Old Wool Woman told me this morning she hopes the council decides to make peace with the Bear Coat.”

He replied, “Yes, while so many others want us to continue walking down the red road of war.”

They stopped beside his lodge where she lived with White Bull's family. He knelt and tied his pony to a tentpeg.

After a long moment she asked, “What road will you walk, brother?”

Brushing his pony's neck with his blanket mitten, White Bull said, “I will set my feet on that road the Sacred Powers told me to walk when I smoked my pipe this morning.”

“What road is that?”

The warrior tried out a valiant smile on his sister. “For many winters now, I have been asked to walk the hardest road.”

Chapter 10

Big Hoop-and-Stick Game Moon
1877

Ever since the days of his youth, he had been called Ice. Only in recent winters had his name been changed.

With thirty-nine summers behind him now, White Bull was considered a holy man, a powerful doctor by the
Ohmeseheso.
His father, North Left Hand, had been a powerful shaman among the Southern People—so powerful that it had been said that North Left Hand caused the death of another man he considered a threat to him. For that North Left Hand was banished from the Southern Bands. After wandering, he was taken in by the
Hetane-vo-eo-o,
the Cloud People,
*
and married a woman of that tribe. They named their firstborn son Ice. North Left Hand's boy grew to be an honorable young man, well respected. It became clear from those early days in the Southern Country that Ice would have special powers to heal, given him by the Sacred Powers.

He was no more than fifteen winters old when he went into the hills for the first time to fast for four days, praying that the Powers would take pity on him. On the fourth day, as his body weakened, desperate to receive an answer, Ice was visited by one of the
Ma-heono.
†
Almost unable to breathe because of his excitement, Ice gazed on the small, handsome man who spoke out of the great silence surrounding that place in the hills.

“Friend, some day I wish you to dig a big hole in the ground. Then I want you to get into it, and to have others put a big rock over the hole in which you put yourself,” the Sacred Man instructed. “Let the rock be a large one, even if it is so big that it would take a number of people to lift it. I will be with you and help you, and I will bring you out safely.”

“W—when I return to my village?” the young man croaked apprehensively.

“No. But one day,” the handsome man said. “One day there will be this testing of your special powers.”

The following summer Ice injured his knee in a fall from a pony. No matter what the tribal doctors did for him, no matter how many poultices he applied, or how many times he soaked it in hot springs, or what roots he rubbed on it, the leg remained swollen and sore. It remained very painful for the next two winters, troubling him to the point that he could feel the power of his spirit ebbing out of him just as surely as sweat would seep from his pores. Slowly, day after day, he came to realize the injury would eventually kill him.

So filled with despair was he that Ice hobbled before his father and said, “I know I am going to die. When I do, I don't want you to bury me in the ground and cover me with dirt. As a warrior of my people, leave me out where my flesh can be eaten by birds and animals, so that my flesh can be scattered far and wide toward all four Sacred Directions.”

“You must not die this way,” North Left Hand argued. “Get ready and I will outfit you for battle. You must go to war and give your body to the enemy.”

“Yes, to die in battle,” Ice agreed.

“Ride right in before the rest so you can count the first coup, then let them kill you. That will be dying bravely.”

Soon he joined a war party riding against the Omaha in their own country. Riding his father's finest war horse, wearing his best clothing, Ice rode straight into battle, kicking his pony ahead of the others so he could be the first to strike. The first enemy he confronted fired his smoothbore at Ice, so close the young man felt the burn of the muzzle-flash. He slashed his quirt across the enemy's arms, knocking the rifle loose. Ice had struck the first coup! But a second Omaha with a bow closed on him. The arrow hissed past Ice's ear.

By that time the rest of the young men had caught up to Ice and joined the fight. In the end they put the Omaha into retreat. When the war party turned south for home, they carried with them three enemy scalps.

When the war party reached their village, North Left Hand was very surprised and extremely happy to see his son still alive. “My son! You have been to war. You have made a vow and given your body to the enemy—but have lived! This truly means you will live to be an old man! You will never be killed by an enemy!”

Ice's father began to dance as his son dismounted, chanting his prayer, “
Ma-heo-o,
I gave you my son. But you took pity on me and you sent him back to me alive so that he may continue to live upon the earth! Now I know he will have a long life.”

North Left Hand leaped atop the war pony and began slowly to circle the camp of the Cloud People, calling out the name of certain people in the village, giving each one a horse. As the person called came forward, he put the pony's rope in their hand and related the story of his son's first coup. On and on he continued around the camp, giving away all his horses and repeating the story of Ice's deliverance by the Everywhere Spirit.

From that day onward, Ice never again tried to throw his life away. The Sacred Powers had prevented him from giving his body to the enemy. They had taken pity upon him.

It was becoming clear to the young warrior that the Powers were saving him for other, more important, work in the years to come. By his twenty-third spring when he and his father had journeyed north to live with the
Ohmeseheso,
Ice was already respected as a holy man who possessed powers to heal and protect.

As it stormed outside one hot night, rain slashing against the lodgeskins and lightning streaking the prairie sky, a visitor came to his lodge. Hook Nose, a young warrior also known among his Northern People as the Bat because his movements in battle were as swift and light as a bat swooping at its prey, came to ask help from the young holy man. This Hook Nose was the same Elkhorn Scraper the
ve-ho-e
called “Roman Nose.” For the last few seasons the man had refused to become a chief of his warrior society, or to sit on the Council of Forty-Four. His only desire was to protect his people.

The two of them smoked that stormy night in Ice's lodge as the thunder clapped above them. That was a powerful sign from the Spirits.

Finally, Hook Nose asked, “Holy man, did you see anything that will protect a fighting man?”

“Yes, I saw something once. A war bonnet. I saw it when the Thunder came to speak to me.”

“Make that war bonnet you saw for me, a war bonnet that would protect a fighting man.”

For a long time Ice worked on the bonnet, its solitary buffalo horn and its double trail of feathers, in addition to that special earth paint, Hook Nose would wear whenever he rode into battle. The final touch was to sew a kingfisher skin behind the single horn. Because one of the
Ma-heono
assumes the shape of the kingfisher when he appears to man, this Sacred Being has the power to close up bullet holes. With this skin sewn to the bonnet, Hook Nose would be bulletproof. Even if an enemy's bullet struck the warrior, the wound would close up immediately.

Now it was time for Ice to instruct Hook Nose in the sacred obligations that went along with this powerful headdress.

“After you put this bonnet on your head for the first time, you must never again shake hands with anyone. If you do, you will surely be killed. When you go into a fight, imitate the call of the kingfisher. This will call up the power of the
Ma-heono.
”

Then, gazing squarely into Hook Nose's eyes, the young holy man declared, “And you must be faithful to all the vows of the Contraries. Especially the law that says that you cannot eat any food that has been taken from a dish with a metal tool. If you do, you will die in battle,” he warned ominously.

Now Hook Nose had been dead nine winters. Killed by the
ve-ho-e
who shot their horses on a sandbar in a narrow riverbed.
*

Many were the warriors and chiefs who knew of Ice's warning to Hook Nose. When the great warrior was killed by the
ve-ho-e
a short time after he ate meat prepared with the white man's metal, respect for Ice's holy powers swelled among the
Ohmeseheso,
as well as among the Northern Bands of the Lakota, especially the Little Star People. Side by side with the Lakota, Ice fought the white man, and even saved White Horse's life at the big fight on the Shell River.
*

Two summers later, the
ve-ho-e
soldiers had raised three forts in the hunting ground claimed by the Shahiyela and Lakota warrior bands. Even after they had ambushed and slaughtered the Hundred in the Hand,
†
the soldiers still would not abandon their posts, where they cowered like frightened sow bugs beneath a buffalo chip. The Lakota and
Ohmeseheso
met to hold their respective sun dances and decide what to do to drive the white man out of the buffalo country for good. It was a time of meaningful prayers to the Sacred Powers—a time when Ice recalled his first journey into the hills to pray for a vision. During that moon, when the buffalo bulls were rutting
#
, the young holy man decided to carry out the wishes of the small, handsome man who had come to him in his vision fifteen summers before.

At their annual camp on the Roseberry River, his people were dancing and praying, calling out for help from the Sacred Powers. Perhaps, Ice believed, his holy strength would save the
Ohmeseheso
and the Lakota from the soldiers.

After selecting a place outside the camp crescent, Ice dug a great hole in the ground deep enough for him to sit up in. Then he gathered a group of men from the warrior societies, sending them into the hills to find a stone large enough to cover the hole he had excavated. Eventually the men returned with a monstrous sandstone slab they had to turn end over end to get down to the village. A crowd of the curious swelled in size as the stone drew closer to the hole.

People scoffed, “What is he doing?”

Others doubted, “Ice cannot move that rock by himself!”

“He will die in that hole!” others cried in panic.

Quieting the crowd, Ice instructed some women to erect a great lodge over the hole, a lodge so big it required three covers. At sunset he held a huge feast inside the lodge, consisting of buffalo, dog, and dried fruit, the three foods blessed during the sun dance. Carrying a special buffalo robe he had painted with the colors of the four Sacred Powers, Ice settled himself at the bottom of that hole as darkness fell.

One of the doubters in the crowd called out, “Let no man leave who brought this stone here! If we cannot pull the rock off the hole, surely Ice will die!”

With all the Old Man Chiefs and the priests of the
Ohmeseheso
present, the leaders formed three rings of the sacred circle around Ice's hole. Then two warriors bound the holy man with bowstrings, hand and foot, before they covered him with his painted robe. He faced the east. In that sudden darkness, he could only hear the sounds of the many who strained and groaned as they muscled the sandstone slab into position. Then there were scraping noises as they moved four rocks atop the huge slab, each placed at one of the cardinal directions, and each so big it would take more than one strong man to lift it.

With that done, Ice listened as they constructed the frame of a sweat lodge upon that sandstone slab, covering the willow branches with buffalo robes just as he had instructed them to do. Eventually, the holy man heard the muffled singing begin as the priests and elders began calling out their prayers for his deliverance.

Becoming aware of the burning ache in his arms and legs, Ice realized how tightly he had been tied by people who did not believe he could accomplish this powerful thing. He told his heart to be quiet, to listen. And for a long time he sat in the darkness as the silence deepened.

After a while, he thought he heard something, then felt something brush past his side. For some unknown reason he could now see when he opened his eyes. There before him sat the little man with the handsome face. Just as he had promised in the dream.

The little man got to his feet and stood in front of Ice. “Why have your people put you here?”

“They think they are in trouble with the
ve-he-o
and they want help.”