Ashes of Heaven (18 page)

Then the seven arose from the snow, climbed onto their horses and slowly moved down into the valley, continuing on their path to the mouth of Suicide Creek.

Only once did Wooden Leg look back at that windswept hill and what little vegetation grew there to protect the holy place from the howling winds.

Big Crow had crawled there to die after he was alone. There beneath the wide sky where
Ma-heono
and the eagles could look down, he had given up his spirit.

The ground a brave man had chosen for his final resting place.

Chapter 14

18-19 February
1877

BY TELEGRAPH

Territory of the Black Hills.

WASHINGTON, February 16.—The senate committee on territories had a long meeting, devoted to the consideration of Senator Spencer's bill to create a new territory out of the Black Hills country, which it was proposed to call Lincoln territory … The committee decided to lay the matter over till the next session of congress for the reason that the bill ratifying the treaty made last summer with the Sioux Indians has not yet been passed by the house, and because legislation being so far behind now, it would be impossible to secure the final action of the senate this session.

With the descent of the sun, the wind had picked up in the valley of the Tongue River. Johnny Bruguier tugged at his worn woolen scarf, once more covering his raw, red nose. The army horse between his legs chose its footing carefully, slowly. The animal was nowhere near as strong as it had been back at the first of the month when he rode away from the soldier fort. It had begun to grow weak almost from the moment the soldier escort turned around for the post, taking with them that supply of horse feed stowed away on the pack animals.

Once more the half-breed could understand why the warrior bands always told the soldiers they would do this or they would do that, when their ponies were stronger. Winter took its terrible harvest on the horses too: those animals that didn't die before spring were nothing but crow-bait bags of bones by the time the snows began to melt and the first shoots of grass emerged from the frosty ground. Bruguier only hoped the army horse between his legs would have enough bottom left in it to cross these last miles in to Tongue River Cantonment.

Again he offered the best prayer he knew that the Shahiyelas' ponies would have enough strength to cross these last miles before they reached the Bear Coat's lodge.

Just before dawn that morning, Bruguier saddled up to begin this ride northward in advance of the village. The cold seemed all the more intense as he grasped wrists with White Bull, nodded to Old Wool Woman, then took the reins to his horse from Two Moon.

“Tell them I will come out from the fort to meet them,” Johnny explained to Old Wool Woman as he settled atop his saddle. “They do not have to worry about the Crow scouts murdering them this time.”

Old Wool Woman stepped up to the horseman, and grabbed his stirrup. “Tell the Bear Coat I am bringing my people to him. Just as I promised I would.”

“He will be happy with this news,” Bruguier assured her just before he turned his horse about and gave it his heels.

It hadn't gotten all that much warmer after the buttermilk sun rose in a pewter sky. But at least the wind wasn't blowing. That is, until now that the sun was easing down after a long, lonely day of pushing everything he could out of the army horse beneath him.

Squinting ahead with the failing light, the half-breed studied the valley north of him, recognizing some landmarks. Now, more than ever, he hoped to cross these last few miles before dark. Better that he ride into the Bear Coat's fort before the full fading of the afternoon sun. Too good a chance that a dark-skinned man like him might well be taken for a hostile warrior slipping out of the gloom as another winter night approached. Johnny knew Miles would have wood-cutting parties out until that last hour before sunset. He just didn't want to stumble onto any soldiers who would take him for the enemy. Not when he was this close.

Not when he had come this far to take that hangman's rope from his neck.

Less than half of them had followed him north from the Little Bighorn. He hoped Miles would not be angry with less than total success. More than half of the fighting bands of the Shahiyela refused the Bear Coat's offer to talk of peace and surrender; they were on their way south to live with Red Cloud's Lakota, down in General Crook's country.

And if they ended up surrendering all those warriors and guns and ponies to Crook, then Johnny Bruguier knew in his bones the Bear Coat was going to be furious.

Yesterday Johnny figured that if he delivered some good news about White Bull's band to Miles then perhaps the soldier chief would not be near so angry. So when the village made camp no more than a day's ride from the mouth of the Tongue, Bruguier decided he would hurry ahead to carry his momentous announcement to Miles.

Nervously glancing over his left shoulder, the half-breed saw how the sullen, winter sun was just then settling upon the hills to the southwest. He didn't have long now. What was the Lakota prayer his mother would have spoken at a time like this?

Angrily, he cursed himself for forgetting the words in his youth, replacing his mother's language with the rich profanity of the white man. Hanging about the sutler's cabin and cavorting with the soldiers had served only to drive the woman's prayers out of his memory. And those were prayers he figured he ought to be mouthing right about now—

He smelled woodsmoke.

Looking up, Johnny squinted into the deepening afternoon light, a ragged shred hung above the trees far, far ahead, tatters of pale smoke streaking the paler sky. Another glance at the sun and Johnny jabbed his heels back into the flanks of the big American horse. It lunged ahead a few steps, then settled back into its lethargy. Without grain for so long, Bruguier figured he would be lucky if the animal got him to the fort, no matter the speed. Still, he clucked and tapped his heels repeatedly as the smell of woodsmoke became all the stronger.

Off the hillside where he had been riding just below the crest, the half-breed pointed the horse toward the Tongue itself. Down into the bottomland where the cottonwoods grew tall and thick, surrounded by a profusion of willow and alder, chokecherry and sarvisberry—enough cover for a dark-skinned man slipping up on a soldier post. He might just make it before dark.

When the voice called out behind him, Johnny froze.

“Stop right there!” it cried with shrill alarm. “Sergeant!”

Bruguier yanked back on the reins and raised his empty left hand encased in the horsehide glove.

“What is it?” a second voice boomed from the brush ahead.

The scared soldier was stepping out of the trees, coming up behind Bruguier, his long rifle pointed squarely at the half-breed's back.

“Injun!”

The second man's voice was close now. “Only one, eh?”

“I'm Bruguier,” Johnny announced to the man ahead of him, turning around in the saddle. A handful of soldiers came up to stand behind the sergeant who dropped the butt of his Springfield to the snow and draped his wrists across the muzzle.

“That's right,” the older man declared with a grin. “This here's the general's scout.”

“That's the one did the talkin' for that ol' red-belly Sittin' Bull back to last fall,” announced another.

“I reckon he's seen the error of his ways,” the second man replied as he stepped forward to get himself a good look at Bruguier. “Thought you rode off with that old Cheyenne woman more'n two weeks back.”

“She's a day behind me,” Johnny said, licking his swollen lower lip, less nervous now that they knew who he was.

Another man stepped up to the side of Bruguier's horse. “We heard you found the camp of them hostiles. Escort boys told us when they come back.”

With a nod, Johnny said, “I'm bringing in a bunch of them warriors to surrender.”

“They're gonna give up?” a soldier shrieked.

“I need to ride on in to tell the general all 'bout it,” the half-breed explained. “They'll likely make it here by this time tomorrow.”

“By gonies, boys!” the second man bellowed loud enough to roust some crows from nearby branches into noisy flight. “That's good news this here scout's bringing the general! This here war's over for us!”

The older soldier stepped right up to the half-breed's horse, yanked off a mitten and held the hand up to Johnny. They shook. “You done good by the general, scout.”

Bruguier gave his horse a nudge as he pulled his gauntlet mitten back over his right hand, more anxious than ever to reach the fort. Having stumbled across this wood-cutting detail, and with the woodsmoke growing strong in his nostrils—the very taste of it scratching the back of his throat—Johnny didn't figure it would take him long at all to reach that clearing where the log huts and humble canvas tents stood against this winter's unrelenting onslaught.

Among those poor shanties looming ahead, soldiers in their long buffalo coats and muskrat caps spotted him, turning and slapping the next man until it seemed nearly the whole post was turning out to watch the half-breed bring that worn-out, broken-down army horse back to the fort. While many of them whispered among themselves as he plodded by, it wasn't until he neared the commander's office that a soldier actually raised his voice.

“Scout's coming in, General!” the man hollered as he took off in an ungainly lope across the trampled crust of snow ahead of Bruguier. “Tell the general his scout's coming in!”

“By damn, if he ain't still alive!” shouted one of the two men standing on either side of the low door to Miles's office.

The second guard turned and pounded the loose-fitting plank door with the side of his balled-up mitten as Johnny gently drew back on the reins and stopped his weary horse. “General Miles, sir! Your half-breed's back from the hostiles, sir!”

No sooner had he unwrapped himself from the half-robe tucked around his legs and dropped to the ground, worrying how his stiff, frozen knees would hold him up, than the noisy plank door flew open. The door was drawn back with a scrape across its jamb by Miles himself, who nearly filled the opening.

“Bruguier!” he roared as he stepped into the fading light. That exuberant voice, the shaggy mane, as well as the full, unkempt beard, reminded Johnny of a great black bear. “By the stars—it is you!”

He grabbed the half-breed's hand and squeezed it, immediately tugging Johnny toward the door. “C'mon, c'mon! We're going to warm you up inside by the stove and then you're going to tell me about your journey.”

Miles suddenly stopped there at the low threshold and turned to look across the snowy quadrangle. “Where are the rest? Did you bring anyone else? Where's the old woman? Did she elect to stay on with her village?”

“You got any coffee, General?” Johnny asked the instant Miles paused to take a breath in that rapid-fire hailstorm of questioning.

“Of course! Of course!” the colonel roared, turning again to one of the soldiers who were pressing close. “Have the officer of the day get us some fresh coffee over here. And dig around for some tins of fruit too. Let's get this man's belly filled so he can start wagging his tongue for me!”

*   *   *

The morning after Big Leggings left to hurry north for the soldier fort, White Bull and the other warrior chiefs did not spur their people to break camp before dawn. Already they had traveled long, difficult days through the deep snow to reach this camping spot beside the Buffalo Tongue River, less than a day south of the Elk River post. White Bull felt the hidden scars from this war: the way the cold and hunger had carved deep into the hearts of his
Ohmeseheso.

A holy man was he, cursed with seeing that which other men would never see.

White Bull's people had only what dried meat they had when the encampment broke up and dispersed to the winds. In that burnt-out country west of the Buffalo Tongue, they found little game while they limped west after the snowy fight at Belly Butte. Coming here from that country of the Little Sheep River near the White Mountains, again little game was found.

The holy man prayed the Bear Coat would be true to his word, prayed he would offer food for hungry bellies, blankets for shivering children, an opportunity for the old ones to rest without fleeing. White Bull wordlessly spoke his prayer throughout that short winter day, even after the Shahiyela made camp for the night and the severe cold settled low in the river valley, clinging to the cottonwood and the brush and laying close in among the lodges.

By the time a sulky sun had climbed close to midsky the following day, White Bull figured he and the other leaders had to be drawing near to soldier fort.

Fearing that the soldiers or their Crow People scouts would again shoot at the sight of the Shahiyela warriors, White Bull, Two Moon, and the other chiefs decided that no more than a delegation of headmen should ride in to talk with the Bear Coat.

“We must all go to see if the soldier chief talks well,” White Thunder said.

“No, some of you must stay behind,” White Bull argued. “If we are made prisoners by the Bear Coat, or if the soldiers' scouts lay in wait to ambush us again just as they did before,
*
then we need a few strong chiefs to quickly lead our people out of danger. Chiefs who will watch over and protect them until the
Ohmeseheso
can decide what to do when there is no one left to trust.”

“What are you saying?” asked Sleeping Rabbit. “Are you really suggesting that some of our leaders stay behind?”

“Yes,” White Bull answered. “If our chiefs are murdered by soldiers or soldier scouts … then we must be sure some of our leaders survive to lead the People.”

“Who is to stay?” Medicine Bear asked.

White Bull turned to look at the man. “You will stay. You will watch over these people. I trust no one more than I trust you, my friend. I will count on you to hurry this village away if we do not return.”