Bill Dugan_War Chiefs 03 (14 page)

Sitting Bull drew close to his first coup in the middle of the shallow water, reaching out with his bow and rapping a fleeing Assiniboin smartly across the shoulder. The sharp crack of the polished ash on taut skin sounded like a pistol shot, and Sitting Bull saw the red welt raised by the blow as the Hohe leaped from his pony and swam for the far shore.

Turning his attention to another coup, Sitting Bull pushed his mount on through the deepest part of the lake and into the shallow water on the far side. There, another Assiniboin who had chosen to swim, leading his pony across, was struggling to remount as the horse tried to keep its feet and haul itself up and out of the water.

Once more, Sitting Bull raised his bow and smacked the enemy warrior on the shoulder. Before he could do anything more, a rifle ball struck his horse in the neck, shattering its spine and killing the horse instantly. The horse had been a great
favorite, and its death infuriated Sitting Bull, who waded out of the lake looking for someone to punish for the loss.

Ahead of him, he could see the rest of the Hohe raiding party heading into some dense timber and disappearing. He looked around for a horse he could use, but by the time he found one, the Assiniboin had vanished into the forest. Chasing them further would be dangerous, and in any case, since they were just a raiding party, there was little to be gained. It was more important to remind them of the Lakota’s presence and strength, and that had been accomplished. It would have been nice to have found a village and stolen some horses, but any nearby village would be alerted now to the Hunkpapa warriors and would be ready for them.

He heard shouting and turned to see what it was all about. He spotted Swift Cloud and two other warriors closing in on a young Assiniboin boy, no more than twelve or thirteen years old. The Hohe had a bow with an arrow notched. He was forced to back up as the three Hunkpapa warriors pressed him. He knew that as soon as he shot the arrow, he’d be left defenseless. Even if he found his mark, the other Hunkpapa would be on him before he could notch another.

The boy backed down a slight hill, into a shallow depression beside the lake, then started up the other side. The Hunkpapa widened their circle around him slightly, spreading out so that he could not watch all three of them at one time.

By now, the rest of the Hunkpapa had returned
to the edge of the lake and were watching the small drama unfolding. They had seen things like this before, some of them a hundred times. There was little or no room in a warrior’s heart for boy who would be a warrior himself one day, and who would someday then have a Lakota boy at his own mercy. The only way to prevent that from happening was to kill him now, while the opportunity presented itself.

The Hunkpapa were mocking the boy, cheering their comrades on, and whistling. The Hohe, perhaps despairing that he could do anything to save his life, finally launched his arrow, or tried to, but he lost his grip. The arrow fluttered a few feet, wobbling, and fell to the ground.

The Hunkpapa laughed uproariously now. “The boy is a great marksman,” Swift Cloud said. “Perhaps I should run for my horse before he shoots again. He will surely get me if I give him a second chance.”

“You won’t get far,” Gray Eagle said. “This Hohe can shoot an arrow into the heart of the sun, if he chooses.” That brought another roar of laughter.

The boy was still backing up, glaring fiercely at his taunters. But there was something about his expression, perhaps the fact that it was softened too much by his tender age, that made it seem sad instead of warlike. His eyes darted from corner to corner and back as he tried to fit another arrow to his bowstring. Swift Cloud feinted toward him, then fell back in mock terror as the boy almost involuntarily pointed the arrow at him.

Another feint from Gray Eagle made the boy lose his balance for a moment, tripping backward over the lip of the depression. His eyes found Sitting Bull now, and he must have sensed something, because his expression changed. He looked squarely at Sitting Bull for a moment, then ran toward him. The move took Swift Cloud and the others by surprise, and he got through unmolested. He threw his arms around Sitting Bull and cried out, “Older brother, help me!”

Once more, the warriors laughed. Swift Cloud grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away, but not without difficulty. The boy was wiry, and he was clinging to Sitting Bull with all his might. When he finally pried the boy loose, Swift Cloud drew his knife as he twisted one of the Hohe’s arms up behind his back in a hammerlock.

The boy winced but did not cry out, instead reaching out to Sitting Bull with his free hand and saying again, “Older brother, help me …”

Sitting Bull walked toward him and took the extended hand, then told Swift Cloud to let go of the boy’s pinioned arm.

Swift Cloud looked as if he had been asked to drink the lake behind him, or some other equally impossible thing, and held onto the boy’s hand. “Why should I let him go?”

The other warriors muttered, partly because it was so unusual a request that Sitting Bull had made. Interfering with Swift Cloud’s right to do as he saw fit with his captive was bold, even impertinent. Also, it sounded as if Swift Cloud were prepared to fight to have his way, and that
was something no one wanted to see. The Hunkpapa had enough trouble with their enemies. Fighting among themselves was disruptive and pointless.

Once more, Sitting Bull said, “Let him go.”

And this time, he got help. Circling Hawk said, “Yes, let him go.”

“Why?” Swift Cloud demanded to know. “Why should I let him go? He is a Hohe. He is our enemy and I have captured him.”

“It was a brave thing he did, fighting you like that. Standing up to all of you with just a boy’s bow. He called me ‘older brother,’ and I have answered him. He is my younger brother now. I will adopt him into my family.”

Swift Cloud seemed stunned by the announcement. His eyes closed partway and his brow furrowed, as if he were having great difficulty understanding what had just been said to him. He looked almost as if it had been spoken in some strange tongue that he had never heard before. But this time he let go of the boy’s hand, and once more the Hohe wrapped his arms around Sitting Bull and looked up at him as if he could not quite believe his good fortune.

More and more of the Hunkpapa were assenting to what Sitting Bull proposed, and the tide was running against Swift Cloud now. He looked toward Stands-at-the-Mouth for a moment, reached out his hand, hesitated, then patted the boy on the shoulder and nodded his head.

“It is a good thing Sitting Bull has done,” he said. “It is a good thing.”

By the time they returned to the village, the warriors were teasing the boy as if he had been Hunkpapa born and raised. Even Swift Cloud seemed to have taken a shine to the boy and rode alongside him, chatting as if they were old friends. As they rode into camp, Sitting Bull took the boy’s bridle in his hand and circled the village, singing of the great victory against the Hohe, and telling everyone how he had found a little brother whom he planned to adopt.

Rainy Butte, Cannonball River Valley
1859

S
UMMER DAYS WERE SPECIAL.
The sun dance was still some weeks away, and the weather was warm, the chill of the winter finally baked out of the land. The oppressive heat of late summer on-the great plains had still not closed its grip on the Hunkpapa territory.

The children were free to come and go as they pleased. The women took advantage of the warm afternoons to catch up on their work and their gossip, sitting in small groups while they worked on clothing for the next winter. The young men, wrapped to their eyes in blankets, watched the girls, sometimes pulling one into the blanket for a few minutes of conversation. The warriors spent some of their time replenishing their supply of arrows, working on a new bow, or, when time permitted, gambling on footraces, horse races, and just about anything else that could possibly support a wager.

But despite the tranquility of the weather, Jumping Bull was in agony. No longer a young man, he had been having trouble with his teeth, and today he felt as if someone had built a fire in his jawbone. It hurt when he lay still, and when he tried to move it hurt even more. Nothing had succeeded in relieving his pain, not a poultice, not an herbal broth, not a chant from any of the half-dozen medicine men he had summoned to his lodge for relief.

Even when two boys ran into camp with the news that two Crows had been spotted nearby, he stayed in his tipi, trying to sleep, hoping that when he awoke the pain would be gone. A handful of warriors took a cursory ride around the village, looking for signs of the Crow interlopers, but they saw nothing more than a single moccasin print. It didn’t seem like much to worry about. The
akicitas
were all made aware of the sighting, but even they seemed inclined to dismiss it as either the product of overactive imaginations or of mistaken identification. Surely the Crows would not be foolish enough to attack a Hunkpapa village so far from their own country.

That afternoon, despairing of getting any rest, Jumping Bull took a walk into the hills above the camp, looking for some new herb that might put an end to his suffering. But he saw nothing he hadn’t seen before, and for that matter, nothing he hadn’t chewed, soaked, or pasted on his aching jaw at least once in the last two days.

He was hoping that the pain would subside soon. They were planning to move the village in a
day or so, and he was exhausted from lack of sleep. Moving the village was no easy thing, although it happened with great frequency. It required cooperation from everybody old enough to carry his own weight, and now, with every step rattling up through his aging skeleton to strike like a hammer blow to his jaw, he dreaded the thought.

But two days later, it was no better, and moving the village could no longer be delayed. The horses had cropped nearly all the grass, the water was muddied and sour, and a move upstream was more than desirable, it was necessary.

Rainy Butte towered in the distance, gleaming red and blue in the morning sun as the Hunkpapa started to pack their belongings. It wouldn’t take long, but it would take sustained effort to get everything ready. It was controlled chaos as travois were hitched to the horses, the tipis disassembled and packed, the lodge poles used to carry still more, their tips dragging the ground, cutting twin grooves in the soft earth.

The summer heat was making the people a little sluggish. The children complained that it was too hot to move, that swimming in the Cannonball River made more sense. The adults thought the same but were too responsible to give in to the urge. But they didn’t move as quickly as they usually did. Finally, everyone was ready and the horses started out, a couple of boys scampering along in the lead. The women and children moved in bunches in a ragged column and the warriors, as usual, brought up the rear, most of them walking, leading their horses, and joking with friends. The
akicitas,
as always, worried about security, but on this morning they were the only ones who did. They rode up and down beside the meandering column, urging everyone to move quickly and keep together. It was no easy task to police a Lakota village on the move. The women teased them and the children drove them crazy, darting out of line to follow a rabbit or pick a few flowers.

They hadn’t gone more than a mile when a hillside above them suddenly swarmed with a band of Crows, all on horseback and commanding the high ground. The Hunkpapa warriors, taken completely by surprise, were disorganized, and it took them a moment to realize what was happening.

The Crows charged downhill, led by a man wearing a warbonnet, its long trail of eagle feathers aloft behind him. The bright colors of the Crow war paint and the glitter of morning sun on polished lancepoints, arrowheads, and the occasional firearm seemed to disorient the Hunkpapa even more as the Crow war party cut across the head of the line of march, separating a few of the boys from the main body.

The packhorses reared up, yanking their leads from careless fingers, and the women were forced to chase after the frightened animals. The Crows had surrounded the two boys in the lead now, and the Hunkpapa warriors were rushing to get on their ponies to mount a counterattack. The squeal of frightened children and the war whoops of the Crows made communication difficult. The older men tried to get the column organized, herding women and horses together into as tight a group as
they could manage, while the young men moved against the Crow invaders.

One of the two boys had already been felled by a Crow. The war party outnumbered the Hunkpapa defenders, making reprisal an uphill battle at best. The Hunkpapas split into two groups and charged the Crows from two different directions. As a diversion, this might have been successful, but as a counterattack, it was not terribly effective.

However, the Crows did give ground under the furious assaults. As they retreated, the Hunkpapas gained confidence and the two smaller units recombined, now confronting the enemy as one unified force. Sitting Bull led the charge, giving an exultant whoop as the Crow began to break up into smaller bands, scattering in every direction.

One of the Crows, perhaps thinking that he had the upper hand or that he might delay the pursuit long enough to allow the rest of the war party to regain its momentum, charged out to challenge one of the Hunkpapas in battle. Swift Hawk accepted the challenge and charged him full tilt, knocking the Crow from his horse and flinging himself on the fallen man in a murderous fury.

The rest of the Crows, watching as four Hunkpapas in succession charged in to count coup on their beleaguered comrade, made a break for it, and the Lakota plunged on in hot pursuit. One of the trailing Crows had the misfortune of riding into an area dotted with gopher holes, and his pony stepped into one of them, breaking a leg and throwing his rider from the saddle. As with the first Crow, this one was swept up by an avenging tide.

Seeing the approaching Hunkpapas, he threw down his weapons and began to cry, but there was no mercy for him. If anything, his submission was taken as a negative factor, a sign of cowardice, and the Hunkpapas cut him down without a second glance.