Bill Dugan_War Chiefs 03 (6 page)

Good-Voiced Elk, a well-known warrior, was speaking. He was restless, and he didn’t care who knew it. It had been months since the last war party, and he was tired of waiting for someone else to take the initiative. Sitting with a few friends, he suggested that it was time to pay a visit to the Crows. “We have left them alone too long. If we wait much longer, they will think that we are no
longer here, or that we are like a bunch of old women. And then they will give us more trouble than we need. Better to remind them on our terms.”

The other warriors nodded their heads. What Good-Voiced Elk said was true. It was not a good thing to let your enemy think you had forgotten about him, because it was a short step from there to contempt.

The Lakota had not had an easy time creating a niche for themselves on the plains. It was not that long ago that the Lakota were strangers, invaders, fighting desperately for a place to live. The Ojibwa had been armed with the white man’s guns and there had been no choice but to flee ahead of them, leaving behind the Lakota lands in the forests of northern Minnesota.

The old men were always telling stories about that time, when the Ojibwa swooped down on them and destroyed their villages, killing women and children and old men. The bitterness lingered, passed down from generation to generation. And when they had at last been driven from their homeland, the Lakota had determined that it would not happen to them again. This time, they would be the invaders, they would take the land they needed to live, and if that meant war, then so be it.

Once they learned to use horses, the Lakota became the most powerful nation on the plains. Unlike some of the tribes already living on the plains, they had not been skilled on horseback. They couldn’t ride like the Comanche or the Crows. But it hadn’t taken them long to master the art.

The warriors all knew the old stories, handed down from father to son, grandfather to grandson. None of them was anxious to go back to the old days, when they had to worry about their enemies. It was better to be on top, to have the very name of your people strike fear in the hearts of your enemies, who were everywhere. That was the way it always had been, and that was the way it always would be. You had to fight to protect what was yours.

“I think,” Good-Voiced Elk said, pushing his advantage, “that we should go on the warpath. We could use some new horses.”

Short Bull nodded. “Do you want to lead the war party?” he asked.

“I will lead,” Good-Voiced Elk agreed. “We should find ten or twenty men who want to go, and we will leave tomorrow or the day after.”

“Sitting Bull will want to go. And I think I know two more men who might want to come along,” Short Bull said. “I’ll ask them tomorrow morning.”

Gray Eagle looked up from the arrow he was making. “I think I might know a couple of men, too,” he said.

Listening to them, Slow was getting excited. This might be his chance. He was anxious for his first coup, and going on a war party with his father, even if Sitting Bull was not going to be leading it, was more than he could have hoped for.

“Then it’s agreed,” Good-Voiced Elk said. “Tomorrow night we will smoke the war pipe. We will leave the day after tomorrow. We don’t want too many men, because I want to move fast.” He
watched his friends get to their feet and disappear in the darkness. Sitting there alone, he listened to the crackle of the fire and, off in the distance, the howl of a wolf out on the plains.

Slow backed away quietly, watching the great warrior and wondering what was going through his mind. A war party was no casual undertaking. It was a great thing, an important thing, and a dangerous thing. Slow knew that some of the men he had just been secretly observing might not come back. They had all lost friends and family members on war parties. Just a few months ago, Slow’s own uncle, Four Horns, had been left for dead on the plains. Four Horns had come back that time, but there was no guarantee that he would be so lucky the next time. The tribesmen did not take a war party lightly. No one would make you go. That wasn’t the way the Lakota Sioux did things. Each warrior made up his own mind. And it was no shame to change your mind. Slow remembered once when his own father had returned home no more than an hour after a war party had left. Sitting Bull was a holy man, more attuned to the ways of the earth than most warriors, and more sensitive to the hidden meanings that surrounded them. A blade of grass, an eagle feather, the paw print of a bear—these were all messages from
Wakantanka,
and you ignored them at your peril. That morning, Sitting Bull had seen an eagle in the sky, not black or brown like most eagles, but all white, and he knew it was a sign. It would be bad medicine to go into battle that day. So Sitting Bull had returned home, not
with his tail between his legs, but with his head held high.

Sitting now in the shadows, watching the broad back of Good-Voiced Elk, Slow thought about approaching the warrior, asking if he could go along on the war party. But he knew what Good-Voiced Elk would do. He would tell Slow to ask his father, and Slow already knew what Sitting Bull would say.

He could hear his mother, too, pleading with Sitting Bull not to take their son on so dangerous a mission. Slow’s sisters, Good Feather and Twin Woman, would chime in too. No, if he were going to get the opportunity to count his first coup, he would have to keep his intentions to himself. If he rode out to join the war party, they would not send him back. So he would have to find out where they planned to rendezvous and make his own preparations in secret.

If he kept his ears open, he would hear Sitting Bull discuss the war party. He wouldn’t be able to ask questions, because his father would see right through him. He would just sit quietly, listening for the tiniest clue.

The next day the camp would hum with news of the impending raid. There would be no celebration, because everyone in the village knew only too well that there might be nothing to celebrate. More than one war party Slow could remember had returned home with dead and wounded draped over their ponies. The village had been filled with wailing, the death song filling the air day and night as the dead were mourned and laid
to rest on their burial scaffolds. He could still see the relatives, wearing old clothes, sometimes with their faces painted or smeared with mud to symbolize their loss.

But he listened and missed no opportunity to eavesdrop on Good-Voiced Elk, Short Bull, and the others. It was hard to hide his excitement, especially when Good-Voiced Elk had come to Sitting Bull’s tipi to ask him to join the war party. Sitting Bull had said nothing, promising only that he would let Good-Voiced Elk know his decision as soon as he had made it. Sitting Bull’s sharp glance at Slow had brought a knowing nod from Good-Voiced Elk, and he had said no more.

By sunset the next day, Slow knew all he needed to know. He made his own preparations, all the while feeling a little foolish. He had a bow, but his arrows were a boy’s arrows, not those of a man. When they hunted, his father gave him hunting arrows, but they were inappropriate for Crows or Assiniboin. And he could not ask his father for war arrows. He would have to hope that
Wakantanka
would provide.

The night before the war party left, Slow could barely sleep. He kept tossing on his buffalo robes. Every sound drifting through the village took on demonic shape in the darkness. The hoot of an owl came from a Crow throat; the muffled thud of pony hooves outside the tipi was the first hint of an Assiniboin war party preparing to thunder down on the sleeping camp.

Every noise brought his hand to his bow, which was tucked under the edge of his sleeping robes.

His fingers would curl around the polished ash, and he could feel the cold sweat of his palms making the smooth wood slippery to the touch. Sometimes he would get to his feet, bow in hand, and tiptoe toward the entrance. All around him he could hear the breathing of his sleeping family, the resonant snore of his father, the sleeping sighs of his sisters, the whisper of his mother’s breath.

With his hand on the tipi flap, he would suddenly feel silly and back away, lying down again, trying to forget what he was about to do. By tomorrow night, he thought, or the next night, all of this would be no more than an amusing story, one he would someday tell around a campfire, or to his own son, trying to make him understand why he was too young for the warpath. But that was little comfort now. At the moment, his muscles twitched like snakes beneath his skin, his throat was dry, and every nerve tingled.

By morning he was exhausted, but he forced himself to get up and go to the river for a bath. It was still gray when he stepped into the water. He could see the village horses grazing on the hillside, dark shadows in the dim light. He went out into the cold current, watching the bustle of activity beginning. He could tell which warriors were going with the war party, as one by one they came out of their tipis, made their ponies ready, gathered their weapons, and rode off.

As soon as he saw Sitting Bull leave, Slow waded out of the river and sprinted to his tipi. He gathered his bow and the war paint he planned to wear and, doing his best not to attract attention to
himself, left the lodge and climbed onto the back of his gray pony. When he reached the rendezvous point, the warriors had assembled. Some were already streaked with war paint, while others stood by their mounts, decorating the ponies with bold splashes of brilliant color and daubing their own faces with bands of red and yellow and blue.

One of the warriors spotted Slow and tapped Sitting Bull on the shoulder. Slow’s father turned around. His face, already painted, was barely recognizable behind the streaks of bright color. His eyes widened when he saw Slow, and he backed up a step, as if the boy were a frightening apparition. “What are you doing here?” he asked when he had regained his composure.

“I am going on the war party.”

Sitting Bill shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. You aren’t old enough yet.”

“If I wait for you to tell me I am old enough, I will
never
be old enough. I have already killed buffalo. I know how to hunt, and I know how to shoot accurately with the bow and with the rifle.”

“That’s not the point … your mother would never forgive me if anything happened to you.”

Slow shook his head. “It is not up to my mother. And anyway, she would too forgive you. She knows that she can’t keep me in the tipi forever. I have left the cradleboard behind. I don’t want to be treated like a baby anymore.”

“But you have no experience.”

“How am I supposed to get experience if I always stay at home?”

Sitting Bull knew the boy was right, but he still
didn’t want to agree. He held up his hand. “Wait a minute. Let me think about this.” He moved away, Good-Voiced Elk following him.

Slow watched the two men conferring. The other warriors were all grinning at him, some pointing then whispering jokes and laughing, but Slow didn’t take offense. He knew what they were thinking, and he knew that someday, when he was like them and some fresh-faced boy wanted to come along, he would have the same reaction. He would laugh and he would tease. But he knew, too, that in the end he would accept the newcomer, because there was no other way. He only hoped Sitting Bull saw things the same way.

It didn’t take long for him to find out. Sitting Bull moved toward him, took the bow from his hand, and emptied the quiver of blunt-tipped arrows onto the grass. “These will not do for making war,” he said.

Then he walked back to his mount and took a coup stick, its bright beadwork glittering as he twirled it once and looked along its length to make sure it was straight. Satisfied, he handed it to the boy.

Slow took the coup stick, trying to conceal his delight. The warriors muttered their approval as he hefted the coup stick high overhead. “It is a good day to die,” he said.

“Not yet,” Sitting Bull said. “You have to put on your war paint. And hurry, because it is already late.”

Yellowstone River Valley
1845

A W
AR PARTY WAS NOT QUITE
as exciting as Slow had thought. They had been riding for two days already, and so far there had not been a single trace of Crows. And he had all the dirty work to do. At night, he had to tend to the horses. During the day, he rode near the rear of the line, as befitted his status as the youngest. He was beginning to wonder whether it might not have been better to have waited for Sitting Bull to tell him when the time was right. But when he thought about it, he realized that even then, he would have been assigned the same chores. Better to get it over with now, he decided. Some things just couldn’t be avoided.

The warriors teased him constantly. They seemed to have a bottomless bag of tricks to play on him, and they were adept enough in their practical joking that he even fell for the same trick more
than once. They never seemed to tire of calling out that the Crows were coming, and every single time Slow would lash his gray pony, clapping his heels against its sides to get it moving, only to hear the explosion of laughter all around him. The warriors knew he was eager, and they were making the most of it.

But it was not malicious, and Slow knew that he would have to bear it with good grace if he expected to be taken on another war party anytime soon. He had known he would have to work hard, but he had not expected to be bored. When they camped for the night at the end of the second day’s ride, Slow tended the horses then moved to the campfire to sit next to Sitting Bull.

His father was a great warrior, and it made Slow proud to sit beside him and the other warriors, men whose names were known not just among the Hunkpapa, but among all the Lakota—the Oglala and the Miniconjou, the Sans Arcs and the Brule, the Two Kettles and the Blackfeet Sioux—all knew of Sitting Bull, celebrated not just for his bravery, but for his accomplishments as a holy man and a healer, as well. And now, sitting by his side, the black night pressing in from every direction, the sounds of the vast, empty plains drifting toward them on the night breeze, father and son each realized that their relationship was changing, changing in some profound way that each intuitively understood, changing in a way that could never be reversed.