Far as the Eye Can See (26 page)

I mentioned General Cooney’s illness, but he said Nate was not going to die. “The doctor told him to rest and drink a lot of water, so that’s what he’s doing.”

I decided not to tell Daniel nothing about Big Tree. I bided my time and focused on my hatred of White Dog. I think I may of been a bit like old Big Tree hisself, since I had nothing much to say as we rode along.

Daniel had got over his first battle, but I could see he had a few dreams to contend with. He looked much older and his hair was now snow white. He wasn’t no more than thirty. This turned out to be a advantage, because when we got to the Sioux camp, they was all goggly-eyed to look at him. Without the packhorses we made fairly good time, so it took us only three quarters of a day sidling along at a pretty fast clip, with long rest periods for our horses along the way, before we found the Indian camp. It was nestled in a gulch by a small stream near the Powder River. There was maybe twenty-five lodges, and a huge passle of horses. We rode in from the east, with the wind in our faces, so not a single dog barked. We was suddenly there at the front edge of camp, letting our mounts take one slow step at a time into the center of the thing. It was cold even for that time in March. The wind wasn’t strong but it was steady and never slowed for a instant.

I didn’t see White Dog or any braves I recognized. We was greeted by a elderly gentleman named Little Knife. He was a Lakota Sioux. He wore no feathers, but he had a necklace made out of bear claws around his neck and a long tan leather coat with long fringe hanging from each sleeve and across the back. He wore a loincloth and leather breeches and beautifully decorated moccasins on his small feet. He was not tall, and seemed to of rode a horse all his life, because he was bowlegged. He spoke no English.

I sat on Cricket and watched Daniel and Little Knife talking. I couldn’t tell from the way they sounded if what they said was making a difference to neither one nor the other. After a short conversation, Daniel looked at me. “Do you speak any of the Sioux language at all?”

“I picked up a little of Crow traveling with a friend, but I don’t know nothing about the Sioux language.”

“Well, he wants us to go back to Colonel Brisbin and tell him they won’t talk to us. They want to meet with the white man chief.”

“Who would that be?”

“I think he wants to talk to the chief of all white men. He’s saying ‘dahn kah’ which means ‘big’ and ‘wah shee chue lah ay kdah.’ It’s something about the white man, or the white man’s province or world.”

I nodded. But I didn’t know. I said, “Big Tree always called the white men ‘wasichu.’ But that’s Crow.”

“No, I think most of them call us that now. But he said ‘wah shee chue lah ay kdah.’ It’s that ‘lah ay kdah’ part I don’t get.”

He looked at Little Knife, then back at me. “I think it means ‘world.’ He also said, ‘Wee chah yah dah pee.’ ”

“Wee chah yah dah pee,” Little Knife repeated.

“That means chief,” Daniel said. “He wants to speak to the chief of all the white men.”

“Did you tell him there ain’t none?”

“U. S. Grant’ll fit that bill, I wager.”

“He wants to have a powwow with General Grant.”

“Not General Grant. President Grant. He’s president of the United States now.”

It was news to me who the president was. I hadn’t read no newspaper in half a decade, and it was too far away from me and this place to matter much.

“What should I tell him,” Daniel said.

Little Knife spoke. He said, “Wee chah yah dah pee, wa shee chue lah ay kdah.”

“He can talk to General Gibbon, I guess.”

“You think I should tell him Gibbon is chief of all white men?” Daniel asked.

“He ain’t dumb because he don’t speak American. Tell him the best we can do is the chief of all the white soldiers in this part of the country.” While I was talking, Little Knife watched me closely. I had the feeling he had seen me before somewhere. Maybe he was one of the Indians Big Tree and me traded with over the years. The wind blew his long hair and made him squint a little, but he stood there as erect as a poplar. I wondered why we was having this powwow and we wasn’t invited to sit down for a smoke. We never got off our mounts. Unlike most of the Indians I had dealt with over the years, this fellow made no gestures with his hands. He stood there looking up at us, high in our saddles, and it didn’t seem to bother him that we was looking down on him from up there.

Daniel spoke a bit more, and Little Knife did not look away from me. His expression didn’t change much, neither.

Daniel stopped talking and Little Knife nodded, finally meeting Daniel’s eyes. There was a long silence. I heard some squaw back in the camp, singing or wailing like a dead soul. I looked back among the lodges for White Dog. I don’t know what I would of done if I seen him. It was getting near the end of the day, and smoke swirled in the sky above the tepees as the squaws stoked dinner fires. I smelled crispy, broiled buffalo meat, in the wisps of white smoke, and my stomach commenced to growling.

Daniel made Little Knife understand that he could have a powwow with the chief of all the soldiers and they talked about that business between them. By the time they was done, a few of the braves had come back from hunting and crowded around to see the white man with the silver hair. I looked for White Dog, or for any of them wearing a red bandana, which told me they was originally with Red Top. They was all young and dark and silent as cats as they moved around us and stared with blazing black eyes. I felt like a field mouse trapped in a corncrib. Then I seen one of them moving among the people, talking in a low voice to the younger braves. Daniel didn’t seem to notice him, but I never took my eyes off him. He was stirring things up, I could see that.

Little Knife finished what he had to say and raised his hand to Daniel, and he did the same.

“Start backing out of here,” Daniel said. He was being very cautious, so I known he could hear some of what that rabble-rouser was saying.

I pulled back on Cricket, and she bowed her head at first, then made a loud shudder from her nose and bobbed her head up and down furiously, but she backed up like I wanted her to, one step at a time. Daniel’s horse was so well trained, he hardly moved his head at all. He just took backward steps easy and slow, with no display of indignity or reluctance.

We got clear of the camp and turned our mounts and headed back toward the column. About halfway there, Daniel told me he was going on without me. “I want you to stay here and take good cover.”

“I’ll make sure they don’t get off nowhere without us knowing it,” I said.

“They won’t be going anywhere,” he said. “I’ve arranged a powwow.”

I said nothing, and he stared off up the trail behind us for a spell. Then he said, “I didn’t like what that one hothead was saying.”

“I figured it wasn’t no good.”

“I don’t think he wants to negotiate with anybody. He kept talking about ‘white devils.’ ”

I said nothing. We both set there looking at the horizon.

“Well,” I said finally. “What’s next?”

“You better stay here, off the trail and out of sight. If you see Little Knife coming, you can just take your time getting back to the column. But if you spot any of them renegades striking out on their own, come a-running so we can send a detachment to meet them on good ground.”

I saluted him, and he turned and went on. I rode up to the top of a little ridge, where there was a small stand of timber, and disappeared in amongst them. I set up camp on a fine bed of pine needles and waited to watch the trail for a while. It was still pretty cold, but I didn’t think it was safe to build a fire or even set up the tent, so I hunkered down under a couple of thick buffalo robes and smoked my pipe. I was sure hungry. All I had was some dried venison. It was good enough to make my mouth water and my stomach howl for something else. It chewed like the billet strap on a saddle, and had as much flavor.

About a hour later, I seen them coming. They was a long way off, a small party. Six braves on horseback.

I got up slowly. I figured it had to be Little Knife and his folks coming to negotiate. It was such a small party, it couldn’t be nothing else. It took me a while to get the robes put away and tied to the back of my saddle in the pack, but the whole time I worked, I watched them coming along. They was moving at a pretty good clip. I seen them go down in a bit of a gulch and disappear for a spell, but then they come back up out of it and they was even closer. Something happened to my heart when I seen White Dog, with that red cloth around his neck, riding along in the lead. The five other braves rode a little behind him, three to his right and two to his left. They made a formation like birds on the wing, with White Dog out front.

This was a damn war party, moving fast and with a purpose. I figured maybe they was headed to find me and Daniel and kill us if they could. What I done next come as a surprise to me. I known and felt the rage—Big Tree laying there with all that wood in him—and not just what he looked like but what it sounded like to break off them arrows I couldn’t pull out. Every hour since, I dreamed of having White Dog in my sights. It seemed like my whole life up to that time—everything else I remembered—just went away. I wasn’t no veteran of the War of the Rebellion, I wasn’t a fur trapper or a mountain man, a scout for the U.S. Army, or even Eveline’s man. It ain’t possible to tell how empty everything in my mind was except for one thing. And I don’t believe I was thinking at all for what happened next.

I tied Cricket to one of the trees and moved over to the edge of the timber where I could see better. I had my carbine, fully loaded. White Dog rode high on his horse, like every Indian I ever seen did. He looked like he was the top half of the horse. His horse seemed to prance.

I laid down on the ground at the top of the ridge, set the barrel of my carbine on the edge of a small boulder to steady it, aimed very carefully at the middle of White Dog’s chest, and fired. He fell backward off his horse. The others scattered a bit until they seen my smoke and where the shot come from. I fired again and hit one of the others, then fired once more and got a horse. White Dog’s horse run with his tail between his legs like a scared dog. I heard one of the braves a-yipping and hollering, and then I seen White Dog get up and try to get on one of the other horses. I shot that horse, then hit White Dog again. He fell down. Two of the braves was now charging up the hill. I let them come for a spell, then shot both of them as high in the chest as my sights would allow. White Dog was dead, one other brave was wounded and running around after his horse, and two others was on the ground in front of me, also dead. I seen the last two a-setting there, holding their horses steady and watching for me. One of them had a carbine, and he aimed it my way and fired. I didn’t feel no wind nor nothing from it, so he missed a long way over my head. I shot him before he could fire another shot. He held on to his horse for a while as it run away, but then he fell off. The other helped the wounded fellow that was chasing his horse, and both of them disappeared behind a clump of trees on my side of the gulch.

It took me longer to tell of it than for it to happen.

I stayed where I was for a while, watching for the two braves that got away from me. They come into sight a little ways beyond where the others was. I seen the one run to catch his horse, which galloped in my direction. The fellow was behind the animal, so I couldn’t get a clear shot. His horse come to a stop a few yards away from me and the brave come up from behind him and grabbed the tail. He swung up onto his mount, then turned and looked at me. I raised my rifle, and he just sat there, staring—like he was waiting for it. I could see he known who I was. His eyes registered the shock and it stopped me. I didn’t fire at him. He rode over to where the other fellow was and I seen him point and say something. Then they galloped off back where they come from. I watched them go, noticed the little cloud of dust their horses raised as they disappeared into the gulch again and then come up on the other side and kept on getting smaller and smaller in the dull light. I waited a little longer just to make sure there wasn’t no movement. Then I got up and, while there was still some sunlight, walked over to the two dead Indians who was laying in front of me. I didn’t recognize the first one. I got him in the neck and he laid there staring up at the darkening sky, like he was searching for the first star. “I wish you didn’t rush at me like that,” I said. The other one was hit just below the right eye. That whole side of his face was a mess, but I seen it was Little Knife I killed. He had a white truce flag tied to the sash around his waist.

I squatted down next to his body. I couldn’t believe it. White Dog was riding with them, but this was the peace party after all. And I known right then that I had to get out of that country. As far away as I could. I had done the one thing that made a man a total renegade and outcast: I’d attacked a peace party. Daniel known he left me here, and that Sioux brave recognized me, so now the army would be after me and so would every Indian. It didn’t matter that it was a mistake or that I really believed those folks was intent on no good. It didn’t matter what I thought at all. Now everybody would want to kill me.

I stood up walked down the hill to where White Dog’s body lay twisted in the grass where he fell. I felt my head begin to spin a bit. The dizziness turned something in my heart that felt like a stab of fear, and to forestall it I started howling, high and loud, at the gray sky. I wailed and yipped like a Indian, staring up at the thickening stars and the rising moon.