Ghost Dance (33 page)

Some shots followed them, sliding through the air over their heads with a distant crack and a sound like the passing of an insect.

Here and there they saw other riders fleeing, all heading as if by instinct toward the Bad Lands.

Most of the Indians who had fled on foot had run to Wounded Knee Creek, to hide in the brush and the icy water. They would be found there, most of them, and slain.

In the distance, Chance heard the bugle's brave notes, sounding Boots and Saddles. The troopers were being recalled from the camp, to mount and follow. There was a sharp, in its way beautiful, sound in the notes of the bugle. It was a stirring call, thought Chance, that call Boots and Saddles, stirring.

Chance, Running Horse and Winona urged their mounts from Wounded Knee, racing for the Bad Lands.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Eighteen

 

The troopers of the Seventh Cavalry, hot with the blood of massacre, methodically burned the camp and hunted survivors. Some of the troopers turned to pillaging, hiding souvenirs of the battle inside their jackets or boots. These they could sell later as mementos of the battle which they now realized had occurred, somewhat after the shooting was over, a battle to be known by the place where it had taken place, Wounded Knee, called for the creek nearby. Several of the soldiers jerked the clothing from fallen Indians, in particular the Ghost Shirts which would bring the highest prices. Some of these would eventually be purchased by museums. There seemed no point in leaving the loot to civilians who would most assuredly, sooner or later, like vultures, come to pick over the field. The spoils, such as they were, belonged, if to anyone, to the victors.

As Chance, Winona and Running Horse urged their mounts over the prairie, they could look back and see columns of smoke ascending from the burning camp. The cold air kept the smoke pretty much together so it seemed the sky was stained with dark parallel bars. In the clear air they could hear the occasional gunshots that marked places and times where wounded Indians were found in the brush or among the bodies. There were no prisoners taken at Wounded Knee. It would take some time before complete discipline could be restored. By the time the troopers could be gathered from the massacre, reunited with their mounts and organized to follow up their victory, those Indians fortunate enough to be mounted would be scattered for miles over the prairie. Those on foot were less fortunate, of course, and several were killed, some as much as three miles from Wounded Knee.

"We are safe now," said Running Horse, reining in his pony.

The three riders slowed their mounts and turned to look back at the bars of smoke rising in the sky.

"My people will not forget this place," said Running Horse.

Chance saw that there were tears in the eyes of Winona.

After a time Running Horse turned his pony north again, and Chance and Winona followed him.

That night the first snow of the year fell, cutting off, for a time, any threat of pursuit. In the afternoon, as Chance, Running Horse and Winona made their way north toward the Bad Lands, the wind had gathered its strength and rushed to meet them, howling, cutting their faces, hurling itself like a lonely, whistling saber across the brown prairie. By dusk the wind carried in its train sleet, that forced the horses and their riders to shut their eyes, and when dark came, the white shrapnel of a blizzard pitted the night, screaming from the north, blurring the air with ice, numbing their hands and stiffening the leather of Chance's reins, the nose ropes of the Indian ponies. Chance had lost somewhere the blanket he had had at Wounded Knee; similarly neither Running Horse nor Winona had covering from the storm other than what they had worn that morning. Chance tried to consider how long they might live thus exposed in the storm. He could not consider the matter rationally for the buzzing of the white hornets about his ears, the jabbing of thousands of delicate snowflakes, each a frozen architecture of icy crystal, driven at high speed against his face and hands, pelting his body. The horses put down their heads, continually shifting to the left, trying to face away from the storm. The riders dismounted and, in single file, pulled the stumbling animals behind them, wading through snow already drifting high enough to cover the tops of Chance's boots.

For an hour they continued to move north, into the blizzard, fighting it.

"We'll freeze!" yelled Chance at the top of his voice, hoping Running Horse could hear him.

"No," shouted Running Horse. "Keep moving! Do not stop!"

Chance felt as though his boots were filled with frozen wood.

They trudged on, dragging the ponies, Running Horse first, then Chance, then Winona.

It was maybe an hour or so later when Chance looked back, perhaps because he suddenly became aware that he no longer heard the noises of Winona's pony, indistinct in the whipping snow, behind him.

He could not see the girl.

"Running Horse!" he yelled. "Winona!"

Running Horse turned and squinted back through the snow, and then, together, dragging their horses, the two men began to retrace their steps. The trough they had cut with their feet and the hoofs of the horses was already invisible. They had gone about a hundred yards when, some twenty yards to their left, they heard the snort of a pony, and, a minute or two later, they found the animal, and Winona slumped in the snow beside it, her fist still holding the nose rope.

Thank God, thought Chance.

Running Horse gave Chance the nose rope of his pony and bent to the slumped figure of the girl.

The two horses and Chance stood together for warmth.

Chance watched Running Horse lift Winona to her knees and shake her, two blurred shapes in the whirling snow.

"I am tired," Winona was shouting at him, "I am tired!"

"Get up!" yelled Running Horse.

"I am warm now!" shouted Winona. "Go on! I am tired! I will find you later."

Running Horse then began to strike her with his open hand, again and again, savagely.

Winona looked at him blankly, almost incredulously, then her eyes betrayed bewilderment, incomprehension at his cruelty, then pain, and then her face and body burned with feeling, with shame, under his blows. Her mouth bled, a red trickle across her snow-encrusted lips.

"Get up," said Running Horse.

"Yes, Husband," said Winona, struggling unsteadily to her feet.

Then together the three of them, Winona now in the center, single file, pulling their ponies, leaning into the wind, continued to force their way northward through the snow.

 

* * *

 

The next day the wind died and, although more snow fell, the cold relaxed, and a deep, gentle white covered the prairie.

Sheltering themselves in a grove of cottonwood trees, Chance and Running Horse at last built a fire, taking the risk that even Running Horse now granted was permissible. The horses, tied by their reins to cottonwoods, knocked the snow from these trees as far up the trunks as they could reach and peeled the bark in long strips with their front teeth. The sound of their feeding made Chance feel even more hungry.

Winona stood up near the fire and listened. Then her face beamed. "Spotted Buffalo," she said to Running Horse. "Listen."

Both men listened.

In the near distance, possibly no more than seventy-five yards through the trees, they heard a plaintive, soft lowing. Three or four cattle had taken refuge in the trees last night, trying to escape the blizzard.

"Wakan-Tonka is kind at last," said Running Horse, wading with his knife through the snow toward the sound.

Winona, Chance and Running Horse remained in the grove for a day before moving on, waiting for the snow to stop falling. The next morning, the first of January, New Year's Day, 1891, they led their horses from the trees and continued their journey north to the Bad Lands.

 

* * *

 

A few hours later, two men, on large-boned army horses, rode into the cottonwood grove. Their big horses stepped through the snow with comparative ease. The men wore greatcoats and fur caps, carried rifles and led a provisioned pack horse.

"This is where the rancher saw the smoke," said Corporal Jake Totter, dismounting and kicking at the embers of the dead fire. He scratched his ear carefully under his fur cap. His squarish face looked satisfied.

"They aren't far ahead now," said Grawson. There was victory in his heavy voice.

"I think you're like to crazy to go after that feller so goddam quick," said Totter. "I near froze last night."

"You had a tent and fire," said Grawson.

Totter looked around himself uneasily. "There's probably Injuns around," he said.

"They're running," said Grawson. "Running."

"They might stop," pointed out Totter.

"You want to get the man that shot you, don't you?" jabbed Grawson.

"I don't aim to get myself shot gettin' him," said Totter.

Corporal Jake Totter wasn't too happy with law officer Grawson. There was something strange about the big fellow, and the side of his face, the way it moved sometimes. It made Totter nervous. And the big fellow didn't seem to have much common sense. Totter was not the brightest man in his unit but he'd been on the prairie long enough to know how to be careful. Grawson wasn't. Totter had no particular hankering to meet up with Sioux stragglers after Wounded Knee. For his money, he'd prefer to be back in Good Promise, on leave, to go to the saloon, to see Nancy upstairs, who'd said she liked him. I might marry that gal, someday, thought Totter. But there wouldn't be any leave, or any drinks, or any Nancy, if Grawson got them both scalped. Vaguely Totter wondered about putting a bullet in Grawson. They'd probably never bother digging it out. They could take it for a Sioux bullet anyway. He could say Indians did it. What was Chance to him? He wouldn't mind shooting him, or getting him and giving him to Grawson, but it didn't really make that much difference to Totter. Totter made more difference to Totter. If he never saw Edward Chance again Totter would not have much minded. Live and let live, said Totter to himself.

"Mount up," said Grawson.

"Yes, Sir," said Grawson, climbing into the saddle.

"If we get Chance by sundown," said Grawson, "I'll give you a month's liquor as a bonus."

Totter grinned. "That's a lot of likker for me, Mister," said Totter.

"After I get through with our friend Chance," said Grawson, "you might feel like getting drunk for a month."

"Hell, I'd celebrate," said Totter.

Totter pulled his horse back beside Grawson's.

"No," said Grawson, "you first," gesturing ahead.

Totter shrugged and led the way, the two men riding from the cottonwood grove, following the tracks in the snow, the tracks of two ponies and one shod horse.

 

* * *

 

Late in the afternoon, Chance, Winona and Running Horse could see the jagged rim of the Bad Lands rearing in the distance. In the snow it looked like the teeth of broken jaws.

"I'll meet you later at the old camp," said Chance. "I want to see Lucia first, down at the Carters'."

Chance had thought that he would not see the girl again, but now, being so close, he knew that he would not resist, foolish though it might be. He must see her again, if only once more.

But Running Horse was looking at him, his eyes sad. "My heart is heavy for you," he said.

Suddenly Chance's heart seemed to stop beating, went cold.

He forced his horse through the snow, wildly, up to the top of a slope, from which he judged he would be able to see the Carter homestead.

Gasping, its flanks sore from the blows of Chance's boots, the horse stopped bewildered turning on the top of the slope, trampling the snow, snorting, and Chance jerked it around and searched the valley, seeing back in the trampled snow some quarter of a mile away the black shell of the Carter soddy. The roof had been burned; there were no livestock in sight; a wagon was overturned in the yard.

"Lucia!" cried Chance at the top of his voice, and kicked the horse, driving it down the slope toward the soddy.

Running Horse and Winona followed him, slowly, not wanting to be there when he first reached the ruin.

At the door of the soddy Chance leapt from the back of his horse and stood in the threshold. The door of the soddy, marked with the blows of rifle stocks and hatchet scars, hung broken on its leather hinges.

Inside the wind had blown some soft snow over the ashes of the fallen roof, making the place seem calm and white. Under a charred beam, dusted with snow, lay the scalped body of Sam Carter, his little shape crumpled into a crooked heap, still wearing its Christmas shirt, a red wool shirt, the collar of which was too large.

"Lucia!" yelled Chance.

She was not in the soddy.

Running Horse looked through the opening where, perhaps yesterday, the door had been locked.

"Lucia!" yelled Chance at him.

Running Horse shook his head.

"Did you find her?" yelled Chance.

"No," said Running Horse.

"Is she outside?" yelled Chance, irrationally.

"No," said Running Horse.

"Where is she?" demanded Chance.

"She is alive," said Running Horse.

Chance drew a deep breath, the deepest it seemed to him he had ever drawn. His hands and arms trembled.

"How do you know?" he asked.

"She is not here," said Running Horse simply.

"We've got to find her," said Chance.

"It will not be hard," said Running Horse, something strange in his voice.

The young Indian turned, and Chance, stumbling, followed him from the grisly soddy.

Outside, Running Horse pointed in the snow. There, a few feet from the overturned wagon, a sign was drawn, like a diagram in sand. It was a crude angle, and inside the angle were two circles, connected by small lines.

"It is the sign of Drum," said Running Horse, speaking slowly, watching Chance's face. "The pointed lines show which way the war party went. The sign is left to guide any of the Minneconjou or Hunkpapa who come this way."