Reap the Whirlwind (40 page)

And Mills suddenly found the ground to his immediate front open and uncontested once more.

It might prove to be a trap, he fussed with himself—like getting into that Powder River village had been, only to find themselves pinned down by the warriors in the bluffs above them.

But now, he argued too, if he made sure these men didn’t string themselves out, if he kept their flanks close to the center and none of them tarried, Mills figured they stood a good chance of making it to the top of that second ridge to the northwest.

“Order the horse-holders forward!” He turned to fling his orders back at Lieutenant Augustus C. Paul. “We won’t remount. Going to charge left front across the open ground.”

As their mounts came forward, the men jostled among the horses and the holders. The sergeants and lieutenants hurried back and forth before the companies, forming them up. As his men began to shape up their line four deep across a wide front for the charge on foot across the broken terrain, their mounts immediately to their rear, Mills again had the nagging sense of something desperately wrong, something grossly out of order, peering back as he did across both flanks of his command. It wasn’t just Captain Andrews’s troop any longer. Now he was missing B and L Companies. Leaving a gaping hole along his left flank. Anson was unable to spot them anywhere behind him.

Where they were gone in the middle of taking that first ridge, he didn’t know, having last seen them to his left on the north side of the Rosebud the first time he formed up the six companies.

All that was certain now was that Mills was left with only three troops of dismounted cavalry and a few hundred more yards of broken ground to cover to reach the bottom
of that second ridge. His men would have to break out into the open now to do it, pushing forward with his horse-holders coming noisily on their rear.

Mills grinned grimly: at least this time they didn’t have to worry about leaving their bloody coats behind in the snow before they charged the enemy. Not like the Powder River fight Colonel Reynolds had botched and nearly cost the lives of every man with him.

Mills whirled and gazed back downslope once again, wondering where the hell those three companies had disappeared to. Growing more than curious. Now he was angry.

He sensed the bile rising in his throat as the first of his men joined him in weaving through the rocks and boulders there atop the first ridge, staring across all that open ground in front of them. All too clearly did Mills remember how the other outfits had abandoned his and Egan’s companies to their fate when he and Teddy got themselves pinned down under that snowy mesa. It had been enough to make a man chew a rusty nail.

Where the hell did those three companies go?

Moon of Ripening Berries

H
e held nothing back, ordered not a single warrior to
remain in reserve. How could he? Crazy Horse wondered.

So, so long had they desperately hungered for this fight.

When his four wolves bumped into the enemy scouts who outnumbered them, the Raven People warriors drove the four back, back farther still across the hills in a running battle until they finally came in sight of Crazy Horse’s hundreds. His
akicita
tried desperately to hold the eight-times-ten in check. But failed.

The excited horsemen flowed past the camp police like spring snow-melt rushing past a rustling tree fallen in midstream. Yelling out their bravery songs, crying their war chants, making their own medicine strong—they every one raced after the Raven People and Snakes, right up that final slope that brought him here to the top of this bluff where he finally looked down on the soldiers of Three Stars.

Reaching this creek valley, they felt the countryside vault beneath them, heave and roll, growing sharply broken as it fell away on either side from this ridge. In streaming up the slopes, his horsemen were forced by the raw texture of the land to peel off into four distinct bands. On over the top of the ridge these four waves poured, across
the high plateau, then down the far slope toward the soldiers in the boggy bottomland.

Without much delay beyond their first shots, the pickets atop the slopes started to fall back in the face of the horsemen. Those who chose to stand their ground were swallowed up, lost beneath the pounding hooves and whirling clubs, war axes and lances glittering, glinting, flashing in the new day’s sun.

The only ones to turn the charge were those Raven People and Snakes. With the bright-red strips of cloth tied around their arms, they mounted and rushed into the fight, covering the retreat of those pickets who ran and stumbled, fell and picked themselves back up to flee some more, dragging their long rifles as they bolted past the Indian horsemen charging up the slope right into the teeth of Crazy Horse’s attack.

Now, as half his force, hundreds of warriors, were checked far to the east where they had been pouring through a gap between the hills, Crazy Horse turned finally, looking north. Wondering where the Hunkpapa were. When they would arrive. He knew they were coming. With his own eyes he had seen Sitting Bull helped atop his spotted pony before leaving at the head of the Hunkpatila column.

But where they had gone in leaving Sundance Creek, he did not know. When they would arrive was of far greater consequence to this fight now that the element of surprise was gone like puffball dust, now that the white man was no longer confused, unhorsed, and on the defensive, now that the soldiers were regrouping and making a counterattack.

He ground his teeth—angry enough to shake a fist at the sky, cursing the Hunkpapa for the long trail they took, for not being here to throw themselves into this fight.

Their medicine man was tired, weak. Sitting Bull should not have tried to lead his tribesmen.

But it mattered little now, the Horse decided. The fight was already at hand, and the rest of his warriors were already in the thick of it, rolling this way, probing along the soldier lines … then reining away in another wave to jab and punch at some new place atop the miles of rolling, broken country.

If Sitting Bull wanted his vision victory over the soldiers—best he get his Hunkpapa here to assure the white man’s defeat.

A bullet sang past Crazy Horse’s ear, snarling like an angry wasp. He stared down the slope at the foot soldiers clutching their long rifles like their mothers’ breasts—frightened like babes, they were.

Another shot nicked the decorative trailing fringe on his right legging. The pony pranced sideways. But in leaning over to inspect the animal, he could find no blood, no wound.

He sat up straight once again, his chest swelling in pride and the certainty of his invincibility.

As sure as his dream-makers had made him that he would not die by a white man’s bullet, not at the hand of the white man at all.

As frightening as would be his death at the hands of his own people, with the long soldier knife driven into his back—that fear nonetheless released Crazy Horse for now. For he knew this was not his day to die.

Wait! … there in the far distance. Off among the dark green of the trees to the north. He saw the first flashes of color in the morning sun, the first rise and fall of the motion of ponies coming on the lope.

They had heard the noise of the battle. The rattle of gunfire. Now they must realize they are late. He cursed the Hunkpapa.

Then gave thanks—for there was more than two-times-ten-times-ten coming now to reinforce his horsemen.

Hopo! May the Great Mystery be praised! It was a good day for them to slaughter the white man!

That long, thin line of Apsaalooke and Shoshone stretched, here and there they gave a little ground—but they did not break.

Along with the half-breeds and the three squaw men from the Wind River Reservation, Captain George Randall, Lone Star’s chief of scouts, rallied the allies, exhorted them, moved back and forth along the wide front as the hostiles poured down on them, all the time intent on plugging any of the holes in their line which the Lakota and Shahiyena
could use to charge down on the soldiers still milling in confusion at the creekbottom.

Plenty Coups heard the next wave coming. The hooves pounded closer, ever closer. Those shouts and screams and taunts yelled to frighten the young men among his Raven People. To lure his warriors and those of the Snakes into doing something foolhardy. But this was not the time for foolishness. If they kept their heads about them, they would hold the enemy long enough for the soldiers to come up behind them with their long-range rifles. Then, and only then, would the day be won.

For now, it was up to a couple hundred allies to hold back these innumerable Lakota and Shahiyena.

As Plenty Coups’s scouts had raced back to the creekside camp in that chase of more than ten miles across the broken country, “Black Jack” Randall had reacted immediately. Perhaps quickly enough to avert what Plenty Coups feared was certain disaster as he reached that last ridgetop only to discover the white men unprepared to receive the enemy charge that was coming hot on his heels.

Between Randall and the man called Cosgrove, they got the allies spread out and countercharging back toward the few soldier pickets falling back in a thin line, barely ready to receive the onrushing hostiles. The enemy’s ponies came within five hundred yards before they pulled off, whirling, milling … but then charged in again. Coming closer this time.

And fell back under the fire from the allies armed with the white man’s powerful weapons. The Lakota circled once more and came racing down on Plenty Coups and the rest. Each time, the horsemen rode a little closer, became a bit more daring, charging into the muzzles of the allies’ guns, screeching and dropping off the far side of their ponies.

It wouldn’t be long, the Apsaalooke war chief realized, before his enemies made a daring ride right through this thin line of defense. Like powerful gusts of strong spring wind, the knots of horsemen slammed against the Crow ramparts: ten, then as many as thirty, charging in bunches, hurling arrows and shooting their guns. But Randall’s line
did not break under all the pressure that first fifteen long minutes.

Then Cosgrove and the captain were among the allies, shouting in English and Snake and Apsaalooke. Gesturing, cheering, getting the scouts on their feet.

“The scalps are yours! Every pony is yours!” one of the white men shouted.

“Remember your women and children!” the other white man hollered. “Kill these Sioux for them!”

In an instant Plenty Coups was leading the rest, setting off at a ragged sprint toward the enemy as the Lakota were caught regrouping for another charge. If they could surprise the enemy this way, then they might catch them off balance. It was good, this plan: rather than fight nothing more than a defensive war, why not take the offensive, push back at your enemy until he folds?

Then Plenty Coups saw him through the waves of dust and the thin layer of murky gunsmoke. As if the entire battlefield fell quiet while he watched only that single warrior coming on among the others in their new charge.

How could any man miss him? Plenty Coups wondered.

A long double-trailer of eagle wing-feathers spilled away from the Lakota warrior’s magnificent bonnet. The midmorning sun glinted brightly off that shiny rifle—it appeared to be a repeater. What a prize that weapon would make hanging in any man’s lodge! As well as the war-bonnet. Any man who wore such a bonnet had to be an accomplished, courageous warrior.

Still, more than the rifle and bonnet, Plenty Coups wanted that great warrior’s scalp.

Skidding to a halt, he dropped to one knee and brought the soldier carbine to his shoulder. Snapped the hammer back a second click to full cock and laid the front blade on the man’s chest … just as the warrior dropped to the far side of his pony. All Plenty Coups found in his sights were the ends of the feathers radiating from the crown of that magnificent headdress.

Angrily he slowly lowered that front blade, laying it down in the vee of the rear sight and holding on the vee in the broad chest of that warrior’s pony. With a gentle
squeeze of the trigger the rifle roared. Without so much as waiting to see for sure, Plenty Coups was already on his feet racing for the warrior as the Lakota’s pony stumbled, reared, then fell back to crumple on his forelegs, giving out completely and rolling to pitch its rider forward.

With a half dozen others Plenty Coups heedlessly raced for the warrior struggling to shake the cobwebs from his head. He looked up, blinked dust from his eyes, and saw the enemy sprinting for him. Clambering to his feet, his legs wobbly at best, the warrior turned and took off.

This was not the way of a warrior of many honors!

He has forgotten the bridle, Plenty Coups thought as some Apsaalooke riders dashed past their war chief on horseback, racing for the unhorsed enemy.

It had long been a symbol of cool-headedness, a sign of ultimate courage, for a man to calmly remove the bridle from his pony fallen in battle.

But this one, this Lakota warrior with the magnificent bonnet that spoke of great war deeds—he did not act with courage and disdain for the enemy.