Thunder Rolling in the Mountains (11 page)

The dancing lasted far into the night. Smoke from the pipes and the fires filled the cold night air. The smoke was so thick that it was hard to see across the circle of dancers.

No one paid any attention to me. I waited. When the dancing grew wild and the voices loud, I snatched the ermine blanket and crept away from the circle.

I crawled through the line of tipis, stopping only to take a rifle and bullets from the tipi of Red Elk. Once I had reached the edge of the village I got to my feet and ran faster than I had ever run before.

I
RAN
until I could run no longer. My heart raced and my breath came in great gasps. I bent over and placed my hands on my knees.

When my breathing slowed, I started off again. I walked as fast as I could. I walked until the stars faded and the sky grew light.

I crossed a frozen stream, stepping carefully so that I did not slip. On the far bank I knelt and broke through the ice with a stone. The cold water gave me new strength.

Again I began to walk. The sun warmed me. I would walk until I left this land behind. By evening I would be safe across the border.

I had not gone far when clouds covered the sky. It began to snow. Driven by the wind, the flakes stung my face. It was hard to walk. I dropped into a gully and pulled the ermine blanket over me.

At last the snow stopped and the sky brightened.
When the sun appeared, it had moved the space of my two hands once and then again. It was time to go. Before I could climb out of the gully I heard sounds. I crawled beneath the blanket and waited.

Quietly, I loaded my rifle. Then I lay still, hardly daring to breathe.

A single horse galloped past me.

I peered from beneath the blanket. On its back was Charging Hawk. His eyes were narrowed and his face was grim. If he found me, I would pay dearly for my escape.

While the sun moved across the sky I did not stir. The white blanket blended into the snow. From three steps away, a rider could not see me.

I slept. When I awoke, the shadows were gathering. The sun was low and the first star shone in the sky. With my hands I scraped snow from the ground. I ate only a little, enough to stop my thirst. Still I waited.

At last Charging Hawk returned. His horse gleamed white in the dusk. Charging Hawk was weary from dancing all night and riding all day. His head was on his chest and he no longer looked for me.

He passed the spot where I lay. I reached for my rifle. I peered down the barrel and aimed it with care. When the gun spoke, the bullet would strike him squarely in the back.

Slowly, I began to squeeze the trigger. Then my
eyes filled with the sight of bodies strewn across the ground. I saw the dead people. I saw my mother. I saw Swan Necklace. I saw Ollokot and Fair Land. I saw all our dead chiefs, our dead warriors, our dead women, our dead children. I saw the dead Blue Coats. I saw them as surely as I had seen them at Big Hole and at Bear Paws.

My father's voice spoke in my head. I heard him say, "This hatred sickens my heart. All men were made by the same Great Spirit. Yet we shoot one another down like animals."

My finger fell from the trigger. The rifle slipped from my hand into the snow. I did not pick it up. Some time the killing had to stop.

I had no hate left. I watched Charging Hawk ride out of sight. It was over.

I got to my feet and walked toward the Old Lady's country.

S
OUND OF
R
UNNING
F
EET
reached Sitting Bull's camp, where she found White Feather, who had left Bear Paws with White Bird's band. Sound of Running Feet stayed with Sitting Bull for about a year. Then she returned to Lapwai. There she took the name Sarah and married George Moses, another Ne-mee-poo who lived on the reservation. She never saw her father again.

Chief Joseph and the four hundred Ne-mee-poo who surrendered at Bear Paws spent the winter at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. The land set aside for them lay between a lagoon and the river, and sickness swept through the camp. Many fell ill with malaria. Within a few months, one quarter of the Ne-mee-poo were dead.

The next July they were taken through the summer heat to reservation lands in what today is Oklahoma. The U.S. Army had stripped the Ne-mee-poo of their only source of wealth, their horses, and so they lived in poverty. Nearly fifty more died in the heat of what the Ne-mee-poo called "Eeikish Pah," the Hot Place.

A year later the Ne-mee-poo were moved to another part of Oklahoma, where they spent six years under terrible conditions. Housing was inadequate and medicine virtually nonexistent. Almost every baby born during these six years died. By now, most of the children were dead, including Bending Willow.

Not until 1885 did any of the Ne-mee-poo return to the Lapwai Reservation in Idaho. That spring, all who were willing to become Christians were allowed to return. But Chief Joseph, along with other Ne-mee-poo who refused to embrace a religion they felt had betrayed them, was sent to the Colville Reservation in eastern Washington State. Joseph would never again see the snowy peaks, the blue lake, and the green meadows of Wallowa. He spent the rest of his life at Colville. When he died in 1904, the doctor listed the cause of death as a broken heart.