The Year the Cloud Fell

by Kurt R A Giambastiani

  More chiefs entered and filled the empty spots around the cold firepit. The air began to grow heavy with the press of men and the slanting sunlight that still lit the western side of the lodge. Several men rose and went outside. There was movement around the perimeter of the lodge and then the bottom of the lodgeskin was raised. The men tied the skin to the poles, and a welcome breeze moved through the large room.

  Finally, the eldest chiefs arrived—Three Trees Together and the other three whose names George did not know. Behind them were two young warriors who held by the arms the young Corporal Hollings.

  Hollings looked scared. His skin was pallid and beaded with sweat. His eyes looked here, then there, like a nervous dog who has disobeyed but is unsure of the coming punishment. The warriors escorted him roughly behind the seated chiefs.

  “Hámêstoo’êstse,” one of them told him. He looked to George.

  “Sit down,” George said. Hollings nodded and sat down. The two guards sat down behind him.

  Three Trees Together settled himself in the place of honor. As he did so, the rest of the assembly quieted. The old man, with eyes bright and youthful in a face weathered by time and untolled years, looked at George and spoke.

  Speaks While Leaving translated in a quiet whisper. “Three Trees Together says: In the three and fifty years since the star fell, I have known of only four vé’hó’e who did not come to take from the People.

  “Two were holy men who came to tell us of the god who was killed and lived again. One gave up on us after a while and left. The other stayed longer, but it made no difference. The third man was a trader who asked our permission to travel our lands. He lived among us for several years, but was killed by the Crow People one winter after an argument over a blanket. The fourth one was a man we called Talks To Spirits. He came to us when I was first asked to be a chief. He was an odd man, but his heart was good. We accepted him among us and he lived as one of the People. He took a wife, and lived many years. He was killed by Long Hair in the great fires along the Big Salty, fighting for the People.

  “All the other vé’hó’e who come to the People come to take from us. Settlers, hunters, soldiers—they all come to take something that is ours—our lands, our buffalo, or our lives—and so we drive them off. For ten years times ten years and more we have driven them off. Thousands of vé’hó’e we have either killed or driven away.

  “In all that time, only four men. And now, you come, One Who Flies, and this man next to you comes. Are you like the four, or like the thousands? It is not hard to guess.”

  He settled back against his backrest. The woven willow twigs creaked.

  “Speak to the man beside you,” he continued via Speaks While Leaving’s translation. “Tell him that we would hear what he has to say, and then speak for him so that we might know his message.”

  George relayed the chief’s words to Hollings. “And don’t speak too fast,” he added. “My French is still rusty and you’ll get too far ahead of me if you charge ahead without a breath.”

  “Yes, sir,” the corporal said. He cleared his throat and sat up straighter, his hands on his knees.

  “I am here on behalf of General Stant of the United States Army, with a message from the President of the United States.” He paused for George to catch up. “It is the request of the President that you and your selected delegates meet with him and his advisors to open discussions on the subject of a treaty between the United States and the Cheyenne Alliance. The meeting is to take place twelve days hence, on the 25th of May, at the place where the Missouri River meets the White River.”

  Speaks While Leaving stumbled at the river names. “Where the cloud fell,” George told her. He motioned for Hollings to continue.

  “It is the President’s request that you grant free passage to his party and his security detachment, so that they might travel to the meeting place without incident. It is also the President’s request that Captain Custer, his son and your captive, accompany your chiefs to the meeting place.”

  The message passed through the translators to the chiefs. George could discern no emotion or reaction in any of them. They sat, impassive and silent. George had learned enough of these people and their open nature to know that this was a show. Like any good poker player, they were not giving their opponent any more information than necessary.

  Three Trees Together spoke, and the words were passed back up the chain.

  “We will consider this request. You will have our decision in the morning. Until then, you will stay at the lodge of One Bear and his daughter, Speaks While Leaving. We will call for you when we need you.”

  It was as abrupt a dismissal as George had heard from any general. He stood with the help of Speaks While Leaving and the use of his uninjured leg. Hollings rose, too. George directed the corporal to walk behind the seated chiefs, along the lodge wall. They exited into the whispers of the crowd and the last of the day’s light. The sky was a pure dome of dark blue that was blushed with rose and lit with orange along its western rim. The sun, a beacon of fire, slipped down behind the already dark hills beyond the river. A cricket played a few notes from a nearby hiding place. The smoke from a thousand cookfires added their scent to the air.

  The crowd dispersed before them, carrying the news to friends and families. George walked beside Speaks While Leaving, Hollings a few steps behind. Speaks While Leaving was pensive, her hands clasped before her, her gaze downcast, her step slow and measured.

  “How do you think they’ll respond, sir?” Hollings asked. “I couldn’t tell from their faces.”

  “Nor were you meant to,” he replied.

  “No,” Hollings admitted. “I suppose I wasn’t. They are a stone-faced lot, that’s for sure. But you’ve been here for a while. I thought you might have a better idea of what they’ll answer.”

  George glanced back and motioned toward the Council Lodge. Hollings looked back to find all the chiefs casually making their way back to their homes.

  “Where are they going?” he wanted to know. “Aren’t they going to even consider the President’s request?”

  “That’s just what they’re going to do,” George said. “Every Indian here will have his say in the matter, if he wishes it. By morning, you’ll have your answer, but as to which way they’ll respond, I haven’t the vaguest of ideas. They are suspicious of us—and with reason. It could go either way.”

  The evening meal was perfunctory: fresh buffalo meat roasted over the fire. Despite the meat’s inviting aroma and warm, velvety texture, George ate little as his discomfort sapped his appetite. Hollings ate reluctantly, his hunger barely winning out over his distaste of the roughly-prepared food and the carcass just outside the door.

  One Bear—an intense man of perhaps forty years whose lean, athletic physique was defaced by ritual scars—ate quickly and left, presumably to discuss the President’s request with his fellow tribesmen. Speaks While Leaving, her mother Magpie Woman, and her “other-mother” Diving Lizard Woman—her maternal aunt, if George had understood the relationships correctly—all left as soon as their guests were finished eating. There was still much work to be done on the large female bison One Bear had brought down during the hunt.

  “The meat must all be removed, stripped, and hung to dry,” Speaks While Leaving said as the women excused themselves. “The bones must be scraped, the innards brought to the river to be cleaned, not to mention the work required to dress the hide and preserve the sinews—though that can wait until tomorrow. Please, though, be seated and be comfortable. We will be just outside if you require anything.”

  George and Hollings remained, then, alone in the lodge. The fire cracked and fussed and lit the room with its lively light.

  Outside, the camp was busy. Families chatted and called to one another as they worked on their kills. All around, George heard the beat of drums and the eerie melodies favored by the Cheyenne as the evening’s feasts got underway. Beyond the doorway, Speaks While Leaving and her relations talked
and laughed as they skinned and butchered the buffalo. He heard Speaks While Leaving begin a quiet song, heard the others join in. The song rose and fell; its rhythm was happy and light. The song dissolved into laughter and embarrassed giggles. He wondered what the words meant that they might so amuse.

  “I pity you, sir,” Hollings said as he picked at his teeth with his thumbnail. “Being out here with these savages. I wish there was a way I could take you back when I go. I imagine it must have been awful for you here. I don’t know how you managed.”

  George found himself wishing the corporal would disappear. “It hasn’t been all that bad,” he said. “They’ve treated me quite well. No worse than a fortnight at Whitley, actually.”

  “Oh, come now, sir. You don’t have to play the brave officer for me. We’re both from well-bred families. We’re both raised to the life of a gentleman. This must have been a trial of the harshest sort.”

  The corporal’s accent and turn of phrase reminded him of Elisha, who now lay dead beneath a landscape as different from his home district as could be imagined.

  “Where are you from, Hollings? Boston?”

  “Yes, sir. Is it that obvious?”

  “Not really,” George said. “It’s just that my navigator was from Boston. Did you know Lt. Reed?”

  “Certainly I did, sir. We were related, don’t you know. He was my cousin.”

  “My condolences, then. He was a fine officer and a good friend. I miss him.”

  “Thank you sir. I’ll pass your words along, but please don’t worry on my account. He was only a distant cousin. Just a name on the family chart until I was posted to The Whit, sir.”

  “Ah,” said George. “Then you missed knowing a remarkable man.”

  “Yes, sir. So I understand.”

  Hollings grew quiet and George was glad to have him so. His side jabbed at him malevolently and the deerskin dressing pulled with every breath. If he could only lay down, just for a moment.

  “How did he die, sir?”

  George’s head jerked up, having nodded as he touched the edge of sleep. “What?”

  “If you would, sir. Elisha was a favorite of my great aunt. I’d like to bring word to her of how he died.”

  George sighed inwardly, unable to refuse such a request but wanting only to sleep. He lay down on his bed of pelts and blankets and looked up into the cone of the lodge. The lodgepoles, sapling trees stripped of twigs and bark, were pale in the firelight and their scent was sharp and fruity. The smoke rose through their nexus. Beyond them, up in the sky, George could see the bright prairie stars.

  “He died bravely, Corporal, and did not suffer much. Put another branch on the fire and I’ll tell you how it happened.”

  His story and Holling’s questions lasted until the women completed their work for the evening. At that point Speaks While Leaving told George he should sleep and he was more than willing to comply.

  When morning came, it was too early. He awoke to find Speaks While Leaving and Magpie Woman still asleep. Hollings lay on his back, snoring to the rafters. One Bear was not in bed.

  George lay there, wondering what the Council would decide to do. He looked up through the smokehole and could see the stars fading in a sky aging from night to day. Hollings rolled on his side and in the silence that followed he heard the quiet steps of early risers on their way to get water—or to make water. Whistlers fluted their songs of morning welcome as young sons searched the wristbands for their family’s pattern. From the hills came a chorus of howls as wolves sung to the fingernail moon.

  He looked across the firepit and saw Speaks While Leaving watching him, her eyes shining in the gloaming.

  “Bonjour,” she whispered. “Comment ça va?”

  “Ça va,” he replied, and her smile calmed his troubled heart.

  Voices came from outside. Footsteps approached, heavy and forceful. The doorflap opened with violence, jolting the remaining sleepers awake. One Bear stepped inside, the scowl on his face so fierce that George became afraid. The chief glared at the bleary Hollings with open hatred before he clenched his fists and controlled his emotions.

  “To’e,” he said. Wake up. With harsh gestures and rough words he gave orders to Speaks While Leaving, pointed toward Hollings and George, then spun and walked out. Speaks While Leaving and her mother shared a glance and a sigh of dismay. Then they rose from their beds and got to work.

  Magpie Woman set about collecting the many buffalo robes and animal pelts from the beddings. Speaks While Leaving came over to the two confused men.

  “What is it?” George asked.

  “We are leaving.”

  “What? All of us?”

  “Yes. The camp is moving.”

  “Him, too?” George asked, afraid Hollings was now captive as well.

  “No,” she said. “The Corporal will be taken back to his country and will deliver the Council’s reply.”

  “And what is their reply?”

  She lifted one hand and cocked her head in a gesture that George could not interpret.

  “They will meet.”

  Chapter 7

  Thursday, May 22nd, AD 1886

  Somewhere in the Unorganized Territory

  Having spent nearly his entire life living with or in the military, George had seen his share of parades. He had seen streets filled storefront-to-storefront with ranks of men in freshly-brushed wools, their polished buttons glinting in the noonday sun. He had seen endless waves of cavalry riding in formation down a rutted country road. He had seen the ragged procession of a hundred wagons returning from the Sand Hills of Kansa Bay with their burden of ten thousand dead. Yet in his experience, of all the displays of military might that had passed before him, never had there been a sight to compare with the one now before him.

  For seven days the camp had been on the move. The logistical organization of such an undertaking would have daunted even the most experienced of commanders.

  Today had been typical of the week gone by. George had been traveling with Speaks While Leaving and her family, ostensibly due to his recent injury but also, he thought, to keep him away from Blue Shell Woman. He had learned from Speaks While Leaving what he had already suspected: that the girl had developed an infatuation. With her brother so often gone on patrol or advance duty, it seemed prudent to stay a fair distance from her. Traveling with the family of One Bear gave him that distance, both physically and emotionally.

  It was before dawn when George had awakened beneath blushing clouds—lodges were not raised while the camp was in transit. Larksong carried through the empty day and the calls of the criers had begun. The men moved through camp delivering the day’s orders. Under the dying stars, Speaks While Leaving translated for him.

  “One Green Eye says that movement will begin after the sun is two fingers above the horizon. The Red Shield soldiers are in charge of the march today, and the Kit Fox men will ride in advance to secure this evening’s site. We will make permanent camp tonight near the bones of Red Squirrel Woman along Fishing Lizard Creek.”

  “Permanent? No more moving?”

  “No,” she said. “Not for at least a moon. The hatchlings need time to grow.”

  George looked to the horizon and guessed that they had less than an hour before the sun would have risen to a height of two finger-widths above the horizon. In a week on the open prairie he had learned—at least in basic terms—how to judge the span of time in hands. Three hands from the horizon, one hand past the top of the sky, two hands and two fingers before sunset…it was a surprisingly accurate system that could be applied to either the sun, the moon, or the morning and evening stars. It did, however, require an intimate familiarity with the land, the seasons, and the lunar phases that George lacked. As a result, his guesses were usually close, but were sometimes off by several hours. Speaks While Leaving had tried to show him how the sun and the moon traveled different paths across the sky but the subtlety escaped him. For her part, Speaks While Leaving was unable to unders
tand his inability to comprehend something so obvious and quickly she gave up on teaching him.

  This morning, however, the guessing was easy. The glow of the ready sun was distinct and two fingers on the horizon translated to half an hour or so. George was quite aware that his guess of less than an hour was more common sense than expert knowledge.

  Once the criers had delivered the day’s instructions, the routine that followed had been well established by six days on the march: gather the whistlers, load them up, and head out.

  It was a household of ten—Speaks While Leaving, her parents, two aunts, two uncles, two cousins, and Healing Rock Woman, their incredibly ancient matriarch. The whole of it included five lodges with poles and coverings, twelve beds, robes, clothing, tools, weapons, furnishings, cooking utensils, food both fresh and preserved, extra hides, pelts, skins, and one three-month old puppy named Barks Like Thunder which the youngest cousin carried slung over her shoulder like some prized sack of salt. Everything, with the sole exception of Barks Like Thunder, was either loaded onto a travois or piled on whistler-back. Healing Rock Woman was given a travois of her own, while everyone else took a whistler from the family’s ample flock. In all, it took over thirty whistlers to move One Bear’s extended family. The hatchlings—already the size of large geese—prowled near the feet of their parents.

  The packing went quickly, as it always did. George did not help, as past attempts had shown that he only got in the way of the women’s practiced movements, so he contented himself with appreciating the efficiency and precision of their operation. Everything had a place, and the place for most everything was one of the ubiquitous parfleches that every family had in abundance. They were large pieces of rawhide, folded like an envelope and filled near-to-bursting. Each parfleche, tied closed, was easily stacked with the others. There were small ones for personal items, medium ones for food stores, and large ones like stiff leather chests that held just about anything, and most of them were painted or beaded with geometric patterns and bright colors. They were briskly filled and in no time the travois was stacked high.