Medicine Creek

by Charles G. West

  “If he’s got any sense, he’ll run,” Bowers said. “Now let’s get down there and take care of these varmints.”

  As quietly as possible, the party of citizens moved down the slope, staying in the cover of the pines until coming to a ridge about two-thirds of the way down to the grass of the valley floor. Bowers held up his hand and halted them. While they watched, the two Indian men got on their ponies and rode out toward the horses grazing at the north end of the valley.

  “Wait,” Bowers cautioned. “They’re going to drive the horses in.” This couldn’t have made his job any easier if they had put a gun to their heads and pulled the trigger themselves. He quickly split his posse into two groups. “You men follow me. We’ll cut them two bucks off before they can get back to the cabin. Lonnie, you and Tolbert take the rest of the men and attack the cabin. And, Lonnie, you men keep a sharp eye. A squaw can shoot a gun, same as a buck.”

  * * *

  Sleeps Standing circled his pony around to the northeast, coming in behind the horses grazing in the lush valley grass. Sore Hand rode around to the west and together they started the horses moving back down the valley. As they loped along, heading the herd along the eastern side of the stream, Sore Hand pulled up even with Sleeps Standing.

  “That little gray mare doubled back again,” Sore Hand yelled. “You keep the horses moving and I’ll go after her.”

  Sleeps Standing nodded and kept driving. This was not unusual. The little mare had an independent way about her and she never wanted to be driven with the rest of the horses. He didn’t even glance in Sore Hand’s direction as he cut out and galloped across the stream in pursuit of the ornery mare. Only moments later, a movement from the base of the ridge to the east caught his attention. In the next instant, a group of riders appeared, charging hard at him. Before he had time to even wonder at their sudden appearance, the air around him was filled with whistling lead. His first thought was to go to the aid of the women and he kicked his pony hard, trying to make a break for the cabin and his rifle.

  As he raced over the valley floor, he could see the riders angling to cut him off. They were white men, though not soldiers, he noticed. His pony splashed into the wide stream and struggled to reach the other side. As he pulled up on the bank, he saw another band of men charging down on the cabin. Lark! he thought, his heart pounding like a hammer. At that moment, his pony collapsed under him and he tumbled headfirst in the grass. He tried to scramble to his feet, but the impact of the first bullet between his shoulder blades knocked him down on his stomach. He struggled to his knees amid a hailstorm of bullets from the riders bearing down on him. The posse’s fire tore into his body as he sank to the ground again and lay still.

  In the tipi next to the cabin, there was total panic. It was not the first time the Indian women had experienced the terror that followed a sudden explosion of rifle fire upon a peaceful valley. Their first impulse was to run. Of the three, only Lark thought of defending them. She picked up Sleeps Standing’s rifle and tried to load it as she ran from the tipi, following White Moon and Rain Song. Rain Song yelled for them to make for the cabin where there would be better protection from the riders’ bullets, which were now ripping holes through the hide covering of the tipi. Before she could load the first cartridge into the chamber, Lark was hit. She screamed in pain and fell. Moments later, she was dead.

  White Moon screamed in agony and ran to her sister. She was struck in the forehead as she attempted to lift Lark in her arms. She collapsed over the body of her sister. The horror of the slaughter taking place before her eyes was like an explosion in Rain Song’s mind. She fell back against the cabin wall, the whole valley spinning in her head as consciousness slipped away, leaving her in a numbing black void. She no longer heard the cracking rifles or the wild shouts of the men, nor even her own screaming.

  At the north end of the valley, chasing the little mare on the far side of the stream, Sore Hand pulled up hard on the reins when he heard the attack behind him. From behind a screen of willows on the bank, he saw the massacre taking place. It had all happened so quickly there was nothing he could do to help his friends. He saw Sleeps Standing go down as the second group of white men fired at the women. There was no time to get to them. Even if there was, he had no weapons other than his knife and a whip. He slid off his pony and tied him in the willows. When he was certain the pony could not be seen, he worked his way back down the creekbank, getting as close as he dared to the cabin. With eyes wide with the horror of the scene, he tried to see who was responsible for this hatred. He knew these men! It had been three years since he had set foot in the settlement the white man called Medicine Creek—three years since the white men drove his people from the river valley. But he remembered a few of the men he now saw.

  At the cabin, things were already out of hand. Arvin Gilbert shouted for order. “Cease fire, dammit!” he yelled repeatedly as the blood-crazed posse rode around and around the cabin, shooting at everything in sight, intoxicated by the sound of their own gunfire. Puddin Rooks, caught up in the blood-letting, emptied his pistol into White Moon, his eyes wild with the sight of her broken and bleeding body. Finally, when Bowers rode up, there was some semblance of order restored. Behind him, one of the men dragged the body of Sleeps Standing with a rope tied to one ankle.

  “Look here, Bowers,” Lonnie Jacobs crowed. “I got me two of ’em with one shot.” He rolled Lark’s body over to display the ugly black bullet hole in her swollen stomach. “This ‘un was about to have pups.”

  Bowers only grunted in reply as he stepped down from the saddle and walked over to the cabin. Several of the men were already inside, searching for anything of value. There wasn’t much; a couple of rifles, some ammunition. These were immediately carried outside to be displayed. Bowers emerged from the cabin to see Lonnie Jacobs bending low over one of the women who had fallen against the side of the cabin.

  “Hey!” Tolbert exclaimed. “This ‘un ain’t dead!” He backed away a little as if to get an overall view of the woman. “Hell, she ain’t even been shot.”

  Bowers walked over and stood looking down at the unconscious woman, “Fetch me that water bag yonder,” he said, and held out his hand. When it was handed to him, he emptied it over the prone body before him. Rain Song immediately stirred and her eyes fluttered for a moment before opening wide. What she saw sent her into a fit of panic. She tried to scramble up but Bowers harshly knocked her back down with his foot. She lay still then, terrified, waiting for her execution. Bowers drew a long skinning knife from a sheath on his belt. With his other hand, he grabbed a handful of Rain Song’s hair and jerked her head back, the honed blade at her throat.

  “Hold on, Bowers!” It was John Schuyler. “Let her go. There ain’t no call for that. We done enough killin’.”

  “What the hell’s wrong with you, Schuyler? This is what we come out here for, weren’t it?” He pressed the knife blade against the terrified Indian girl’s neck, but he hesitated.

  Arvin Gilbert spoke up. “I think we done what we come to do and that’s run ’em out of here. We burn this place down and the job’ll be done. I think we need to remember we’re all Christian men here and we’ve got no call to slaughter this girl. She ain’t no threat to us now.”

  Bowers held no such notions of Christian kindness. As far as he was concerned, she was no different than the vermin he found in his lard cellar—just another rodent to exterminate. He was of a mind to go ahead and slit her throat, but he sensed a general feeling of guilty compassion taking hold of some of the members of the committee. Reluctantly, he released her and pushed her back against the cabin again. “Well, what the hell do you propose to do about her? Just let her go?”

  “I didn’t say that, but we can take her over to the agency at Lapwai with the rest of them Injuns. That’s where they’re supposed to be anyway.”

  Bowers shrugged his shoulders and got to his feet. “Hell, I don’t care.” He looked around him at the gathering of citizen vigilantes
. “Is that what you all want?” There was a general agreement that this would probably be the Christian thing to do. The one objection came from Lonnie Jacobs, who still wanted to kill the woman. Bowers scanned the faces of the rest of the posse. They all seemed reluctant to continue the slaughter. “All right, then, we’ll take her prisoner. Let’s burn this place to the ground.” He stood back and watched while the rest of the posse set fire to everything that would burn. There was a certain satisfaction Bowers felt in watching the flames licking the sides of the log house. He could not, however, avoid a feeling of disappointment knowing that two of the Indians had escaped. Little Wolf would have been a prize worth catching. The other one, the one Tolbert said was an old Nez Perce, was insignificant. “Some of you boys round up them horses.” At least there would be some profit shown for their raid.

  The bloodlust had consumed Puddin Rooks, and he too was disappointed that most of the posse favored sparing the girl. It was like a fever had taken hold of him and he craved to see more and more blood flow. While most of the men rounded up the horses, he joined Tolbert and Lonnie in mutilating the bodies of the women while Bowers held a terrified Rain Song, making her watch the atrocities committed. The sight sickened Arvin Gilbert and he turned away.

  From a bullberry thicket near the head of the valley, Sore Hand watched the flames leaping into the late afternoon sky and the black column of smoke that curled up toward the mountain tops as he quietly sang his song of mourning.

  3

  High up on a tree-covered ridge that gave way to a small open meadow still covered with about a half foot of snow, Little Wolf stole silently through the pine-scented forest. He moved with the fluid motions of one who had spent his formative years stalking game like that which he saw below him now. Although they snorted and sniffed the air cautiously, the three elk were unaware of the hunter now within a mere fifty yards of where they were grazing.

  Staying downwind of his prey, Little Wolf made his way carefully around a fallen tree to a position where he had a clear field of fire. He paused a moment to admire the animals searching for the new spring grass beneath the snow. The older bull was a magnificent animal, almost regal in the way he pawed and scraped away the snow, lifting his head every now and again to look around, testing the wind. The cow and the younger bull pawed at the snow unconcerned. Rain Song would be pleased with the young bull. In moments like these, Little Wolf was always most in tune with the earth, and he felt a oneness with the elk and the mountains surrounding them. Thoughts of his childhood and his boyhood friend, Black Feather, filled his mind as he remembered the hunts they went on together. He shook his head sadly. Born a white child, he could no longer remember the faces of his white father and mother. It seemed impossible to him to even imagine he could feel the love and respect for them that he felt for Spotted Pony and Buffalo Woman, his adoptive Cheyenne parents.

  He had not thought of his Indian parents for some time but they were always tucked away in the recesses of his mind. It was Spotted Pony who had given him the name Little Wolf, when he first came upon the child devouring the still warm liver of the grizzly he had killed. A boy of only ten killing a grizzly was unheard of—and big medicine. Spotted Pony had told him that he had taken the power of the bear and the people of his village had honored him, even at that young age.

  That was many battles ago. Black Feather was dead, killed by a soldier’s bullet. Dead too were Morning Sky, Spotted Pony, and Buffalo Woman, and more recently his friend Squint Peterson.

  He shook himself from his brief fit of melancholy. Why, he wondered, were such thoughts invading his mind? He reminded himself of the joy he knew when he was alone in the mountains or with the loving wife who waited for him back in his little valley. There had been many hard times, but life was good now, and he was thankful for that. He roused himself from his moment of reflection and got back to the business at hand. He was not close enough to the elk for a bow shot, so he laid it aside and pulled his rifle up to his shoulder. The younger bull was large for a spike and would provide plenty of meat for this trip. He raised his rifle and aimed at a spot behind the shoulder, about halfway down the chest, and squeezed the trigger. The bull dropped, shot through the lungs.

  Little Wolf watched as the old bull and the cow loped off over the ridge and into the trees. Then he went back up the ridge to get his horses. They were tied no more than two hundred yards away but he wasted no time in retrieving them. Scavengers moved in fast on a fresh kill, and he didn’t want to give the eagles or crows or magpies a chance to descend on his meat.

  The elk had simply collapsed when shot so it remained in a sitting position with all four legs folded up under it. Little Wolf pushed him over on his side in the snow. The bull was so big that it was a fair struggle to pull his back legs around to point them downhill. He worked quickly to part the skin of the beast’s belly. He started by cutting two slits in the hide just large enough to place his fingers. Then, inserting his skinning knife, blade up, he split the length of the bull’s belly, holding the hide away from the huge gut with his fingers until he had skinned one side. When the animal’s bowels pushed forward, he deftly cut around the sack and gutted it. After he had skinned up to the brisket, he reached inside the rib cage and cut out the organs as best he could. Finished, he crammed snow into the bull’s chest cavity to absorb the blood. Then he cleaned it out again and packed fresh snow inside. Though a young bull, the elk was far too large to carry, so he went about quartering the meat, cutting away the portions he wanted. While he worked, he thought about Rain Song and could not help but smile. She would scold him for the way he cut up the animal, wasting too much of the meat. Butchering a kill was women’s work and she was very confident of her skills. She was a tiny thing compared to him, but she would let him know in no uncertain terms that she was chief of the tipi.

  When he had finished one side, he pulled the hide down once more to protect the meat and, with the help of his horse, turned the elk over on the other side and repeated the procedure.

  It was late afternoon by the time he had his meat loaded on his packhorse and covered with the hide. He cleaned his hands in the snow and recited a Cheyenne prayer of thanks to the spirit of the elk for providing him with food. His hunting finished, he started down the mountain. It would be dark soon and he wanted to get farther down from the high country to make camp. The spring nights were still plenty cool so there was no concern for keeping his meat from going bad, even if he made it all the way down to the valley.

  * * *

  Little Wolf started back to his valley the next morning, after a breakfast of fresh elk, washed down with strong black coffee. It would take him most of the day to make the trek through the mountain passes and over the last high ridge that protected his valley. It was a fresh spring day and, though always alert, Little Wolf was in a carefree frame of mind as he followed the rushing stream through a cut in the pass. He was returning home earlier than he expected. That would please Rain Song. She did not like it when he was away for long periods.

  The sun was already resting upon the mountaintops to the west when he climbed the last ridge between him and his little valley. Upon reaching the top, he was immediately aware of a thin gray spiral of smoke drifting lazily up from the valley below him. This caused immediate concern, and he prodded his pony for more speed as he made his way through the trees until he reached an open place from which he could observe his valley.

  All the horrors of the past exploded in his brain, slamming against his prior sense of well-being with the impact of a gunshot. His blood seemed to freeze in his veins, and he shook his head violently, trying to shake from his eyes the vision that had caused his heart to stop. Far below, where his cabin had once stood, there was now a charred sore in the green of his valley. At once, he felt his muscles tense as his warrior’s instinct alerted his body for battle. The white men had found them!

  He drove his pony down the ridge, oblivious to the steepness of the slope and the danger of stumbling. The Appa
loosa responded to the challenge. He dropped the packhorse’s line and left him to follow on his own. It seemed to take forever, but he reached the bottom of the ridge in only a few minutes and was riding hard toward the still smoking embers of his home. As he rode, bent low over his horse’s neck, fleeting thoughts raced through his mind, thoughts that maybe all was not as it appeared. Maybe there had been an accident that started a fire. Maybe Rain Song and the others were all right and the worse that faced him was the need to rebuild. They were thoughts of desperation only, and the closer he got, the more he realized it. For everything was destroyed—the cabin, Sleeps Standing’s tipi, even the corral poles had been pulled down and thrown on the fire.

  He reined the Appaloosa up hard and dismounted. Frantically, he looked around him for signs of life. There was no one there. He prayed that it meant all had escaped this vicious attack, for the signs told him this was white man’s work. As he searched the ground for tracks, he discovered the bloodstains in the grass. His heart sank—there had been a lot of blood. He stood up and scanned the ridges all around the valley, searching for answers from somewhere, momentarily at a loss, afraid to speculate on what had happened to his wife and his friends.

  After a paralyzing moment of despair, he collected himself and forced his mind to work on the sign left for him to follow. Putting his grief aside, he began to cover the entire area, putting together a picture of what had taken place there. It was not pretty and, the more vivid it became, the more his anger grew. There had been twenty or more riders, all on shod horses. They had not only burned everything to the ground, it was plain that they had also ridden around and around the burning cabin, probably celebrating their raid. With that image burning in his brain, Little Wolf had not the faintest spark of remembrance that he was born a white man. He was Cheyenne pure and simple, and his war with the white man was rekindled into a raging inferno.