I had the feeling she was memorizing everything about me, storing away little details to savor later in case the worst happened and I didn’t return.
I knew what she was thinking and feeling because my hands moved over her with the same gentle desperation, the same need to savor each sensation, to commit to memory the way the firelight danced in her hair, the way she sighed beneath me as our bodies entwined.
“Wahcawin...Wahcawin...” I moaned her name as my seed spilled into her, felt her nails slide down my back as she shuddered beneath me.
“Wahcawin...”
“Do not even think it!” she exclaimed, placing her hand over my mouth. “You will come back to me. I know you will.”
I nodded, and yet I felt a terrible coldness deep within, a fearful knowledge that, should I die, I would be unhappy, even in the Land of Many Lodges, if she were not there beside me.
I made love to her all night long, pledging my love, promising to return as soon as I could, silently praying that she would be kept safe during the battle.
Volumes have been written about the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and I won’t bore you with all the gory details. Suffice it to say that Custer, that pompous glory-hound, disobeyed his orders, split his forces, and rode to destruction, taking over two hundred men with him.
The battle was filled with noise and confusion as battles always are, and the smell of dust and powder smoke clogged the clear Montana air. I saw Custer once, his hat gone, his golden hair cut short. He was in the thick of the fight, and despite my dislike for the man, I had to admire his courage, and the courage of his men. They fought bravely, valiantly, right up to the end, but they never had a chance.
I rode toward Custer, hoping to be the one to bring him down, for he represented everything I hated about the wasichu, but I never got close to him. A trooper clad in Army blue and gold rose up before me, his eyes blazing angry defiance, his lips curled back in a savage snarl as he sought to unhorse me. And suddenly I forgot about Custer, forgot about the battle raging hot and heavy all around me, as thoughts of vengeance crowded my mind.
I sprang from my horse’s back, wanting only to get my hands around the corded neck of my old nemesis, Sergeant Victor Polanski.
We crashed heavily to the ground, grappling for possession of the knife clutched in Polanski’s fist, rolling back and forth while men died all around us.
Polanski was bigger, heavier, but I guess I hated harder and after what seemed like hours, I wrested the knife from his grasp and plunged the foot-long blade into his throat. He made an ugly gurgling sound as a torrent of blood gushed from his severed jugular vein.
The thin layer of civilization that I had worn for the past twelve years melted away as I felt his blood splash over my hands and arms, and I threw back my head and unleashed the shrill notes of the Cheyenne war cry. Then, kneeling beside Polanski’s body, I very deliberately lifted his scalp.
Catching up my horse, I swung onto its back, surprised to find the battle was over. Custer and his men were dead. Sporadic firing off in the distance told of another battle in progress, but I was tired of fighting, and I rode back to the village.
Wahcawin ran to meet me, her eyes wide with concern until she ascertained that the blood splattered over my hands was not my own. Ushering me into our lodge, she offered me a bowl of venison stew, then bid me rest while she looked after my horse.
Exhausted, I fell into a deep sleep.
It was morning when I woke up. Stepping outside, I learned that the Seventh hadn’t been totally destroyed. True, the five troops with Custer had been wiped out. But he had sent six troops out with Reno and Benteen, and the survivors from those two commands were entrenched on a bluff, putting up a pretty good fight despite the fact that they were few in number and nearly out of food and water.
Some of the younger warriors wanted to wipe them out, too, but Sitting Bull said no, there had been enough fighting, and it was time to go home.
And so it was that the Indians broke camp. They had won a great battle. Sitting Bull’s vision had been fulfilled. Now the time for fighting was over. It took the better part of the day to empty the valley. We fired the grass before we left, and a great blanket of smoke blotted out the vast blue sky.
And so Custer died, and his death spawned a great rage among the wasichu, worse than anything that had gone before.
And now the Army rode against us with a vengeance, determined to annihilate the red man once and for all, or see him safely trapped on the reservation, stripped of his weapons and his pride and his freedom.
The tribes scattered.
General McKenzie captured the main village of Dull Knife. Lost Bull was killed. Dull Knife surrendered.
Sitting Bull and his people fled to Canada.
I took Wahcawin into the Black Hills and we hid there until the fighting ended. It was a miserable existence, at best. WE had nothing save the clothes on our backs, a few blankets, and a handful of cooking utensils. But it was enough.
Later, when it was safe, we erected a roomy lodge in the shadow of the sacred hills. The war was over. Hard rock miners, the Army, and settlers swarmed across the land, moving westward, ever westward. Those that passed near us left us alone. But then, we had nothing worth stealing.
Sometimes I heard one of the soldier’s call me “squaw man” or “Injun lover” but their words rolled over me like water off a duck’s back. I knew who I was and what I was, and their words no longer had any power over me.
It was there, in the shadow of the Black Hills, that our children were born - three sons and three daughters. Dark-skinned, raven-haired, there wasn’t a trace of white blood in any of them.
So it was that I returned to the vast rolling land I loved. The Indian wars were over, and there was peace on the plains. But it was a sad kind of peace, for the hills were bare of copper-hued warriors, and the nights no longer rang with the sound of their laughter. No longer did great herds of buffalo cover the earth like a curly brown blanket. No longer did paint ponies graze along the Platte, or the Yellowstone, or the Rosebud. No longer did our lodges cast shadows on the sacred mountains of the Dakotas.
Indeed, it was a sad day for my people. But the saddest news of all was the news that Crazy Horse was dead.
I heard of his death from an Army sergeant leading a patrol through the Hills on their way to Fort Abraham Lincoln. Crazy Horse had gone peacefully to the Red Cloud Agency, the sergeant said. Once there, soldiers had escorted Crazy Horse to a building - a building that turned out to be a jail. Crazy Horse had a strong aversion to the white man’s iron house - what Indian didn’t? - and when he saw the bars on the small square window, he had turned and run for his freedom. He didn’t get far. One of the soldiers struck him in the back with a bayonet, piercing both kidneys.
Some of Crazy Horse’s friends stepped forward to help him, but he shrugged them away. Took a few proud steps. And fell to the ground. His friend, Touch the Clouds, argued to take the stricken warrior back to the lodges of his people, but he was ordered to carry the fallen chief into the guardhouse. There, in the white man’s iron house, Crazy Horse passed into the next world. His final words were reported to be, “I am bad hurt. Tell the people it is no use to depend on me any more...”
The news of his death left me heavy-hearted with grief. Crazy Horse, Tashunka Witko, war chief of the Sioux Nation, was dead at the age of thirty-three.
Sitting Bull, that mighty man of vision, remained in the Land of the Grandmother. “Yellow Hair” Custer lay dead in the valley of the Little Big Horn.
So many great names, gone down in death or defeat because the red man and the white man could not find a way to live together in peace.
So many great names...Dull Knife, Gall, American Horse, Red Cloud, Black Kettle, White Antelope, Rain-in-the-Face, who was credited with killing Custer and eating his heart, Man Afraid of His Horses, Little Big Man, Spotted Tail...so many great names.
But I could not remain sad for long, not when I could see m
y children playing happy and free outside our lodge. Not when I could spend each night in Wahcawin’s loving arms, listening to the coyotes bark at the moon. Not when I could look up and see the Black Hills silhouetted against the night sky.
At such times, I am filled with a warm sense of peace and love and belonging, and I know this is what I have yearned for ever since the day a Methodist minister destroyed a peaceful Cheyenne village on the banks of Sand Creek those many years ago.
It had taken me a long time to find peace and love and acceptance. Indeed, they were intangible ideals, just as Wahcawin had said, and yet it is Wahcawin herself who is the essence of all three.
And so I hold her close and sometimes, when the night is quiet and the stars hang low in the Dakota sky, I see my old friend, Mo’ohta-vo’nehe, the wolf, grinning at me from the darkness, and I am content.
~finis~
About the Author
Madeline Baker started writing simply for the fun of it. Now she is the award-winning author of more than thirty historical romances and one of the most popular writers of Native American romance. She lives in California, where she was born and raised.
In The Shadow of the Hills
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
In the Shadow of the Hills Copyright © 2011, 2017 Madeline Baker
Published by Butterfly Kisses Press
Cover art by Cindy Lucas
In the Shadow of the Hills Page 27
