The Powder River

by Win Blevins

  She had not let herself scream.

  She was not too dissatisfied with herself, really. She had maintained her demeanor. When she got to Adam, when she touched him, she would be all right.

  Smith put his arm briefly around Elaine’s waist and turned back to his patient. “He’s going to be OK,” Smith said happily. He felt the route of the big wound around She Bear’s head. “It’s amazing. It went in here,” he said lightly, “and out there.”

  He felt Elaine touch his shoulder with her cheek and pull away to make room. Calling Eagle and Medicine Wolf had arrived—Smith had sent the old woman for one of the tribe’s healers, a practitioner with herbs and incantations. Smith waved the medicine man forward to show him the wounds.

  Smith began to feel terrific. She Bear was still groggy as hell, but he would be fine. Elaine looked OK, maybe a little shaky, but Calling Eagle was steadying her. And now he got to do what he had come back west to do—give his people something important by doing what he did best. Smith was grateful to Calling Eagle, who had summoned him to the supposed dead man first instead of getting Medicine Wolf. He laughed to himself. Did his grandmother call Smith first because she thought the man was dead?

  “See, the bullet just tiptoed around his skull and didn’t penetrate. It made this big gully”—he fingered the bigger wound, which circled toward the ear—“and this little one.” He touched the other gully, which angled upward. “The bullet actually split. She Bear has a skull like a grizzly’s.”

  She Bear managed a dizzied grin at this compliment.

  Smith picked up She Bear’s hat, made out of the skin of a grizzly head, cocked it in the air, and grinned at Elaine. The gesture was silly, but what the hell? Then he got an idea. He felt around inside the hat, and, sure enough—

  “I found it!” But he couldn’t get it out. He took his knife, picked at the skin of the hat, and brought forth his little prize. “Here’s the piece of bullet that went upward. The other one went on through.” He stuck his little finger out the hole where the bigger fragment went and wiggled it at everybody.

  Smith put the piece of bullet in She Bear’s hand. He knew the warrior would want to keep it, perhaps put it in his medicine bundle. “What medicine you made today!” Smith complimented him.

  The warrior nodded. He looked more alert now. He’d taken a hell of a lick, though, and Smith meant to keep him lying down as long as possible.

  It felt so good to be healing the people. Back at the agency most of them avoided him. More white-man stuff, they said, and they were rejecting all of that. Now, broken and bleeding, his people really needed him.

  “Medicine Wolf,” Smith said, “don’t you think we ought to poultice these? Can you make some poultice?” Smith had confidence enough in folk-medicine poultices—they seemed to work as well as the concoctions he used. The doctor began to rummage in the geometrically painted rawhide box he’d brought, called a parfleche, his improvised version of a Gladstone bag.

  “I think I’d better sew this big one up,” Smith said. “Would you hold the skin for me?” Medicine Wolf eased in close and pressed the torn edges toward each other. Elaine was good at doing this, but it was important to teach Medicine Wolf, and Elaine would understand that.

  When he’d threaded the needle, Smith carefully made his row of neat stitches with silk thread. Medicine Wolf watched keenly. See what happens when you treat him as a colleague? Smith said to himself. “You can sew up the next one,” he told Medicine Wolf. “It’s easy.” See what happens when you treat your people as adult human beings?

  He turned back and smiled at Elaine. She didn’t look so pale anymore. I’m getting it done, he wanted to cry to her. I’m getting it done.

  “Hou! Hou!” shouted Twist throatily. Morning Star, the great Morning Star, had also spoken up for the war charge. A real, old-time Cheyenne war charge. Overrun the soldiers—they deserve it. Didn’t they attack us, even our women and children? Aren’t they dog-manure-eaters?

  “Hou-hou!” Twist shouted again, his inflection rising with the other men’s. All the young men wanted a war charge, and the great Morning Star was on their side. Was he not one of the two old-man chiefs? The young men looked at each other with blood lust in their eyes.

  Twist wanted to count coup on the soldiers. He wasn’t a member of the society of Dog Soldiers, because he was without honors. In the last two years, the younger Tsistsistas had had no chance to show their daring at war. No chance for coups, no chance for glory, no chance to gain the standing in the tribe that would enable a man to take a wife. To Twist, that was the worst part of the imprisonment on the cursed agency. For Twist it was even worse, for he was small and ill-favored.

  Now Twist exulted. Even Morning Star was for the charge. Twist scowled at the tall white-man doctor known as Smith—damn the white men!

  But Little Wolf, the warrior turned old woman, spoke up now. He argued that the people should simply accept the good luck they’d had today. They’d held off the soldiers without wasting too much of their precious ammunition. No Human Beings had been killed, and only a few soldiers. Maybe the officers, even though they were white, would not feel so humiliated that they would telegraph for the railroad to bring five times as many fighters and kill a lot of Indians to get their self-respect back. A very lucky day. So if the Human Beings just waited, the soldiers would run out of water down there in their rifle pits and have to go home.

  It would be very satisfying, yes, to ride out there and get personal glory in the only way a warrior could get it. But the responsibility of the old-man chiefs, both himself and Morning Star, was the welfare of all the people, not just the young men. The whites back east had too many soldiers and too many guns.

  Twist felt bile in his throat. This chief would turn all the Cheyenne warriors into women. Then who would protect the people?

  Little Wolf asked several men to tell the warriors about the whites’ overwhelming numbers—the four men who had been sent to prison far off in Florida, and the white-man doctor, who had been all the way to a place called Boston. Twist didn’t care what they had to say. The four had been broken in spirit by their time in the white man’s jail. The doctor, worse yet, had the whites whitewash his Indian spirit and paint over it with what they called education.

  When Smith began to speak, Twist fixed him with a malevolent glare. Naturally, the doctor spoke as the coward Little Wolf told him to, and as the others did. Yes, yes, more soldiers and guns and ammunition than we could ever imagine—the doctor parroted his lines perfectly, like the others halter-broken by the whites.

  Now Little Wolf, satisfied with himself, tried to put even more hobbles on the warriors. When the young men were out trying to trade for horses and guns, he argued, they should steal nothing and kill no one. The white people got more excited by Indians’ raiding farmers and ranchers than their fighting with soldiers. Peace, Little Wolf counseled all of them. Don’t shoot, don’t steal, only trade.

  Twist looked across at Black Coyote, and his friend sent back a hooded glance. Some of the warriors would ignore this stupid advice.

  Inflicting a bad defeat on the whites, Little Wolf summed up, would endanger everyone. If the warriors made the whites mad enough, there might even come a day when not a single Tsistsistas-Suhtaio of the northern band would stand between the earth and sky. The only way to get back to Powder River country was to walk as quietly as possible.

  Twist felt disgust as real in his throat as vomit. When Little Wolf asked for the sign of assent, and even Morning Star gave it, Twist found it almost unbearable. But he noticed that maybe a dozen young men, like himself, gave no sign at all.

  Now the dog soldiers, under their leader Tangle Hair, were assigned to watch the soldiers during the night and keep them from going for water, but to avoid killing them. Since Tangle Hair would charge him with the duty of staying peaceful, Twist strode away from the council.

  The doctor made him mad. That Smith had no business speaking up in a war council—he wasn’t a C
heyenne. His father was a white man, and his mother the offspring of the old Frenchman Charbonneau and an Assiniboin woman. Besides, his mind had been spoiled by education.

  The doctor and his schoolteacher wife were pretending to be on the side of the Tsistsistas-Suhtaio. But at the same time they tried to convert the people to white ways. It was worse than forcing the people to live like whites—these two wanted to take over their minds and make them want to live like whites.

  Twist’s blood was up. He felt like clubbing the doctor’s head in. He knew that killing another Cheyenne was the unpardonable sin, always punished by banishment from the tribe. And the old-man chiefs said the doctor was a Cheyenne. But the people—would the people say so?

  Twist thought they would see that the doctor was a white man’s disease. They would praise the warrior who purged the people of disease.

  Chapter 7

  Some men found her by accident not long before sunset, when a few clouds were gathering for a little rain. She was back in some low rocks, whimpering, a wounded animal seeking a lair. They summoned Medicine Wolf, and this time the man of red medicine sent for the man of white medicine. Smith felt honored by the summons.

  “Her name is Leaf,” Medicine Wolf muttered. She looked about six years old, and Smith could see she was scared of the strangers hovering over her. He could also see what was wrong—she was shot in the right ankle, the mortis was hit, and it was never again going to work the way it should.

  Elaine clambered back among the rocks and reached for Leaf’s hand, but the child cried out and rolled away. It was pitiful to see the way she rolled, managing to leave the ankle where it was, unmoving.

  Just then one of the warriors came up and spoke to her. Christ, it was the one who glared at Smith back at the council and looked so antagonistic. When the warrior slipped around and put a hand on her head, Leaf didn’t pull away. Medicine Wolf whispered that he was Twist, her uncle, not her father—her parents were dead.

  Smith felt a rush of compassion for the child. There were too damn many Cheyenne orphans, like the ones coming up from behind now. He looked at the uncle. The man’s eyes were bitter and hateful. Well, Smith was ready to overcome bitterness and hatred. Medicine and compassion were his tools. Now was a good time to start.

  Smith sent Elaine for more of his tools and medicines. He asked Medicine Wolf to get a piece of green buffalo hide—Medicine Wolf would be able to judge the size and might well be as good at making a splint of it as Smith.

  Before leaving, Medicine Wolf whispered some sharp sentences back and forth with Twist. Smith didn’t have to hear the words to know that the warrior wanted the white-man doctor away from his niece. The medicine man made a decisive gesture and left. Smith chose not to be angry at Twist for his hostility and to be grateful to Medicine Wolf for his support.

  Smith turned his attention to the child. How had she gotten into the area where there was shooting? They would never know. It was what came of having no mother to look after you.

  Smith looked at the sky. About an hour to sunset, and the rain clouds were making it dark already. The bullet had to be drawn, the wound poulticed, the bones set in place, and the splint put on. The bones would fuse—the mortis would allow little or no motion again—but if he set them properly, she would be able to gimp around on the ankle, maybe gimp pretty vigorously.

  He put his mind on the order of the tasks he had to get done and deliberately did not think of the girl’s jerking and writhing and crying out.

  He started building a little fire to sterilize his tools, thinking as he went through the motions. He made himself think of his grandfather, Strikes Foot, who had spent his entire life on a prosthetic foot. A buffalo hoof as a prosthesis. Strikes Foot had limped, but had actually turned the hoof into a kicking weapon in combat, making a disadvantage into an advantage. That could be done. A bad ankle didn’t mean a ruined life.

  With a nice little blaze going, Smith had to quit putting it off—he reached for the ankle. The child grasped her uncle’s hand and allowed Smith to pick up the leg with only a little mew. That was a good start. The bullet was still in there—no exit wound. That might be the lead he could feel on the medial side, or it might be a sizable piece of shattered bone. No telling whether it would be hard to get out—might be a bastard. As Smith examined the ankle, Leaf mewled softly, but did not cry out. She was a brave little girl, a Cheyenne, and Cheyennes endured pain without complaint. Her little cries would be the musical accompaniment to Smith’s job, and he would hate that.

  He set the leg down and looked at Twist. The man was a smoking volcano of antagonism—best just to ignore him.

  Smith couldn’t get his mind off the one medicine in the bag Elaine was bringing that would help. Chloroform. It would help a lot. Save Leaf a lot of pain. Keep her still, and let Smith cut without damaging a tendon or an artery because she jumped at the wrong instant. Without it, Smith might not get the job done at all. Without it, he could ruin her ankle completely. Without it, he could set her to bleeding and kill her.

  Smith knew damn well he wouldn’t get to use it.

  In his months at the agency, Smith had not been able to get any Indian to take chloroform. He showed them how it worked—he wanted them to make their decisions with open eyes—and they despised it. Pain was not important to them. The little death they saw, the death of the spirit, overawed them. They did not seem impressed that men who passed through the little death came back apparently as good as ever. The idea of surrendering the spirit to unknown forces—that was what horrified them.

  Of course, they didn’t denounce Smith’s medicine. That would have been rude. Tolerantly, they said it was fine for the white man. But when the time came to take it, they shook their heads stubbornly.

  Elaine and Medicine Wolf came back together. Elaine set the tools and medicines next to Smith’s fire. Medicine Wolf’s piece of hide soaked in a bucket, even though it was still green and soft. Smith and Elaine got to heating the scalpels and tweezers in the little flame. The rain held off, but the wind picked up—typical plains rainstorm, plenty to blow the dust around but not enough to wet it.

  All right. No more delaying. Talk the bastard into it. “I want to put her to sleep,” Smith said boldly to Twist. Twist controlled his face furiously. Medicine Wolf and Twist waited for Smith to finish speaking, as courtesy demanded. Smith spoke of how the little sleep wouldn’t hurt the child, would save her a lot of pain, might help her walk better, might even save her life. Smith spoke the words smoothly, confident on the outside, on the inside hopeless.

  Twist gave Medicine Wolf a sneering look, turned to Smith, and shook his head.

  “No little death,” Medicine Wolf added hoarsely.

  Smith looked at Elaine. Her eyes were sharp with disapproval and anger. He and she disagreed about this. You have to do what you know is right, she argued, whether they see it or not. You have to treat them like adult human beings, he answered, and recognize that they’re in charge of their own lives. Otherwise you’re as big an ass as the agents and missionaries who force “improvements” on them.

  Elaine handed Smith the sterilized scalpel without a word.

  Smith looked at Leaf’s eyes. She was scared to death of the scalpel. She would do her damnedest for her uncle, and she would be goddamn courageous, and if Smith had to look at her eyes, it would drive him crazy.

  Work! he ordered himself.

  He propped the lower leg on his lap with the medial side in. If that was the bullet, he would have to be careful of that artery. But the lead looked like it lay to the side of that tendon.

  He motioned Medicine Wolf and the uncle close and got them to hold knee and foot—tight! he told them, as tight as you can.

  Then he made the incision, and the jerk was not too bad, and his hands were devoted wholly to his task.

  Unfortunately, his mind still listened to Elaine and Medicine Wolf shout back and forth in imagination. Elaine snapped self-righteously, “Do what’s right, for pity’s sake!�
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  “No little death,” Medicine Wolf answered implacably.

  The word death gonged in Smith’s mind, and Elaine shouted over it, “Do what’s right!”

  The blood hit him square in the cheek and blinded him in that eye.

  Smith grabbed Leaf’s leg back. Christ, she’d had a spasm and her foot had moved and obviously he’d cut the goddamn artery and he couldn’t see anything and damn blood was everywhere and …

  The spurt stopped. Instantly he got a compress on the bleeder. The heart pumped and blood sprayed again.

  He threw the compress away and pressed on the artery above with both hands and a lot of his weight. The blood still spurted a little. Goddammit.

  Elaine was already putting the tourniquet on. Damn, she was good. She started cranking. Smith put more pressure on the artery with both hands and blinked his eye, trying to get the blood out. The bleeder still spurted a little.

  As Elaine got the tourniquet tight, the spurts changed to oozes. Smith could see the bleeder, cut transversely, its end poking out rudely. He would have to tie the son of a bitch off.

  Elaine gave him a fierce look, but, hell, self-accusations were already clanging through his head. He couldn’t knock Leaf out, but he had to. Smith felt like his chest would bust. He wanted to bellow like a gut-shot bull.

  He looked frantically at Leaf. She was relaxed now, her body no longer convulsed with pain. Except for her eyes, you could almost believe she was asleep. Her eyes were huge, and transported by pain.

  He had to put her out. He couldn’t put her out.

  Suddenly his mind went blank and calm. At that moment the rain came, big, sparse drops blown hard.

  “Thread!” he said in English. Elaine handed the silk to him and he went to work on the bleeder. He tied it off easily—he felt nimble-fingered as an elf. The tie looked like it would hold, for sure.

  “Loosen the tourniquet,” he said in English. She did. The artery bulged and the tie held.