The center of the camp was already chaos.
The twin line of cavalry charged towards the Sioux tipis, one flank peeling off and starting to cross the ground in the direction of the corral. Indians ran between the plunging horses, hacking upwards with axes and clubs; kneeling and attempting to use rifles or bows; simply running.
Herne saw a brave get to within a dozen yards of his right before Carey dropped him with two shots in the chest. The first so close to the second that they seemed to make a single entry wound.
A horse reared up close to the sacred lodge and its rider struggled to stay in the saddle. A figure in a scarlet and yellow buckskin shirt dashed from inside the lodge and jumped high at the horse’s side. Herne saw the soldier pulled free from his stirrups and down towards the ground. Almost before he had struck the ground the knife blade flashed silver against the dark background and then as swiftly again and the Sioux had moved away and leaped for the saddle pommel of the now riderless horse.
The Sioux whirled the horse round and galloped hard across the ground. Herne watched the white feather at the back of the brave’s head bobbing and weaving and followed its movement with his rifle, starting to squeeze down on the trigger...
A soldier rode right across his sightline and he eased back; when he looked again White Eagle had moved from his immediate view.
To his left the men were firing at irregular intervals, keeping the trees clear of any escaping Indians, but, like Herne, constantly impeded from doing anything more positive by the milling action of the cavalry.
Herne looked for Colonel Bradley and caught sight of him to the left of the hollow, close by the tipis, which were being systematically torn to the ground by soldiers who rode through and through them, slashing out with their cavalry sabers.
A lone soldier began pulling at the sides of the lodge and some four of the Sioux saw him and ran at him with clubs and knives raised.
Herne shouted a warning to Carey and set his Sharps aside, drawing his Colt. Before they could reach the soldier he had dropped two of the Indians and Carey had finished off a third.
Neither of them could do anything about the last man.
The blow from the running Indian’s war club struck the soldier on the underside of the jaw and jerked his head back and up so that he never saw the movement of the knife which cut through the material of his army coat, through his vest, skin, flesh; which was pulled out and driven hard again, this time not moving further.
A cavalry trooper on horseback fired his pistol into the Indian’s back from less than ten feet. Indian and white man went down beside the lodge and lay across one another, the blood of the one merging with that of the other.
Herne and Carey continued to fire across the darkening space, alternating between pistol and rifle, while the wind and rain which blew hard into their faces made sighting and aiming more and more difficult.
Like blue-gray ghosts the cavalry galloped and turned and turned and galloped again.
One of the few of the Sioux who had managed to get on to his pony was Crooked Snake. He had been close enough to the corral to get in the middle of the animals when they were stampeded out. He had weaved for minutes now, knees guiding the pony first this way and quickly that, while both hands struck about him with a long-bladed knife and a cavalry sword that he had snatched from where it had fallen in the first charge.
As the Army attempted to flatten the hollow of everything other than themselves that moved, Crooked Snake slashed and cut into his sworn enemy. As the lightning leaped across the sky for the last time and Crooked Snake saw the battlefield lit up brilliantly about him, the Sioux was glad in his heart that he had ridden and joined with White Eagle. Glad that he had been shown the truth. Glad that he would die like a warrior and not a hunted animal. Like...
A bullet smashed into his right shoulder from the rear and the saber dropped from his hand as the arm swung uselessly. He dug his knees into the pony’s side and tried to turn him fast, bringing up the knife in his other hand.
In the middle distance, through the slanting, driving rain, he could see that the sacred lodge was half demolished. Only the center pole yet stood erect.
Closer to him a pair of soldiers charged at him, one with a carbine pointing over his horse’s head, the other wielding a saber which he flashed above his head and began to move through a curve that cut towards him.
Crooked Snake ducked sideways to avoid the blade and as he did so a gun went off very close to him. At first he wasn’t certain that he had been hit but on the ground he knew that his ribs had been smashed back against the other side of his body.
He tried to look up and instead of seeing the cavalry man who had jumped down from his horse and now stood over him, his mind saw Light-of-the-Stars and she was beautiful and he wondered about his child and whether it had been a son and he hoped it had because then it could grow strong and learn to fight like a true warrior and…
The edge of the blade split his skull between the eyes, bisecting the nose, the upper lip, breaking bone, stopping the brain, severing life.
In the center of the ground the sacred pole now lay flattened. The pouches which had contained the sacred organs and the girl’s fair hair had been driven deep beneath the horses’ hooves.
Thunder and lightning had ceased and now there was only rain, the first rain for months, and the dust from the higher canyons and the ledges and clefts of the rocks turned to an endless succession of white rivers which flooded down into the hollow and made it almost awash in moving whiteness.
Herne stood away from the trees.
The bodies of dead and dying spread themselves as far as he could see, most of them wearing the war paint and buckskin and breechcloth of the Oglala Sioux. A horse moved its forelegs as it lay on its side and looked at Herne, who drew his Colt and set the barrel close to its sad head before he squeezed the trigger.
From some way off, almost as if in a dream, Herne heard the muffled crackle of carbine fire as those Indians who had managed to escape the attack met the soldiers who had kept back in waiting for them to do exactly that.
Herne walked slowly across the ground, the water splashing up about his boots and staining them gray-white. He saw Lieutenant Patten kneeling by the body of a dead soldier and went towards him. Patten turned and stood, his face blank, the mustache smeared with blood at one side. More blood ran down the side of his face from beneath his hair. The sleeve of his uniform jacket was partly severed through and torn. Age had stamped itself on his youthful face: in less than half an hour he had grown older by ten years.
Patten pointed down to the ground and Herne bent forwards, recognizing the insignia on the shoulders.
When he turned Bradley over the Colonel’s cast eye stared back up at him blindly. The other eye and a third of his face had been hacked away with an axe. Sheered ends of bone and sinew showed clearly. There were at least three wounds in his chest, possibly more. The skin of his face, where his face had skin, was chalk white. The rain fell on it now and washed the white away and then there was only the emptiness and the occasional, quick welling of blood which somehow still ran.
‘Jed!’
Carey’s shout brought Herne up and round and as soon as he saw the scout’s arm pointing upwards he knew what had happened to White Eagle before he saw him.
The Sioux had climbed to the upper ridges of the needle-peaked rock and now stood on the same ledge which Herne had struggled to earlier. He stood still and straight, except for the movement of his chest and throat as he sang a slow, plaintive song of death which was caught at by the wind and muted by the rain.
The white eagle’s feather fluttered behind his proud head as Herne silently lifted the Sharps to his shoulder.
For an instant Herne remembered the cruel, lonely majesty of the white tailed eagle he had seen soaring through blue sky and something that was close to admiration and compassion stilled his finger.
But it was no more than a moment.
Herne fired, then
lowered the big rifle, watching as White Eagle was hurled suddenly back against the face of the rock and then slowly came forward, slowly, arms going outwards, moving as if trying to ward off some unseen spirit, to ward off death. Almost as if trying to bear his body aloft.
Herne watched as White Eagle’s body hurtled downwards, striking an outthrust edge of rock and hanging there for a few seconds, arms and legs angled all wrong. Then the destroying, dying fall continued.
Before he had hit the sodden ground, running with white rain and Sioux blood, Herne had turned away.
Also in this series
1: WHITE DEATH
2: RIVER OF BLOOD
3: THE BLACK WIDOW
4: SHADOW OF THE VULTURE
5: APACHE SQUAW
6: DEATH IN GOLD
7: DEATH RITES
8: CROSS-DRAW
9: MASSACRE!
10: VIGILANTE!
11: SILVER THREADS
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