Wolf Mountain Moon

by Terry C. Johnston

  With a mighty yell from a hundred throats the Ohmeseheso charge began. In the van rode Medicine Bear, kicking his pony violently through the deep snowdrifts to keep it in front of the rest—mostly veteran warriors who carried many scars of countless battles against the ve-ho-e and other enemies.

  Oh, how great was the honor of leading these men into battle!

  He turned at the sudden shrill, high-pitched whistle, a foreign sound. Looking into the cloudy sky, Medicine Bear tried to find the cause of that strange noise. Then he saw it. A ball fired from the white man’s wagon gun.

  Sailing over the ranks of the warriors, the sphere crashed into that open ground between the horsemen and the soldiers entrenching among the red shale on the hilltop. Rocks and snow and shards of iron splintered into the cold morning air. Back tumbled the ponies and warriors, men crying out and horses whimpering in shock. Riderless horses bolted away. Men crawled on their knees, dragging themselves out of the snow. Everyone else milled aimlessly, some of them dazed.

  Their charge was broken!

  “Go! Go, Medicine Bear!” Long Jaw goaded, pointing to the slope of the nearby hill where the soldiers began to plop to their bellies, their rifles at ready. “Lead us now before the wagon gun shoots again!”

  Swallowing down that first flush of fear, telling himself that no harm could come to him with the power of the Turner watching over them all, Medicine Bear did as he was instructed.

  Wheeling the frightened pony in a circle, he yelped like a wolf, howling to give himself courage as he set off in front of the others. In that instant the others threw off the confusing mantle of shock and tore off again on horseback or on foot. A wide massed front of warriors followed the Turner onto that open ground that would lead them to the base of the soldiers’ hill.

  Right on over the shallow cannonball crater he leaped his pony, paying it no heed as the soldier rifles opened up on them.

  Back and forth he waved Nimhoyoh, giving its protection first to one side of the warrior formation, then to the other. Exactly as he had done in the battle against Three Finger Kenzie’s pony soldiers. What he held in his hands at this moment was the sort of power that made the Tse-Tsehese a great people!

  Power to turn soldier bullets away from the warriors who would sweep around behind the ve-ho-e camp, rescue the prisoners, then gallop over the last of the Bear Coat’s soldiers.

  Snarling wasps began to strike the ground all around him and the others at the front—soldier bullets. On through the middle of that hail charged the warriors who would protect the Ohmeseheso!

  Suddenly Medicine Bear heard the smack of a bullet striking flesh and cracking bone. A warrior at his left hand pitched backward.

  This could not be!

  With his heart rising in his throat, Medicine Bear feared he had not done all he could to protect these fighting men. Back and forth more violently he waved the Turner.

  Another horseman whirled off the back of his pony. And a third—barely hanging on, wavering atop his frightened animal.

  All around him the once-mighty charge started to falter, men twisting to look at Medicine Bear, looking too at Long Jaw riding beside Nimhoyoh.

  “Ride over them, Medicine Bear!” the older warrior shouted, his words without fear. “Ride right over the soldiers!”

  “We have the power!” Brave Wolf hollered at his other elbow.

  With renewed strength the warriors screamed their war cries. Those who had rifles, mostly soldier weapons captured at the Little Sheep River last summer, fired them. Those with bows had to wait to draw closer before they could shoot—close enough to see the fear on the faces of those soldiers hiding behind the chunks of red shale in their burrows.

  But the closer they raced toward the ve-ho-e, the more bullets fell among the Ohmeseheso. Another man was struck. He cried out. Faces once filled with confidence, eyes once filled with complete trust—now they turned to see if they had been abandoned by Nimhoyoh, if Medicine Bear had deserted them.

  Worse than bullets, confusion and doubt struck them all. The Sacred Turner was still there above them, yet the soldier bullets were not turned to air. Ponies and men cried out each time one of them was struck with bullets that were supposed to become harmless.

  Again the big wagon gun across the river belched its mighty roar. A whistle drew closer, and closer, and closer—and suddenly Medicine Bear knew it was coming for him.

  Closer and closer! Falling right out of the sky …

  He was turning his pony savagely to the right when the ball struck the animal on the left rear flank.

  Pitched off as the pony careened to the side, Medicine Bear landed among the feet of other milling, frightened animals. Scrambling to his hands and knees, he crawled forward to snatch up Nimhoyoh again. Then turned, finding his pony struggling back onto its legs, by some miracle managing to shake off the great blow as a dog would shake water from its back.

  Leaping to his feet among the confusion as the warriors turned back on themselves, Medicine Bear lunged for the single rawhide rein, caught it, and brought the animal close, cooing into its ear to calm it as bullets snarled past.

  Only a few old veterans pressed on with the charge against the hillside now.

  Another shot might come from the wagon gun at any moment. Better to withdraw—some were shouting—better to cross the river and join the others on the ridgetops.

  Gently he ran his hand over the wound on the pony’s flank: the hair rubbed cleanly off in a path as wide as his outstretched fingers and palm, from the top of the flank down the animal’s thigh. The flesh had turned raw and angry, but as smooth as if Medicine Bear had shaved it with a sharp knife.

  Closing his eyes, he tried hard to remember Coal Bear’s prayer that freezing day in the Red Fork Valley. He must give thanks to the Powers because Nimhoyoh had just saved him and the pony. The powerful ball from the white man’s wagon gun had not exploded.

  Yet the warriors were retreating. They were not staying with Medicine Bear to defeat this band of soldiers, to sweep on across the river and around behind the Bear Coat’s wagon camp.

  Then Medicine Bear realized he had been spared. For some reason the Powers had spared his life. And he knew he must follow the rest of the warriors across the Tongue, carrying the power of Nimhoyoh into the fight on the far side of the river. And if need be—give his own life to protect the Ohmeseheso.

  Closing his eyes, he suddenly remembered Coal Bear’s prayer, uttered that freezing day in the Red Fork Valley as the greatness of the People went up in oily smoke.

  Now it would become Medicine Bear’s prayer. The life of one man mattered little when the life of the Ohmeseheso was at stake. Today was the day on which the People turned. If they failed in battle this day, then the Ohmeseheso were finished as a great people.

  Crying aloud as the soldier bullets landed harmlessly all around him and the pony, Medicine Bear repeated Coal Bear’s prayer: “Hear me, Ma-heo-o! Save my people! If you must take someone—take me, I pray you! But save my people!”

  *The Dull Knife Battle, A Cold Day in Hell, vol. 11, The Plainsmen Series.

  † The North brothers’ battalion of Pawnee scouts.

  Chapter 34

  8 January 1877

  With every shot he took at the Indian, Donegan grew more certain that war chief up there led a most charmed life.

  The way he danced and cavorted on the hilltop, what with all the bullets kicking up skiffs of snow, lead smacking off the rocky ledges behind him, sprays of dirt and sandstone puffing into the stiff breeze—and not one soldier able to drop the red son of a bitch.

  He had seen bravery like this only a few times before in his decade in the far west—as recent as Mackenzie’s fight with the Dull Knife Cheyenne. Twice warriors had come out of hiding, each dressed in their finest bonnets as they steered their ponies back and forth in front of the soldier lines: taunting, teasing, making the soldiers look the fools with their poor shooting. Nevertheless, on that cold day in hell some soldier or
one of the scouts had done in the first daring warrior. And eventually the second toppled as well.

  Still, for a time there back on that November day, Seamus d wondered if there truly was something to this thing of a warrior’s magic. Exactly the way he was beginning to feel again down in the gnawing pit of his all but empty belly. What little hard biscuit and half-cooked bacon he had shoved down before the shooting began did him little good now after all the exertion and strain of slogging through knee-deep snow in heavy winter clothing.

  Up and down the loose skirmish line formed by Butler’s men the soldiers hollered to one another, exhorting their comrades to take their best shot at the prancing, preening, strutting cock-of-the-walk who leered at them from above, daring them all to shoot him.

  But none of them could.

  The first seconds and those first volleys were long-ago history now. It wasn’t only that war chief in his big bonnet, but several others who jumped up and down on either side of him across the top of the same hill—showing themselves only long enough to take a shot at the soldiers advancing no faster than a snail’s crawl. Then the riflemen in those rocks would duck back down behind their breastworks once more as the bullets smacked and zinged and whined around them. Up and down, up and down, up and down like the working of some steam piston on a locomotive. Never in the same place. Never the same warriors. No telling how many were up there the way they all dodged and zigged, twisted and zagged. There could be twenty. Or there could easily be as many as a hundred just right above the soldiers’ heads.

  Yet for all their gyrations, one thing was for sure. Unlike all the rest, that war chief in the big, showy bonnet wasn’t ducking out of sight behind the breastworks the others had piled up in the snow. Instead, he stayed in full view, dancing one way a matter of ten yards, then prancing back a full twenty yards in the other direction as he sang and swiveled and waved his big rifle at the soldiers. Every now and then he would throw it against his shoulder and shoot down at the white men—then throw up the trapdoor, slipping another cartridge from the wide belt at his waist, and shove it into the breech.

  A Springfield, Seamus thought to himself. Easy to recognize—what with the bands on that barrel. Carbine. Cavalry piece. Likely the son of a bitch got it at the Little Bighorn.

  “Someone shoot that red bastard!” a man growled off to Donegan’s right, behind his shoulder.

  No more than a hundred yards separated the enemies now.

  “We’re trying, Sergeant!” a young soldier claimed with no little exasperation.

  Then, as Seamus watched, the war chief on the ledge found himself out of cartridges. Hollering at those around him, he ducked out of sight.

  “You think we got ’im, Sarge?”

  “No,” the noncom stated flatly. “Red snapper didn’t fall. Just hidin’. So you ain’t got ’im dead to rights.”

  “Went to reload,” Donegan declared quietly to those nearby.

  The men only nodded grimly before their eyes went back to the ledge above, concentrating as they rocked up onto their knees and hands, dragging their buffalo coats through the snow with a slur to claim a few more precious feet of the hillside. A foot at a time, if no more than inches. Hunker behind this clump of sage, fire if you spotted yourself a target—plan out your next crawl to the next sage bush for your next rest.

  Maybe an hour later they were no farther than seventy yards from the warriors above them, each man scrambling, slipping, backsliding until he secured another grip in the icy, crusty, wind-whipped surface of the snow. Men who stared into that raw wind, most with nothing but their eyes exposed behind wool-blanket masks, small explosions of frosty breath puffing from the holes the soldiers had cut for their mouths. Lay and shoot, fight and survive, on this steep slope while the enemy rained down bullets and arrows … while the blizzard moved in, already obscuring the hills just across the Tongue behind a curtain of frothy white gauze. The wind howled, managing to find every loose crevice of a man’s clothing, penetrating past the layers of buffalo hide, wool blanket, army wool, merino wool, and burlap sacking.

  No matter how many layers—none of it could stop a man from shaking when it was no longer the cold that made him tremble so.

  As the minutes dragged into another hour, as their desperate clawing advance up the steep hillside bogged down, it was becoming clear that this far southern end of Miles’s line might not be going any farther. While the soldiers’ big guns commanded the knoll on the north end of the valley, the greatest Indian strength held the tall hill on the east side of the valley at the opposite end of the ridge. Not only was it a position secured by military strength in sheer numbers, it was the one place on the battlefield where a lone warrior continued to rally his forces through the strength of his personal medicine.

  Seamus wondered how long it would take before bullets won out over magic.

  As Donegan lay there in the cold—some two feet of dry, flaky snow all around him as he repeatedly levered, aimed, and fired—his mind flitted back to dim, remembered glimpses of old Ireland: how the priests did all that they could to combat the pagan superstitions of the poor country people with superstitions of their own Mother Church. Centuries of druid legends were spurned, replaced with miraculous tales of water turned to wine, a loaf of bread become enough to feed a multitude … and a dead man commanded to come forth from his very own tomb, called out to walk again, his eyes able to see once more when they had been sightless for three days.

  So just whose superstition was he to believe now?

  “Damn, that was close,” muttered a young soldier to Donegan’s left. The man held up his arm so that it was plain to see the furrow and the hole made by the bullet’s raking path.

  “Keep your head down, sojur,” Donegan advised with a wry grin. “Chances be they’ll go and shoot over you. But always remember: when you’re taking heights, keep your ever-living head flat on the ground.”

  At the sound of growing excitement among the enemy, Seamus peered up the slope, finding the war chief back again—this time gesturing to his kinsmen as he pranced along the ledge above, bullets landing all around him, smacking into the rocks. For a moment he stopped, shouting to the other warriors, appearing to goad them into joining him in making an assault on the white men.

  One of the soldiers cried, “You think them sonsabitches gonna try charging us?”

  “Not a charge,” came the answer from off to Donegan’s right.

  Seamus looked, finally recognizing the speaker as Black-foot half-breed William Jackson from nothing more than the scout’s clothing.

  Donegan shouted, “Jackson—you figger he’s making bravery runs?”

  The half-breed nodded behind the wolf-hide hat pulled down securely over the scrap of blanket protecting his face from the wind. “Four to do. He has made two.”

  Up piped a cocky soldier, “Which means the red-belly got him just two more runs back and forth to do!”

  “Get ’im this time!” came the call, which was taken up by many voices.

  More of the soldiers grunted onto their knees, scrambling for foot- and handholds on the icy slope. Some firing as others crawled inches closer to that most desired target. They were closing on fifty yards of the Indians above them. Close enough that either side could make their shots count, Donegan brooded. But—as always seemed the case—the anxious soldiers seemed to be frittering away their issue of ammunition without much effect on the enemy. At the same time, the warriors appeared to be growing even stingier with their cartridges. Firing less and less down into the soldier lines … perhaps waiting for a better shot, a certain target, a sure kill.

  Donegan could hear the Jackson brothers hollering at each other now—unable to understand their Blackfoot tongue laced with an English curse word every now and then. If it hadn’t been for that, the two would have been indistinguishable from the soldiers. Every man along this base of the ridge was masked in some way, a faceless battalion that struggled to hold on, more determined than ever as the minutes crawled
past to knock down that strutting war chief above them.

  With no more than fifty yards separating Butler’s men from the brow of the hill where the warrior in the bonnet pranced in full view, the officers moved back and forth through the snow and sage on horseback just behind the soldiers—encouraging, assuring, rallying, reminding the men to husband their ammunition.

  Seamus had no idea how many carbine cartridges he had left in his pocket for the Winchester—but something in his gut warned him that he shouldn’t waste any more bullets on that war chief. Not the way the soldiers were throwing it away. Why, if they were ordered to push on to the top in one grand assault of the ridge, he would need every bullet he still had down in those pockets. Or if it came time that the warriors poured off the hill and Butler’s men fell back, retreating all the way back to the wagon camp to fort up, then chances were Seamus would need every last bullet until he got his hands on his cartridge belts so heavy he had to carry them over his shoulders.

  “I got ’im!” some man suddenly bellowed.

  Donegan twisted to peer uphill, watching the war chief stagger back a yard, a hand slapping against his chest. The Indian hobbled to the side a few more steps, then clumsily spilled out of sight on the ledge directly above the Irishman.

  Shrill cries erupted from the rocks around that high knoll. Warriors had watched their leader fall. They were angrier now—perhaps furious. Chances were good they might well work themselves into a suicidal frenzy and come spilling down from their breastworks.

  But all that showed themselves were two warriors who leaped from behind the rocks, pitching to their hands and knees in the trampled snow, crawling from different directions toward the war chief’s body. Then a third appeared, scurrying in a crouch toward the others as the soldiers shouted among themselves—boasting on who dropped the chief—then several soldiers had sense enough to remember to train their weapons on those who had come to rescue their daring leader.