Death Chant

by Judd Cole

  But again the old shaman reminded himself that he had seen with his own eyes the mulberry-colored birthmark hidden behind Touch the Sky’s hairline. It was in the shape of an arrowhead—the mark of the warrior. Touch the Sky was surely the young Cheyenne of his medicine vision, the son of a great chief and the savior of the Shaiyena.

  Arrow Keeper left his tipi, the arrows tucked carefully under one arm, and crossed camp to join the growing circle around the fire.

  Already the drummers were beating a hypnotic rhythm on huge hollow logs. The blooded warriors had already assembled, faces painted like Arrow Keeper’s. They carried their decorated shields and wore their crow-feather war bonnets. As always, Honey Eater and a young girl from the Crooked Lance Clan were serving as maids of honor at the ceremony. They kept time with stone-filled gourds while the warriors took turns dancing with their knees kicking high. Beaded buckskins and brightly painted faces glinted in the firelight as the men chanted, “Hi-ya!” over and over, lulling the others into a trance.

  Arrow Keeper would bless each warrior’s bonnet and shield so the white man’s bullets could not find them. A Cheyenne who had painted and danced for war would face any danger, even sure death, with courage. But most braves would flee from a fight if their faces were ungreased and their bonnets not blessed.

  With the brave named River of Winds attending him, Arrow Keeper took his place beside the same stump upon which Black Elk had stood earlier to speak to the tribe. He spotted Touch the Sky, dressed in new beaded buckskins, standing by himself and watching Honey Eater. With dread heavy in his belly, the old medicine man also noticed Black Elk watching both of them.

  For a moment, Arrow Keeper wondered why Wolf Who Hunts Smiling was hanging back from the main circle and moving stiffly. Then the hot-blooded young Cheyenne turned just right in the light. Arrow Keeper winced when he saw that the youth’s chest had been wrapped in soft bark dressings. The hateful stare he aimed at Touch the Sky left no doubt who had caused his wound.

  “Warriors!” Arrow Keeper shouted. “Bring your gifts to the arrows!”

  He unwrapped the pouch that contained the four sacred Medicine Arrows. Then he lay them carefully on the stump. Arrow Keeper prayed in a singsong chant to the Great Spirit while the males took turns filing by and making an offering to the arrows.

  Black Elk left a pair of new chamois leggings.

  River of Winds gave an elk skin wallet.

  Swift Canoe knelt to leave a bone-handled knife.

  Little Horse gave his only blanket.

  High Forehead left a pair of quilled moccasins.

  Touch the Sky sacrificed his only scalp, the hair he had lifted from the white man who had tried to kill him near Bighorn Falls.

  Other warriors and warriors-in-training left twists of tobacco, buffalo robes, and pelts. Walking stiffly, his face wincing with pain, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling was the last to make an offering. He left a dressed deerskin.

  As soon as Wolf Who Hunts Smiling had filed past, Arrow Keeper knelt to gather up the arrows. He reached one gnarled hand forward, then suddenly felt his breath hitch in his chest.

  Too late, he realized he should not have let the wounded Wolf Who Hunts Smiling come close to the arrows. This was a terrible omen.

  Fear making his scalp sweat, Arrow Keeper stared at the single scarlet drop of blood staining one of the arrows.

  Chapter Seven

  Soon after he had announced his battle plan to the tribe, Black Elk divided the warriors into teams. Thus they could track and harass the scar-faced white and his bands of murdering thieves scattered throughout Cheyenne country.

  Black Elk chose to lead his original group of warriors-in-training: his cousin Wolf Who Hunts Smiling, Swift Canoe, High Forehead, Little Horse, and Touch the Sky. Though he revealed little of his inner feelings, he was proud of his band’s development as warriors.

  From the scouts’ initial reports, he knew that one band was marauding in the Powder River Valley near Yellow Bear’s old summer camp. Their number was twice that of Black Elk’s group, and they were well armed with new rifles. He was not sure where the scar-faced leader himself was. According to the scouts, this one often traveled from band to band, as if deliberately making it difficult to pin down his location.

  One-half sleep after they had ridden out from the Tongue River camp, Black Elk stopped his band in a deep coulee near the Powder.

  “Hear my words!” he said, addressing them from horseback. “Do not forget the talking paper at the trading post. Our enemies are not only the dogs we hunt down now. Every Cheyenne is a target for any paleface who wishes to kill red men for gold. Avoid riding along ridges, and do not ride away from the group alone.”

  His words sobered Touch the Sky and the others. The life of every red man had been endangered ever since the Bluecoats had invaded Indian territory. But now they were hunted like the buffalo, and like the buffalo their numbers were dwindling.

  As if reading their thoughts, Black Elk added, “Remember the grief of your brother Walking Coyote when he found Buffalo Hump dead and scalped on the trail. Recall the wails and cries of the children and squaws when our dead braves were brought back to camp. Shaiyena blood has been shed and must be avenged. Our braves did not die the glorious death with the death song on their lips. They were cut down like dogs and now wander alone in the Forest of Tears!”

  He raised his lance high. All six Cheyenne shouted, “Hi-ya!”

  Touch the Sky felt his blood humming at Black Elk’s words. Again he recalled Walking Coyote’s grief as he had slashed his arms open over his dead brother. He had also made good on his vow to burn down his tipi and give away his horses. But by silent agreement, not one Cheyenne in camp dared mark them as his own. They would be fed and cared for until some tactful way could be found of giving them back to Walking Coyote. And though the mourning brave now slept alone at the edge of camp, he was under constant watch. Food was left for him in the night, and he would be stopped should he prepare to fall on his knife.

  Despite their common cause as warriors, Touch the Sky was aware of great danger to him within the band. Since he had cut Wolf Who Hunts Smiling on the night of the Medicine Arrows ceremony, the younger Cheyenne was clearly bent on revenge. Ominously, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling no longer bothered to taunt him as before. But he watched Touch the Sky constantly. His wily, furtive stare never left the tall youth. His wolf eyes missed nothing.

  Sensing this trouble before they left camp, Touch the Sky had chosen to ride his spirited dun instead of the handsome gray he had stolen from the Crow hunters. He had bested Wolf Who Hunts Smiling in a fight and saw no reason to antagonize him.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Black Elk said in a demanding tone when they stopped later to water their horses in the river. He pointed toward the medicine bundle that Arrow Keeper had tied on the dun’s bridle before Touch the Sky rode to the trading post. “Do you pretend to be a shaman?”

  “Arrow Keeper tied it there,” Touch the Sky said. The old medicine man had also tied a polished antelope horn filled with magic herbs around the pony’s neck.

  “Why did he do these things?”

  “He told me it would make my horse faster and stronger,” said Touch the Sky.

  Scorn briefly touched Black Elk’s stony features. The dead flap of his sewn-on ear looked like wrinkled rawhide in the glaring sunlight.

  “So that is why you counted coup on the gray before my cousin could,” he said. “Arrow Keeper shed the blood of many enemies in his youth. Now his medicine is strong. Since he placed these totems on your pony, I will leave them there. But put these words in your sash. No medicine will be strong enough to win Honey Eater from me. Do you understand this?”

  Touch the Sky met the warrior’s dark-eyed stare and refused to look away. “I hear the words you are saying to me,” he finally answered.

  “But you do not believe them?”

  Touch the Sky continued to match his leader’s stare. But this time he said nothing.


  “Clearly,” Black Elk said, his tone mocking, “the calf thinks he is a bull. Let us see, then, if he can lead the herd.”

  With Black Elk leading until that point, they had been tracking the whites along the Powder toward its confluence with the Yellowstone. They were well north of the Black Hills, the sacred center of the Cheyenne universe, and drawing dangerously close to the soldier town called Fort Union. Without another word, Black Elk ordered Touch the Sky forward to ride as scout.

  Wolf Who Hunts Smiling exchanged a knowing glance with Swift Canoe. Now they would exact some revenge for the beating Touch the Sky had recently given them!

  At first, as he rode forward to the point position, Touch the Sky felt dread heavy in his belly. But he had paid close attention to Black Elk’s repeated lessons in the art of tracking, and he recalled the things he had been taught. Soon he was absorbed in searching for the white murderers’ trail.

  In the beginning things went smoothly. The whites were traveling with many horses and heavily laden pack mules, and tracks were plentiful. But as his shadow began to lengthen in the westering sun, Touch the Sky abruptly encountered a great difficulty: the entire trail had been wiped out by a herd of wild horses. Further complicating matters, the whites had drifted far away from the river. Touch the Sky could not merely keep following the water and hope to pick the trail back up.

  Black Elk rode behind the others and offered no advice. Wolf Who Hunts Smiling and Swift Canoe exchanged more glances, their eyes mocking Touch the Sky. After he had ridden in a wide circle, looking for sign, Touch the Sky recalled something he had once seen Black Elk do. He rode straight toward a tall cottonwood tree and quickly climbed up into the top branches.

  The vast brown plain and the greener tableland of the river lay clear before him. The Powder, sluggish without the spring runoff to swell its banks, twisted and coiled northeast toward the point where it joined the Marias River at Fort Union. The fort was still well beyond the horizon. But Touch the Sky could see enough of the intervening landscape to make a good guess about their enemy’s probable route. A series of deep cutbanks near the river explained why they had swerved wide. Yet they could not wander too far west from the river because the grass this far north was stunted and brown with the coming of the cold moons.

  Touch the Sky made a map inside his head of the most likely route, memorizing a few features as landmarks. Then he climbed down again and, showing no hesitation in his face, led the others forward.

  At first the tracks eluded him, and his heart began to sink. Then, just as Black Elk began to ride impatiently forward, he spotted a line of prints. Hope surging within his breast, Touch the Sky swung down off his pony to examine the prints. As Black Elk had taught them, he read the bend of the grass to determine how fresh they were. But the short grass made this difficult. He had better luck when he studied the mud inside the prints to see how much it had settled. They were no more than a few days old. The depth of many of them attested to the weight of heavily laden pack animals.

  He rose again and gave his report to Black Elk. The war chief listened in impassive silence. But when Touch the Sky had finished, he nodded and said, “You have done well. Lead on.”

  Wolf Who Hunts Smiling’s face was a malevolent mask of hatred. But for a moment, as Touch the Sky leaped up onto his pony, he thought he saw Little Horse watching him with a look of admiration. But the young Cheyenne quickly averted his eyes and pretended to be in conversation with High Forehead.

  Again the trail was easy to follow. They rode in silence until the sun was only inches above the western horizon and the air was growing cool. The trail had passed the cutbanks and veered toward the river again. As they rounded a dogleg turn in the Powder, Touch the Sky immediately spotted signs of a huge camp.

  Black Elk ordered them to dismount while he examined the signs all about them. The camp was recent. Embers dug out of the pile where a huge fire had been built were still warm to the touch. The white men had camped there at least one full sleep, judging from the quantity of human droppings just past the camp circle.

  “Bad medicine remains wherever these murdering dogs have camped,” said Black Elk. “We will ride well beyond this spot and make our own camp.”

  Black Elk selected a copse in a good patch of graze near the river. They tethered their ponies with rawhide strips, then spread their buffalo robes for the night. To be safe Black Elk decided on a cold camp. Their enemies were probably too sure of themselves—and perhaps too drunk— to bother posting sentries or sending anyone to double-check their back trail. But he did not want to risk a fire when he was not sure of the whites’ location.

  His band contented themselves with pemmican, dried plums, and cold river water. Touch the Sky had spread his robe well away from the others. But as he lay down and wrapped himself against the biting chill of the night air, he thought he could hear conspiring whispers from the direction of Wolf Who Hunts Smiling and Swift Canoe’s robes.

  A cool sweat broke out on his forehead. Black Elk had assured him that he did not value his life less than that of the others, that he would treat him fairly. But could the warrior truly feel that way after Honey Eater had returned his bride-price—and after Black Elk had seen her leaving Touch the Sky’s tipi on the very same day of the rejection? What if Black Elk had merely said these things because he and Wolf Who Hunts Smiling were plotting to kill him and blame it on the white devils?

  As the others began to fall asleep to the backdrop of the river’s gentle purl, Touch the Sky imagined noises: rustling sounds, the snap of small twigs, the crush of leaves under moccasins.

  Recalling Wolf Who Hunts Smiling’s malevolent stares, he was unable to sleep. Finally he recalled a trick he had learned from the wily Pawnee leader War Thunder—the same trick that had saved the Pawnee’s scalp when Wolf Who Hunts Smiling was about to lift it.

  Moving as silently as he could, guiding himself by the light of a full moon, Touch the Sky gathered dead limbs and dried-up thorn bushes. With these he made a ring around his robe. Anyone trying to sneak up on him in the night would have to make noise.

  The last thing he did before lying down again was lay his knife and Navy Colt handy in case they should be needed quickly. Somewhat reassured, he finally fell into an uneasy sleep.

  “You got somethin’ for us, Harlan?”

  The bald, clean-shaven clerk named Harlan Perry looked up from the broad deal counter. Two bearded, longhaired men in buckskins were grinning at him. He recognized the one with the coarse-grained face as Jed Longstreet. The other was Stone McMasters. Both men worked for Henri Lagace, and Perry rued the day they had ever set foot into the Montana Territory.

  Perry shot a nervous glance toward the small Lakota Sioux woman who was stacking pelts at the far end of the counter. He wished he had heard the men ride up so he could have sent his wife into the back room.

  “I don’t believe anything came in today, gentlemen,” he said finally.

  Longstreet dug a playful elbow into McMasters’ ribs. “Aw, he’s jist playin’ the larks with us, ain’tcha, Harlan?”

  When Perry said nothing, McMasters said, “You got a cob up your sitter? You know what we come for. Now git it.”

  “Gentlemen, no flatboat arrived today, so—”

  “In a pig’s ass!” Longstreet snarled, his pockmarked face twisted in drunken impatience. “Lagace ordered that alcohol weeks ago. Now you look real good and see if you got it.”

  Hearing their voices turn ugly, the Lakota woman, Sun Dance, had quietly rounded the counter. But before she could slip past the two foul-smelling whites, the one named McMasters reached out and roughly grabbed her by one arm.

  “I ain’t never planted my carrot in no red cow, Jed,” he said to his companion. “I wunner how that feels?”

  The moment McMasters grabbed his wife, Perry reached toward the scattergun he kept under the counter. But in the blink of an eye Longstreet lifted his big percussion-action Sharps rifle and planted the muzzle in the squaw
’s belly.

  “If you’re feelin’ froggy, Harlan,” he said in a low, dangerous voice, “you jist jump.”

  Perry dropped his hands to his side, knowing he was whipped. It had been a mistake to ever come out West, he realized again. Things had hummed along just fine until Henri Lagace and his hard-bitten followers had moved in. Now all the wanton killing, the distilling of powerful liquor to deliberately weaken the Indians and make them dependent—it was stirring up the white community to a frenzy. Soon it wouldn’t be safe for a white man married to an Indian. He’d have to sell out and head back East.

  “Wait a minute, gentlemen,” he said in a defeated voice. “Let me check again.”

  He rummaged under the counter. A moment later he wrestled a hefty wooden keg down on the counter in front of him.

  “Well, wood ticks in my johnny!” Longstreet said. “Lookahere!”

  Sun Dance finally struggled free of McMasters’s grip and scurried into the back room. Watching the clerk with a mocking grin, Longstreet reached out and hugged the shipment of alcohol in one brawny arm. Lagace would be in a good mood when they arrived back at camp with this. It was time to boil up a new batch of Indian whiskey.

  They were halfway to the door, hobnailed boots echoing on the raw puncheon floor, when Longstreet turned back around to stare at the dejected clerk. His coarse-grained face half in shadow under the broad brim of his plainsman’s hat, Longstreet said, “You jist forget about them Injun-lovin’ lubbers back East helpin’ you out, Harlan. The only gum’ment out here is Henri Lagace and his gal Patsy.”

  To make his point clear, Longstreet raised the big Sharps again. “Harlan, meet Patsy Plumb!”