by Win Blevins
They are deceivers.
He remembered the day he had watched them as teenagers, Light Curly Hair topping her over and over. The memory crawled on his skin.
They are deceivers.
Who knew that better than No Water?
He wanted to bite something in half.
No Water hated her. She had married him because she thought he would be a big man in the tribe. He was a big man. But Crazy Horse became a shirtman, and big in war, and the younger warriors idolized him, the fools. They didn’t see how weak he was. She didn’t see it. Now she thought she’d chosen wrong.
His wife was intrigued by this … thing, like watching the sun glint off glass, seeming powerful when there was really nothing there, only mirages.
I’ll show you. You never had any choice. I made the choice. I’ll show you.
They wouldn’t even make a lodge together. They wanted her to stay with No Water so they could make a fool of him in his own home. She would laugh and moan and cry out when he topped her, and everyone would know and laugh at the deceived husband.
They are mocking me.
He would make her tell, make her tell. Then he would kill that skinny, pretentious, woman-slinky, and very Strange Man. He would catch him atop Black Buffalo Woman and bash his head in. Then he would strangle her and watch her eyes bulge as she died.
But then No Water thought of Red Cloud, her uncle, her family, her connections. They would not stand for even a little force used on Black Buffalo Woman. They would tell her to put his moccasins outside the tipi. They would ruin No Water in the band.
Besides, many people would avenge the Strange Man. They were fascinated by his softness, which they did not recognize as weakness, like birds watching a snake.
Fine, he thought. I’ll be more subtle. Somehow.
Little Big Man’s laugh caromed around the lodge circle. Little Hawk pounded Crazy Horse on the back.
No Water raged to kill all of them.
INCIDENT AT HORSESHOE RANCH
Some of the warriors, the ones who hung around American Horse, said they were friendly with the white people at Horseshoe Ranch and maybe they could trade for some powder there. Too many men had guns but no powder.
Crazy Horse just nodded his head. As was his way, he didn’t even speak to agree. Everyone understood.
Little Big Man admired Crazy Horse extravagantly. When the sandy-haired man had asked quietly for volunteers to do a little raiding, seventy men volunteered. Even loaf-around-the-forts who hadn’t fought in a long time wanted to ride with this leader.
So Little Big Man, Crazy Horse, Little Hawk, and the American Horse warriors left the others behind and rode to the ranch.
Horseshoe Ranch was built around an old stage station and stockade. They rode in with their faces unpainted, crying out “Hau, kola!”—Hello, friends! Little Big Man noticed that Crazy Horse hung back, but he himself cantered rowdily right on into the yard with the American Horse warriors—he wasn’t a man to act suspicious. When the door slammed, they just yelled louder, “Hello, friends!”
The first bullet knocked Blue Stone right off his horse.
Ponies and riders almost ran over each other getting out of there.
Blue Stone and another man down crawled out of the line of fire and came running.
Little Big Man looked at Crazy Horse for leadership. Crazy Horse was ready. “Don’t forget,” he said ironically, “even if they’re friends, they’re white.” His eyes were wicked.
Three or four American Horse warriors said, “Let’s go!” at the same time. Little Big Man was galloping ahead of them.
Shooting did no good—the whites were holed up in the main house firing back through slots cut in the logs. So the Lakota set fire to the stables and the stockade. Then, since it was getting dark, they decided to pick up their warrior friends and ride to the place of Mousseau nearby. His woman, who was Sicangu, would give them something to eat.
Later, in the full dark of night-middle-made, the smoldering stable and stockade logs still glowed. Little Big Man had an idea. He sat on his haunches and howled like a coyote. He had a little fun with it, sticking his flat nose into the air and forming a snout with his fingers to make the other warriors laugh, even Crazy Horse. Well, if the whites were still in there, they apparently weren’t interested in any coyote. So the warriors slept.
In the morning the whites passed up a chance to leave with a detachment of soldiers.
“They must want to fight,” said Little Hawk. So the warriors gave them good sport.
By dark the Lakota knew where all the holes in the logs were for shooting. If there was a risk to be taken, Little Big Man and Little Hawk wanted to take it. They calculated the firing angles and sneaked up and set the main house on fire.
On the hill the Lakota watched it burn. Little Big Man improvised a dance and a song:
“We came visiting—
You said hello with your rifles.
We came visiting—
You said hello with gunfire.
“We asked for food—
You gave us lead.
We asked for coffee—
You gave us bullets.
“We asked to be friends—
You gave us hatred.
We asked to be friends—
You gave us hatred.
“From hatred we made bones.
From hatred we made you into bones.”
He didn’t sing it in a melancholy way—he made it grisly and mocking. After the first time through, he got some of the other warriors to join in, which made him feel good. He noticed that Crazy Horse still kept apart, didn’t join in singing or dancing or cheering on. He wondered why the Strange Man never sang or danced.
In the morning, though, they found no bones or bodies in the ruins of the house. A tunnel led to a little fort made of sod. The whites had slipped away in the darkness toward Mousseau’s place. By the time the Lakota got there, the Frenchman and his wife had hightailed it. The Horseshoe Ranch whites had grabbed some horses and headed for Laramie.
Little Big Man and Little Hawk quirted their ponies after the whites, and the others followed, whooping. Little Big Man looked back and saw that Crazy Horse was coming, though he wasn’t hurrying.
In some little hills they caught up with the Horseshoe Ranch whites and ran their horses off. After a while the white men thought better of their cover and ran for a hilltop with a little timber. But the Lakota chased them out again and now started herding them across the plains like wild horses. Every once in a while a white would fall and a Lakota would dismount to scalp him.
Little Big Man and Little Hawk were having a fine time, making the whites run like prairie chickens. Little Hawk yelled, “Scalps today!”
Little Big Man looked back and saw Crazy Horse ride toward an old, hairy-faced white man who had fallen behind and tried to hide. To Little Big Man’s surprise the leader didn’t shoot him. He stood off and watched the man scurry into a gully.
Little Big Man cantered back to Crazy Horse. “I had a place to hang that scalp,” said Little Big Man edgily, nodding toward his lance.
The leader said nothing. He pushed his pony forward fast, but Little Big Man came up alongside and looked at him, waiting.
“Maybe we’ve done enough killing today,” said Crazy Horse.
Little Big Man felt like he’d been slapped.
Crazy Horse wiped off his face paint and took the war-eagle feather out of his hair. He felt melancholy. These white men had been friends of some Lakota here, and they had fought spiritedly. True, they had acted dumb—so scared by the troubles all around, probably, that they shot at friends riding up just to trade for food. So if half of them were lying along the trail dead and scalped and only four were left alive, they deserved it. But Crazy Horse felt melancholy at all of this.
He saw that Little Big Man was still seething at the stopping of the fight. The blood ran hot in Little Big Man. That was part of what made him a good companion, and a good comrade
in war.
Crazy Horse said to Little Hawk, “Make sure all the warriors stay back.” He nodded at Little Big Man. “Especially that one.”
“They’ll kill you,” said Little Big Man with a snarl. It seemed as though he was mad at his friend for taking this risk. Crazy Horse looked at him, learning something.
“They will kill you,” echoed Little Hawk.
Crazy Horse smiled easily. Yes, it was a risk, and that was all right. He shrugged as though to say, “It is a good day to die.” He handed Little Hawk his repeating rifle and said, “If they do, this belongs to you.” He set his knife down and picked up his canupa in its otter-skin case and held it out before him. Slowly and deliberately, he walked toward the white men. Every few steps he made the sign that meant “friends.”
When he walked, his legs felt all right. When he stopped to sign, he felt them shake. If anyone noticed his nervousness, white or Lakota, he did not mind.
The whites kept their guns pointed at him. He was so close now that none of the four would be able to miss. He walked right in among them, sat down cross-legged, and took his canupa out of its case. Taking his time, looking politely toward the ground and not into the whites’ eyes, he filled the canupa with cansasa, lit it, sent the first smoke to the four directions, Father Sky, and Mother Earth, and handed the canupa to the oldest white man.
The fellow took it and smoked.
After they had all smoked and all the weapons were set down, Crazy Horse signed, “Enough good men have died today.”
The oldest white man said, “We cached some goods at Mousseau’s place. If you let us go, we will give them to you.”
Crazy Horse smiled. Telling where the goods were was like giving them away already. He wondered if there was any powder in the cache. He looked into the white men’s faces. They were exhausted. They had run a long way across the hot plains. They had no water and must be parched. They had some small wounds. But they had been brave, and now they faced him and spoke up like men and neither whined nor begged.
Crazy Horse made the sign for “yes.”
After the long trip back to Mousseau’s place, the Lakota left with cansasa, beans, coffee, sugar, whiskey, clothes, beads, and other things, but no powder. They took the goods and left the white men alone.
That night Little Hawk cut the seat out of his first pair of white-man pants and wore them saucily. He found some rolled paper in a pocket.
“Money,” said Crazy Horse. “Maybe it will buy some powder.”
“It better,” said Little Big Man irritably.
BURN! BURN! BURN!
In the spring of the next winter, the year known as Wears-a-Spotted-Warbonnet Was Killed, the whites quit. So they said. In this year of 1868 they would abandon the forts on the Bozeman Trail forever. For as long as the grass should grow and water flow, all the country between the Muddy Water River and the Shining Mountains, from the Shell River to the Elk River, and in the center of it Paha Sapa would belong to the Lakota, to hunt in and live as they pleased. Thus the peace paper this time said: The Indians won.
So the southern bands went in and signed the paper and got plenty of presents, including guns and ammunition. “Now that we are all friends,” said the agent, “why should we not give you guns?” When he said this, the soldiers turned their backs and the people pretended not to see their scowls. Most northern bands also signed, even the hostiles—even Man-Whose-Enemies-Are-Afraid-of-His-Horses of the Hunkpatila. “The Shifting Sands River War is over,” said the whites.
But the Oyukhpe Oglala did not go in, or the Bad Faces. Crazy Horse felt like cheering when he heard what Red Cloud was reported to have said: As long as soldiers stayed in the forts of Shifting Sands River country, he would touch a pen to no peace paper.
The word was out. The Sahiyela were invited in, not the Lakota, so Crazy Horse rode to the fort as the invited guest of Little Wolf’s band of Sahiyela. Hump, Little Big Man, Little Hawk, and He Dog came along. The smiles flashed like knives, with a dangerous edge.
The silver eagle chief had sent word to Little Wolf that on this day the soldiers would walk and ride out of Fort Phil Kearny, their wagons and wagon guns rolling behind them. And they would never come back.
Most of the goods would roll off in the wagons, the silver eagle chief said, but Little Wolf’s people were welcome to the rest.
The Sahiyela were talking about all the things they might get: horseshoes to use for spear points, surely, or steel to shape into knives, maybe beans, maybe coffeepots, maybe the cloth of the curtains the white women had put up, maybe flour, probably empty flour sacks.
Crazy Horse had in mind something else altogether.
The five Lakota watched from Pilot Butte, where the sentry had stood and signaled so many times that the wood train was under attack. With his eyes Crazy Horse followed the columns filing away to the south in great clouds of dust—hundreds of men, hundreds of horses, and dozens of wagons make a lot of dust. He wished he couldn’t see them for the dust and would never be able to remember anything here on Piney Fork but the dust of the soldiers taking the back trail.
His mind went back to that winter day he had decoyed the hundred in the hands past Lodge Trail Ridge and into the ambush. He felt pride in it, but not much pleasure. War was of the spirit. Only slaughter was of the body.
Even as the last soldiers went out the gate, the Sahiyela ran over the forts like ants after sugar. The Lakota smiled at each other.
When the last soldier was beyond the Pilot Butte, they cantered down to the fort and through the gate. No one to report their approach now, no one to turn them away now, no one to tempt them with whiskey, no one to tell them only one Indian at a time in the trading room.
Sahiyela women were scurrying about everywhere, their arms full of white-man belongings. Flour sacks for dresses, awls, lemon crystals for making lemonade, hatchets, a couple of tools to make round lead balls with, tins of oysters, Iroquois shells, odd ends of wool and of calico, a spool of glossy ribbon, an iron for pressing clothes (they didn’t know what to make of that), combs, mirrors, a pair of blacksmith’s tongs, horehound candy, a tattered quilt, and a real prize—a bronze medal with the image of a man named Millard Fillmore on it.
One old woman stood in a doorway, her arms crossed, legs spread defensively. “This is my lodge!” she hollered. “This is my lodge!” She glared at everyone, booming out her claim over and over, like a crazy person. “This is my lodge!”
Then Crazy Horse noticed a half-dozen women setting up housekeeping in various rooms. Little Wolf gave him a tilted smile to say he’d noticed, too. The chief spoke softly to one of the akicita men, and he gently started moving the women out of the fort. “None of us will live in the white-man lodge,” the akicita man said to one of them. “We do not live in one place. We follow the buffalo.”
Crazy Horse and Little Big Man grinned at each other. When they were finished, neither the Sahiyela nor anyone else would be living in this fort.
They staked their ponies for a quick getaway.
“This is your privilege,” Little Wolf said to Crazy Horse. “You earned it the day of the hundred in the hands.
“I tried to get the silver eagle chief to give me what was in there,” said Little Wolf, pointing to where the powder magazine had stood. He traded mad grins with Little Big Man. “But he was too smart for that. He gave me these.” He tapped one of four round metal containers. It made a dead, thunking sound—it was full.
Little Big Man opened it and sniffed. He was proud of knowing how to work the gadgets of the whites and knowing how to take care of his rifle expertly. He looked up at Crazy Horse and winked and said, “Coal oil.” Crazy Horse smelled it. It stank like a tar seep.
Little Wolf got the Sahiyela out of the fort while the five Oglala splashed coal oil around the bottoms of all the buildings and the stockade. Crazy Horse watched them carefully, making sure the coal oil stretched far enough. “I want everything gone.”
Little Big Man worked the faste
st. Crazy Horse thought he was like a kid playing with fire.
When they were finished, a quarter can of oil was left.
“Let’s keep it,” said Little Big Man enthusiastically.
Crazy Horse shook his head no.
“Let’s burn the gate twice,” said Little Hawk. “Close the door flap on them.”
He Dog exclaimed assent—“Hoye!”
“Let’s burn the trading room double,” said Crazy Horse, “where they thought they could buy us.”
“Hoye!” cried Hump.
Everyone agreed, though Little Big Man was disappointed.
Crazy Horse held his torch up. They had dipped heavy limbs in coal oil and lit them with lucifers left by the soldiers. He looked toward Hump at the far corner to his left, He Dog at the corner to his right. Little Big Man and Little Hawk had volunteered for corners out of sight. They would act when Crazy Horse yelled.
Crazy Horse pitched the torch against the bottom of the wall.
WHUMP! went the flames.
WHUMP! WHUMP! Hump and He Dog ignited their corners.
His pony shied so hard Crazy Horse almost lost his seat. He called out to the skies, a primal bellow. “He-ya, he-ya, he-ya, he!”
WHUMP! WHUMP! on the far side of the structure. Crazy Horse quirted his pony hard away. The heat almost blistered his bare back.
A huge stench came up his nostrils, acrid and burning.
He heard hoofbeats of the other riders behind him.
They sprinted to the top of Pilot Butte and turned to watch.
The fire was mammoth. It stank. It roared like rapids. It was a great red maw devouring everything, like the sunset at the end of the world.
“Burn, burn, burn!” yelled Little Big Man.
Crazy Horse thought, They’re like Wakinyan, but they burn.
GRANDMOTHER PLUM
“Unci,” Crazy Horse began. He took his grandmother’s elbow in his fingers and said no more for a while. She moved her upper body a little where she sat. Yes, she heard. Yes, she knew he wanted to talk. As usual she kept her eyes averted, acknowledging nothing.
