by Win Blevins
She was huge in his heart.
He saw the warriors getting ready to charge and wondered if they had enough bullets to win. Then he thought of the fight on the Rosebud a quarter-moon ago, when the soldiers’ rifles got so hot they wouldn’t eject the spent shells.
So he kicked his horse into the no-man’s-land between white and Lakota warriors. He rode in curves, circles, slants, every which way, drawing the soldier fire. As he rode, he felt himself in a swirl of time and place between one world and another, a place of spirit, a place utterly protected against not only the bullets ripping through the air at him but the physical world itself. He was Rider, and invulnerable.
He rode hard back to his own side, where the warriors were shouting his praises. “Hold your fire!” he shouted.
Back into no-man’s-land he rode, exhilarated, serene in the confidence that he couldn’t be touched. He made a show of riding tricks. He called mockery at the soldiers who couldn’t hit him.
He felt like Rider today.
Back to his warriors at a gallop. “Wait!” he shouted. “Soon!”
And once more toward the whites.
The fire was heavier now. He could feel the anger and frustration of the soldiers in it. But it was impotent.
So he circled back toward his warriors, blew the whistle meaning “Charge!” and rushed the whites’ left flank headlong. He felt the surge of Lakota fighting men behind him.
The soldiers broke and ran.
The Lakota killed some from behind. Before long, though, the soldiers reached some trees on a little rise by the river.
The fight slowed. It was hard to attack them in their good cover.
Soon the whites broke and again and ran for the river. Straight off the high bank they jumped their horses into deep water where there was no crossing.
The Lakota caught them from behind. They clubbed the soldiers off their horses into the swift and flooding stream. They used arrows. They killed mercilessly.
The whites who got across the river climbed a hill where they were hard to reach.
Some of the warriors stayed up on the hill and kept the soldiers pinned down there.
Most of them came back and started picking up abandoned rifles and shells, grinning at each other, exulting. They jabbered and joked with the queer nervous energy that follows a wrestle with death.
Until a big shout came. “Soldiers!”
A messenger, riding hard from downstream.
“More soldiers!” he yelled. “Down that ridge where the dust is!”
Another fight. No one was alarmed. Yes, that was the middle of the camp, where the women and children had fled from this first attack. So it was simple—they would kill the soldiers.
Energy coiled and gathered in them. Another fight. Another look at death. Yes, they were ready. This was their day, supremely their day.
These soldiers were coming directly from the east. The warriors looked at each other speculatively. Maybe these were the ones Sitting Bull saw falling upside down into camp.
“Hokahe!” some of them yelled. Others looked at each other appraisingly. Yes, let them come. Yes, let’s go get them.
Gall and Crazy Horse drew the warriors together with their whistles. They asked for a charge. The women and children were down there, and the lodges were half-down. They must strike hard.
The martial spirit was huge in Gall—his wives and children murdered. The warriors saw it and felt it.
“This is a good day to die!”
“This is a good day to die!”
They roared downstream.
Crazy Horse circled through the Oglala village. His pinto was played out. Black Shawl, anticipating, was holding a second mount for him. He saw Sitting Bull briefly. The Big Bellies were staying in the village, ready to fight or flee if the soldiers got too close.
A pretty young woman, unmarried, was singing encouragement:
“Brothers-in-law,
now your friends have come.
Take courage.
Would you see me taken captive?”
Crazy Horse gathered up some warriors and galloped for the river.
Gall and his forces were just getting there. Four Sahiyela flanked each other on the far side of the river, facing the soldiers, four alone against two or three hundred. They laid down a fire that slowed the whites down. Brave men, thought Crazy Horse.
Galloping toward the river, he saw that Gall was crossing now. He appeared to outnumber the soldiers easily. As his men charged the white line, the soldiers started falling back. The village was going to be safe.
And now Crazy Horse saw what was going to happen. Gall was pushing up the hill hard. Other warriors from the lower circles were crossing the river behind him. The front of the double column of soldiers was getting hit bluntly and hard, the whites would have to …
Custer was determined to get his five companies back together and make a defensive circle, damn it. The ones who descended to the ford were being driven up the coulee and onto the hill to the north. The general and his companies above were fighting their way north to join them. They would kill the horses if they had to, use them for breastworks, and lay down a fire these savages would never forget.
Custer looked merrily across his horse’s neck at his brother Tom. “It is a good day to kill!” he said mockingly.
They had to get together first. He yelled, he fired, he used his spurs. The enemy was pouring up the hill. Where had all these Injuns come from? Where had they gotten all this ammunition? Why had they suddenly decided to fight instead of run?
When General Custer saw that fellow, the correspondent of that Bismarck newspaper, he would have some choice words for the high command. The newspapers always liked it when field officers said what asses the generals back in their headquarters were.
The enemy fire was heavy. Some men of these companies weren’t going to get to that high ridge where the stand would be made. He grinned sardonically to himself. Not everyone was chosen by fate.
Crazy Horse saw it. The coulee running upward, the hill behind. Beyond that he remembered the long ridge stretching to the northwest. The battle laid itself out in his mind. He watched the white soldiers going for the high ground where they would make their stand. He saw himself and his warriors coming at them from behind. He thought so. He was almost sure.
He got off his fresh pony. He threw gopher dust on it to confound the enemy. He put spears of grass into his long hair to suggest snow that drives creatures before it. He called upon the power of the wind to confuse the enemy. When enough warriors were gathered, he blew the eagle-bone whistle. For once he raised his voice: “Let every Oglala,” he cried, “every man of any circle who wants to, follow me!”
They whipped their ponies after the war leader Crazy Horse, and he felt the power of all these men propel him forward.
He rode for the river and turned downstream, away from Gall’s fight, toward the hillside that would lead him up to the far end of the ridge. He saw it. As the soldiers came up the hill, firing back down at Gall, he would hit them from the other side. He would turn the place of their stand into a trap. But nothing was certain yet.
He rode hard, rode furiously, rode eternally.
When Crazy Horse came up the last rim below the highest ridge, he saw them, yes, the backs of the first soldiers to the top. Not forted up yet, just arriving. It was perfect.
He looked. He felt the sun on his face. He felt Hawk in his heart, jubilant. This day was radiant as the one in his boyhood vision more than twenty winters ago.
Now was the time. Yes, he would charge straight into the whites, trusting Rider’s power. When they saw the strength of his medicine, his men would follow him. The surprised soldiers would scatter like prairie hens. Then there would be nothing left but the killing.
He put his quirt to his pony and screamed. “KEE-ur! KEE-ur!”
PART FIVE
GOING HOME
1877
In the twilight
the spirit of Hi
s Crazy Horse stands
on the sundance ground.
He raises the sacred canupa
to the sky and intones a prayer:
“In a sacred manner I send a voice to you.
In a sacred manner I send a voice to you.
To half of the sky
I send my voice in a sacred manner.
In a sacred manner I send a voice to you.”
As the light grows,
he continues to pray.
Hundreds of Lakota people
rise up around him,
dancing in celebration.
Over the thumps of feet and drum
we cannot hear his words.
TO THE VICTOR
The victory tasted delicious. The big villages moved off from the site of the battle and held big dances to celebrate. The men chanted, sang, and danced their deeds in the fight against Long Hair by the Greasy Grass. Crazy Horse noticed that they sounded like hero stories of old. Lakota warriors struck so many coups that many of them had not been witnessed.
Men made new songs about the fight. Some were mocking:
“Long Hair, I had no guns.
You brought me some.
I thank you.
You make me laugh!
“Long Hair, I had no horses.
You brought me some.
I thank you.
You make me laugh!”
One of the songs Crazy Horse liked best pointed at the way the whites were always condemning people different from them:
“A charger, he is coming.
I made him come.
When he came, I wiped him out.
He didn’t like my ways,
That’s why.”
What he was happiest about was that the people had joined together and acted as one people, not a lot of quarreling bands and chiefs. Also, the Lakota had fought the new way, not individually but as a unit, not for honors and glory but to kill.
Other war leaders paid him a compliment. When they saw that Gall would chase the soldiers up the hill, the warriors following Crazy Horse rode away from the fight, around in back of Long Hair, and surprised him from the rear. They added that only Crazy Horse could have led the men in that roundabout attack.
People said the spirit of Sitting Bull’s vision had been realized. Others said that because of some mutilations and stripping of bodies, a terrible price would be exacted later.
Many Lakota wondered what the soldiers would do now. “Respect us,” some said, “and leave us alone.” “Get revenge for Long Hair,” others said, “by sending ten soldiers for every one they sent to the Greasy Grass.”
Crazy Horse did not participate in these arguments. He said in private that they would simply have to wait and see what the whites would do. There was nothing to be gained by guessing about it. He had another reason not to talk, though, to withdraw and be quiet and listen: Something was more and more insistent in his mind—the beat of the drum.
The soldiers made their choice: They withdrew from the entire country and waited until one full moon had passed and half of another, the Moon When All Things Ripen. Even then they marched all around and found hardly any Indians and had indifferent success when they did.
In the meantime Crazy Horse went to Paha Sapa against the miners. He thought the people mustn’t lose the Hills. But regardless of what the army did, more miners crawled over the hills every day, tearing up the earth looking for gold. He took groups of young warriors. They slipped through the canyons silently, used arrows instead of guns, and killed miner after miner.
They stole wagonloads of goods that were welcome in the camps.
When the young men dragged their feet, wanting to enjoy themselves, Crazy Horse went back to the Hills alone and killed more miners. He was quiet and effective. He felt more murderous than he had since the days when he avenged Little Hawk’s death.
It was He Dog who figured out what Crazy Horse was doing and upbraided him.
“And what do you do?” He Dog asked a little sharply, talking about the lone trips.
“Kill miners,” said Crazy Horse. It required no explanation.
He Dog sucked at his canupa and said nothing for a while. Then he spoke softly and intensely. “My friend, you have no right.” He looked Crazy Horse in the eye. “You have no right. You belong to everyone now.”
He let it sit. They both were thinking how Crazy Horse had belonged to everyone as a shirtman, pledged to think of all the people first, and how he had lost that status and those duties.
“Things are different now,” He Dog said. “The Big Bellies are agency chiefs. We have not made any new shirtmen for a long time. The people choose the leaders they want in the way they want.” He gazed at Crazy Horse directly. “They’ve chosen you. You are their hero. They follow you.”
Crazy Horse listened to the beat of the drum.
He Dog was quiet for a while. “This is a terrible time,” he said. “The hoop of the people is broken, some of us living the old way, some of us begging from the whites. To mend the hoop we need leadership. You cannot throw your life at the feet of some miner who happens to see you first.”
Crazy Horse stayed in camp. It was time for the fall hunt anyway, if anyone could find buffalo.
When the meat was in the packs—well, some meat—came the awful news. The Big Bellies had sold Paha Sapa. The Black Hills, whites called them, and the whites “owned” them now.
People listened to the messengers in the council lodge in a hubbub. They spoke out of turn and even interrupted each other. Men called “Hunhunhe!” in regret. Some women wailed.
“They can’t sell any land,” said someone. “The paper says three out of four of us have to sign.”
“The whites say it’s done,” answered the messengers.
“How many signed?”
“Thirty or forty.”
“Out of all the people?”
“Thirty or forty.”
Worm said, “They see how few of us are left.”
“Why did they sign?”
“They were drunk,” someone put in.
One messenger held up a hand. “Red Cloud refused to sign,” he said. “Spotted Tail refused to sign. Then the agents said no more food would be given to anyone until they signed.”
No more food at all. The children would starve to death.
The warriors looked at each other. No one said the obvious. If you took the white man’s word, his food, his clothing and blankets, then he would starve you whenever he wanted more.
At this revelation Crazy Horse, silent as usual, got up and left the council.
He walked out into the hills near camp. He sat and looked around and saw nothing. He was in a rage.
He tried to quiet enough inside to listen to Hawk, to sense Hawk’s mood.
Maybe she was still. At least he couldn’t feel her.
Besides, she was his guide in war.
Who would guide him when he won on the battlefield and lost everything to a piece of paper?
WINTER OF THE SOUL
Crazy Horse watched them walking knee-deep through the soft snow, gliding through the flakes that drifted down, gray, misty shadows barely moving. Many took just enough steps to keep from freezing to death. When they stopped, they looked thin and bare and quaking, like the leafless aspens they walked through.
Easing down, the snow made them lavender silhouettes against the pink dawn light. Yes, they had a kind of austere beauty. Sometimes he thought death was beautiful. Sometimes he felt its call, soft and alluring. Sometimes the call seemed to come from Hawk. Sometimes from the mother whose name he would never speak. Sometimes from the beat of the drum.
It was not time to listen to it, not yet.
He stood in the deep snow among the aspens and watched the Sahiyela village of Morning Star walk toward Crazy Horse’s camp on Hanging Woman Creek above the Buffalo Tongue River near the Shining Mountains. The village had been hit by Three Stars’ soldiers, and for three-quarters of an entire moon, a moon of
death, they had walked through the terrible cold to seek succor from Crazy Horse.
He was afoot because he had given his mount to a young woman with children of about six and two winters. The woman could barely stand up on her frozen, bloodied feet. Akicita men would be here soon with plenty of ponies, but Crazy Horse wanted to ease the woman’s pain immediately. He would walk back to camp. Sometimes walking made his mind and spirit reflective, and he saw into things.
This time he could barely stand to see. The word was that eleven babies had frozen to death in their mothers’ arms. Clearly the soldiers had destroyed most of the village’s possessions—horses, lodges, food, clothing, blankets, everything. And left them to walk through the cold, dying.
This moon, which the whites called November, had been the coldest Winter Moon he could remember. The snow that began last night at dusk had warmed Mother Earth a little. Otherwise more children would probably have frozen to death in their mothers’ arms just last night.
Now his village’s camp was on Hanging Woman Creek. The name was from the Psatoka, who said that an older woman had hanged herself from the lodge poles here when her man took a second and younger wife. Still, the name seemed … fateful.
Sometimes he felt mesmerized by the beat of the drum.
He shook his head and forced himself to think not about his birth mother but the soldiers. They had done such things before to the Sahiyela, on Sand Creek, at the Washita, and just last winter at Two Moons’ camp, when He Dog was there. Such soldiers were incomprehensible to Crazy Horse. “Understand your enemy” was a first principle of war. He did not want to understand these enemies. But he did want to kill them.
Morning Star told the story in the council lodge, but so feebly it hardly made sense. The Sahiyela thought the soldiers had missed them. A youth captured by several Snakes had given the location of the village away before he realized the Snakes were scouting for the army. The pony soldiers struck at dawn. Morning Star’s young son had been killed in the first charge. The soldiers got straight into the village. The warriors had to hold them off from a nearby ridge while the women and children fled. Over thirty Sahiyela were killed. And the soldiers burned the entire village, everything the people owned.
