Climb the Wind: A Journey Into Another Past

by Pamela Sargent

  “Not if he goes to them in peace. Not if he promise to ride with the Lakota and fight with them against the Seventh.” Isaiah turned toward her. “I live with the Lakota. I live with them for years. Maybe I would have still been living with them if my wife hadn’t died.”

  She knew all of that, but could tell that he needed to talk. It was probably easier for him to talk to a woman, even a woman like her, than to one of the men.

  “I don’t know,” he went on. “They called me Wasichu Sapa, the black white man, but they didn’t treat me like I was colored, not after I was living with them a while. I kept finding reasons not to leave. Told myself I would someday, and then kept putting it off. Maybe I’d still be living with them and thinking about leaving if she—”

  He fell silent. Jane said nothing as she looked from west to east, scanning almost without thinking for any signs of danger. Isaiah’s dark eyes shifted from side to side; he was doing the same thing.

  “I went back to the army in ‘71,’’ Isaiah continued. “They sent me out with the Northern Pacific survey team, to be a guide, but I was just as glad when they decided not to build those tracks. You see—” He frowned and rubbed his chin. “I ain’t disloyal, not to the army, and not to the Lakota. That’s what I told myself, that I could be a friend of the Lakota and an army man both. The Lakota’d have their lands, and we’d have ours. Now I know that ain’t gonna happen. People goin’ to come flocking into these parts once they find gold, and that means war.”

  “So you think all those stories about gold being here are true,” Jane said.

  “I knows it.” Isaiah reached down and put his hand in the water, then brought it out again and opened his palm. She saw two bits of yellow metal, hardly bigger than flecks of dust. “That’s what’s here,” he said, “and it ain’t much, but the Seventh is sure to find more.”

  “You’re so sure of that?” she asked.

  “I knows it. The Lakota—” He turned and gazed directly at her. “I passed some time with the Hunkpapas, in Sitting Bull’s camp. The older braves said he might have been the greatest of the chiefs, and others said Crazy Horse would have been, except for Touch-the-Clouds and his vision of the hoop being joined and all the Indians, even old enemies, being one nation.”

  “I heard about Touch-the-Clouds,” Jane murmured. “Not much, mind you, just that he brought a lot of tribes together.”

  “He did more than that, Calamity. He give them all a new vision. The old men told me things changed a lot after that. I don’t understand a lot of it, because they didn’t let me find out much. Wasn’t just that I was a Wasichu Sapa—a lot of the Lakota didn’t seem to know what was going on, either. The old men didn’t like that much, but they couldn’t do much about it.”

  Jane leaned forward, waiting for him to say more.

  “I thinks it was after the Lakota smoked the pipe with the Crows that things really started changing,” Isaiah said. “Touch-the-Clouds told them that the Black Hills were sacred to both Lakota and Crow, and the only way they could keep them was to stick together. By then, the Lakota had a peace with the Kiowas and the Comanche, so the Crow was ready to listen to him, I reckon.” He stared at the bits of gold in his hand. “Touch-the-Clouds told them the buffalo was dying in the south, that the white men was killing them, that they would keep on killing them until no buffalo was left, and there was only one way to stop the killing.”

  “Go on,” Jane said.

  “He said the Black Hills was given to the Lakota, to all the Indians, by Wakan Tanka so that they would have weapons for their fighting. I think maybe they was digging up some of the gold for buying weapons. Never could find out much, because except during the Sun Dance in the summer, the Lakota and everybody else was keeping away from there. Some men would leave their camps and go into the Black Hills for a while, but nobody talked about why.”

  “Maybe they went to look for visions,” Jane said.

  “They’d stay away too long for that, for visions and making medicine.” Isaiah let out his breath. “Too many secrets. That’s what the old men said, too many secrets, too much that Touch-the-Clouds and the men he trusted the most wanted to keep to themselves. But things turned out the way Touch-the-Clouds said they would. The Lakota still had the buffalo to hunt. The treaty wasn’t broken.”

  “Until now,” Jane said dryly.

  “And now I has to pick my side and stay with it, just like White Man Runs Him and anybody else. Can’t run from one side to the other. Got to make up my mind to fight for the Seventh or for the Lakota and not look back.”

  He was admitting that his loyalties were still torn. She tensed, suddenly wary of the other scout. For a moment, Jane thought of reaching for her gun and making up Isaiah’s mind for him. She would not have to shoot him in the back, she could outshoot him even if she gave him a fair chance, then blame his death on the Indians when she rode back to rejoin the Seventh.

  She could not do it. Isaiah was as much of a friend as she had found with the Seventh Cavalry. He would not betray a friend, any friend, even her; of that she was certain.

  “If White Man Runs Him is heading for the Sioux,” she said at last, “then we might as well keep following him.”

  “Yeah. For now.” Isaiah stood up and let the tiny bits of gold fall from his hand.

  They mounted their horses and rode on, moving east, following the creek and the trail of the Crow scouts. If the Sioux were on the warpath, she hoped that Isaiah’s old ties to them would give them some protection.

  Isaiah reined in his horse. He motioned to her, then dismounted. Jane leaned toward him from her saddle. He pulled a slender wand with a tiny pouch attached to it from the ground, then held it up.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “An offering to Wakan Tanka. It ain’t been here for long—maybe two days or three. There’s tobacco in the bag, and a little bit of willow tied under it. Someone came here to pray and make medicine.”

  Jane found herself scanning the hills. She did not feel anyone watching them. She hoped that she could trust her instincts.

  Isaiah stuck the wand back into the ground. “There’s another one over there,” he said, pointing, “and another.” He mounted his horse. “Somebody was praying a whole lot, and I wonder what for.”

  They made camp for the night under a stand of pine trees on a hill overlooking another small creek. There were some horse droppings under the trees; White Man Runs Him and his companions had not stopped here for long.

  Isaiah, having unburdened himself to her earlier, was silent as they ate. Jane thought longingly of hot coffee followed by whiskey. There was no sense in making a fire, and she had not bartered for any whiskey to bring along, knowing that she would need a clear head.

  They used their saddles as pillows and their horse blankets as their beds. Isaiah slept with his back to her. Once in the night, she heard him let out a sound that sounded like a sob, and wondered if he was dreaming of his dead Indian wife.

  They woke just before dawn and ate hardtack for breakfast, then followed the creek upstream. By midmorning, they had come to more hilly ground. The trail of the Crow scouts led up a grassy hill. Jane was behind Isaiah. He was at the top of the hill when she heard him curse.

  He lashed at his horse and galloped down the other side of the hill. Below them lay an expanse of grassy pastureland, and in the grass there lay three small, lifeless bodies. Jane’s eyesight was damnably keen. The corpses, she saw, had been stripped of clothing. Their chests were bloody hollows, their legs gashed with deep cuts, and their scalps were gone.

  She galloped after Isaiah and caught up to him. He slowed his horse as they neared the bodies. She recognized the face of White Man Runs Him, now twisted and staring at her with lifeless eyes. The Sioux had cut open his chest and stuck a willow branch into the gaping wound. Someone else had pushed a long quill into his groin, where a lot of his male equipment was missing. By the look of him, White Man Runs Him had taken a while to die. She did not want to loo
k closely at Hairy Moccasin and Goes Ahead.

  Isaiah dismounted and stared at the dead men for a while. Jane studied the grass. A large party of Sioux had camped here, but not for long. Some had gone west, the others south. The Indians going west had left the parallel tracks of poles being pulled over the ground, so they had been using pony drags to move tepees and lodges, and had to be women and children moving to safety. The others—the warriors—were heading south.

  “They’s headed toward the Seventh,” Isaiah said, although Jane could already guess at that.

  “Can we warn them in time?” Jane asked.

  “I don’t know. There’s only two of us. If we wears out our horses, we’ll never make it. The Indians should stop for a while, put on paint, pray for animal powers, get ready for battle. Maybe we could reach the Seventh if they don’t move too fast.”

  Jane mounted her horse quickly. “Then we better get moving, Isaiah.” There was no time to do anything for the dead Crows.

  The colored man’s lips moved as he whispered something. He looked like he was saying a prayer. She wondered if it was a prayer to the good Lord or one to Wakan Tanka.

  “Isaiah,” she said more sharply.

  He swung himself into his saddle. They rode away from the mutilated bodies of the Crow scouts.

  There were two of them on horseback, coming down the pine-covered slope, one a Sioux with a feather in his long braided hair. Caleb Tornor could not make out whether the second man was an Indian or not. He carried a piece of white cloth attached to a stick and wore a worn blue army jacket that might have been stolen off a dead man, but he couldn’t be a Sioux or a Cheyenne, not with black hair that reached only past his collar.

  The Seventh had just finished setting up tents for the night. “Halt!” Lieutenant Donald McIntosh called out. They were to treat any redskins they ran across as friendly, as long as the Indians showed no hostility. Those were the orders. Caleb regretted those orders and would not have minded picking off this Sioux if he thought he could get away with it. He wondered what the pair wanted.

  Sergeant Smith was walking toward the two men when Captain Tom Custer, the general’s brother, rode past the nearest tents. The Sioux with the feather in his hair held up one hand. “We have come to talk,” the Indian said in English. “We wish to speak with your chieftain, the one called Long Hair, the man the Crow have named Son of the Morning Star.”

  Caleb narrowed his eyes, surprised to hear the red man say the words so easily. The Indian was wearing only a breechcloth and leggings, but he also carried a Winchester and had a Colt pistol at his waist; an ammunition belt hung across his chest.

  “I am the brother of Long Hair, the Son of the Morning Star,” Captain Custer said. “What do you want?”

  “I have told you,” the Sioux replied. “We come here with a message for your chief Long Hair.”

  “Sergeant,” Tom Custer said to Smith, “go to the general’s tent and—”

  Caleb had caught sight of the general. “He’s already riding this way, sir,” Caleb said.

  Custer rode toward them on his favorite sorrel horse. He wore his favorite buckskin jacket and the blue yellow-striped trousers of his uniform. He had cut his hair before setting out on this expedition, but a few reddish-blond curls poked out from under his hat. He glanced toward the two strangers before reining in his horse in front of his brother.

  “What is it, Tom?” the general asked.

  Tom Custer gestured at the Sioux and his companion. “They want to talk to you. One of them speaks English.”

  “Both of us do,’’ the man in the officer’s blue coat said. Still seated on his horse, he extended his arms, palms out.

  “My name means White Eagle in your words,” the man with the long braids said. “The man with me is called the Orphan.”

  “I know him,” Custer said, “by another name.” He stared at the stranger in the blue coat for a bit. “I am the man you call Long Hair. We came here in peace, not to attack your people. I smoked a pipe with Spotted Eagle and Fast Bear of the Sansarc Lakota.”

  “You may have smoked the pipe with them,” the man wearing the feather said, “and you may say you come here in peace, but you have broken our treaty by coming to Paha Sapa.”

  “We came to explore,” General Custer said, “to see what is here, and then we intend to leave.” He gazed at the two with his cold blue eyes.

  “Will you leave and never come back?” the man in the blue coat said. “When the army comes into Indian lands, surveyors and settlers usually aren’t far behind. These lands are sacred to the Lakota, and were promised them by treaty.”

  General Custer frowned. “You’re not a Lakota, Rowland.” Caleb looked from Custer to the stranger.

  “I am not a Lakota, but I have lived among them for some time now.”

  General Custer frowned still more. “You don’t belong here.”

  Caleb shifted uneasily on his feet. Maybe this Rowland was actually a deserter. There had been enough of them.

  “And how exactly did you come to be out here?” General Custer asked.

  “Colonel Jeremiah Clarke asked me to live among the Lakota for a while and then report back to him,” Rowland said. “And now I have come here with a message from the chiefs Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Touch-the-Clouds. They are asking you to leave the Black Hills and to promise not to return. They want your pledge that you will abide by the treaty the United States government and the Lakota signed in 1868.”

  “The Orphan named Rowland carries a talking paper with these words,” White Eagle said. “He will give it to you now.”

  Rowland reached into his blue coat and took out a folded piece of paper. Tom Custer nodded at Caleb, who went to get it. “I wrote these words out myself,” Rowland said. “They were given to me by a warrior who rode to me with this message from Touch-the-Clouds. The words are set down exactly as he spoke them. By now they will have been said to Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and others of the chiefs.”

  The general’s lip curled. Caleb could almost believe that Iron Butt Custer was amused. “Read the message to us,” Custer said.

  Rowland’s horse carried him closer to the general. There was still enough light to read by, but Caleb wondered why the man had written the message down; the Sioux with him probably could have repeated it word for word from memory.

  “By coming into the Black Hills,” Rowland read, “you have broken the treaty between our peoples. If you leave now, and swear never to return, we will remain at peace. If you refuse to leave, we will consider ourselves at war with you, and with anyone else who comes into the Black Hills without having first pledged himself to us as our brother.”

  Rowland fell silent. General Custer was looking at him contemptuously. Lieutenant McIntosh fidgeted.

  “Is that all?” Tom Custer asked.

  “That is the message,’’ the Sioux called White Eagle added.

  Rowland handed the piece of paper to General Custer, who took it and held it by two fingers, as if longing to throw it away. “There’s something I don’t understand,” Custer said. “‘Pledged himself to us as our brother’—what does that mean?”

  Rowland glanced at White Eagle. The Sioux said, “This land is Lakota land. Other land is ours by treaty. If the Wasichu want to come to these lands, they must come as friends of Lakota and live as we allow them to live instead of taking our land from us and driving away the buffalo.”

  General Custer was reddening, angered. Behind Caleb, Sergeant Smith cursed softly. No self-respecting white man, Caleb thought, would make any promises to a bunch of red savages to live as Indians wanted him to on land that should belong to whites anyway. Sooner or later the Indians would have to get out of the way or face extermination. That was a law of nature; Caleb had heard that somewhere. It was the destiny of white men to have all of this land, from east to west. If God had not wanted white men to have this land, He would not have allowed them to take it.

  “And what will happen,” General Cus
ter said, “if we remain here to complete our exploration?”

  Rowland looked even more uneasy. White Eagle said, “If you stay, you will never leave the Black Hills.”

  “Sounds a lot like a threat, Autie,” Tom Custer muttered to his brother.

  “We’ll do what we were sent here to do,” General Custer said, letting the paper Rowland had given him fall from his hand. “Tell them to leave us unmolested, and we’ll ride out of this territory. If the Sioux want a fight, we’ll fight, and give no quarter. Tell that to your chiefs. Lieutenant McIntosh—see that those two ride out of here before dark.” He dug his knees into the sides of his horse and rode toward his tent.

  “You heard the general,” the officer named McIntosh said to Lemuel. He picked up the paper that Custer had dropped. One of the other Blue Coats brought a horse to McIntosh; he mounted. “I’ll ride with you as far as that rise.”

  Lemuel flicked his reins lightly against his horse’s neck. “You will see nothing from there,” White Eagle said to the lieutenant. “Our fighting men are not here—not now. Not yet.”

  “Why did you write all this out, anyway?” McIntosh asked.

  “For the record,” Lemuel said. “I don’t suppose General Custer might change his mind and decide to leave the Black Hills.”

  “Never,” McIntosh said. “The Sioux haven’t got a chance against the Seventh.” His eyes shifted toward White Eagle. “You’d better make that clear to them.”

  Lemuel’s insides knotted. Throughout the ride here, he had been telling himself that there was a chance the expedition would leave peacefully. That everything could go on as it had, with the Lakota in their territory and the treaty being kept—he clung to that hope without reason. He remembered the last time he had seen Custer, at Appomattox, carrying off the desk on which Lee had signed the South’s surrender as a souvenir. He wondered if Custer had brought the desk out west with him.

  McIntosh slipped the paper inside his coat. Rubalev, after hearing the message carried to them from Touch-the-Clouds, had insisted on having Lemuel set it down in writing. “The Wasichu use written words to rob you of what is yours,” Rubalev had said to the Lakota messenger. “Tell Touch-the-Clouds that we will use a talking paper against your enemies.” The Lakota with them had looked happy at that, as if the piece of paper held strong medicine that would give them victory over the Blue Coats.