Ashes of Heaven (The Plainsmen Series)

by Terry C. Johnston

  As she spoke the words in Lakota, Old Wool Woman watched the half-breed’s eyes twitch. The way a man might attempt to hide a flinch.

  “The soldier chief owns these two horses and he could ride either one—”

  She interrupted, “Did the Bear Coat himself tell you that he might ride out to meet us on his war horse?”

  Without speaking, Bruguier shook his head sullenly. “No, he did not mention the horses when he told me he would talk with the chiefs. He told me if they surrender to him, there will be peace. If they do not surrender, there will be war.”

  “What did this one say to you?” Black Bear Shirt demanded of Old Wool Woman.

  She explained what the half-breed said in Lakota, then added, “It is the same message the Bear Coat asked me to bring to you myself. If you want to talk of surrender, you can come to his fort and he will talk peace with you. But if you do not want to surrender, he will put his soldiers on the trail of our village.”

  “Until he drives us onto the Lakota agency at White River!” Little Creek argued.

  “No,” White Bull said calmly. “Perhaps if we surrender to the Bear Coat in this northern country, the soldier chief will give us our own agency in our own land.”

  Crazy Head declared, “This must be. If we are to surrender to the soldier chief, he must give us our own agency on our own lands—where we will always be close to the bones of our grandfathers.”

  “Tell the half-breed we will follow him to the soldier fort,” White Bull instructed Old Wool woman. “Tell him we come to talk to the Bear Coat about surrender, to talk about an agency in our own country.”

  This was the ninth day of their journey north from the valley of the Little Sheep River. Too long a trip only to turn around and flee now. Too great a distance, so deep the cold. So little to eat, so little warmth. So very much to hope for. A white horse or a roan horse. Surrender and peace rode one animal while war and desolation would ride the other. Old Wool Woman’s heart was in her throat as the delegation followed Bruguier and the stranger north those last steps to the Elk River.

  It wasn’t long before she smelled fires, heard the distant ring of axes as wood was being chopped. Thin veils of smoke stained the winter blue sky. Then she spotted the first soldier ahead. He turned to shout at the clearing beyond him, waving a small piece of cloth tied on the end of the long knife attached at the muzzle of his rifle.

  More soldiers appeared, stopping to stand and stare as if incredulous, disbelieving.

  Old Wool Woman watched many of these chiefs and warriors stiffen, their faces set stoically for what now confronted them, as they slowly rode into the arms of the enemy.

  A horn blared in the distance as she spotted the tops of those wooden lodges and canvas tents where she and the other prisoners were held, where the soldiers lived, where the Bear Coat told her he was offering peace to her people. Many of the soldiers were shouting now, mixing their voices with the clatter of metal striking wood and the thump of hundreds of feet pounding the hardened, snowy ground.

  Of a sudden a flood of soldiers appeared in front of the Ohmeseheso, streaming left and right as some of the ve-ho-e shouted orders. In their long, buffalo-hide coats and big fur hats, pulled down over their ears, the soldiers were forming themselves into what appeared to be a battle line.

  While Crazy Head and Old Wolf and the others slowed their gait slightly, they did not halt, despite this display of warlike might from the Bear Coat’s soldiers. Closer and closer their ponies slowly carried them toward the log lodges, toward the tall pole where the soldier chief had hung his medicine symbol with its stars of white and its bars of red. Toward that line of ve-ho-e standing stiffly, each one clutching a rifle with its long knife attached—those weapons pointed at the sky and ready for war.

  Still more shouting continued behind that first rank of soldiers as more of the white men appeared, forming themselves into second and third rows, strengthening those first walls of the enemy.

  Didn’t they understand she had brought them men of peace? Old Wool Woman thought. Didn’t these soldiers realize this was a group of brave men come to talk of surrender? Didn’t these ve-ho-e see how quickly they could wipe out these courageous chiefs who put themselves in the palm of danger?

  “Make up your mind now, Two Moon,” White Bull spoke low to the warrior riding beside him, just in front of Old Wool Woman. “Have courage … for here we are to be killed.”

  She swallowed hard, her heart thumping loudly, as Two Moon nodded once and both men stiffened—their backbones rigid as if to ready their bodies to receive the impact of soldier bullets.

  She could not have made a mistake, Old Wool Woman told herself. The Bear Coat had promised her. She had looked into his eyes and believed.

  Then suddenly out of the shouting and wavelike movements of soldiers in their long buffalo coats, she saw the top of his body, recognized that thick wool cap he wore. He was so tall, his head rose above the others.

  The air was sucked out of her as she realized he was on horseback behind those rows of soldiers, that horse carrying him toward the Ohmeseheso delegation.

  Row by row by row the soldiers parted as she held her breath, waited for her heart to beat again. There he was as the last soldiers opened a path in their ranks for him. The Bear Coat was riding the whitish-gray horse!

  “He is riding the horse of peace!” she announced out loud even though every one of the chiefs could see it for themselves. He was wearing a short bearskin coat, the tails of which spilled across the back of his saddle.

  “The half-breed spoke wrong?” Two Moon asked, leaning slightly as he whispered to White Bull and the entire delegation came to a stop.

  “I think the half-breed wants to have his joke on us,” the holy man said grimly, his eyes narrowing on Bruguier’s wide back.

  Holding his bare right hand aloft in greeting, the soldier chief came to a halt right in front of the delegation. He said something to Bruguier. Then the half-breed turned to speak his Lakota to Old Wool Woman.

  “The Bear Coat will shake hands with the mighty warriors of the Shahiyela and Lakota to welcome them. He will have his soldiers put up some canvas lodges for you to sleep in while you are here. And he has ordered a meal prepared for all of you. When you have eaten, the soldier chief will call you to come talk with him at his lodge.”

  Then Bruguier turned back to the Bear Coat and spoke in the white man’s tongue again.

  The soldier chief nudged his horse forward, stopping at the center of the line where he held out his bare hand to Crazy Head. But instead of gripping the chief’s hand as Old Wool Woman knew these white man favored doing, the soldier chief momentarily gripped the Council Chief’s right wrist in his hand, then released it, smiling all the while.

  In front of her the chiefs and warriors began to murmur among themselves. She understood why all too well. Among the Indians of the plains, this quick gripping of the wrist was the sign for prisoner.

  Turning from Crazy Head, the Bear Coat performed the same gesture with Old Wolf, then moved on down the line, briefly gripping the wrists of each one of the delegation. Still smiling was he.

  Old Wool Woman was confused more than ever. Did he know this was Indian sign for something bad? Or was the soldier chief merely clumsy in his enthusiastic greeting of these warriors?

  No matter, she supposed, as she looked around in those moments while the Bear Coat finished his wrist-grab greeting. She and the warriors were now surrounded the way she and the other women and children had been surrounded by the Bear Coat’s scouts on that wintry day near Suicide Creek. They were prisoners as much today as they were that afternoon before the Battle of Belly Butte. So many soldiers, so many guns, and nowhere to run, even if they could escape now.

  The Ohmeseheso had been prisoners all along, she figured. Prisoners of the winter, captives of the wandering, and the cold, and the hunger.

  What difference did it make now if the Bear Coat broke his word and made them prisoners of his soldi
ers?

  Chapter 16

  19 February 1877

  In less than three weeks the half-breed and the old woman had returned in success! They had managed to convince many of the Cheyenne to ride north to talk to him.

  Nelson A. Miles sensed a giddy surge of elation through his every vein. Now Sherman and Sheridan would have to drape him in glory! Now those mealymouthed superiors like Terry and Crook would be shown for what bumbling, indecisive, incompetent fools they were.

  Now Miles would get what he had wanted all along: his own damn department!

  The colonel was beside himself with self-congratulation at his genius in sending for the leaders of the warrior bands. The only thing that might in any way threaten to dampen his mood was the fact that Crazy Horse and his headmen hadn’t joined this delegation. As soon as the courier had reached the post, Miles had asked about the war chief and his village.

  “They are on their way to the Powder,” the half-breed explained as he was handed a steaming tin of coffee.

  “To the Powder?” Miles’s voice rose an octave. “Why?”

  With a shrug of one shoulder the scout first sipped at his coffee, then answered, “This Crazy Horse not going to surrender easy.”

  “No,” Miles had replied, his enthusiasm sinking. “I didn’t think Crazy Horse would make it easy on any of us.”

  Like stepping from the sunlight into the shade on a bright autumn day, Miles felt a bit colder for that news. It meant he had some chasing and harrying and fighting to do before he would stand ramrod straight to have those general’s stars pinned on him. Word had it Sitting Bull was already out of reach, somewhere north of the Yellowstone, closing on the Missouri despite the winter weather, and making for Canada as fast as the latest storms would allow his impoverished people to move. And now Crazy Horse was just beyond his grasp as well.

  “To the Powder you said, Bruguier?”

  He wiped some coffee from his mustache with a forearm and answered, “East is the best guess for that bunch. Powder. Maybe for the rest of the winter. That’s his country.”

  Irritated, he pressed on, “Surely Crazy Horse realizes by now that we know he favors the Powder River country.”

  But the half-breed only drank his coffee.

  Miles had turned and looked at the crude map hanging behind him in the tiny commandant’s office. Running a fingertip down the Tongue River, south by west, he rested it near the star he himself had drawn after returning from the fight at Battle Butte. Looking east from there to the Powder, he brooded. Then his eyes moved west, to the country of the Rosebud.

  “Isn’t Crazy Horse a man smart enough to attempt to fool me with some underhanded jiggery?”

  When Bruguier again failed to answer, Miles looked about the room at the officers crowded in there with him. Captain Andrew S. Bennett, lieutenants Charles E. Hargous, Oscar F. Long, and Edward W. Casey all nodded their heads, murmuring in agreement with each other.

  “He’s for sure going to give us the slip by scooting west, just like you say, General,” Captain Ezra P. Ewers declared, using Miles’s brevet rank long ago awarded for courage under fire.

  “Yes—but we can catch the bastard on the Rosebud,” Miles had assured them. “Still, for the present, we’re going to have our plates full with these Cheyenne and Lakota coming in to surrender.”

  Now that he had accomplished just what he told his superiors he would do, sleep had been difficult for him. The night after the half-breed showed up, he only dozed off and on, his mind busily composing letters to Mary, many more telegrams to Sheridan in Chicago, others to Sherman in Washington City. After all, wasn’t he due a moment of gloating and self-congratulation?

  And when that morning sun climbed unobstructed by snow clouds, his spirits rose with it. He was finishing his fourth cup of coffee when Bruguier stopped at his office door and the guard announced his arrival.

  Miles stepped out into the bracing cold, glancing a moment at the rising sun, bright and splendid in all its radiance. “Going to be a glorious day, Johnny.”

  “Yeah, General.”

  “Bring those chiefs here to me, Johnny,” he instructed as his cup steamed in the cold.

  “I get them Injuns here for you, then you fix my trouble over to Standing Rock?”

  Leaning a shoulder against the jamb of the open doorway as he watched the half-breed step into the saddle, Miles said, “Soon as these warrior bands surrender and I don’t have to go chasing after them anymore … then I’ll see that those charges against you disappear. You keep on doing what I’ve asked you to do, Johnny, and I’ll do what you’ve asked of me.”

  He had watched Bruguier rein away without uttering another word, watched the scout’s back until the half-breed was tangled in among all the cottonwood that framed the Tongue on its path south.

  That day dragged as few had before. Miles jumped at every approaching set of footsteps, his ears perked up at every loud voice outside—believing each new noise heralded the return of Johnny Bruguier and the Cheyenne leaders. Waiting, waiting past his midday dinner and on into the afternoon.

  When the first word came in, adjutant George W. Baird had Miles’s horse ready, that gray beast with the faintest brushes of white in his coat. A clayish-white coat dominated by a huge head—And oh, how the beast loved to prance. There never was but one choice of horse for Miles to ride out to meet the chiefs when they showed up. He would awe them with his splendid appearance astride that magnificent animal he had paddle-wheeled north from Leavenworth the previous summer. Those Cheyenne would get themselves a good, close look at the Bear Coat, the soldier chief who had given them no quarter and now demanded their surrender.

  There atop the great gray beast he had perched himself regally, while they came before him—hungry-eyed, poorly dressed in winter’s rags, every one of them riding a half-starved Indian pony that was no more than skin and bones—come to sue for peace.

  He had no doubt that these enemies would be impressed by his sudden appearance from behind his men formed in ranks—he, on horseback, seated imperially above file upon file of an infantry that had twice driven Sitting Bull into the wilderness, the very same infantry that had put Crazy Horse and these war chiefs to flight just the month before.

  He remembered how his mouth went dry when the momentous cry echoed across the parade and the officer of the day ordered the bugler to sound assembly. Miles had taken one last glance in that cracked mirror he had carried from Leavenworth in his small chest of personals. Among them were a gilt-edged cabinet photo of Mary, a small locket of her hair, which he had carried up the Tongue in a vest pocket, and some sweet-scented letters of her most daring confessions of the flesh. He had always been resolute, enduring their forced separation.

  “General?”

  Miles looked up now and found his adjutant standing stiff and expectant before his desk. “Yes, Mr. Baird.”

  “I’ve come to report the Cheyenne have finished their supper.”

  “And their coffee?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very good, Lieutenant. Have the sergeant of the guard escort them here, and tell the officer of the day to fetch up Bruguier and the prisoner called Old Wool Woman so we can have our translators at my side.”

  “Of course, General,” said Baird, snapping a quick salute before turning for the door.

  My, but they did look magnificent in their own wild and feral way, Miles mused as the chiefs entered his small office one at a time. Each man first acknowledged him with a glance, then let their eyes roam over everything. Old Wool Woman busied herself with each chief as he came into the office, gesturing toward Nelson, plainly telling her people they could settle themselves on the floor in front of the Bear Coat’s desk.

  “I imagine they’ve never been inside a building before,” he whispered to Bruguier who slouched beside him on the edge of the small, cluttered desk. “This must be a wonder to them.”

  When the visitors had all been seated row upon row on the crowded floor, there
was barely enough room for his officers to stand, pressed against the walls. A palpable tension had seized that small room. Nelson’s men had no weapons visible for this conference, but he had ordered them to have their sidearms ready beneath their unbuttoned coats. Neither he nor his officers were innocents when it came to dealing with these war chiefs. Only a stupid recruit, or a dead man, would believe the chiefs didn’t hide pistols and rifles beneath the blankets they wrapped around themselves.

  Despite the air of suspicion and fear of treachery, Miles grinned hugely as their eyes came to bear on him. He nudged Bruguier forward beside him two steps, then halted.

  “Ask them if they would like a drink of my whiskey,” the officer instructed.

  After translating, Bruguier shook his head. “None of them want your whiskey, General.”

  “Well, now—perhaps that’s for the better,” Miles replied. “Tell them I am very glad that they came to see me and that I will get to know all their names very soon,” Miles promised, and waited for the half-breed’s translation. “I understand there is a Sioux chief among them.”

  Toward the back, a man stood.

  “He is called Hump,” Bruguier said. “With the Sioux, he is a brave warrior, a smart chief.”

  Both alarm and excitement flushed through Miles. “Why is this man here with the Cheyenne chiefs?”

  Johnny asked for Hump’s answer, then repeated it. “He says he and these Shahiyela are related. Many of them marry each other. They hunt together, they fight the white man and the Crow together. Now, he says, he comes with his friends and relations to hear what the Bear Coat says about making a strong peace and giving their people a country of their own for all time.”

  “Why didn’t he go with the other Sioux?” Miles asked. “With the Crazy Horse village?”

  “Hump says all the leaders went their own way after making up their own hearts. Some chiefs went one way, some another. Lots of directions, like the winds off the hills come spring. Hump and his people have followed his heart to hear if the Bear Coat speaks true.”