Ashes of Heaven (The Plainsmen Series)

by Terry C. Johnston

  Despite the unknown, they had followed him. Despite all that he warned them of, the chiefs and their warriors followed with their families. There were no easy places to go anymore. There was nowhere safe for their women and children and elders. Their lives had changed and Box Elder told them they would have to find some way to accommodate that change.

  Walking beneath Nimhoyoh across all those miles, he remembered those first ve-ho-e who came to the Ohmeseheso generations before, when he had been but a little one himself. The hairy faces who came, and went again. Those few did not stay in the land of the Lakota and the Ohmeseheso, but merely moved through it. Yet ever since the fight of the Hundred in the Hand near the Pine Woods Fort* the ve-ho-e had come to stay.

  Box Elder knew the finest days of his people were in their past.

  All he could strive to do now was to assure that his people survived. If they were not rich in ponies and lodges, weapons and plunder, winter robes and quillwork, then the Ohmeseheso must survive into the next generation. And the next. And hopefully the next.

  Of all the roads Box Elder had walked, even that climb out of the Valley of the Red Fork when Three Fingers Kenzie crushed the Shahiyela and they stumbled into the unknown winter wilderness, this was the hardest.

  Day by day he walked on foot with those at the front of the march, just behind Spotted Wolf and Elk River on their ponies. Their young men rode watch on either flank, ranging ahead so they would not be surprised when they finally struck the Buffalo Tongue. For two days now they had journeyed north along its west bank, sensing they must be getting close. Now they had stopped for midday, with the spring sun high, while two of the young men scouted far ahead, probing for some sign of the soldiers and their fort.

  Over these last two days Box Elder could tell that Elk River had grown even more anxious. He was not quite himself anymore. The holy man called the chief to sit with him as they rested.

  “Elk River, I think you have grown unsure that you made the right decision to follow my medicine.”

  When he finally answered, the war chief said, “Yes, it is true what you say. My heart grows heavy to give the ve-ho-e all our horses, to give up all our weapons as the Bear Coat demands of us when we surrender.”

  “The war is over,” Box Elder reminded him. “Our days of fighting the white man are done, but I cannot leave this north country. I cannot leave this land. I cannot leave the bones and burial ground of my ancestors.”

  “A man should not leave his ancestors,” Spotted Wolf said.

  Box Elder continued, “Now it is up to us to see that there are Ohmeseheso to live, to make a peace with the soldiers—to last beyond the seventh generation.”

  “I hear what you say in here,” Elk River said, tapping a finger against his temple, “but my heart aches so for what was.”

  “Elk River,” Box Elder commanded, “is your daughter near?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you see her?”

  “Yes, I see her, Uncle.”

  “Look at your daughter, Elk River,” Box Elder directed. Then he called out in a loud voice, holding out his arm. “Bear Woman, come take my hand!”

  Without hesitation, the young woman stepped up and knelt beside the old prophet, allowing him to clasp her hand in both of his. “I am here, Box Elder.”

  “Bear Woman, you tell your father that your family will live on into the generations to come. His blood will not die. You say this to your father now.”

  “I know my daughter will marry one day,” Elk River interjected.

  “No, she will marry soon,” Box Elder replied, wagging his head. Then he turned his sightless eyes to the young woman again. “Your heart must be light, Bear Woman. Going to the soldier fort will bring a great change in your life. Where we are going, you will meet a young man.”

  “One of White Bull’s people?” she asked.

  “No,” Box Elder said.

  “A ve-ho-e soldier?” Elk River snarled.

  “No,” the old prophet assured. “I do not see Bear Woman with a soldier. But, the ways of the heart are rarely known to man.”

  Squeezing the old one’s bony hand, Bear Woman asked, “What are you saying to me, Box Elder?”

  “At the fort, you will fall in love with a man. The two of you will marry within a few days.…”

  Through the brush stabbed the sound of oncoming voices, the hammer of pony hooves. Box Elder could tell the scouts were returning.

  “The soldier fort!” came the cry.

  “It is not far!” another voice took up the call.

  “We will be there before the sun sets!”

  All around Box Elder the others were standing. He could sense the fear in them. Excitement too. As the old man arose beside Bear Woman, he clutched her hand very tightly. More than anything, there was among these people a dread of going on.

  “Walk with me, Bear Woman,” he said as he felt his sightless eyes sting and the tears spill down his weathered cheeks.

  The two of them set off slowly, parting the crowd as his feet felt their way north, into the unknown, into their future.

  “I am afraid,” she whispered.

  “So am I,” he admitted as he felt Lame Dog come alongside him, felt the Nimhoyoh placed in his right hand.

  Bear Woman asked, “You are afraid too, Grandfather?”

  “Yes,” he finally admitted. “But my heart is filled with hope … for you and I will lead the rest into this new day for our people.”

  * * *

  “White Bull says that old man out in the front has much power,” the young Cheyenne half-breed explained to the Irishman.

  Seamus nodded, watching the small procession inching closer to the outskirts of Tongue River Cantonment to surrender. He and Willis Rowland stood in the midst of more than thirty Cheyenne and Lakota scouts who had volunteered to serve Colonel Nelson A. Miles. All around them stood the women and children, the hundreds of soldiers who were turning out for this surprise arrival. The Bear Coat planted himself at the center of the long, colorful, noisy gauntlet, there among his officers as he finished shoving the last of his big brass buttons through the holes on his dress coat, draped with resplendent braid and adorned with glittering hash on the cuffs.

  “What is that the old one’s holding over his head?” Donegan asked.

  “The scouts say it is the Sacred Turner,” Rowland declared. “I’ve never seen it myself down south, but my mother has told many stories about it. My mother’s people call it Nimhoyoh. They say it has the power to make them invisible to an enemy that wants to do them harm.”

  “They’re afraid,” Donegan whispered.

  Not even Rowland heard him say it, but he felt his heart sink as this grand old man entered the far end of the long gauntlet of Cheyenne and soldiers greeting them. They were afraid of being murdered.

  Stooped and bowed with age, the old man holding aloft that sacred object was helped along by a young man steadying one arm, a young woman on the other. The old man must be some powerful priest, he figured. That priest must be very, very afraid, having to hold up that object to protect his people from the soldier bullets, walking here between two long rows of soldiers.

  “Two chiefs are bringing in their clans with the old holy man.” Rowland translated what some of the Cheyenne scouts were saying as they greeted the newcomers. “There ain’t many of ’em, is there?”

  “Can’t be many big groups out there no more,” Seamus said. “Does White Bull know who them two are helping the old man?”

  “Lame Dog is the young man. He’s going to become a medicine man too,” the half-breed youth said. “But White Bull says he don’t know why the one called Bear Woman is walking up front too.”

  “Perhaps that’s the safest place to be,” Donegan observed as the procession stopped and Miles stepped forward. “If that Turner really is going to protect them from bullets.”

  Then Miles turned, waving Willis Rowland up. The colonel turned some more, finding Rowland’s white father in the crowd. W
illiam Rowland nodded in approval. The colonel smiled and put his arm around the young half-breed, who reached his side to begin translating the Bear Coat’s greeting for the new arrivals.

  Moving to the elder Rowland’s elbow, Seamus said, “Some stroke of good fortune brought you here, Bill.”

  Rowland glanced at the taller man. “A long time coming, this day.”

  “There’s more of ’em still out there.”

  “I know,” Rowland agreed sadly. “Soon as we heard reports Spotted Tail was on his way to talk ’em into coming in to the agency, Willis and me set off.”

  “You wintered up at Red Cloud after Mackenzie’s fight?”

  Scratching at his leathery cheek, the interpreter said, “Agent or army always needs someone to talk for ’em.”

  “’Specially after we helped Crook take the ponies and weapons away from Red Cloud’s bands,”* Donegan said. “What makes a man leave the agency in the dead of winter like you done?”

  Rowland stared at the icy ground, grinding at it with a boot heel. “Man gets old, winter stabs him to the bone. I ain’t young as you, Irishman. I ought’n be moseying home to a fire and my woman.”

  The crowd was beginning to break up. Soldiers heading off in a hundred directions, Crazy Head’s Cheyenne swarming around the new arrivals, leading them toward their camp north of the fort. Horses whinnied, men sang, and drums were beaten. Children laughed and women cried as they greeted old friends.

  “Will you look at that, Bill?” Seamus asked as Miles passed by with some of his officers, joined by a few of the Cheyenne leaders and that old blind man who had just arrived.

  Young Willis Rowland walked slowly beside the young woman who maintained her unwavering hold on the blind shaman’s arm. It was plain to see that Willis was already smitten. Almost as plain to see, by the way the young woman glanced coyly from the corner of her eyes at the young half-breed, that she too was taken with the interpreter.

  “I figure the boy’s been bit,” Rowland said as his son moved past with the others, not even glancing over at his father. “About time too. He just turned eighteen earlier this spring.”

  “She’s a handsome woman, Bill,” Seamus said as he turned back to the elder Rowland. “Your boy could do a lot worse.”

  “Always wanted him to find a Cheyenne gal like I did,” smiled the father. “Figured he’d do better that way, than him trying to break in a white gal … Willis being mixed-blood and all.”

  “I’ll wager you’re right on that account,” Donegan declared. “But you didn’t bring Willis this far north just to get him hooked up with no Cheyenne woman.”

  “No, we could’ve turned south with Morning Star’s village if all we was doing was to find him a wife,” Rowland said as he took a plug of army tobacco out of a coat pocket and bit off a sliver. “You’re right about another thing, Irishman. There’s more out there. You know that, don’t you?”

  “How many you figure?”

  “Nothing Miles can’t handle,” Rowland said. “But … the last ones gonna be the real hard cases.”

  “Always that way, ain’t it?” Donegan asked. “Them what can read, but still won’t pay no heed to the writing on the wall.”

  Chapter 27

  Spring Moon

  1877

  BY TELEGRAPH

  SPOTTED TAIL TO BE MADE A COLONEL IN THE ARMY.

  THE INDIANS.

  Surrender of More Cheyennes.

  RED CLOUD AGENCY, NEB., April 26.—Nine Cheyenne warriors surrendered this morning. They report thirteen lodges to follow them in a few days. These will make twenty lodges that have come in since the main body of Cheyennes arrived. It is reported by these Indians that forty lodges of Cheyennes are moving toward the mouth of the Tongue river, to surrender there. Crazy Horse was, at last accounts, on this side of the Belle Fourche, coming this way.

  It took Wooden Leg a long time to do anything but grieve for his sister.

  When the peace delegates found that big village on the Powder River, Old Wool Woman was carrying the terrible news that Crooked Nose Woman shot herself in the head at the soldier fort because the man she wanted for a husband hadn’t been among the delegates with White Bull and Two Moon. At first Wooden Leg was very angry with Shoots Twice for his sister’s death, but then he realized he could not blame the man. Shoots Twice had already been gone hunting for days when the delegation started for the Elk River fort to talk surrender with the Bear Coat.

  After the peace-talkers found the village on the Powder, the camp broke apart again. But this time, Wooden Leg didn’t continue south for the agency with the majority. Instead, he steadfastly remained with his Kit Fox Society war chief.

  “Those who want to surrender are free to surrender,” Last Bull told his warriors.

  It was plain to him that Last Bull still licked his wounded pride. Most of the Shahiyela continued to blame Last Bull and the Kit Fox men for not allowing them to escape, not even letting them prepare a defense against that devastating attack by Three Fingers Kenzie.

  “As for me, I will not surrender anywhere,” the chief declared to his loyal warriors. “Not while the grass grows tall and our ponies are fat.”

  In addition to Last Bull’s wife and children, four other married men—Dog Growing Up, Many-Colored Braids, Little Horse, and Black Coyote—brought along their families. Joining those five lodges was a mixed group of thirteen unattached young men from all three warrior societies. At each camp these bachelors slept in the open, or made themselves shelters from willow and brush. By and large most of them did their own cooking, but Wooden Leg slept in Last Bull’s lodge, as a member of the chief’s family. Ever since Wooden Leg had helped protect Last Bull’s wife and children during the Powder River fight,* the warrior chief had treated the young man like a nephew.

  Once Wooden Leg’s father decided he would follow Little Wolf and Morning Star to the White Rock Agency, Last Bull took him in. It had been good for him to have family around him as they moved west from the Powder River, hunting each day, slowly moving from camp to camp, keeping on the watch for the Crow People or for the Shoshone, always wary of soldier columns.

  A few days later a young warrior reached one of their camps, asking to join Last Bull’s band. Although Yellow Eagle had wintered with his relations at the White Rock Agency, the moment the weather began to warm he said his farewells and headed for the north country alone to locate the wandering bands.

  “I happened upon Little Wolf’s people,” Yellow Eagle explained to the Kit Fox Warriors. “But when I learned they and Morning Star’s people were going in to the agency where I just left, I asked them where I might find any who were staying out.”

  “You want to stay free with us?” asked Yellow Hair, Wooden Leg’s brother.

  “Yes. I came a long way from the reservation to be free,” he declared. “And free I will remain.”

  It wasn’t long after they parted company with the big village that Black Coyote’s wife gave birth to a son. Well known among the Ohmeseheso for her bravery, Buffalo Calf Road Woman had acted with great courage in rescuing her brother during the fight with Three Stars on the Roseberry River the previous summer.* In those final hours of Buffalo Calf Road Woman’s labor, the wife of Many-Colored Braids assisted as midwife and medicine woman, delivering a healthy, strong-lunged boy who raised his first battle-cry to the spring skies.

  “This is another good sign,” Last Bull told them as soon as they heard the newborn’s first wail from the birthing lodge. “New life for him means that we will continue in our old life!”

  Inside the birthing lodge, the medicine woman tenderly rubbed the tiny boy’s body with milkweed down, then cut the umbilical cord, saving a portion of it for the child’s mother. In the following days Buffalo Calf Road Woman would encase the cord in a leather amulet cut in the shape of a turtle. After it was decorated with beads or quillwork, this revered symbol of the sacred Grandmother Turtle—the creature who had helped Ma-heo-o create Mother Earth—would remain with
the child for many winters to come.

  Across the days that followed the birth, four other women helped the new mother by taking down or setting up her lodge. Daily thunderstorms forced them to seek shelter early every afternoon, storms of rain and cold that kept the hunting poor in the country of the upper Powder, later as they reached the headwaters of the Buffalo Tongue country. Always when the weather turned cool and wet, the deer and antelope bedded down and were hard to flush out. But those rains caused the grass to grow tall and lush; in little time their ponies would fatten after a harsh and long winter.

  Last Bull came to Wooden Leg and said, “In the morning I want you to go scouting for buffalo.”

  He loaned Wooden Leg one of his strongest horses and a packsaddle to lash the meat upon. The young warrior headed into the hills alone, hopeful. He had the rifle he had taken from a dead soldier, after the fight on the Little Sheep River, and a good supply of ammunition for it. Three nights he stayed out, without sign of buffalo. Although he spotted some game off in the distance, when Wooden Leg caught up to the others he was empty-handed, but for two turkeys.

  Never before, Wooden Leg told them, had he seen that countryside so bare of deer and antelope, elk and buffalo. He realized it wouldn’t be long before hunger would return to the eyes of the little ones. How it made his heart ache to look about those three-times-ten in Last Bull’s camp, to see how every man, woman, and child’s clothing had worn beyond repair. And not nearly enough skins to replace their tattered garments.

  Long gone were the blue coat and breeches he had taken from that dead soldier beside the Little Sheep River. Even his leather shirt and the wool leggings he had been wearing since early winter now hung ripped and ragged. The only decent article of clothing Wooden Leg still owned was the wide-brimmed white hat he had captured during the Rose-berry River fight. It alone had survived not only the heavy snows of the previous winter but the drenching downpours of spring.

  While Wooden Leg had been off searching for buffalo sign, a despairing Last Bull reluctantly dispatched two of his warriors to the White Rock Agency to sniff out the conditions of those who were surrendering. Yellow Eagle, who had recently come out from the reservation, took White Bird south with him. A few long and hungry days after Wooden Leg rejoined the camp, the two scouts returned from their journey.