Brothers of the Buffalo

by Joseph Bruchac

  And now there was just one last prisoner to put into irons. From the look on his face, he was more than just unhappy at the prospect. He looked to be one of those young warriors who would sooner die in battle than be chained. One who would gladly trade a ball and chain for a bullet in the breast. He was trying to hold back, digging his heels into the dirt. The two big men of the 5th on either side of him pushed him forward.

  “Look at that one,” Josh said. “Like a horse that’s caught the scent of the branding iron!”

  Black Horse. That was the man’s name. Wash had heard it called out. The group of Cheyenne women who’d been watching from a distance were getting more upset as Black Horse struggled. Up to then those women had just been moaning and wailing. But now they were starting to sing. Wash had no idea what the actual words were, they being in Cheyenne, but he could guess the meaning. Some sort of warrior song, the sort that urges a man to fight like a wolf rather than be tied up like a dog. The white soldiers were paying the women no mind—and that was foolish. Nothing could get an Indian man stirred up to a boil faster than being embarrassed in front of his women.

  Couldn’t any of the white officers lolling about and smiling with Lieutenant Colonel Neill see what was going on? Wash thought about speaking a word of warning. But what good would his saying anything do? He was no more than a private, a man who was supposed to keep his mouth shut in front of his superiors, to say nothing of the fact that he was a colored soldier and therefore expected to be doubly silent. Plus the fact that the lieutenant colonel disliked and mistrusted black soldiers only a little less than he did the Indians.

  That was one of the reasons why no black man was now on guard, just the bored and complacent white soldiers of the 5th—despite the fact that the two companies of Buffalo Soldiers, D and M, were the ones who’d been sent there to escort those same prisoners back to Fort Sill.

  I just hope nothing goes wrong, Wash thought.

  And then something did.

  As Wesley raised his hammer to drive in the rivet, Black Horse pulled his leg free of the manacle. With that same leg he booted the surprised blacksmith in the chest, knocking him head over heels. Quick as a panther, Black Horse leaped over the man and began to run. The singing of the Cheyenne women turned into ululating cries as the fugitive sprinted toward the river. Cross over that and he’d get to White Horse’s camp, only half a mile away.

  But, Wash thought, he’ll never make it. All you need is a few men on horses to head him off.

  Black Horse was only one man, fleeing in fear of being chained. It should have been easy to catch him. Unless someone did the wrong thing.

  And then someone did. More than one someone. Those surprised white men of the 5th Infantry raised their guns and started shooting. That was bad enough. But even worse, the white soldiers were so excited that their bullets mostly flew over Black Horse’s head. And where were those rounds heading? Right toward White Horse’s camp.

  A bullet from a .45 rifle could travel a mile and still be lethal. And that was just what those stray rounds did. They ripped through the lodges of Dog Soldiers, the fiercest fighters of the Cheyennes. Not knowing what was going on, what were the people of White Horse’s camp to believe? Just like those in many a peaceful Cheyenne village in the past, they assumed they were under attack. The angry shouts and desperate screams coming out of White Horse’s camp were proof of that.

  But the soldiers of the 5th paid no attention. They just keep reloading and firing at Black Horse as fast as they could, still sending most of their shots right into the Dog Soldier camp. Black Horse suddenly fell, finally struck by what surely must have been a mortal wound. His legs kicked, and then he lay still. The fight was over for him.

  An arrow came arcing out from White Horse’s camp. It dove like a hawk and thunk! hit a soldier of the 5th in the shoulder. A flock of arrows followed the first. Those Cheyenne Dog Soldiers had turned in their guns, but some had kept their war bows. They were taking the fight to the men they believed were trying to wipe them out like they had at Sand Creek and the Washita.

  Wash, Josh, and Charley watched it all, stunned. They were far enough back to be out of arrow range, so they didn’t move. Better in the middle of the craziness to stay still and wait for orders.

  Most of the men of the 5th were still firing or ducking arrows. Some of the white soldiers, though, were showing enough sense to herd the manacled Cheyennes back into the stockade. At least those chained-up Indians would not be taking part in the fight begun for no good reason.

  But I’d bet a million that is not going to be true for us, Wash thought.

  And sure enough, just as he thought that, a bugle began sounding boots and saddles.

  “Come on,” Josh yelled, grabbing Wash’s arm.

  The three of them ran for the barracks.

  By the time they had formed up with their companies, the fight had moved across the river. The Buffalo Soldiers rode toward White Horse’s village. The Dog Soldiers had retreated, the women and children going first, the men following behind, keeping their faces to the army and firing as they fell back. The only weapons the Indians used were their bows and arrows. But even though they were outgunned, they had managed to slow the advance of the 5th Infantry and the 6th Cavalry.

  Wash’s hands were trembling—not from fear but from the tension that came before going into a fight. He held steady to the reins as he guided Blaze down the bank into the water. With Charley to his right and Josh to his left he splashed across the North Canadian in good order with the other men of Companies D and M.

  They trotted through the deserted village, empty save for the body of a single Cheyenne warrior, his hands empty of any weapon, lying dead halfway out the door of a lodge. The acid odor of gunpowder was in the air, as was the smell of burning. One of the lodges they passed was on fire, flames licking up its leather sides. Volley after volley of gunshots could be heard from the sand hills ahead of them.

  Wash found himself wishing that Sergeant Brown was with them and not back at Fort Sill. He felt nearly naked going into a fight without the sergeant’s good sense to guide them.

  “Up there,” Charley hollered.

  In the distance where the sand hills started, they could see men of the 6th dismounting and advancing on foot toward where the Indians had to be hiding. Unlike the nervous guards who had started the whole ruckus, the 6th cavalrymen were holding their guns at the ready and not yet firing. And no arrows were coming toward them.

  “Dang it,” Charley said in a disappointed voice. “Just when I thought we was going to have a real fight for once. Them Cheyennes must be out of arrows. This shindig’ll be over before we get a chance to get into it.”

  Suddenly a dozen flashes of fire came from the hills. The sounds of those gunshots fired by the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers reached them a second later.

  “Appears they did not turn in all their rifles after all,” Josh said in a laconic voice.

  The 6th cavalrymen had been totally taken by surprise by the fact that the Indians had dug up more than the hatchet. In those sand hills away from their village they had buried as many rifles as they had turned in when they surrendered. The men of the 6th quickly retreated, firing back at their hidden enemies.

  When they reached the position where the men of the 10th waited, the cavalrymen of the 6th were shaken but appeared unhurt. Not a one of them seemed to have been hit. That didn’t surprise Wash. Taking careful aim never seemed to be a strong point in any battle, whether those shooting were Indians or army men.

  “We are in it now, boys,” someone shouted. It was Captain Alexander Keyes, one of the two white officers in command of companies D and M. “Dismount. Form up with the 6th.”

  Things began to happen fast. Private Hamms blew the signal to charge. And just like that they were running hard at the sand hills, bullets whickering around them, everyone hollering at the top of their lungs and shooting. Then, almost at the same moment, they were answering the call to retreat, taking withering fi
re from the Cheyennes, whose aim had improved. Captain Keyes took stock. A dozen men wounded, though none that serious. Six of them still able to keep up the fight while the others were taken to the rear.

  “Get ready again, boys,” Keyes yelled.

  Wash looked around. Josh to his left, Charley to his right. All three of them untouched.

  So far.

  Hamms sounded the bugle once more. They charged on foot again, shooting at enemies where all they could see were rifle barrels. The Dog Soldiers were well dug in to pits in the sand, unlike the black cavalrymen, who were out in the open. And this time the response from the Cheyennes was even more accurate. Four more men were wounded, two so bad that they had to be carried back when retreat was sounded once more.

  Wash spat sand out of his mouth. He wiped it from his eyes where the grit was being carried down with the sweat now soaking him from head to boots. Charley and Josh were still by his side, none them hurt but all of them bone tired. Though it had seemed to happen in a matter of heartbeats, the fight had now been going on for hours. The sun is was just a double hand’s width from setting.

  “Here come the coffee mill!” somebody yelled.

  Wash turned to look. Lieutenant Colonel Neill had finally arrived and brought with him a Gatling gun, the kind of weapon that could spit out a stream of bullets as fast as the gunner could turn the crank.

  Wash ducked down as the gun’s barrel was swung to fire over the heads of the members of the two Buffalo Soldier companies.

  “Fire!”

  BAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!

  Raking the dunes, .45 caliber rounds sent spurts of sand ten feet into the air. Impressive as it looked, Wash suspected those bullets were doing little more than rearranging the surface. The Indians had to all be scrunched down low in those deep holes they’d dug.

  “Advance on foot,” Neill shouted from his position back by the gun, waving his saber.

  What?

  Captain William Rafferty and his men of the 6th began to stand and start forward. Neill gestured for the white troopers to stay put.

  Charley poked Josh with his elbow. “Guess who they goin’ to send in instead of them white boys?”

  Rafferty looked back toward Neill.

  “More suppressing fire, sir?” Rafferty called out.

  A second longer burst answered him from the Gatling gun. It raked back and forth, back and forth across the Indians’ lines, sending sprays of sand into the air.

  BAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT! BAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!

  Wash doubted that it had any more effect than the rounds fired before. The sand was absorbing most if not all of the rounds.

  Lieutenant Colonel Neill waved his arms to get the captains’ attention. He shouted so loud that Wash could see his face turn red—even from as far away and safe from the fighting as Neill was standing.

  “Stand up the 10th! Move them forward!”

  Moving again, moving past the 6th into the heat of the battle. More and more flashes came from the Cheyenne guns in the dunes. But the men of D and M companies didn’t stop. They ran faster as more bullets came at them.

  Then a bullet whizzed past Wash’s head—in the wrong direction! Others followed. The shots were coming not from the Cheyenne guns in front, but the rifles of the white 6th cavalrymen behind him.

  Charley was just ahead of him. Wash tried to call out a warning, tried to tell him to get down. The bullet hit Charley in the back and spun him around. He fell awkwardly on his side twenty feet away.

  “Josh, Charley’s hit!” Wash yelled.

  Then a bullet with his name on it thudded into the back of Wash’s hip. It was like being struck by a giant hammer. It dropped him to his knees, but he still managed to crawl forward to reach Charley’s side. He rolled him over. Charley’s eyes were open, but all the laughter was gone from them. The wound in his chest where the bullet had exited was as big as Wash’s fist. No blood pulsed out of it. The big happy heart that the .45 bullet had passed through was no longer beating.

  Wash tried to say something, tried to call Charley back to life. But no words come out of his mouth. Instead, something hit him hard on the side of his own head. The whole world turned gray around him as he fell forward into a hole so deep that it had no bottom.

  He opened his eyes when he heard the sound of thunder. The sandy battlefield was gone. He was on a cot. When he tried to move, a pain stabbed him in his hip that felt like he was being pierced by a bayonet. Still, he tried to sit up.

  Two hands gently pressed him back down.

  “Wash, you stay still,” a voice said. It was Josh. “You got hit twice. One was just a crease on your head. That knocked you out. Other was a bullet hit you low down, right where you sits. Old Sawbones dug that one out. Says you might be stiff a while, but you can get back in the saddle in a month or so. So you going to be all right.”

  “Charley?” Wash asked.

  Another roll of thunder from outside made Josh pause before he answered. “You know,” he said.

  “I know.” Wash’s voice caught in his throat. He swallowed, took a breath. “Wasn’t Indians.”

  Josh sighed and nodded. “Them white boys in the 6th never did like us darkies. Captains say it just happens sometimes. Accidental-like. We stood up when we should have kept down.” He shakes his head. “Not a thing we can do about it.”

  Rain began beating hard on top of the roof. Wash looked around. A dozen or more other wounded men lay in the cots around him. It was hard to tell by the lantern light whether they were black men or white.

  “How many?” Wash asked.

  “Nineteen casualties,” Josh said. “Most from our 10th.”

  They listened to the sound of the rain.

  “Want to know what happened in the fight?” Josh finally asked.

  “I suppose.”

  “We never was able to break through. Old Neill, he called up every available man, had us all dig in around the Cheyennes’ positions. By then it was dark and the storm was coming, way bigger than this little one hitting us now. So much thunder you’d a thought the sky was going to war. Rain so hard you could not make out your own hand at the end of your arm. Next morning, Neill orders us to charge. And all we find is empty rifle pits.”

  Josh let out a bitter chuckle. “Ever’ one of them Indians snuck out during the night and got away. Most of them just went back to the other Indian camps near the agency. And even with all that shooting, looks as if there was not but three Indians killed.”

  Of that I’m glad, Wash thought. Then the thought of his best friend with his heart blown out came to him once more. His eyes filled up with tears.

  “Goddamn it all,” he managed to choke out.

  “Yessir,” Josh said. “That does about sum it up.”

  As long as the Sacred Arrows were treated

  with proper respect, they protected the People.

  They were carried on the back of the wife

  of each Arrow Keeper who came after Sweet Medicine. When the proper ceremonies were carried out

  and the arrow renewed, the People had plenty of

  buffalo. When the proper ritual was done before

  going into battle against their enemies and

  the arrows were carried in a certain way on the lance of a chosen warrior, they brought the People victory.

  Then came the summer of the year the ve’hoes call 1830. That summer, in the moon when the wild cherries were ripe, the People went to take revenge against their old enemies the Pawnees. White Thunder was Arrow Keeper. He and his wife had their hands and faces painted red with the spiritual paint. His wife carried the bundle with the Sacred Arrows upon her back. All was as it should be.

  But when the Cheyenne warriors came upon the Pawnee village, they were impatient to attack. They did not give White Thunder time to do the proper ceremonies that would have blinded the enemies. There was no time for him to reverently place the Sacred Arrows on the bed of white sage, to chant the song:

  There you lie help
less, easy to be wiped out.

  The warriors were in such a hurry that

  the Arrow Keeper was unable to dance with his left foot extended, keeping time to that chant, with all of the warriors behind him in a line as he thrust the points of the Sacred Arrows toward the enemy.

  None of that was done, nor any other parts of

  the ancient ritual Sweet Medicine had taught.

  Instead, Bull, the warrior priest chosen to lead

  the charge, rode up to the Arrow Keeper.

  He was in a big hurry. He should have been leading,

  but the other Cheyenne warriors had charged ahead

  of him and now he had to catch up.

  He thrust his lance toward the Arrow Keeper.

  “Quick! Tie the bundle to the end of this,” he said.

  That, too, was wrong. The arrows should have been

  tied in two separate pairs, the Man Arrows together and the Buffalo Arrows together. Instead,

  all four Sacred Arrows were tied together

  at the end of the lance.

  Then Bull rushed into the battle.

  A single Pawnee man sat on a buffalo robe

  in front of the other enemies. He was sick and

  had decided this was a good day to die.

  He was singing his death song. Other Cheyennes

  had already struck that sick man with their coup sticks as they rode by him. There was no need for

  Bull to ride at that man and try to count coup.

  But Bull did just that, and as he swung his lance

  at the Pawnee, the sick man turned his body to avoid

  being hit, grabbed that lance tight, and tore it

  out of Bull’s grasp, taking the Sacred Arrows.

  “Come here and take this,” he shouted to

  the other Pawnees. “Here is something wonderful.”

  Hearing his words, the other Pawnees raced up

  to surround him. The Cheyennes could not get there

  in time. The Sacred Arrow bundle was placed in