Ashes of Heaven

by Terry C. Johnston

  For a moment the three Old Man Chiefs looked at one another. Finally, Morning Star relented, “Tell us what you have to say, Two Moon. The Chiefs’ Council will have ears for your words.”

  “Two days ago, White Bull told you what rests in his heart,” the warrior began. “Even though it is clear that the rest of the Elkhorns are prepared to move into the White River Agency, this holy man has told you why he does not believe it is a wise move for our people to travel south.

  “I have been there as well,” Two Moon said. “You chiefs know that. Our eyes have seen the same sights there. Most of the Little Star People there have witnessed the white-topped wagons snaking their way past, heading west, or heading north to the Sacred Hills. Like White Bull said, there seems to be no end to the ve-ho-e. There are so many that they are all over that country. They are like ants boiling out of an anthill.

  “That is not our country. We must share it with the Lakota. But it never was our country. Even when we were at that White River Agency last summer,* the white man known as Long Knife,† the white man who has married one of our women, warned me that many ve-ho-e are coming. Not this winter perhaps, maybe not even next winter—but he said they would come soon in numbers we cannot imagine. It is just as White Bull has said it.

  “Perhaps the holy man is right,” Two Moon continued. “Maybe we should learn to be friends with the white man. Maybe we should make a treaty with the ve-ho-e while there are still any of us left.”

  Drawing himself up, the warrior laid his hand upon his chest and said, “I will go north with White Bull. I will go to the soldier fort on the Elk River to see what the Bear Coat has to say about surrender, about an agency in our own country. Any warrior, any family who wants to come with White Bull and me should join us! And those who do not want to see what the soldier chief has to say can choose where they want to take their families.”

  It had suddenly become so clear, Old Wool Woman remembered, that there was not going to be one consensus for the People to follow. It was plain their camp was divided, and would stay divided. The white man had succeeded in tearing the Ohmeseheso apart.

  With Two Moon’s declaration, Crazy Head, a little chief with the Crazy Dogs, had suddenly bolted to his feet. As the council began to stir and murmur, he raised his voice to say, “Two Moon is right! There are too many whites for us to fight. It is impossible to kill them all! We must find a way to live with them before there are no more of us. I will follow White Bull and Two Moon!”

  “You will give up to the soldiers?” Standing Elk challenged from his position on the southern end of the sacred circle.

  “War has brought us nothing but death and ruin,” Two Moon said before Crazy Head could respond.

  Suddenly Old Wolf stood in that circle of chiefs, declaring, “I too will join White Bull.”

  Then Medicine Bear got to his feet. He had carried Nimhoyoh, the Sacred Turner, into their fight against the Bear Coat’s soldiers at Belly Butte when a cannon ball struck his pony in the battle. “And I will join you. My people will go with White Bull to the soldier fort.”

  Distress blanched the faces of Little Wolf and Morning Star, nothing less than black-bellied anger crossed the face of Standing Elk.

  He stood now, holding his short warrior’s staff in one hand, slapping it against the other palm. “Very well,” he growled in a low voice that showed how difficult it was for him to contain himself. “Like White Bull, Two Moon has made his decision to join with the soldiers, to make another treaty. You have heard my words. I have refused to make another treaty with the ve-ho-e. I still say I will not go to the Elk River post. Instead, I will lead everyone who wants to go to the White River Agency to join the Lakota.

  “Not so long ago, in the memories of most men here,” Standing Elk explained, “our chiefs decided to live together like relations with the Lakota people. The Lakota claim this land we are standing on right now as their hunting ground. If I must choose whose land this is to be … I say it belongs to the Lakota and the Shahiyela. It does not belong to the Ooetaneo-o* and the white soldiers!”

  No longer was that council a quiet affair—excited and angry voices were now raised above a whisper. A line had been drawn in the icy snow, and every man had to choose a side.

  Standing Elk concluded, “I refuse to listen to any offers from the Bear Coat! As for me, I go to the agency to stand with the Lakota!”

  After four days of debate and argument and council-making, all that the chiefs could decide was to go their separate ways. While friends and relations started south with Little Wolf and Morning Star, camp criers instructed those who would go north with White Bull and Two Moon to prepare to leave the following morning.

  It took four days of trudging east before they struck the Buffalo Tongue. Four days during which Old Wool Woman kept glancing back, hoping to find someone from the other camp hurrying to catch up on the back-trail of White Bull’s people.

  Four days now, and it was finally clear they were few and alone in their journey to surrender to the Bear Coat.

  Few and alone beneath an endless, crushing sky.

  * * *

  “Will we camp tonight at the mouth of Suicide Creek?”* young Wooden Leg asked as he brought his pony alongside White Bull’s at the head of the march.

  “Yes,” the holy man answered. “There is wood and water there, and the people are already weary from the last four days of travel.”

  “I wish to go in search of the place I buried Big Crow after our winter fight with the soldiers.”†

  White Bull nodded. “You can go, as long as you and the others keep a wary eye open for any patrols. The soldiers may still be out and scouting for warrior camps. Do not get yourselves in trouble.”

  “We will watch like a hawk on high,” Wooden Leg promised. “And meet you at the mouth of Suicide Creek by the time it grows dark.”

  The young warrior reined his pony about and raced back down the line of march, crying out for his friends to join him. In a matter of heartbeats there were six who had joined up. The seven eager horsemen kicked their horses into a lope, riding past the head of the march, angling up the snowy slopes that rose on the east bank of the Buffalo Tongue River.

  As they rode farther and farther to the north, Wooden Leg constantly assessed the rise and fall of the narrow valley, searching for familiar landmarks that would show the young warrior the place where he and two Lakota warriors had buried Big Crow in their retreat after the fight with the Bear Coat’s soldiers.

  “There,” he finally declared, pointing toward the tall, rocky cliff to the east.

  Yes, there where the valley wall jutted straight up toward the sky. At the base of that wall he and the two Lakota had found a niche in the rocks where they could bury the courageous hero of that fight at Belly Butte.

  It had been inspiring to the other Shahiyela warriors, who were atop the battle ridge that cold, terrible morning with Crazy Horse and his Lakota, that Big Crow decided to make four sacred bravery runs in plain sight of the oncoming enemy. Not far below them the Bear Coat’s soldiers were approaching, sometimes stopping to kneel and shoot at the warriors firing back, warriors busy erecting breastworks out of the sandstone, busy warming their hands and feet at the many fires blazing atop that low ridge.

  This was powerful medicine for so courageous a warrior as Big Crow, especially for a warrior who wore such a large and striking war bonnet that he would make a perfect target of himself for those soldiers clearly within rifle range below. As Wooden Leg watched in awe, Big Crow came out from behind his protective breastworks and began to dance and cavort in clear view of the enemy. At times the chief would fire his rifle at the soldiers struggling through the deep snow toward the base of the ridge where he goaded them with his bravery.

  After that first run, Big Crow had ducked behind the rocks, kneeling there, huffing loudly to catch his breath in the dry, shockingly cold air. Swallowing a mouthful of snow, the warrior chief suddenly leaped to his feet again and went out to perfo
rm a second dance before the soldiers, taunting them, whirling this way and that, firing his rifle until his repeater was empty.

  Big Crow came back a second time to catch his breath behind the breastworks, to reload, and to suck on the icy snow. Then he made a third taunting dance before the enemy. But after another brief rest to catch his breath, a soldier bullet caught Big Crow squarely in the chest.

  As soon as Wooden Leg and the two Lakota warriors reached the fallen chief, they could see he had received a mortal wound: too much blood turning the snow crimson beneath the brave warrior’s body. Ultimately they dragged Big Crow behind the breastworks. When Crazy Horse began his retreat, and with the two Lakotas’ help, Wooden Leg managed to drape the body over the back of a pony.

  After fleeing many bullet-flights up the valley, Big Crow had regained consciousness, but with it came the great pain. He had asked to be left to die in a proper place for a Shahiyela warrior. With sadness, Wooden Leg had complied, curling the war chief’s body into a crack in the rocks before carefully setting many small rocks over Big Crow to form a protective cairn.

  Now this afternoon Wooden Leg grew confused as he looked across the rocky wall for that niche. Where he had gone first to look, there was no body. In desperation he continued north along the ledge for some distance. Finally he returned to the others, muttering to himself that he was sure he had been right in the first place.

  “This is where we buried Big Crow.”

  “But there is no body here now,” one of the warriors said.

  And a second remarked, “Maybe the soldiers came and found the body and took it away.”

  “Yes,” agreed a third. “See how the rocks have tumbled down from the wall.”

  Wooden Leg was all the more confused by the appearance of that cleft in the rock wall, by the jumble of stones below it. “Those had to be the rocks I placed over his body—”

  “Look here!” shouted another who had hung back upon his pony. He pointed to the brush sticking up through the snow.

  Hurrying over, Wooden Leg and the others inspected the clumps of sage. It was true—some of the branches were broken and others disturbed. Perhaps this was sign of what had become of Big Crow.

  “Did you and the Lakota crush those branches when you brought the body here?”

  “I don’t think so,” said a member of the group. “The snow was deeper that day.” He stood a distance down the slope. Now he pointed at the ground.

  “Big Crow crawled this way,” Wooden-Leg declared after he trudged over, inspecting the site.

  Together the seven followed the path scratched through the snow between the clumps of sage until they could see the patch of buckskin emerging from the windblown snowdrift plastered at the side of a small stand of stunted pine. They knelt around that snowdrift and carefully began to scrape away the icy ridge of frozen snow that had formed around the body. The more they cleared from the corpse, the more it became plain how Big Crow had crawled down here, as if making his way to the river.

  Having dragged with him the buffalo robe Wooden Leg had buried him in, Big Crow had propped himself against a large clump of cedar there among the stunted pine as if to rest, to catch his breath as he had been doing when he was making his bravery runs before the enemy.

  “He looks as if he is sleeping,” one of the others said as Wooden Leg brushed the last of the icy snow from the dead man’s face.

  Indeed, it did appear as if the brave warrior chief were only sleeping: his right arm was raised and propped behind his head, his left hand simply laid across his bloody breast.

  Without a word among them, the seven spread out, some venturing downhill, while others went uphill in search of enough stones to form a new burial cairn. Then, with Big Crow’s frozen body laid out within that small stand of stunted, winter-gaunt pine, the young Shahiyela warriors buried the revered leader beneath those yellow and red sandstone slabs once more. They smoked their pipes over his grave and asked the Spirit People once again to accept this brave warrior onto the Star Road.

  Then the seven arose from the snow, climbed onto their horses and slowly moved down into the valley, continuing on their path to the mouth of Suicide Creek.

  Only once did Wooden Leg look back at that windswept hill and what little vegetation grew there to protect the holy place from the howling winds.

  Big Crow had crawled there to die after he was alone. There beneath the wide sky where Ma-heono and the eagles could look down, he had given up his spirit.

  The ground a brave man had chosen for his final resting place.

  Chapter 14

  18-19 February

  1877

  BY TELEGRAPH

  Territory of the Black Hills.

  WASHINGTON, February 16.—The senate committee on territories had a long meeting, devoted to the consideration of Senator Spencer’s bill to create a new territory out of the Black Hills country, which it was proposed to call Lincoln territory … The committee decided to lay the matter over till the next session of congress for the reason that the bill ratifying the treaty made last summer with the Sioux Indians has not yet been passed by the house, and because legislation being so far behind now, it would be impossible to secure the final action of the senate this session.

  With the descent of the sun, the wind had picked up in the valley of the Tongue River. Johnny Bruguier tugged at his worn woolen scarf, once more covering his raw, red nose. The army horse between his legs chose its footing carefully, slowly. The animal was nowhere near as strong as it had been back at the first of the month when he rode away from the soldier fort. It had begun to grow weak almost from the moment the soldier escort turned around for the post, taking with them that supply of horse feed stowed away on the pack animals.

  Once more the half-breed could understand why the warrior bands always told the soldiers they would do this or they would do that, when their ponies were stronger. Winter took its terrible harvest on the horses too: those animals that didn’t die before spring were nothing but crow-bait bags of bones by the time the snows began to melt and the first shoots of grass emerged from the frosty ground. Bruguier only hoped the army horse between his legs would have enough bottom left in it to cross these last miles in to Tongue River Cantonment.

  Again he offered the best prayer he knew that the Shahiyelas’ ponies would have enough strength to cross these last miles before they reached the Bear Coat’s lodge.

  Just before dawn that morning, Bruguier saddled up to begin this ride northward in advance of the village. The cold seemed all the more intense as he grasped wrists with White Bull, nodded to Old Wool Woman, then took the reins to his horse from Two Moon.

  “Tell them I will come out from the fort to meet them,” Johnny explained to Old Wool Woman as he settled atop his saddle. “They do not have to worry about the Crow scouts murdering them this time.”

  Old Wool Woman stepped up to the horseman, and grabbed his stirrup. “Tell the Bear Coat I am bringing my people to him. Just as I promised I would.”

  “He will be happy with this news,” Bruguier assured her just before he turned his horse about and gave it his heels.

  It hadn’t gotten all that much warmer after the buttermilk sun rose in a pewter sky. But at least the wind wasn’t blowing. That is, until now that the sun was easing down after a long, lonely day of pushing everything he could out of the army horse beneath him.

  Squinting ahead with the failing light, the half-breed studied the valley north of him, recognizing some landmarks. Now, more than ever, he hoped to cross these last few miles before dark. Better that he ride into the Bear Coat’s fort before the full fading of the afternoon sun. Too good a chance that a dark-skinned man like him might well be taken for a hostile warrior slipping out of the gloom as another winter night approached. Johnny knew Miles would have wood-cutting parties out until that last hour before sunset. He just didn’t want to stumble onto any soldiers who would take him for the enemy. Not when he was this close.

  Not when he had
come this far to take that hangman’s rope from his neck.

  Less than half of them had followed him north from the Little Bighorn. He hoped Miles would not be angry with less than total success. More than half of the fighting bands of the Shahiyela refused the Bear Coat’s offer to talk of peace and surrender; they were on their way south to live with Red Cloud’s Lakota, down in General Crook’s country.

  And if they ended up surrendering all those warriors and guns and ponies to Crook, then Johnny Bruguier knew in his bones the Bear Coat was going to be furious.

  Yesterday Johnny figured that if he delivered some good news about White Bull’s band to Miles then perhaps the soldier chief would not be near so angry. So when the village made camp no more than a day’s ride from the mouth of the Tongue, Bruguier decided he would hurry ahead to carry his momentous announcement to Miles.

  Nervously glancing over his left shoulder, the half-breed saw how the sullen, winter sun was just then settling upon the hills to the southwest. He didn’t have long now. What was the Lakota prayer his mother would have spoken at a time like this?

  Angrily, he cursed himself for forgetting the words in his youth, replacing his mother’s language with the rich profanity of the white man. Hanging about the sutler’s cabin and cavorting with the soldiers had served only to drive the woman’s prayers out of his memory. And those were prayers he figured he ought to be mouthing right about now—

  He smelled woodsmoke.

  Looking up, Johnny squinted into the deepening afternoon light, a ragged shred hung above the trees far, far ahead, tatters of pale smoke streaking the paler sky. Another glance at the sun and Johnny jabbed his heels back into the flanks of the big American horse. It lunged ahead a few steps, then settled back into its lethargy. Without grain for so long, Bruguier figured he would be lucky if the animal got him to the fort, no matter the speed. Still, he clucked and tapped his heels repeatedly as the smell of woodsmoke became all the stronger.