by Judith Pella
Alerted by the gunfire, the main force speedily dispatched a troop to the rescue. When the troopers burst in on the scene, the warriors were suddenly not only outnumbered but also facing a two-front battle. They returned several rounds of fire, inflicting little damage to their enemies, and were soon forced to retreat to a more tenable position. There was a sparsely wooded area some three hundred yards away, but an open, grassy meadow had to be traversed in order to reach it. The Cheyenne were now as exposed and vulnerable as the three scouts had been fifteen minutes before.
A hundred yards from the trees, Little Left Hand’s horse was shot out from under him and he was trapped beneath its crushing weight. Broken Wing and Stands-in-the-River reined their mounts to an abrupt stop, both men leaping to the ground even as the horses were still in motion.
With bullets crisscrossing over their heads from several different directions, the brothers dragged their comrade free. Then Broken Wing, using the fallen horse as a shield, provided a cover of rifle fire as Stands-in-the-River lifted the injured Little Left Hand onto his own mount.
“Come!” Stands-in-the-River shouted to his brother, turning to make sure Broken Wing would make good his escape.
Broken Wing fired his last shot and spun around to make the sprint to his waiting horse. He reached the gray stallion, but as he leaped into its saddle one of the soldier’s bullets hit its mark. The searing pain was so explosive, so unexpected that Broken Wing lurched forward and nearly lost his grip on the stallion, and would have if the stallion had not bravely held its ground. His hands clutched around the Pawnee war pony’s neck, Broken Wing maintained his own footing and swung successfully into the saddle. The gray covered the rest of the distance to the trees in a lightning sprint that left the soldiers amazed.
But Broken Wing was hardly aware of the speeding powerhouse under him. To the wounded warrior, it seemed an inordinately long time before the sounds of gunfire and the noisy pursuit of the soldiers faded into the distance. Crushed beneath the weight of his wound, Broken Wing kept pace with the other warriors only by the tenacity of his fine gray stallion. When the party, having evaded their pursuers, finally halted in a secluded gulch, Broken Wing was bent over his pony’s neck barely able to hang on.
This was the first indication to Stands-in-the-River that his brother had been hurt. He rushed up to him and helped ease him from the horse onto the soft ground, grimly aware of the widening splotch of red on the back of Broken Wing’s buckskin shirt.
“Oh, my brother!” groaned Stands-in-the-River. “This is my fault. I have led you to your death by my foolishness.”
“You did—we did what was necessary.”
“Wind Rider will never forgive me!”
“I fear it is the whites she will not forgive—” Broken Wing paused as a spasm of pain shot through his body. Then urgently he gripped his brother’s hand. “Stands-in-the-River, go to her … help her understand….”
“I will bury you here and then keep on fighting the white man soldiers,” said Stands-in-the-River, anguish and bitter gall nearly choking his speech.
“Go to your lodge, my brother. There is no other way….”
“Broken Wing!” Only the warrior’s stoic reserve kept his overwhelming emotion at bay. “This must be avenged!”
Broken Wing shook his head. “I want no hate spent on me…. Remember, nothing lives long, only the mountains and the earth. Tell this to Wind Rider. And tell her to remember only the happiness we had, and the love. It was good—”
But Broken Wing said no more. He closed his eyes and began the journey upon the Hanging Road to the happy place where he could hunt and ride in peace and freedom with his long-departed friends and ancestors—perhaps even with his white stepfather, Abraham Johnston.
44
Trudging up from the river, carrying two heavy skins of water, Deborah glanced toward the village where riders were approaching. Half a dozen warriors were returning to camp, and as she always did since Broken Wing’s departure, she studied the group closely, hoping one would be her husband returning. She hurried back toward the village and as she came closer she recognized Stands-in-the-River clearly. Then she saw the gray stallion—riderless, with a load laid across its back.
“Broken Wing!” she cried, and, dropping the skins, ran to the stallion.
After that, everything passed in a dark haze for Deborah. She stood by silently, numbly, and watched as several of the women began the awful ritual of dismantling Broken Wing’s lodge. They gave away all his possessions, his shield he had made during the last Sun Dance, his favorite bow, his hides, his horses, even the cooking utensils. When they finished, nothing remained, not even the lodge poles. She knew she must have wept during the whole ordeal because she felt inside that hollow, raw sensation of one who has cried for hours and hours. She knew Gray Antelope must have held her through it all because she saw her friend next to her, but she could not feel the woman’s comforting arm around her shoulders. She could feel nothing, only emptiness.
When it was done, when there was only flat, bare earth where once her happy lodge had been, Deborah was left with only two possessions—a buffalo robe and a knife. Leaving her children in the care of Gray Antelope, Deborah went off alone to complete her expression of grief.
The grass by the bank of the river was cold as she fell to her knees in it, a reminder that winter was not far away. But Deborah’s winter had begun the moment she had laid eyes on the riderless stallion. Deborah took the knife firmly in her hands. She had seen other Cheyenne widows do this, but until now had not fully understood the extremity of grief, the magnitude of loss that could give a woman the courage to honor her dead mate in such a way. She brought the knife to her hair and sliced away the long, dyed braids. She slashed the sharp blade across her arms and legs and, as she watched her blood drip into the grass, she did so with the knowledge that with each wound she inflicted upon herself, she was elevating her husband in honor and respect. In this way the others would know what a great man he was and that he was loved beyond the mere expression of words. It was the Cheyenne way, and it was no longer hard for Deborah.
When she had finished, she stood, somewhat unsteadily, and went to the scaffold where they had laid Broken Wing. There she placed the blood-stained knife.
More than anything she wanted to join him on that scaffold. She wanted to die also. What reason was there to go on? Life was filled with too much loss, too much pain. What good was a little happiness if it was only going to end in heartache? Why did God taunt her so?
“Oh, Broken Wing, why didn’t you take me with you on the Hanging Road? You were never selfish with me before—why now?”
The knife caught her eye. She thought of the times she had faced the possibility of death before in her life—when Leonard had driven her to the brink of suicide; when she stood on the gallows with a rope around her neck; when she struggled, hopeless and alone, on the prairie. Each time she had chosen life, chosen to fight to live. She might have been weak and helpless, but she had always been a fighter. Broken Wing had seen that; he had called her a warrior.
Did that mean she must now find the strength within herself to fight once more? But she had none left.
How could she possibly go on if she chose not to take the knife and finish the work the ritual wounds had begun? The steel that had kept her back straight and proud as she walked up the gallows steps now suddenly seemed bent and useless. The stamina that had forced her to crawl on hands and knees, hungry and tired, grasping at the prairie grass as if for life, had all melted away. The sheer stubbornness that had once prevented her from pulling that derringer trigger was gone.
“I am no longer able to fight!” she silently cried into the prairie wind.
And out of the far distant past, her father’s voice responded to her anguish.
“My flesh and my heart faileth; but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever.”
Deborah had scoffed at those words as a seventeen-year-old girl griev
ing the loss of her brother. She had believed that her father, at a loss to comfort her, was merely placating her. But what if he had been right? What if God truly was the only source of strength?
Yet, how could He cause all this pain and misery and still be the same God who brings comfort and strength?
She wished she could forget all about God. Why did He have to be part of the equation, anyway? She managed without Him quite well—until a crisis struck her. Then, for some reason, He would leap back into her thoughts as if He were trying to haunt her. All the teachings of her childhood would spring into her mind. She did not want to be the kind of weak, ineffectual person that turned to God only in time of need. She wanted to be independent, self-sufficient.
But if God were truly the only source of strength … ?
She seemingly had only two choices then: give up and take that knife and end her suffering, or turn to the One who was ready to give her the strength to go on.
“I don’t know … I don’t know …”
Falling to her knees beneath her husband’s scaffold, she began sobbing once again in agony and confusion.
“If I had a reason to live … just one reason!”
Several minutes later, Deborah struggled to her feet. Her emotional stamina was gone, and her physical reserves were drained as well by the loss of blood and pain from her wounds. She might have stayed longer at the foot of the scaffold, but the coming of evening brought a biting cold wind that penetrated even her numb senses. She remembered the robe she had left by the bank of the river. She thought she would fetch it and return to her husband and there wait until she knew what to do.
She had taken no more than a few steps when a little figure burst through the bushes that surrounded the burial site. It was Carolyn, her face damp with tears, her little voice broken with emotion.
“Nahkoa!” she screamed. “You go away, too?” Weeping, she threw her arms around her mother’s neck.
In a moment, Gray Antelope came huffing and puffing into sight. She held Blue Sky in her arms. “I’m sorry,” she said, “the little one got away before I knew. She was afraid you would go away, too, like—” Gray Antelope broke off, for it was not right to speak the name of the dead. “I could not stop her.”
Kneeling by her daughter, Deborah brushed away her tears. “Oh, my dear Singing Wolf! I won’t go away from you, don’t worry. But I must be alone for a while because … because …” How did one explain such a thing as mourning to a child? How did other Cheyenne children accept the temporary absence of their mothers during the mourning time? Maybe it was wrong of her, selfish, to follow the traditions if it meant causing pain for her child. At a loss for the proper words, Deborah looked up to Gray Antelope for help.
The older woman faced the child and spoke with the assurance of one who had lived her life with these traditions, who understood them and knew they somehow brought order and cohesiveness to her people.
“Singing Wolf,” she said with pride and confidence, “your mother must mourn; it is the way of our people. In this way she brings honor to the dead. You must be a brave Cheyenne child and allow this to be.”
“Then I want to mourn too!” said Carolyn, her previous fear turning into stubborn determination.
“Mourning is not for children.” The finality in Gray Antelope’s voice did not invite argument even from a petulant child like Carolyn.
“You come back,” Carolyn said to her mother. It was not a question but a demand.
“I will, my dear … I will.”
Gray Antelope Woman looked at Deborah as if to affirm the truth of Deborah’s statement, for she had been nearly as fearful as the child—with perhaps more reason, since she had a better understanding of the depth of Deborah’s grief.
Deborah responded to her old friend’s questioning look. “I know now I have a reason to come back.”
Deborah kissed her children and hugged Gray Antelope, then watched them go. She wasn’t ready to go with them yet, and she did not know when she would be, but at least now she knew she would return to them. It was not yet her time to travel the Hanging Road.
She had asked for a reason to live and she had, in her children, been given two reasons. It almost seemed as if Carolyn’s arrival, timed so perfectly, had indeed been an answer to her outcry. Was that answer from God? Had He interpreted her cry as a prayer and then answered it faithfully, as her father would surely have believed?
“I wonder,” she said softly into the wind. “I wonder …”
45
Black Kettle’s band moved to a winter camp in the broad basin of the Washita River in Indian Territory. It was a fine place for a camp, with thick stands of cottonwoods lining the sandy banks, while precipitous red bluffs looked over the scene like a domineering father. Some six thousand Indians, including bands of Arapahoes, Comanches, Kiowas and Apaches, had taken advantage of it, spreading out along a fifteen-mile stretch of the river as it curved back and forth through the valley.
The peace-chief’s village was at the most western point of the line of encampments, somewhat isolated. But the chiefs considered that as soon as they did some hunting and obtained a small supply of food, they would move closer to the other camps for added protection.
A thick layer of high clouds overshadowed the valley, portending an early snow. Deborah pulled the buffalo robe tightly around her shoulders. She had walked on the fringes of the camp for several weeks, eating meager handouts from Gray Antelope and other sympathetic women, and sleeping out in the open wrapped like a cocoon in the robe.
She had lost weight, grown weak, and in the last day or so had developed a mild fever. She didn’t know how she managed to go on, if it was hope or despair that drove her. She missed her children terribly, and she still cried often, especially at night when she’d unconsciously reach out for Broken Wing’s loving warmth only to find a cold, empty place at her side. She wept even more when she realized it was not only a husband she had lost but a friend. A terrible void had been left in her life.
Yet something had begun to happen inside Deborah that day when Carolyn had come running to her in apparent answer to her anguished cry. She couldn’t quite explain it. She wouldn’t say, in the words of Sam Killion, that she had found religion. But she had found hope, or at least she had come to see that hope was possible, that it might truly be found by a diligent seeker. Unfortunately, in the days that followed, she had become too absorbed in her struggle against the physical elements to give this search for hope much attention.
The little hope she had appropriated, however, sustained her, until one day Gray Antelope Woman came out to the place where Deborah had made her destitute camp. She gave Deborah some pemmican and a cup of water, and squatted down beside her while she ate.
“Crooked Eye sends me,” she said. “He wants me to tell you it is time for you to cease your mourning.”
“I will never quit mourning,” said Deborah.
“I know, Wind Rider,” said Gray Antelope with compassion, taking Deborah’s hand in hers. “The wounds on your heart will take much longer to heal than those on your skin, but if you do not come back, you will die. The snow will fall soon, perhaps tonight; the earth will freeze, and I fear you will also. Besides, your little ones need you. As much as I would like to be, I am not their ‘nahkoa.’ It is you they want.”
“You are right, my friend. There are others I must consider now.”
With Gray Antelope’s help, Deborah stood, and together they returned to the village.
“You will live again in the lodge of Crooked Eye,” said Gray Antelope.
“Thank you. I would be honored to live with my dear friends.”
That night an early snow fell upon the Washita valley. Deborah was kept warm by the nearness of her children and, though they could not replace the friend and companion she had lost, she knew they were a gift of inestimable value.
As winter closed in with certainty upon the prairie, General Sheridan was faced with the repeated failure of his troops
to make contact with the hostile Cheyenne. He finally was convinced his only hope of success was to mount a winter campaign by which he might catch the Indians at their weakest, and thus most vulnerable. For this task, he called upon Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer, who had not long before been relieved of his command of the Seventh Cavalry because of desertion, for which he had faced a court-martial. Sheridan believed that only the daring Civil War hero, the youngest general of the war, could pull off the risky campaign. Eager to take back the reins of the Seventh, Custer returned to Fort Hays immediately.
While Custer was refitting the Seventh Cavalry, Black Kettle was convinced by Ten Bears, of the Comanche, to make another attempt at peace with the whites. Thus, he traveled to Fort Cobb to meet with its commander, General Hazen.
“I am not afraid to come among the white men,” Black Kettle told him, “because I believe they are my friends. My people want peace, and for that reason we have stayed south of the Arkansas as the treaty on the Medicine Lodge Creek said we should. But I have not been able to keep all my young warriors home. Some became angry when they were fired upon by the white settlers, and now they want to keep on fighting. I cannot speak for the Cheyenne north of the Arkansas; I cannot control them.”
Hazen, who had already taken in some bands of Kiowa and Comanche under the protective custody of the fort, regretfully told Black Kettle that he had no authority to do so with the Cheyenne. He told the peace-chief that only Sheridan could make peace with the Cheyenne, but he was quick to warn Black Kettle that there were already troops in the field and he could not guarantee their intentions. He believed Black Kettle truly wanted peace and promised he would make this known to the authorities. But in the meantime, he could do nothing to stop the war.
On the twenty-third of November, as Black Kettle was returning to his camp on the Washita, a heavy snowstorm blanketed the land. The Cheyenne felt relatively safe as the wind and snow beat down upon their secluded and well-hidden village. No army would venture out to make war in such weather. But they had not taken Custer into their reckoning.
