It made Roman Nose laugh to watch the frightened white men release their mules and go bounding back across the sand to the shelter of the wagons. Some of the Lakota drove the mules off to camp while others chased after five horsemen who raced for the soldier fort.
On the hillside above the timbered ravine, Roman Nose dismounted, spread his small blanket and took out his short medicine pipe. Filling the bowl with tobacco taken in the raids of last winter, he smoked, watching his warriors begin firing at the soldiers and civilians trapped in the circle of their wagons. Time enough to watch and enjoy.
But the white men poked loopholes through the sides of the wagons, and killed a few of the more daring warriors who attempted to ride close enough to hit a soldier or count coup.
So as the afternoon dragged on, and the sun grew hotter, like a white eye in the sky that seemed to be scolding him, Roman Nose grew restive, watching the lack of progress while the Cheyenne dead mounted.
Knocking out the burnt tobacco into his palm, the war chief tossed four pinches into the winds, another toward the sky, and one dropped on the earth. A last pinch he smeared across his forehead before he tied on a special headdress made for him by a feather shaman named Ice.
It was time the powerful medicine of Roman Nose ended this fight with the handful of white men burrowed in their wagon corral.
Riding slowly down the slope, he called his main lieutenants to his side and told them his plan. They left to order others to crawl in close and keep the soldiers occupied and hunkered down behind cover while Roman Nose himself prepared the grand charge.
When all was in ready, the war chief shouted his signal. The snipers who had crawled close to the wagons opened up a deadly barrage with their white-man guns taken last winter along the Platte and yesterday at the bridge. The Shahiyena had many more rifles than did the Lakota of Young Man Afraid of His Horses.
Then Roman Nose turned atop his pony, waving both his arms for the charge to begin. The others raced behind him, like swallows following a hawk. As they neared the snipers, the Shahiyena riflemen ceased firing.
With the quickness of a striking snake, the red horsemen were among the wagons in a slashing, noisy blow, leaping over wagon tongues, shooting down at the white men who hid behind saddles and barrels and kegs. Without their chief saying a word, the warriors leapt from their ponies at a dead run, clubs or tomahawks in their hands, killing those who rose to fight to the last. Hacking at the wounded who could no longer raise themselves in defense.
In a matter of six heartbeats—their fury was spent.
With a wild screech from his powerful chest, Roman Nose announced to the white men in the fort and to the Lakota in the hills that he had been victorious. While some of his warriors stripped, scalped, and mutilated the dead soldiers, he ordered others to plunder the goods in the wagons, then set fire to the wagons themselves once everything they could carry on their ponies had been carried off into the hills north of the river.
Along with fourteen more rifles taken from the bloody, frozen clutches of their white victims.
After the Cheyenne had swarmed over Sergeant Custard’s wagon train, Major Anderson called for volunteers to carry a message eighteen miles east to the soldiers stationed at Deer Creek. Anderson selected three men, paying them fifty dollars each for their dangerous ride. Under cover of darkness the three slipped out separately and took different routes down the North Platte.
Anderson needed men badly: he had nine men seriously wounded, and twenty-five had been killed.
Among the mutilated dead retrieved at the far side of the river from the previous day’s fierce fighting, a note was found attached to one of the bodies—more like a scrap of paper torn from a soldier’s personal diary. Word of that note spread quickly among the men of Platte Bridge Station, most choosing to believe that it was in fact written by a former Confederate serving with the Eleventh Ohio for the past year.
“It says he was captured down on the Platte some time back,” Jonah Hook said.
“Note don’t say a damn thing about a
“It says the Injuns don’t want peace, and they’re expecting another thousand warriors to join up to fight us. And you don’t believe it was writ by the soldier?”
Sweete shook his head, then whispered. “The Injuns don’t keep a soldier alive, Jonah. That’s pure addle- headed thinking.”
“If it ain’t a soldier, who then?”
“A woman.”
“Woman?”
“Lot’s of ’em got took in those raids down on the South Platte. What I saw of it—”
“You seen the note?”
“Anderson wanted me to look at it,” Shad admitted. “It don’t look like the hand of a man. More like a scared woman’s hand wrote that note.”
“Damn their black hearts!” Hook cursed not quite under his breath, his chest heaving. “Nothing more evil than these savages dragging off women and children into the wilderness—for God knows what outrage.”
“Injuns ain’t the only ones. White or red—we all done our share of evil to one another out here across this big land.”
Sweete found Hook staring at him, eyes narrowing.
“Old man—it sounds to me like it don’t bother you to think of that woman being alone with all them savages—raping her.”
“It bothers me, Jonah!” he snapped. “But, goddammit—I’m telling you the Sioux and Cheyenne ain’t the only sonsabitches out here. Evil bastards come wearing all color of skin. I saw for myself how Colorado Volunteers showed off the private parts of Cheyenne women they killed and raped and cut up down on the Little Dried River.”
“You seen that with your own eyes?”
“Several fellas held up them privates for show at a opera house in Denver City last winter.”
Jonah’s mouth worked a moment, trying to form some words.
“I pray my woman and child are safe down in Indian Territory right now, where no soldier going to touch ’em, Jonah.”
Hook swallowed hard.
“Lord, Shad—it’s like all this is a big hole gets opened up in me, and I can’t fill it or close it no way I try. Lord watch over me, but how I wish I was home with Gritta and the young’uns. Home.”
Shad turned away to stare at the sky when he saw the tear tumble down the young soldier’s dirty cheek.
The next day, after Sweete and the Shoshoni had delivered their urgent dispatch and the hostiles had apparently cleared out, Captain Lybe led his detail of Third U.S. Volunteers on down the Laramie Road. They had pushed several miles east of Deer Creek Station when Shad spotted a cloud of dust ahead of them.
“Indians?” Lybe inquired.
“Don’t think so. Leastways, not down there. Don’t make sense—them bringing a big camp with women and children this close to Laramie. Sioux and Cheyenne like to fight the soldiers off and away from the fort.”
The captain wiped the back of his hand across his cracked, rosy lips. “Go see for yourself, Sweete.”
Shad came back a half hour later to find Lybe’s men sitting in what shade they could steal among the alder and cottonwood, escaping the late July sun.
“Soldiers, Captain,” Sweete announced as he rode in among the anxious soldiers.
“Thank God,” Lybe said.
“Thank General Connor and Jim Bridger,” Shad replied.
“Connor?”
“Bridger’s leading him this way.”
“How many troops?”
“A shitload.”
“Bet he’s coming this way, loaded for bear. For certain he’s heard of the attack on Platte Bridge Station.”
