wagons.
“She has a child?”
“A son. Born the first week of the Moon of the Seven Cold Nights.”
“Will he have a brother, Yellow Hair? Will you give Monaseetah a child of your own? She is your woman.”
“Monaseetah is not my woman,” he stammered, his eyes searching the faces of the curious warriors.
Mahwissa’s wrinkled lips curled. “It is true no black-robe waved his hand over your marriage. Yet the Everywhere Spirit knows you took Monaseetah as your wife. She is fertile like the prairie soil in spring. It is not yours to decide, Yellow Hair. The Everywhere Spirit will use you in His way. Not even the great
Agitated, Custer glanced at her belt, anxious to change the subject of this conversation. “You have my knife. The knife I let you carry to visit your people.”
“Yes.” She giggled, pulling aside her blanket to expose the scabbard at her belt. Mahwissa had trimmed it with small, tinkling tin cones and strips of red cloth.
“You decorated it for me. I thank you.” Custer extended his hand.
“No longer is this your knife.” She closed her blanket.
For a moment Custer was speechless. “I see,” he finally replied, straightening in the saddle. Custer gazed at the old chief. “Tell me, is Medicine Arrow like you, Mahwissa? Is he a liar too? I gave you warm food to fill your belly. A blanket for your back. Yet now you steal my knife. Is the word of the Cheyenne an empty sound?”
Mahwissa threw her head back, cackling. “Do not talk to me of lies between our people, Yellow Hair. You offered food and I ate. You gave me a blanket and I slept. You gave me a pony and sent me back to my people. I stayed. Would you not remain with your people?”
“I asked you to help—”
“Yellow Hair, hear me! I would sooner starve in freedom with my people than live with a full stomach as your prisoner. Though I would shiver at night without your blankets, I would sooner let my bones freeze and my flesh rot in freedom than live my years beneath your warm blankets.”
Moylan watched Custer draw in his shoulders at the tone of her words as if flinching at a painful wound. Without knowing what was said, he sensed the air sour between Custer and the woman. And Moylan knew as few others would exactly how shame stung Custer like a slap in the face.
“I will remember, Mahwissa,” he whispered. “You spit in my outstretched hand, like an ungrateful dog.”
“No longer will you treat me like a dog, Yellow Hair,” she said with a sneer.
Custer gazed at the amused faces of the onlookers. “Sadly, it will not be you, nor this Medicine Arrow, who will suffer. Instead, the Cheyenne of the future will pay for your stupidity here today. Listen! You can hear the Cheyenne of winters to come—hear their keening on the prairie winds. Listen! I hear Cheyenne children crying, growing weak with empty stomachs. Fathers killed by soldiers. Mothers chased into the wilderness to starve. Listen to the winds of the future!”
Custer straightened in the saddle, signaling Moylan to follow. Medicine Arrow studied the renowned Yellow Hair as he rode up, as if appraising the portent of the moment.
Written on both faces Moylan saw the realization that they were about to play out a drama neither one had the power to stop. Two men brought here to confront each other, setting in motion the gears of some machinery that would grind inexorably for eight more years.
Something in the haughty way the old chief sat on his horse told Myles that Medicine Arrow had made his choice—to defend his people and their ancient nomadic way of life.
Moylan studied Custer as he and the commander drew closer to the Cheyenne villages on the Sweetwater, wondering if Custer had learned that all his kindness had gone for naught. Moylan sensed something tighten, shrivel and die in Custer back there when Mahwissa shamed him.
With the set to his commander’s jaw, Moylan realized George Armstrong Custer finally accepted the fact that the Indian respected only a pony soldier who was tough and fearless, a soldier as possessed in following his own vision of personal glory as were the Indian warriors who rode against him. Near the center of the sprawling, bustling village, Medicine Arrow halted in the midst of a large crowd come to see the great Yellow Hair.
Boys stepped up to take the reins from Medicine Arrow as he slid from his pony. Others came to lead the soldier horses away. The war chief ducked into his lodge. At the front stood two short tripods. The first held a war shield. From the second hung a bow and quiver stuffed with arrows.
Custer ducked into the close warmth of the lodge, the adjutant on his heels. The chief gestured for Moylan to have a seat on the robes by the door.
Medicine Arrow settled at the rear of the lodge, showing Custer to sit at his right hand. He muttered briefly to the gray-headed woman busy at the fire. Without a word she scurried like a gray spider from the lodge.
“My woman is told to bring the camp crier. He will walk the circle of our camps, calling the chiefs and counselors to join us in our talk. The fire warms our cold bones while we wait. When all are here, we listen to what lies in each other’s hearts.”
Custer turned to Moylan. “Myles, see how they’ve placed me at the right hand of the chief himself, the seat of honor.”
One by one the chiefs, and counselors entered, taking their respective seats in the circle. Each plopped down on the dark robes like winter owls around the cozy warmth of the fire.
“Myles,” Custer whispered, “you see this ancient one here?” He gestured to the wizened Indian at his right, his face carved with the passing of many winters. “Probably a medicine man among these people. One of their feared shamans. Seems I’m flanked by two powerful men among the Cheyenne. You’re privy to a momentous occasion, Mr. Moylan. The tribe is about to pay me a great honor.”
Custer swept his arm about. “Crude paintings on the buffalo-hide wall. Figures representing the stories of Medicine Arrow’s life. Deeds in peace and war. Rawhide parcels hung from the poles. Some hold articles of dress. Others might contain rock and feathers, ashes or bone—all part of Medicine Arrow’s personal magic.”
Directly behind his head, Custer pointed out a long bundle wrapped in the skin of a coyote’s winter hide. From it hung fringe. Porcupine quillwork decorated both red and blue trade cloth wrapping the ends of the bundle. “This must be some magical container—something signifying the chiefs rank among his people. An esteemed honor for a man to sit beneath the bundle.”
What Custer could not know was just how wrong he could be.
For a man to be given a seat at the right hand of the chief was disgrace enough. Yet it was a mild rebuke compared to the Cheyenne giving him this place beneath the sacred bundle. Its presence over his head during this council marked how momentously serious these proceedings were viewed by the Cheyenne.
Years before, when Rock Forehead had been chosen as the keeper of that sacred bundle by the Southern Cheyenne, he had taken his new name. Legend had it the bundle’s Medicine Arrows had been presented by the Everywhere Spirit to a Cheyenne man in the long before as a gift to a chosen people. Wrapped in a wide strip of winter-gray fur lay the four arrows: two shafts painted crimson, symbolizing a continued abundance of food for the Cheyenne people, the second pair painted black to signify the tribe’s continued victory in war.
By placing the soldier chief they called Yellow Hair beneath their sacred arrows, the Cheyenne had placed George Armstrong Custer on trial.
While Custer admired the red-and-black-dyed forked stick from which the sacred bundle hung, the last guests stooped into the lodge. The elkskin flap slid over the doorway.
The old man to Custer’s right drew a long buckskin bag into his lap. From this beaded bag he pulled a pipestem as big around as a walking stick, from which hung a decorative array of war-eagle feathers and winter- white ermine skins. To the end of this stem the chief attached a crimson pipestone bowl, inlaid with pewter and rubbed with bear grease to reflect every dancing flame of the fire.
At the old man’s waist hung a smaller pouch. From it he drew a handful of willow bark and tobacco mixture, which he poured on a square piece of red cloth on the ground before him. Herbs and leaves were added, then stuffed into the huge pipe bowl. During the ritual, the old one droned an ancient prayer, asking that with the smoking of the pipe this day would come truth from every tongue.
The old medicine man surprised Custer, grabbing his wrist. The old man closed his rheumy eyes and turned his face toward the smoke hole above, placing the soldier chiefs hand over his heart while he murmured his toothless prayers.
