Ever since he had ridden a rising star among the Shahiyena.
In the late autumns most of the warrior bands wandered back onto one agency or the other, either at Red Cloud or over at Spotted Tail. Through the seasons his people remained closer to the Lakota than they did to their own southern cousins down in Indian Territory. And with the coming of the new grass that fed their ponies and made the animals strong, the warrior bands once more wandered west and north off the reservations.
It had been so this summer. He and the rest of his staunchest holdouts had been out hunting for scalps in the Paha Sapa,* killing those white men who scratched in the ground for the crazy rocks near the sacred Bear Butte. It was there they learned of the rumors that a great fight had taken place far to the west. In the country of the Powder and the Rosebud, on a river where the Lakota traditionally hunted buffalo and antelope—a place called the Greasy Grass.
In that country, the story was told, in the span of no more than eight suns, the warriors of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull had twice defeated great armies the white man had sent against them.
Now the word was being spread: Bring the people! Come north! Soon the white man will be gone forever!
Like some of his friends, Yellow Hair had family living with Little Wolfs band back there on the agency at Red Cloud. While most of the other warriors in that war party hurriedly rode off to the west to join the great chiefs in their defeat of the white man, Yellow Hair and a handful of his friends raced south to spread the word among their people still remaining on the reservation. Those women and children, the old ones and those too sick to help themselves, they would all need the courage of the warriors to flee from the soldiers of war chief Jordan at Camp Robinson.
So it was that they had finally gathered more than eight-times-ten-times-ten of Little Wolfs people and other stragglers behind the ridges north of the agency three days ago. And yesterday they had started north. The Shahiyena had a wide road to travel, a road wide-open as well! To travel so slowly, to bring their families along, these were warriors who had every reason to feel confident that no white man, no soldier would raise his hand to stop them from joining the Hunkpapa medicine man in the north. He was the one with power now—for hadn’t he seen the white man’s ruin in his vision?
For those last few days they had waited on the agency, deciding whether to go or not. Scouts brought word that soldiers were prowling the very same country the Shahiyena would have to cross if they hoped to reach the Powder River hunting grounds. Then scouts returned from the Mini Pusa,* bringing news that the soldiers had turned around and were marching back to the south, toward the Buffalo Dung River, and had abandoned that country between the reservation and the Paha Sapa. As if fleeing from the danger in those mighty villages to the north who had just crushed two armies.
The way was clear!
Yesterday Yellow Hair and the warriors had started them out. No soldiers from Camp Robinson came out to try stopping the People. They hadn’t even seen a single white man all that day. Then this morning, as camp was coming to life and the women were loading their travois for the day’s journey, scouts came in with a report of a train of white-topped wagons that was coming from the west. Coming from the white man’s forts and cities, bound for his settlements in the Paha Sapa.
That would mean those wagons were loaded with supplies: boxes and cans of food, bolts of cloth for the women, whiskey for the warriors, brass and iron kettles, tin cups and butcher knives, maybe even bullets and guns. What a gift the Everywhere Spirit had delivered Yellow Hair’s people as they began their journey to freedom!
They were fleeing the white man’s oppression and the slow starvation of the reservation … and this was the Everywhere Spirit’s reward—this train filled with supplies to take with them as they moved to the north country, never to be forced into returning to the agency again.
He was sitting behind the hill now, gazing at the small mirror he could hold in the palm of one hand, straightening his face paint, when one of the young scouts came tearing up on his pony.
“There are two of them,” the youngster said breathlessly. “They left the wagons and are now hurrying ahead of the rest.”
Yellow Hair asked, “Which way are they coming?”
The scout pantomimed, arching his arm west to east.
The war chiefs eyes narrowed gravely. “If they move their horses too fast, they will see our warriors behind these hills—and our surprise for the wagon train will be ruined.”
“We must kill the two riders,” growled Rain Maker.
“Yes,” Yellow Hair said to his good friend, the one who had seen him take the brave man’s scalp many autumns before. “And we will lead them.”
Quickly he pointed to a handful of others who would come—men like Beaver Heart, Buffalo Road, and other old friends. Not a large party, but enough that they could easily swallow up the two riders and kill them behind one of these rolling hills without alerting the others. The wagon men would roll on down the white man’s road toward the Paha Sapa, not knowing that death waited for them all this new day as the sun rose in the east.
“Come!” Yellow Hair shouted as he kicked heels into the ribs of his strong pony.
Behind him Rain Maker and the others yelped as they streamed out from the far side of that knoll and followed Yellow Hair into the shallow ravine. The sun was chasing shadows off the land, rising strong and confident this morning. The way his people were once more rising above the land.
This was to be their summer. The time of his people.
On they raced down the bottom of the ravine, listening to the fading shouts of encouragement from the warriors who would lie in waiting, hiding until the signal was given to attack the wagons.
Closer and closer they galloped toward the white man’s road at the mouth of this ravine.
In the coldest hour of that morning Bill Cody had awakened himself as he used to do all the time, at least before he had gone east to begin performing on the boards. It was a good life, and it paid him well enough.
But it was nothing like this: rising before the sun and saddling up, walking his mount through row upon row of sleeping soldiers, and finally climbing into the saddle beyond the pickets. To ride alone below the waning stars, just he and these grassy hills, having put Warbonnet Creek at his back so he could look to the south and have his eyes behold nothing but this great inland sea. Bill had enough time to circle west, ease on south, then angle over to the east, where the Cheyenne were sure to be somewhere on that road.
He wanted to know where they were, so he could tell Merritt how much time they had before the Cheyenne were up and moving. Before the Cheyenne bumped head on into the Fighting Fifth.
Sure enough, Bill found the village in the smudgy gray light of that dawn. But by the time he had wandered back to the west so he would not be discovered by any wandering scouts, and returned to the regiment’s bivouac, Bill found the soldiers already up, finishing breakfast, some having saddled their mounts while others were busy oiling the trapdoors of the Springfields, packing themselves down with ammunition.
He caught up with Merritt as the colonel was climbing into the saddle.
“I just received good news, Bill,” Merritt said in that Gatling-gun, rapid-fire speech of his when he grew excited. “Messenger came in with word from our forward post. They’ve spotted Indians.”
“Probably the advance party of the village I found waking up this morning, General.”
“I’m going to see this for myself,” the colonel said with a smile.
They had gone to the high ground, waited—and were rewarded quickly enough. The Cheyenne thought they were about to swallow up those two couriers, then ambush a wagon train. Were they going to be surprised!
And now he sat atop his buckskin, his hat tugged down on his long brown curls, pulling down the bottom of that short-waisted Mexican coat of black velvet drenched with a blood-hued scarlet braid, resplendent with silver conchos and white lace adorning the cuffs. None of the oncoming warriors he would meet in a matter of minutes could outshine him. Too bad these dowdy, dusty, frumpy soldiers knew nothing of the importance of such things. A man must look his best, wear his finest, when he rode into battle. Perhaps only a true warrior like himself understood these Cheyenne they would strike in a few heartbeats. A man always wore his finest when going against the enemy.
“All ready, General?” King asked above him at the top of the hill.
Merritt rose slightly in a crouch just down the slope from the lieutenant, gazing over Cody and the rest, then peering back to the line of troopers gathered in the middistance. “All ready, King. Give the word when you like.”
No matter what Bill did to prepare his weapons, to straighten his clothing in these anxious minutes, he never
