that to stay out of the way of the two soldier armies, the less game they found. Already the men had to kill most of the dogs, and a few of the poorer ponies. Just so that the little ones would have something to eat.
More and more there was talk about going south, all the way back to Red Cloud’s agency. There, more argued every day, the old and the sick and the very young could find something to eat. The white man’s flour and his pig meat. No real choice to a Lakota warrior.
Still, with each new day American Horse found himself thinking more on it, for the sake of these people.
Such a thing was all but laughable to a warrior. To run before the soldiers now was all but unthinkable. To retreat back to the agencies?
The soldiers had come probing into Lakota hunting ground from two directions. But his people had stopped the soldiers of Three Stars on the Rosebud. Then they had defeated Limping Soldier’s army on the Greasy Grass. Yet the white man did not leave them alone.
Even now the army marched on the backtrail of this little village, harrying his people the way buffalo wolves will follow along in the wake of a herd, waiting for a calf to be abandoned by its cow, waiting for an old bull to fall, unable to rise.
Although the seven great circles had begun slowly to separate days after defeating the soldiers along the Greasy Grass, nonetheless most of the clans and warrior bands had migrated in the same general direction. First to the south toward the mountains, then veering off east toward the Tongue, and finally setting a course for the north once more. After crossing Pumpkin Creek the bands had splintered, by and large, for the first time along the Powder near the mouth of Blue Stone Creek. Here the Shahiyena of the North broke off and continued for the White Mountains* under their chief Dull Knife.
Hunting as they continued east, the Lakota warriors set fires in that country they were abandoning not so much to deprive the soldier horses of something to eat but more because it helped the new grass grow early the following spring. Every summer they had done the same, for as long as American Horse could remember. It always meant good grass next year for their strong little ponies as well as for the buffalo, who would migrate to this country once more on the winds. Most of the Lakota bands wandered on east, fording Beaver Creek and on to the Thick Timber River† as they slowly ambled toward the various agencies close by the Great Muddy River itself.
Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapa, Crazy Horse’s Hunkpatila, the Sans Arc under Spotted Eagle, even American Horse’s own Miniconjou—other chiefs too—like Black Moon, Four Horns, and No Neck—all the bands had maintained contact throughout the last two moons of migration. In the nearby country even now those other bands remained ready to lend assistance in the event of an emergency, though they must travel and hunt separately. Better to break into small camps for hunting now that game was becoming scarce.
There was still a long way to go before his people would reach Red Cloud’s agency.
Before then perhaps they could force the white man to give up the chase, to clear out of Lakota country for good. Without a fight—this would be all anyone could ask!
After two long, hard fights on the Rosebud and the Greasy Grass they did not have that many bullets left. Even with the number of weapons and bullets taken from the soldier bodies—the Lakota did not have enough to make another big fight of it against the white man. Better to stay out of his way if they could.
But while they avoided the soldiers, it made sense to remain ready and watchful. And arm themselves for that day they might use up all their bullets. So it was that many of the older warriors taught the young men how to cut iron arrow points from old frying pans and iron kettles.
A good fighting season this had been—driving off Three Star’s soldiers from the Rosebud, crushing the rest who came to fulfill Sitting Bull’s great vision. Among all the bands the Lakota had lost fewer than ten-times-ten warriors altogether in both great battles! So even though the lonely women had mourned, the camps had much more to celebrate.
Those had been good days to die! The very best his people had ever known.
Now roaming scouts kept the camps informed of where the two armies were marching. They knew each time the two armies were reinforced by more soldiers. And they knew when the two joined into one. It wasn’t long, however, that reports came saying that half of the soldiers were staying along the Elk River.* And the others were coming east, heading for the Owl River,† led by the traders’ sons‡ who were scouting for the soldiers. Traitors such as they would likely follow any trail they could find.
It was not a hard thing to find a trail, American Horse scoffed. After all, all the big clans were here. Crazy Horse’s people were but a few miles away to the south. Even Sitting Bull had come down from Killdeer Mountain in the north with his Hunkpapa faithful, camped close by to the east a ways, where the old medicine man mourned the death of a son who never recovered after he was kicked in the head by a pony during the waning of the last moon.
In his Miniconjou camp of more than twenty-six-times-ten, the chief even included a handful of Shahiyena who had splintered off from Dull Knife, a few Oglalla under war chief Roman Nose, and even some Brule lodges— all drifting south for Bear Butte in the Paha Sapa.* Among these other bands he was known as Iron Plume, sometimes called Iron Shield or Black Shield. But among his people, his own familial clan, he had long been known as American Horse. While his mother had been Miniconjou, his father, Smoke, had been Oglalla. Long ago in the dawn of the white man’s Holy Road far to the south, Smoke had been one of the first Lakota met by Francis Parkman. After his father’s death American Horse had remained with his mother, living with her people.
Not long ago at twilight he had gone out to look over the village, to look beyond the hide lodges and brush wickiups at the knotting of the ponies here and there on the surrounding hillsides. American Horse liked this time of day best, when the lodges lit up from inside, beckoning a man into their warmth—like a woman raising the buffalo robe to show her naked body to her man. Three-times-ten, plus seven more … those buffalo-hide lodges stood close together in a narrow, three-pronged depression of coulees running toward the Rabbit Lip Creek, all of it sheltered from the cold north winds by a grassy ridge. Across the timbered stream to the south another grassy embankment rose into the broken countryside at the base of steep clay and limestone buttes. For the most part the lodges themselves would stand concealed from soldier eyes, hidden by the chalk-colored ridges that rose on the north, west, and south of their camp. Those bluffs*lay in a near perfect north-to-south line for some twenty miles, and spreading anywhere from two to six miles in width, all of them covered for nearly half their height with an emerald cap of pine and cedar. Here in the bottom his people camped out of the wind, with good timber for their fires, plenty of grass for their horses, and cold, clear water flowing down from the high places.
In this camp on the Mashtincha Putin† lived warriors who like hundreds of others had made one by one the hundreds of the soldiers of Sitting Bull’s vision fall on that sunny ridge back in the Moon of Fat Horses. Here lived Miniconjou war chiefs named Red Horse, Dog Necklace, and Iron Thunder. Men who in these greatest days of their people were at the peak of their power.
But why was it that American Horse saw little future in fleeing to the reservations for the harsh winter and escaping to the free prairie come spring? How long could they go on like this? The great herds were shrinking, just as the clear, pure water holes in the last hot breathless days of summer shrank to muddy wallows.
American Horse shuddered with the chill gust of wind here on this high ground where he looked down upon the lamplike lodges, beckoning him with their warmth. The cold and the wet had driven his people south toward the agencies earlier than usual this hunting season. Unrelenting storms and drenching rain had convinced them they should make for Bear Butte, from there an easy journey on to Red Cloud’s and Spotted Tail’s agencies to make ready for winter.
To go in and beg the white man for flour and pig meat for their families … what utter humiliation that was for warriors whose eyes had witnessed such greatness in turning back Three Stars on the Rosebud, such victory in crushing the nameless soldier chief who brought his white men prancing down on their great village beside the Greasy Grass.
With the rise of the wind American Horse pulled the heavy buffalo robe about his shoulders, enjoying the sensuous feel of its hairy warmth on his cheeks. Into his lungs he drew the fragrance on the wind, smelled the smoke from those many fires below him, kettles on the boil, supper warming.
Up from the creek bottom floated the agonized cry of Little Eagle’s daughter.
Her time had come. Her child ready to be born. What pain he heard in her cries drifting all the way up here, where they reverberated from the chalky walls. This was the only crying he wanted to hear from the lips of his people: the birth of their children into freedom. No more did American Horse want to hear the wails of women in mourning, the whimper of little children so hungry and cold that their eyes sank into their sockets. No more did he want to hear the cries of the old ones unable to keep up on their bloodied feet as the villages fled from the
