: The Dull Knife Battle, 1876

“You best not come closer!”

The rider reined up. “I am here to tell you something.”

A warrior in the rocks near Morning Star angrily hurled his voice at the horseman. “Tell us nothing but that you are coming to fight beside us against the soldiers.”

“I must fight against you,” Old Crow sadly admitted from the back of his skittish pony.

“Then perhaps we should kill you as we will kill the soldiers!”

Other warriors in the rocks shouted in derision too, but no one fired a shot at Old Crow. Killing one of their own would be so hard a thing to do.

Morning Star’s voice rose above the others. “You have come here for a reason, my friend. Tell us.”

The horseman patted the pockets of the dark wool coat he wore. “Although I am forced to fight against you —I am leaving a lot of ammunition for your guns on this hillside.”

They watched him ease out of the saddle, lead his pony to a rocky outcrop, then quickly empty his pockets. Then the Council Chief leaped back into the saddle, tightened his grip on the reins, and called out in parting.

“The old days are gone, Morning Star! We are watching the sun set on the old ways. Do not let the soldiers kill any more of your relatives. Bring them to the agency where we can live out the rest of our days together in peace, smoking the white man’s tobacco.”

Jamming the heels of his winter moccasins into the flanks of that pony, Old Crow reined about in a cascade of snow and bolted away, turning his back broad and inviting to the warriors among the rocks.

But no man fired his weapon at Old Crow. It simply would not be an honorable thing to raise a weapon against one’s own people.

Even if that man no longer acted like one of the Ohmeseheso, but acted instead more like a white man … the hated ve-ho-e who brought destruction wherever his boot left a track.

* Red Cloud Agency, Nebraska.

* “Warbonnet Creek—17 July 1876.

† The South Fork of the Cheyenne River.

Chapter 38

Big Freezing Moon 1876

Every throb of that drum was like a tiny stab at his heart—making pain for him in each of his six wounds. Little Wolf knew the Snake Indians would beat it right on through the bitterly cold night.

But for the tiny fires they had kindled here and there in the breastworks and among the rocky crags that shadowed the valley, it was very dark. The stars had been blotted out not long after the sun had turned the clouds a deep reddish purple. And then it began to snow.

The clouds hovered just over their heads, shrouding the tops of the mountains, as the chiefs and headmen of the People gathered in council to discuss what course they should take.

There wasn’t much arguing—for their choice seemed clear. While there were those who spoke on behalf of the wounded, the sick, the old, and the little ones, who whimpered with the intense cold and their empty bellies, still no one chose to surrender to the soldiers in the valley. There was but one course to take, and that was for them to start away from the valley that very night, abandoning the camp where everything they owned had been destroyed.

How proud Little Wolf was that his people were still fierce and as full of fight as ever despite their devastating loss.

“I will remain behind, even if no others stay with me,” Young Two Moon volunteered. “Tonight I will sneak down close to the village under the cloak of darkness and wait for the soldiers to leave tomorrow when I can go down to what piles of rubble and ash are left—to see what I can find for us to use.”

“This is good,” Little Wolf replied. “And we need others to follow the soldiers’ trail as they leave the valley. To see where they are going now that we journey north.”

“We must travel through the mountains for a long distance,” advised Walking Whirlwind. “If we go onto the plains too quickly, the soldiers will find us there and we will never reach the Crazy Horse people.”

Just as Old Bear’s small band of Tse-Tsehese had done last winter following the fight on the Powder River in the Sore-Eye Moon, they would again seek out the Hunkpatila Oglalla band of Crazy Horse, said to be camped for the winter along the Tongue River.

Besides that drumming and the triumphant singing of the Shoshone scouts in the valley below, all around the chiefs women were keening softly, crying out with shrill and angry voices, mourning the dead, singing over the wounded as the old shamans shook their rattles, blew their prayers into each bloody, frozen bullet hole with four long puffs of air.

Brave, heroic men like Yellow Nose suffered in silence for the most part, asking only for sips of melted snow as they lay curled close to the small fires.

For all the pain they had caused his people, Little Wolf still would gladly take Old Crow’s gift of soldier bullets—those boxes of the shiny cartridges left behind in the rocks below Morning Star and the others. Yes, Little Wolf was never so proud he did not use the white man’s bullets to defend his people.

He wondered now how Old Crow slept, wondering if he slept at all—having turned against the Ohmeseheso even though he too was one of the Council of Forty-four. Perhaps the power of the Maahotse would indeed kill all those who had turned their backs on their own people.

For a long time that afternoon Black Hairy Dog had prayed over the Sacred Arrows he pulled from their fox- skin quiver. Many warriors and women eventually gathered around the priest, all joining in to stamp their feet and sing the songs that would put a curse on every one of those who fought on the side of the white man against their own people.

Then, slowly, with much respect, the Sacred Arrow Priest lifted the Arrows one by one from the white-sage bed he had made for them to overlook the valley, replacing them in the quiver. Then just past twilight Little Wolf sadly watched Black Hairy Dog place the Maahotse on his wife’s back, and together with an escort of some eighteen families they began their retreat to the south. Big Horse, White Buffalo, Young Turkey Leg, and others were, after all, Southern People like Black Hairy Dog.

“We will stay east of the mountains as we go south,” they told Little Wolf and the rest at their last council just before departing. “When we reach the foot of Hammer Mountain* we can then turn our faces south by east back to our agency.† Only then will I be sure the Maahotse are safe.”

Esevone was safe as well. Some time ago Coal Bear and his woman had fled up the mountain with the Medicine Hat as men like Box Elder, with his Sacred Wheel Lance; Long Jaw, with his bullet- riddled red blanket cloak; and Medicine Bear, with the magic of the Turner, first used their powers to cloak the old couple with invisibility, then diverted the enemy’s bullets. By sundown there were many who had poked their fingers through the countless holes shot in Long Jaw’s cape, whispering in amazement that not one ve-ho- e bullet had penetrated his body.

Truly, the Everywhere Spirit had watched over His people this day. But they still faced the winter, and the wilderness, and the search for the Hunkpatila of Crazy Horse.

Little Wolf winced with the pain in his six wounds as he turned to look up the slope into the darkness at the faint points of red light glowing here and there. Beside one of those fires rested the Hat Bundle. With its power secure, the People just might survive the coming ordeal.

But at a terrible cost.

Then he shuddered to think how many were sure to die in the coming ordeal.

During his short nap in the midst of the long-range battle yesterday afternoon, William Earl Smith’s leg had gone to sleep and a deep cold had seeped into the muscles. As the night wore on, the leg continued to hurt all the more, making any attempt he made at sleep fitful and sporadic. Between the leg and the cries of the wounded in