Wolf Mountain Moon: The Battle of the Butte, 1877

must not take any of the spoils from that battle.”

Lame Red Skirt bent his head, and his eyes did not meet Sitting Bull’s when he admitted, “I remember.”

“I told all who could hear that Wakan Tanka instructed me not to plunder those dead soldiers. That we had defeated them, that we had killed them all, was gift enough.”

“What happens now?” asked Bull Eagle. “What’s done is done! What happens now that so many of our people did take the soldier spoils from the Greasy Grass?”

For some time Sitting Bull thought and thought, staring at the fire while he heard the sounds of dogs and children at play in the cold, women at their work with supper fires and boiling kettles, the faint rustle of the wind through the bare branches of the cottonwoods outside his smoke-blackened lodge. An infant crying. An old woman keening softly as her man slipped beyond into death. He listened to these sounds of his people before he listened to what he knew rested in his heart—put there as a gift from the Great Mystery.

“Now that so many have disobeyed Wakan Tanka,” he sighed, “our fate is sealed. We will be driven before the winds like the down of the cottonwood tree. Without a home in our own land.”

“But we can hunt the buffalo that will make us a strong people once again!” Gall cried out in growing despair, his face flushed in anger. “These soldiers cannot follow us for all of winter!”

Quietly the Bull replied, “Bear Coat’s walk-a-heaps do not need to hunt buffalo to survive as we do. They carry what they need in their many wagons. Because of that they can follow us right on into the winter—giving our warriors little time to hunt, our women no time to dry meat and scrape hides.”

“We can gather the bands once more and be strong as we were in the summer moons. We can defeat these soldiers!” Gall screamed in sheer desperation, his eyes glistening.

“Once we could defeat all those wasicu soldiers, yes,” Sitting Bull admitted dolefully. “When we did as Wakan Tanka told us to do—He was on our side. Now some small Lakota chiefs have even sold away our sacred hills, the He Sapa.^* Now it hurts my heart to see how many of the people in this camp have turned their backs on the Great Mystery and robbed the soldier dead. They are so proud of their trophies that they forget my warnings!”

Lame Red Skirt pleaded with the Hunkpapa mystic, “What are we to do now that so many turned their faces away from the right?”

“Without the Great Mystery to help us,” Sitting Bull said gravely, as quietly as the crackle of the cottonwood fire at their feet, “we will be driven before the wind for the rest of our days.”

“But, General,” Simon Snyder groaned, “Bruguier’s a wanted man!”

Miles turned from the captain of F Company and looked at the half-breed as he said, “So what say you, Johnny? Will you come work for me and the army?”

Bruguier’s eyes narrowed. “You know the white man wants to hang me—”

“General,” Captain Edmond Butler protested, “this is the very man who was helping that outlaw Sitting Bull make a fool of you during your parley with the Sioux at Cedar Creek! This breed’s nothing more than an opportunist who will tell you anything you want to hear—then abandon us at his first opportunity!”

“Perhaps even betray us to his Sioux brethren!” Snyder cried.

“Hush! All of you!” Miles snapped. “What think you, Kelly? Can I trust this man?”

Luther Sage Kelly turned from staring out the window at the swirling snow kicked up by the wind blustering past the small cabin where Nelson Miles had taken Johnny Bruguier for a conference that Friday morning, the seventeenth. He regarded the half-breed a moment longer, then said, “The way I see it, General: both of you have something the other needs.”

“Poppycock!” scoffed Frank Baldwin.

Aide-de-camp Hobart Bailey snorted, “What does this redskin have that General Nelson A. Miles could possibly need?”

“Information on Sitting Bull and the rest of the roaming Sioux,” Kelly replied, stepping between members of the colonel’s staff to move closer to Miles.

“I have no doubt of that,” Miles said before any of his officers had a chance to sputter their protests. “So, tell me, Kelly—what do I have that Bruguier needs?”

Luther gazed at the half-breed’s dark face, those flintlike eyes gazing back at him evenly, without betraying what might lie behind them. “To begin with, General—Johnny Bruguier here is trusted by Sitting Bull. Trusted enough that he was the old warhorse’s own interpreter. Isn’t that right, sir?”

“Yes—so what are you driving at?” he snapped impatiently.

Kelly continued. “Because of his important status to Sitting Bull and the rest of the hostiles, I imagine it would not be an easy thing for someone like Johnny to turn his back on all that and come over to the army side … would it, Johnny?”

For a moment the cramped cabin grew quiet. Then, still clearly bristling at the officers’ doubt of him, Bruguier stiffly responded, “No, not easy to help the soldiers.”

“A man might even feel he was committing suicide if he became a turncoat like you’re asking him, General.”

“What’s your point?” Baldwin demanded.

Kelly looked directly at Miles, saying, “I figure there’s where you can make things right by Bruguier if he betrays Sitting Bull.”

“How can this soldier chief make things right by me?” the half-breed challenged suddenly, his eyes haughty. “The army does not have enough money to make me turn my back on Sitting Bull. A man the Lakota called the Grabber did that before^*—and his life is worth nothing now. One day soon, I hear, his scalp will hang from a Lakota lodgepole.”

“But I doubt you’ll ever see that scalp hanging from some warrior’s lodgepole, Johnny,” Kelly said confidently.

“Why you so sure?”

“You’ll be dead—hanged at the end of a white man’s rope.”

Luther watched the half-breed swallow hard, as if he might be imagining the fierce struggle to breathe as he danced at the end of a hangman’s noose. Then some of the fire smoldering in Bruguier’s eyes faded.

Kelly continued. “General, if you could help Johnny here clear up his murder charge with the civil authorities … I bet he’d have a reason to come over and see your side of things.”

Kelly watched the light come on behind the colonel’s eyes. With Crook and Terry bumbling and bungling things north and south, it was evident Miles had himself a clear shot at getting something done to end the Sioux War, and thereby earn his general’s star. If helping a half-breed turn his back on his mother’s people would assure him that star, Kelly had a good suspicion that Nelson Miles would likely jump at the chance.

“What would you say to that, Bruguier?” Miles asked. “When we brought you in here a few minutes ago, you babbled that you didn’t kill that man in cold blood. You said it wasn’t your fault. So tell me: if I help you get this matter straightened out—will you help me with the Sioux?”

The half-breed’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “You say you make it so I’m a wanted man no more?”

Miles straightened, running a hand down the brass eagle buttons on the front of his tunic. “Yes—that’s my pledge to you. I’ll do all I can to make sure an innocent man does not get himself hanged.”

Bruguier slowly turned on his heel, parting the officers as he stepped to the window, where he gazed at the wind-driven snow. After a minute he turned to Kelly, as if he might trust only him. “The soldier chief here—he can take the white man’s rope off my neck?”

Kelly glanced at Miles. The colonel barely nodded.

Luther asked, “Can you see that Sitting Bull surrenders at the Tongue River post?”

“Yes. I think I can do that,” Johnny replied, putting a hand at his collar, fingertips laid across his throat. “There aren’t many left with him now—chiefs and warriors. Will the Bear Coat help me?”

Without waiting for Miles to answer, Luther said, “Yes, The Bear Coat will see to it there is no rope waiting for you.”

In those next two days Johnny Bruguier began to pay for having that hangman’s noose taken from his neck.

The first item of business for Miles was the matter of some Indians the two Jackson brothers said they learned were camped up north of Fort Peck along Porcupine Creek. From Big Leggings the soldiers learned the band