Wolf Mountain Moon: The Battle of the Butte, 1877

Ohmeseheso village in the Red Fork Valley by their turncoat Indians—Morning Star’s advance scouts came racing back to all those people stumbling across the hills on frozen feet, yipping with their exciting news in the bitter cold that had killed old ones and tiny babes … those nowhere strong enough to endure this greatest of winter hardship.

Descending from the high mountains where the ve-ho-e dared not follow their bloody footprints, down past the Big Lake,^* over to Crow Standing Creek,^† finally to the Tongue, where they marched north to the mouth of Otter Creek. Following the east fork, Morning Star’s Tse-Tsehese^# crossed the high divide, where it was said they should find their friends and relations among the Lakota.

Morning Star’s heart leaped in his chest—like a pink-bellied fish breaking the surface of a high-country stream. How he hoped for succor, for relief …

At the head of that sad procession of the Ohmeseheso^@ lurched the two Old-Man Chiefs, Morning Star and Little Wolf, coming to a clumsy halt on their frozen legs, the new snow nearly reaching their knees.

“There! Beyond that hill!” one of the three young riders cried joyfully as he came galloping up to the old men. “We have seen the Crazy Horse people!”

As that news shot back through the cold stragglers, many of the old warriors began to sing once more those strong-heart songs that had sustained them during the recent battle with the pony soldiers. Even though they had few robes and blankets among them, everywhere now the women joined in celebration, trilling their tongues in joy. Once more Ma-heo-o had delivered His people from the hand of disaster.

Trudging stiff-legged to the crest of that low hill, where he caught his first whiff of woodsmoke on the knife- edged breeze that made his eyes seep, Morning Star peered down, his limbs gone wooden with the terrible cold. There … below … along a bend on the east side of the upper waters of Box Elder Creek,^{^} among the leafless cottonwoods where the Lakota sought shelter from much of the winter’s cruel wind, sat the hide and canvas lodges—smoke rising from each blackened crown of poles. Headed their way already was a handful of young Oglalla warriors and camp sentries, their strong ponies plowing through the deep snow, while behind and below them dark antlike forms of the Crazy Horse people emerged from their lodges, coming out to see for themselves what was causing all the excitement among the camp guards.

“Come, Morning Star,” Little Wolf said quietly as he reached his old friend’s side and tugged on an elbow. “Let us go tell Crazy Horse that the ve-ho-e soldiers have attacked us again.”

For the longest time that winter afternoon the Tse-Tsehese leaders sat with Crazy Horse and the other Hunkpatila headmen, discussing Three Finger Kenzie’s attack on their Red Fork village. As the sun began to set on that cold land, they talked over the why and asked the Oglalla to consider just what they could do for their close cousins, the Ohmeseheso—just as the Crazy Horse people had done last winter before eventually deciding to go in search of Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapa.

But this time Morning Star believed he heard a different sound come from the throat of Crazy Horse. This time the Oglalla Shirt Wearer did not speak with the same voice as he had when the pony soldiers attacked Old Bear’s village beside the Powder last winter.

This time there was a chiseled hardness on the face of Crazy Horse. And nothing soft in the eyes of the Oglalla war chief.

“We have little,” the Lakota leader explained icily to his people as well as to their Tse- Tsehese guests. “After soldiers have chased us from camp to camp to camp since summer—forcing us to stay on the run all the time—there aren’t many hides to give you to replace your lodges. And we do not have enough meat to feed your people.”

For a long time Morning Star was stunned into silence. Then he finally asked, “What can your people give us?”

Wagging his head icily, Crazy Horse said, “I do not have enough to feed my own people … so how can I feed the Ohmeseheso as well?”

“What would you have us do?” demanded an angry Little Wolf, the Northern People’s Sweet Medicine Chief, a warrior wounded six times in their recent battle with the pony soldiers.

Drawing himself up, Crazy Horse explained to his old comrades in war, “I will give you what my people can spare … for three days we can take you in and feed you, shelter you. But no more.”

“For three days,” Morning Star repeated. “After that, where will we find Sitting Bull?”

“Yes,” Little Wolf said, his dark face suddenly beaming with hope. “Sitting Bull will help us again if you cannot. Tell us where we can find him!”

As the Oglalla leader’s eyes crimped into resolute slits, he replied, “Sitting Bull is no longer in this country.”

Morning Star asked, “Where can we find him?”

“You will not,” the Lakota mystic answered. “For he is long gone—many days’ ride from here.”

“Where?” Little Wolf demanded sharply, hope replaced by suspicion.

“Far to the north of the Elk River^*—where my scouts tell me he is running away from the Bear Coat’s soldiers … fleeing for the Land of the Grandmother.”

So the Tse-Tsehese rested for those three days, sleeping in the crowded lodges among their close relatives, the Oglalla, eating what the Crazy Horse people had to spare. Once more the two peoples shared the same despair.

In those moons come and gone since the big fight at the Greasy Grass last summer, some of the Hunkpatila had journeyed in to visit friends and relations at the White River Agency, where they learned the soldier chief they had wiped off the earth was none other than Yellow Hair, known to the Tse-Tsehese as Hietzi—the very same ve-ho-e who had destroyed Black Kettle and driven Rock Forehead’s band in to their cramped reservation on the southern lands.

Then, on the fourth day, when Crazy Horse said the Ohmeseheso were to be on their own, the Oglalla chief suddenly called another council, his face no longer as hard as chert.

“Our people are like two streams that run down the same mountain,” he told the refugees from the Red Fork Valley. “We have always looked to one another’s welfare.”

“Do your words mean we can stay on with you?” Little Wolf demanded, the iron edge of a warrior to his voice.

Finally Crazy Horse answered, “We no longer have much food to share with you—but my hunters tell me there are buffalo to the south, along the Buffalo Tongue. Your men can make meat and gather robes—”

Morning Star put out his hand to quiet Little Wolf and the angry warriors the moment they interrupted the Oglalla Shirt Wearer. “We will take our people there, Crazy Horse—and hunt for ourselves.”

Little Wolf growled angrily, “We cannot go south! It would be sheer lunacy! Three Stars is marching north from the Powder to look for us!”

Then, as Morning Star opened his mouth to explain to his embittered chiefs that they had no choice but to look to their own safety, Crazy Horse spoke again.

“My village will go with you,” he explained to the Tse-Tsehese. “We too must hunt for meat and hides. Like you, the soldiers have not given us much rest this autumn so that we could hunt for the winter. My warriors are almost as desperate as yours to feed our people. Unless our hunters make meat, I am afraid many of the Hunkpatila will be forced to go in to the White River Agency to fill the bellies of their children.”

“But what of Three Stars’s soldiers?” Wooden Leg demanded. “What of Three Finger Kenzie’s prowling pony soldiers?”

Crazy Horse turned to the young warrior, saying, “My wolves who have been keeping an eye on those soldiers tell me they have turned around and are going south again, back to their warm forts. Once more the Great Mystery has watched over us and the soldiers haven’t found us here in this country.”

“But don’t you believe that once the soldiers have new supplies,” Morning Star asked, “they will return to search for us?”

“No,” Crazy Horse asserted. “Together we will go hunt buffalo on the Tongue. Our women will scrape hides for new lodges to replace those the soldiers have destroyed. We will dry meat so that our people will not want for food this winter. No, my Ohmeseheso friends—I don’t believe the army will march against