Wolf Mountain Moon: The Battle of the Butte, 1877

“They are lost!” He Dog growled, shoving Spotted Elk as the many on foot closed the gap on them.

“Turn the horses! Turn the horses!” Fat Hide ordered Bad Leg and The Yearling.

All was confusion now. In the middistance a handful of soldiers were shouting. Spotted Elk could hear their voices, see the breathsmoke puffing from their tiny mouths as they came racing toward the scene. The delegates’ ponies were bolting, scattering in fear to the four winds, being chased by some of the enemy warriors and their women.

Oh, how those Psatoka screamed and screeched at the Lakota fortunate to escape, Psatoka holding aloft Lakota pipes in one hand, the scalps of those five honorable men they had just murdered in the other.

Spotted Elk glanced over his shoulder, finding more soldiers were coming now. Behind them a soldier horn was blowing too. Wasicu coming from many directions now. It was a wholesale ambush! The soldiers broke from hiding, running to help the Psatoka murder all the Lakota.

Those left with Crazy Horse wheeled about and kicked their ponies into a hard gallop, heading back to that low rise of ground where they had first looked down upon the soldier fort. Where they had first spotted the enemy lodges back among the trees along the Buffalo Tongue River.

For a few heartbeats He Dog halted them, throwing up his arm and bringing his pony around in a tight circle. Down on the flat ground they saw the soldiers reaching the scene, guns in their hands. At that very moment Spotted Elk watched a Psatoka warrior disappear into the tall willow with the two white flags, carrying away those signals of peace as the soldiers arrived.

“We better go before the soldiers follow us!” Fat Hide cried out.

Already Bad Leg and The Yearling and some others were frantically driving the horses hard through the deep snow, down off the high ground, heading south, racing back up the Buffalo Tongue River toward the Crazy Horse village.

He Dog waved the rest on, waiting to be the last to flee with Crazy Horse. But Spotted Elk reined up beside them, all three waiting a breathless moment longer, gazing down at that scene … realizing that there were no survivors, knowing the soldiers’ Psatoka wolves had killed all five.

No man could still be alive after that treacherous butchery.

“There, Mr. Leforge!” Nelson Miles screamed at the civilian, ripping the two white towels from the hands of Hobart Bailey, his adjutant. The colonel roughly yanked up Tom Leforge’s hand and stuffed the flags into it.

“G-general—”

“There, by Jupiter! Your goddamned Crow are guilty of unprovoked and cowardly murder!”

“I can’t believe—”

“There—that’s your evidence!” Miles roared. “What have you to say to that?”

Leforge could do little more than stare down at the flags and wag his head in disgust. One of the towels was even stained with a little blood. Sioux blood.

“Bull Eagle! They even killed Bull Eagle!” Miles screeched, wagging his head violently. Then his voice suddenly quieted. “He was one I took a real liking to, figured I could trust his word.” Then he was screeching again, “And now your bunch of cowards have murdered him!”

Leforge gulped, then said, “I know most of them what done this—”

“You know the sons of bitches, do you?”

Shrugging, looking back up into the flinty glare of the colonel, Leforge admitted, “Don’t know what come over ’em to do anything like this.”

“A little too late to figure that out, don’t you think, Mr. Leforge?” Miles was seething. “Why—just yesterday I had you warn that bunch of yours that I would hang any one of them if they killed one of my Yanktonais couriers riding between here and Buford or Peck. Now they’ve killed Bull Eagle!”

Leforge pleaded, “Sir, they told me them Sioux fired on their women as they was riding in.”

“Bullshit!” Miles roared, slamming a fist down on his flimsy desk. “You and I both know those five didn’t come riding into a soldier fort shooting up your Crow camp!”

“The women … they’ll tell you—”

“Shut your lying mouth before I shut it for you, Leforge!” Miles fumed. “I have witnesses—soldier witnesses —that tell me different. I for one could not believe the Sioux would ride in here under a flag of truce, shooting at your women!”

Leforge swallowed hard, then nodded grudgingly. “General—there’s most of ’em wanna try to make it up to you—”

“Make it up to me?” Miles interrupted Tom Leforge. “Don’t you understand that just a month ago Bull Eagle showed up here, came riding right in here while I was gone chasing Sitting Bull? That’s right—he came in under a white flag—just like the ones your Crow tried to hide—came in to get some rations because he trusted me, because I told him he could trust that white flag!”

Leforge stared at the floor. “I can’t defend what they done, General.”

“Bull Eagle was the sort of man doing what was best for his people,” Miles stormed. “He alone was more of an honorable man than a hundred of those cowardly Crow of yours!”

Never before had Luther Kelly seen the man so angry. Make no mistake, Nelson A. Miles was an emotional, volatile man. But this … this treachery and attempt at cover-up had the general right on the edge. Miles was shuddering as he tried to contain his fury, his fists clenching and unclenching. As the general slowly brought both fists up, Kelly became afraid Miles would do something he might well regret.

Luther instantly stepped between Miles and the squaw man. “General—if I may. Let’s try to sort out what we can do about all this right now.”

“What we can do right now!” Miles shrieked. “We had five Sioux chiefs ride in here to surrender their people to me. Our efforts at convincing the enemy that we will continue to make war on them is finally beginning to bear enough fruit that Bull Eagle and his emissaries come riding in here under two goddamned white banners of peace … and they’re butchered within sight of my post!”

Miles lunged at the two grease-stained white towels Leforge held across his open hands, but Kelly was there first, tearing them away from the squaw man.

“Any reason why your Crow would kill the Sioux chiefs without warning?” Kelly demanded, glaring into Leforge’s eyes.

“Any reason?” Leforge answered. “How ’bout lots of dead relatives—if one reason’s good as another for you.”

Miles grumbled something under his breath, turning slightly before he roared, “They’re cowards, Leforge! All of them who had any hand in this! I’m not sure I shouldn’t string you up while I’ve got my hands on you! Just to show your bunch what I think of cowards!”

Kelly watched Leforge flinch and swallow hard at that imaginary noose tightening around his throat.

The squaw man bravely said, “If that somehow evens things, General—then string me up.”

Miles began to sputter with frustration. “You know goddamned well it won’t do me a bit of good with the Sioux, Leforge! Those other riders who watched your Crow kill the five helpless chiefs, why—they’re halfway back to Crazy Horse right now … off to tell him that my word can’t be trusted! Your back-stabbing sonsabitches have gone and shattered months of my hard work trying to hit the Sioux solidly while talking straight to them at the same time!”

“I ain’t got no idea what you want me to do now, General,” Leforge pleaded.

Miles leaned in to ask, “You said the dozen or so responsible for the murders have already escaped?”

“They took off about as soon as your soldiers started showing up.”

“Cowards!” Miles shouted as he whirled on his heel and stomped back to collapse behind his desk in the canvas chair. “Those Crow are supposed to be warriors! Warriors don’t kill unarmed enemies under a flag of truce!”

Feeling almost like a traitor himself, Kelly had to declare, “General, the Sioux had weapons under their blankets—just like at Cedar Creek.”

“But they didn’t have those weapons out and ready to use, by God!” Miles blustered. He turned to glare at the squaw man. “What will become of those responsible, Leforge?”

“They’ve took off for the agency, General.”