Wolf Mountain Moon: The Battle of the Butte, 1877

warming his hands. Dusting off the knees of his blanket leggings, the young warrior took a few tentative steps toward the half-buried ball. He stopped, then took a few more steps. Closer he went to the white man’s whistling weapon-ball as the rest watched in stunned silence.

When he was finally no more than an arm’s length from it, Spotted Blackbird pulled his bow from the quiver strapped at his back. Gently he tapped the ball and leaped back as if stung by a rattlesnake.

Many of the others gathered around him at a safe distance gasped, leaping back too.

But nothing happened.

Spotted Blackbird stepped closer once more. Then tapped the black ball again—harder than ever—and immediately dropped into a protective crouch.

When no explosion shook the ground, the warrior walked right up. to the object and smacked it solidly with the end of his elkhorn bow.

Then he began to strike it repeatedly, shouting in glee, dancing around and around it as he hammered the ball with blows. The other warriors came up to touch it too—counting coup on it as Spotted Blackbird had been the first to do.

It was great fun … until they heard the next whistle above their laughter, that warning cry of the black balls coming from the far side of the ridge. Warriors scattered, dashing to the top of the bluff, watching the ball sail up through the lowering clouds, in and out of the dancing white of the wind-driven snowstorm. Again every one of them scattered, yanking ponies and pushing one another out of the way. Only a fool would think that all the white man’s exploding balls would land harmlessly in the snow like so much sandstone or a river boulder.

With a hissing rush the ball sailed down, down—exploding in a blinding profusion of meteoric light, splintering rock and scattering red earth over those huddling nearby behind sandstone breastworks. The clatter of falling earth ended, and the warriors leaped to their feet, dusting the snow and dirt and rock chips from their clothing, shouting again to the wasicu, holding their genitals, pulling aside their breechclouts to wag their rumps at the soldiers.

“Hit me here!” one of the Shahiyela yelled at the white men below, patting the crack in his ample rear end.

Back and forth it would go like this, Crazy Horse believed. The warriors would not budge, and the big whistling balls would not drive them from this ridge.

But over to his right … now, that was a different matter.

Over there the soldiers were climbing out of the ravine that for a time had slowed their advance considerably. They wore too many clothes, he thought. The soldiers looked as if they had no legs as they struggled through the deep snow. Just the tops of their bodies, draped with those big buffalo-hide coats, the tails of which spread out like a whorl of prairie-flower petals come spring to this rolling country. Almost like tiny lodge men. Soldiers who looked like lodges. No legs had they, but still the wasicu pushed on.

After so many summers of fighting, after all those battles, Crazy Horse could tell the leaders, the soldier war chiefs, gesturing and waving and shouting to the others, urging them on—marching even into the face of the withering fire from the Shahiyela on that far end of the ridge.

Quickly he glanced at the knoll to the north to be sure. No, the Bear Coat was still there with the wagon guns. Then Crazy Horse looked back to the south where the soldier chiefs led their men lumbering to the bottom of the steep slope. It was there that Big Crow and his Shahiyela fired bullets and arrows down at the white men.

These were very, very stupid soldiers, Crazy Horse thought as the wasicu shot their rifles up the far slope at the Shahiyela warriors, then reloaded to advance another few steps before shooting again. Like the crawl of black ants up the steep side of a prairie anthill.

Yes, he thought: these are very, very stupid soldiers.

That … or very, very brave men.

^*Present-day Battle Butte Creek.

Chapter 33

Hoop and Stick Moon 1877

“Grandfather!” Medicine Bear had cried out to the old man last night as the hundreds of warriors had begun to stream out of the village into the dark, kicking their ponies north through the snow and the cold in a huge cavalcade toward the Bear Coat’s soldiers who had camped near Belly Butte.

Coal Bear turned slowly on his spindly legs there before the Sacred Hat lodge, finding Box Elder’s young spiritual apprentice hurrying toward him. “Medicine Bear! You are not going with all the others to fight the ve-ho-e come the dawn?”

“Yes,” he huffed, breathless with excitement. “I am going with the others, but I want to fight the white men the same way we fought them in the valley of the Red Fork.”

The old man nodded, sighing. “You carried powerful magic that day, my son.”

His heart swelled with pride. “Yes, Grandfather,” he said, using the term of respect for the older man who was Keeper of the Sacred Medicine Hat. “But Box Elder is too weak to ride so far in this cold. So I go to ride and fight for him.”

“Hopo! This is a good and mighty thing you do,” Coal Bear replied.

“You can help me,” Medicine Bear pleaded, his mouth dry with apprehension as he stared intently into the old shaman’s eyes. “I want to carry Nimhoyoh into the fight with me.”

“The Sacred Turner?”

Medicine Bear could see the extreme worry cross the old man’s face.

“I carried it before—”

Coal Bear interrupted. “I remember. In the battle against Three Finger Kenzie.^* Yes, the Red Fork Canyon … when you carried Nimhoyoh above the rest of us all and thereby turned away the soldier bullets so we could escape with the Sacred Hat into the mountains.”

The youngster hurried on with his plea. “When the battle begins at dawn, I wish to protect the many warriors the way I helped protect a few in that terrible battle.”

Coal Bear stared dispassionately at the young man for a few moments, then said, “Come inside.” He pulled back the hide flap and hobbled into the lodge.

A fire still glowed, warm and welcoming. Coal Bear’s woman had her back to them, turning to watch the two men enter. She nodded in recognition, then returned to her work at packing their few possessions into the second of only two small rawhide parfleches. After losing everything to the soldiers in the Red Fork Valley, all they now owned belonged to Esevone—the Sacred Medicine Hat of the Ohmeseheso. The last of their blankets had been folded and tied, everything made ready for the time when the woman would yank the pins from the lodge cover, when she and others would quickly dismantle this lodge that was the new home their people provided for Esevone.

Though small—not near as grand as had been the previous lodge transported across the high plains for countless winters until it was destroyed by the Ho-nehe-taneo-o, the Wolf People,^† in that terrible fight—this was nonetheless the first lodge the Tse- Tsehese women had collected hides for, sewn together, and cut in the proper shape when they began their slow rebuilding among the Crazy Horse people. From one hunt, then another, they acquired the hides until they had enough to erect this small lodge. Once more the Sacred Medicine Hat had a proper resting place—there at the back, opposite the door, sitting against Nimhoyoh.

It was the Sacred Turner that Medicine Bear immediately cast his eyes upon now as he entered Coal Bear’s dwelling. Nimhoyoh, what he had been called upon to carry that terribly cold day of blood on the snow that was still so fresh in their memories.

Coal Bear said, “I see you are wearing Box Elder’s powerful shirt.”