the formidable shadow of the mighty Roman Nose.
For the sake of mutual strength following their independent raids on the settlements in Kansas, these warrior bands had come together with the rest to hunt buffalo here where the immeasurable herds still gathered in the great valley of the Plum River, what the white man called his Republican. Last moon, while celebrating their annual sun dance on a tributary of the Plum called Beaver Creek, roaming scouts from the villages had first reported spotting the half-a-hundred. From their dress, the fifty did not appear to be soldiers. Still, this was a season for some precaution. The news of the white men caused the bands to begin migrating to the northwest. Surely, the tribal leaders reasoned, if we see these white scouts on our trail, close behind will come the long columns of soldiers.
It was aggravating, yes, having such an annoyance on their backtrail. Still, the half-a-hundred were hardly worth the effort of putting on one’s paint and taking the cover from one’s shield, thought High-Backed Bull as he paced back and forth in the bright sun of that waning afternoon.
“These are fighting men, warriors—this half-a-hundred,” declared Porcupine when he had finished tying up the tail of his pony in preparation of battle.
“They are not soldiers!” High-Backed Bull snapped, the unrequited tension pinching his face like the coil of a rattlesnake. “They are nothing more than ground-scratchers … the same sort of white men we have killed all summer long.”
Porcupine shook his head. “No. I think you are wrong, my young friend. I am afraid we will find this band of ground-scratchers is something very different from those who fought us beside their dirt houses.”
“How are they different?” Bull demanded. “Because this half-a-hundred comes looking for us? Like foolish old hens?”
“No. They are different because they are not soldiers, who are paid to fight. This half-a-hundred comes with some quarrel in their hearts for us.”
“Why would you fear some white men who might have a quarrel with us? We have left many to grieve after our raids across the white man’s settlements.”
“I fear any man who comes into a fight with the strength of his heart to make him strong,” Porcupine said. “Much better for me to fight a man who has only the power of his muscles, perhaps his cunning and wiles. But—the one I fear the most in battle is the man who comes to make his heart right. On and on that small band of white men has followed our trail, like a persistent wolverine intent on clawing its prey from their hole. Following … forever following.”
Try as he might, Bull struggled to put the warnings of Porcupine, his mentor, out of his mind. For a moment or two at a time he watched the Dog Soldier and Brule camps alive with the steady throb of war drums.
“This half-a-hundred poses no threat to us, Porcupine,” he declared a short time later when he squatted in the shade of a lodge, watching the chiefs gathered in Pawnee Killer’s council a few yards away. “You confuse me. Those white men are so outnumbered that this time not one man among us will have to worry himself with protecting our villages while women, children, and old ones escape onto the prairie—just as Pawnee Killer’s band had to do when Long Hair attacked last summer.”
“Hear this, for what I say are the words of a warrior of the Shahiyena!” Bull shouted in reply, his blood running warm. “Those white men. Those half-a-hundred. Some are wearing scalps that soon will hang from my own belt!”
By this time the Lakota and Shahiyena delegations had finished their proscribed meal and passed around the pipe. As well, the young warriors in all camps were now stripped of their hunting clothes, having donned their finest war regalia. In this warm season that meant most wore nothing more than moccasins and breechclout. Still, what marked each individual’s battle costume was not his clothing or lack of it—rather it proved to be his headdress, perhaps a simple hair covering fashioned of a stuffed bird or small animal totem, setting off his peculiar face and body paint, all of which added to those decorations each man had lavished on a favored war pony.
Bull stroked the muzzle of his animal after he had tied small eagle wing-tip feathers down the length of its mane. Small, fleet, wide-chested little cayuses we will ride this day, he thought to himself as he watched the imposing figure of Roman Nose from afar. These grass-fed ponies would now carry their owners into battle as the Lakota and Shahiyena butchered that small band of white men foolish enough to march squarely into the steamy gut of this ancient Indian hunting ground.
The white men had now become the quarry.
The afternoon dragged on so that by the time a young, flat-nosed warrior announced the council’s conclusion from the doorway of Pawnee Killer’s lodge, the sun had fallen well past midsky.
“We ride them down before the sun sets in the west!” the Brule chief exclaimed as he emerged from his lodge.
The immense Lakota village shrieked with renewed fever as the other war chiefs emerged into the afternoon light. Young boys scurried through camp, bringing extra war ponies in from the herds. Women chattered loudly, no one in particular listening, as they brought forth the weapons their men would use. Out into the sunshine of this battle day came the short-horn or Osage-orange bows, skin quivers filled with long iron-tipped arrows fletched with owl and hawk feathers. Out came axes, knives, and war clubs—some of river stone, others carved wood, a few nail studded like archaic maces. Long buffalo lances shadowed the ground, many more than ten feet long with tiny grooves radiating from the huge iron spear points, the better to drain a victim’s blood. Here and there the afternoon light glinted from a firearm, either pistol or rifle. These were white-man weapons bought with blood beyond the Lodge Trail Ridge two winters gone: a glorious fight when many of these same warriors had joined in butchering Fetterman’s soldiers, the hundred-in-the-hand.
Last into the light of a battle day came the potent, protective shields, pulled ceremonially from their hide wrappings by the women. Gently each wife smoothed the fluttering feathers and straightened tiny, tinkling brass cones, perhaps brushed a finger over the magic symbols painted across the bull-hide surface or stroked the teeth on a small weasel skull or a badger jaw, perhaps elk milk teeth or a buffalo scrotum filled with private power. These were powerful totems: the strongest of war medicine evoked come this moment of battle. Come now this time to slaughter the half-a-hundred.
“Porcupine!” Roman Nose called out as his face emerged into afternoon light. “Bring the young Bull with you!”
“We are going to kill these white men at long last?” asked High-Backed Bull as they hurried over to the tall war chief.
Roman Nose nodded, bending his head and whispering, “Long ago I vowed never to become a chief—like these old men. Too much like women, I think: much talk, and not enough fighting!”
As some Brule herders brought up the council’s ponies, Roman Nose turned slightly, lifting his nose into the air as he was greeted with the fragrance of stewing meat and fry-bread pungent on that warm afternoon breeze. As was the custom at this season of year, the Lakota women had prepared the council’s meal outside beneath the hide awning so that the interior of Pawnee Killer’s lodge would not be unduly heated beyond the chiefs’ endurance. Roman Nose began to rub his stomach, signifying his satisfaction with that ceremonial meal just completed.
“Your belly is as full with meat and bread as are your ears with the words of the old chiefs?” Porcupine asked the Nose.
When the war chief failed to answer, High-Backed Bull turned to look at Roman Nose, finding the war chief’s hand frozen where it lay on his belly, a grimace of horror crossing his features, as if he suddenly had trouble swallowing something, as if his throat had constricted.
Three Brule women huddled over two steaming kettles where they had boiled the hump meat Pawnee Killer had served his guests. A third, and smaller, kettle crackled with spitting grease, where the women fried their bread made with flour stolen in those recent raids along the white man’s roads and in the white man’s settlements.
Bull watched the big chief’s eyes narrow as he was handed the reins to his war pony by a Brule pony boy. Still Roman Nose refused to take his gaze from the old Sioux woman who repeatedly speared the fry-bread from her kettle … each piece impaled on the tines of an iron fork.
Iron!
In terror Bull instantly realized the seriousness of this transgression, knowing that Roman Nose’s personal
