these warriors had been spoils of the Fetterman Massacre two winters before: single-shot muzzle-loading Springfield muskets. Only a handful owned repeaters captured in recent raids on the white man’s roads.
In this merry village of Dog Soldiers the Shahiyena hosted Pawnee Killer’s Brule as everyone—men and women, children as well—reveled the coming night before they would resume their march to wipe out the half-a- hundred. Word spread from fire to fire this evening that the fighting force stalking the villages had camped no more than ten miles downriver, within easy reach before the sun rose to heat the ground where the mighty horsemen would spill white blood in one swift charge come morning.
The thunderous horde of horsemen would surround and attack the half-a-hundred, the camps cheered. No more to it than squashing a tick grown plump and lazy between your fingers, watching the blood trickle and ooze over your hand. A momentary distraction only, thought High-Backed Bull—then the warrior bands would continue as planned on their sweep of their ancient buffalo country.
Along with Roman Nose, chiefs Tall Bull and White Horse had sworn to stop the smoke-belching medicine horse that rode on the iron tracks. The Shahiyena bands had joined Pawnee Killer’s Lakota for the greatest of all raids against the white man’s settlements as summer began to abandon this high land. With the coming of autumn on that full moon following the first frosts licking the prairie ponds with ice, there would come the planned sweep through the white man’s villages. Enough of them now to drive the white man back from the buffalo ground for a long, long time to come.
Porcupine had told his young friend what the war chiefs had decided on for the coming time of war. No more hit-and-miss raids along the roads nor striking an outlying settlement. Instead, the Lakota and Shahiyena had decided to ride toward the east in bands of fifty to a hundred warriors at most, scattering out to do their killing, leaving no white man alive, carrying his women and children away into captivity. Leaving the white man’s lodges in smoking ruin. Driving off all his horses and slow-buffalo for their own.
For but a short time would they raid and kill and burn, while that full moon shrank to half its size. Then all warrior bands were to turn from their destruction and point the noses of their ponies north, to journey toward the land where Red Cloud himself defended the ancient hunting grounds west of the sacred Bear Butte. No more could the soldiers bother them there, for word had it on the moccasin telegraph that the white man was abandoning that country, leaving his forts behind, from the dirt fort on the Powder River, to the one high on the Sheep River.* The red man had won!
But High-Backed Bull had sternly refused to ride with them when the time came. He had decided his destiny could not lie in a land where the white man would not be found. Instead, with narrow, hate-slitted eyes, the young warrior had vowed to stay close to the land of the whites— there the better to kill them, one at a time … spilling their blood until he once more ran across the one white man he wanted more than all the others.
Until at last Bull could gaze into the fear-glazed eyes of the one who had fathered him.
*Bighorn River
8
“IT IS COLD, High-Backed Bull,” whimpered the young warrior to his friend walking beside him.
He was shivering too with the retreat of the sun, but still his blood ran hot, his heart burning in his ears as they drew farther and farther from the Shahiyena camp. “Soon enough. Little Hawk—you and Starving Elk won’t have time to think about the cold of this night.”
The two Cheyenne brothers walking their horses downstream from the village circles with the Bull had been on many raids against the white man’s wagon roads and his outflung settlements of dirt-scratchers. But not one of them had ever attacked a camp of white men who had so boldly stalked them. Of a sudden, the Bull held his hand up and stopped in the darkness, listening.
“I hear it too,” said Starving Elk.
“The white men aren’t coming to attack at night?” asked the young Little Hawk.
He was certain they would not. Yet the white man was known for often doing the unexpected. As the quiet plodding of hooves drew closer, he held his breath, following the sound around the brow of the nearby hill, knowing the horsemen would not dare expose themselves along the rolling skyline.
When he squinted into the starlit darkness, the Bull was certain he could not see a thing. Yet when he did not try so hard, in fact did not look directly at what he wanted most to see, then he saw them: movement at first, then the shadowy forms of horses, the smoky men atop moving slowly, yet steadily downstream.
And just as his own mind was attempting to sort out why the enemy probing at the warrior camps would not be marching upstream, the half-dozen horsemen halted, and the buzzing of their talk carried through the still summer night’s air.
He thought he saw the fluttering of feathers atop the head of one. Then the rustling fan of unbraided hair washing out from the shoulders of another. It all made him bold enough to call out.
“Who is there, in the darkness?”
“Shahiyena?”
“Yes.”
“Burnt Thigh, we are. We thought you to be enemies.”
The Brule Lakota urged their ponies back along the curve of the hill toward the three who remained on foot beside their animals.
“I thought you might be some of the white men, come to see how strong we are,” the Bull told the others as they halted before him. “My name is High-Backed Bull.”
The leader nodded. He was young too: that much the Bull could tell of the cheeks and nose under the dim starlight.
“Our camp, like yours, is celebrating the victory to come tomorrow when the sun arises from its bed,” the Lakota said quietly. “I am Bad Tongue.”
“The fight will be over all too soon,” the Bull replied sourly, perhaps a little too sharply. “And there are too few scalps to go around.”
“You wanted to take some scalps tonight?” asked the Brule.
“We came for the white man’s big horses,” Starving Elk replied quickly.
“I came to take a few scalps for myself before they are gone in the morning,” the Bull boasted. “Brought down like the buffalo cows that they are, hamstrung by the quick-footed wolf pack.”
“Ponies and scalps,” said another of the Lakota. “You come with us and we’ll find enough for all of us.”
The Bull turned to the two brothers.
When Little Hawk had nodded to his older brother, Starving Elk said, “Yes. Let’s join the Burnt Thigh.” He gazed out at the night sky, shivering, perhaps with more than the cold.
The Bull turned back to the Lakota leader. “One must be very brave to fight both the white man and the night spirits. It is good to have friends along, Bad Tongue.”
“Yes,” the Brule replied. “Good to have friends along. Come, ride with us.”
The three Shahiyena mounted their ponies, the two brothers on animals they had crept into the herd to catch without a sound—for had either of them been discovered, the punishment would be severe. The old ones and war chiefs wanted no foolish coup-hunters alerting the white men prior to the massed attack at dawn.
They inched over hill after hill, searching for the camp, looking for the faint glow of the white man’s fires, stopping from time to time to listen for the snuffling of his horses and mules, to put ears to the ground while others held their ponies quiet, to sniff the air for the distinct smell of fresh offal dropped by those weary animals driven in the chase up the Plum River. No sight of the white man here. No sound to hint they were drawing close. No smell to betray the big animals.
Sandy, grass-shrouded hill after bare knob they climbed until—
“High-Backed Bull!” Bad Tongue hissed sharply in his crude, unpracticed Cheyenne. When the oldest of the Shahiyena drew alongside at the crest of the hill and knelt with the others, Bad Tongue began his hands-dancing, talking in sign.
“Yes, I can see!” High-Backed Bull answered with his hands, his heart leaping, his blood throbbing at his
