like marrow scum risen to the top of blood soup brought to the boil.
High-Backed Bull and Bad Tongue had led the others around the base of the bluffs and ridges in this rugged, naked country heaved up with dark monoliths and black blottings against the paling, starlit sky that wheeled nonstop overhead in the land’s incessant crawl toward the coming day of blood on the sand by the Plum River. Once they had stopped to water the ponies, watchful not to let the animals have too much, only enough to slake their thirst. Then the horsemen crossed to the north bank of the river on foot, remounted, and set out again to the east.
The big bear among the stars lay but a hand’s width from the horizon when Bull touched Bad Tongue’s arm and signaled the rest to halt behind them. He sniffed at the air.
“Smell,” Bull whispered.
The rest drew the cold, high desert air into their noses noiselessly.
The Brule said, “Fire.”
He nodded to Bad Tongue. “The breeze has come around out of the south.” Bull pointed. “Beyond those ridges, we will find them.”
“The big American horses,” Bad Tongue growled in his poor Cheyenne.
“The half-a-hundred who have dared follow our camps,” Bull corrected. “The half-a-hundred who will lose their scalps for it.”
“Do not spill your own blood on this ground,” Bad Tongue admonished. “So anxious to spill the white man’s are you.”
Bull snorted derisively. “The rest of you can go get what you want now. And I will ride in for what I came for.”
Bad Tongue clamped a hand on the Shahiyena’s arm to stay the Dog Soldier. “Porcupine and Roman Nose— any war chief would say for one or two of us to spy on the white man’s camp first before riding in blind.”
Bull gazed at the starlit face of the Brule and could find no reason to dispute the Lakota’s fighting wisdom. “All right. You and me.”
“On foot.”
Bull nodded and slid from his pony, handing the rawhide rein to Starving Elk. He strode off without waiting for Bad Tongue, nor did he look back. He only heard the warrior off to his left.
At the crest of the second ridge, the odor of burning embers, of fried meat, the wind-carried fragrance of fresh horse droppings, all became so strong that they bellied to the side of the slope rather than crawl directly at the top. There below, a matter of a few flights of an arrow, lay the eerie reddish glow of the white man’s camp. From time to time dark shadows blotted the crimson into the black of the prairie momentarily until the glowing embers of their old fires reappeared. Perhaps they were the enemy’s pickets moving back and forth between the warriors and the distant fire pits. Perhaps some of the bigger shadows were animals.
A snuffle, then another, was heard in the middle distance. Most of the animals were actually grazing closer to them than High-Backed Bull had expected: off to his right hand and just below the base of the high bluff that overlooked the white man’s camp. He smiled, tapping Bad Tongue in their mutual silence—then pointed down to the main body of the herd as one of the mules released a caustic, metallic bray. There came an uneasy shuffling of hooves before all fell silent again.
“There is one guard I can see,” Bad Tongue whispered. “That means there will be at least two.”
Bull agreed. “At least one you cannot see.” He pushed himself backward until he was behind the edge of the slope and got to his feet. “Now the rest of you can go steal your big American horses.”
Bad Tongue raised himself before the Shahiyena. “And you—you can take advantage of our noise, High- Backed Bull. Looking for scalps to take.”
In silence they hurried back to the rest, coming out of the darkness as the gray boiling back in the east broadened, stretching into a more definitive line that strung itself from north to south. Full darkness would not last much longer. It was time to strike.
He mounted while Bad Tongue explained the position of the horse herd to the rest. Bull looked at the two brothers. While they listened to the Brule, their eyes were nonetheless on High-Backed Bull. He waited until Bad Tongue finished his clipped instructions, then nodded at Starving Elk.
“You and Little Hawk—go with the Burnt Thigh. Help them run off the horses.”
“Where are you going?” Starving Elk asked, his voice a pitch higher in the starlit darkness.
“I will meet you across the river. On the south side when you have started the horses and mules, driving them back to our camp.”
He would wait for no more questions. Bull reined away abruptly, moving east along the base of the sharp- sloped ridge. Without any thought other than instinct, he decided to race into the white man’s camp, charging among the half-a-hundred from the east, as the rest raced into the herd. That way, he considered, the white men would have their attention on the west when he came lunging up their backs. No doubt he would be backlit by the sun’s coming—but High-Backed Bull calculated that the surprise he would create would be more than enough to outweigh that danger to himself.
At the first break in the bony ridges that reeked of alkali, the Shahiyena brought himself up short, finding that he had not come east far enough to begin his attack. Instead, Bull found himself still to the west of the crimson fire pits and those few shadows moving against the pale, red lights. Still, he was closer to the enemy camp now than before—able for the first time to make out clearly the black mounds of sleeping men curled in their blanket cocoons across the gray ground.
He reined about and urged the pony on east.
It was then that his ears brought him the sound of muted voices from the camp, brought him the first hint of pony hooves hammering the cold night wind that tortured this high desert land.
Bull smiled and hurried his pony toward the graying east just as the night split with the bellow of a white man, a warning from the far side of camp where Bad Tongue and the others would be making their attack.
“There’s one of the sonsabitches!”
Unprepared that the rest should be discovered, Bull was forced to bring his pony around sharply, sawing the rawhide rein so savagely, he nearly spilled the pony. On the far side of the crimson fire pits and the dark mounds erupting from the ground, a white man had bolted to his feet, throwing a rifle to his shoulder.
“Don’t shoot!” another hollered, up and sprinting for the first shadow.
Bull sensed his heart rise to his throat, the blood’s fiery cadence hammering in his ears as he sat there atop his pawing animal, the wind grown strong in his face, the light coming up on his left shoulder, and the camp below him exploding into life. More of the mounds stirred. Harsh, whispered voices exchanged words among those who had been gathered feet to the fires only moments before, abruptly brought to life as the hammer of hooves on the sunbaked prairie brought its sunrise song to the unsuspecting white men.
Then the riders broke over the last rise. In the space of a moment, all was a furious blur, like a reflection on the surface of a wind-chapped pond. Bull saw them against the horizon in the graying light, more like wisps of shadow, like curls of greasy smoke from some creosote-soaked sagewood fire—black and mobile, stark and streaking between the carbonite earth they moved across and the starry sky that served as their only backdrop.
One after another each shadowy form raced fluid as spring water off a midstream boulder, sliding down the high ground on horseback, feathers in a breeze-whipped spray clustered at each warrior’s head as the eight emerged from the top of that far knoll. The sky oozed red of a sudden, smothering the gray of night, coming the dusty crimson of sunrise. Below the riders as those horsemen drove their animals down the long slope, beginning to screech at the top of their lungs, the valley of the Plum River lay drenched in bloody gray light.
“Here come the rest of ’em!” came a shout from among those at the far side of the white man’s camp.
Bull watched two more of the enemy bolt into motion as if they had been shot out of a gun. The curses of those coming awake of a sudden were now lost among the pounding of footsteps and the hammering of unshod pony hooves distinct on the cold morning wind.
The war cries cracked the air like fragmented shards of thunder, distant but drawing closer with every beat of a man’s heart.
“They’re after the horses, men!” a high-pitched voice cried out from among those on the west.
For Bull it was time to ride.
That same voice again hurled itself over the throbbing camp, men and animals startled into motion, curses
