cows all by his lonesome. From that moment on, Cody was big medicine with North’s trackers.
“Why you figure we haven’t found any travois sign yet, Shad?” asked the young scout as he settled down beside the older plainsman at their evening fire.
Sweete stared into his cup of coffee and finished chewing the mouthful of buffalo loin contemplatively. “Could be there ain’t no villages on the move. Only war parties.”
“What’s the chance of that?” Cody asked, sweeping some of his long blond hair back from his bare cheek. “Pretty damned slim, you ask me.”
He nodded. “Damn slim, Bill. Or, you told me I had to put money on it—I’d say they got their village hid away someplace, far enough away from where they been raiding that we ain’t run across sign of it.”
“What happens if we keep up the pressure on the war parties?”
“They’ll split up until there ain’t much of a trail to follow.”
“Long as we got one trail to follow, Shad—we got ’em. Right?”
“You know well as me, Cody: we only need one trail. We follow it—we’ll find the rest eventual,” Shad answered.
The young scout smiled as he leaned forward to cut a slice of the buffalo loin staked over the coals in Sweete’s fire pit. “And when we find the rest of the war parties—we’ll sure as hell find Carr’s village of Dog Soldiers for him.”
Since then the Dog Soldier chief had lusted after the captive, keeping her to himself as his private concubine. Each night when he was done with her, Tall Bull threw the woman from the lodge, where the camp dogs were immediately drawn to her—likely drawn by the smell of the blood from her beatings, perhaps the earthy fragrance to her after Tall Bull’s coupling.
Bull almost felt sorry for the woman as night after night he watched her crawl away naked from the chief’s lodge, her small bundle of bloodied clothing clutched beneath an arm, doing her best to fend off the curious camp dogs.
So the disgust he first felt for Tall Bull had grown to revulsion. Not because the chief was a man who claimed his carnal rights to the white prisoner—but because Tall Bull was slowly losing interest in making war on the whites. Because of the woman, it seemed Tall Bull thought of little else but coupling. Not of attacking. Not of stealing horses and the spotted buffalo. Not of killing the whites. Every day he appeared to think of his loins a little more.
Though she was white, Bull could not bring himself to blame the woman. He cursed any man, especially a war chief, who thought of little else but coupling with a white person. That thought alone stoked Bull’s inner rage. More and more it took increasing effort to keep from hating the white part of himself.
“You are always cleaning that gun,” Porcupine said. “Come with us, Bull.”
He looked up from cleaning the big Walker revolver to the handful of older warriors standing in a crescent around him. Bull gazed down the barrel, finding satisfaction in the gleam of metal in evening’s fading light.
“Where do we go?” he asked almost absently.
“To talk to Tall Bull,” said a war chief of great reputation. “You will want to hear what we have to say.”
“Does White Horse grow weary of this waiting too?”
The war chief started to turn away, saying, “Come with us, High-Backed Bull. And you will hear me speak what burns in your own heart.”
They found Tall Bull and took the chief to White Horse’s lodge, where they quickly smoked a pipe without great ceremony.
“It is time we spoke of making more attacks,” White Horse said directly.
Tall Bull’s eyes flicked slowly from man to man around the circle. Yet he said nothing.
“This summer heat makes you grow restless, eh?” Wolf Friend asked his question of White Horse.
Bull watched for a sign from the face of Tall Bull, then that of his closest companion—Wolf Friend, one who would do his best to support the chief.
Bad Heart was hardly a friend to any man who did not want to make war on the white man. He and Bull were the two who stayed most loyal to Porcupine across the seasons. Bad Heart sneered as he asked, “Why does Wolf Friend ask this of White Horse? Does he think White Horse grows restless because he does not have a white woman to copulate with?”
The group laughed together, a little uneasily as they passed around a water gourd. Outside, the lodge skins were rolled up; beyond, a group of children hurried by in the deepening dark of twilight while the moon rose yellow as a brass rifle cartridge in the east.
“White Horse is right,” agreed Plenty of Bull Meat. “We dare not let up on the white man now.”
“What of the soldiers?” prodded Tall Sioux. “We go in search of the white man’s settlements to attack … then the soldiers come after us. No—it is not the earthscratchers we must attack now. I say we must go after the soldiers who come marching winter after winter to attack our villages.”
“Tall Sioux speaks true,” said White Man’s Ladder with a cautious tone. “Soldiers search out our villages, butchering our women and children who cannot escape. Remember Black Kettle’s people?”
“Black Kettle ate the scraps of food the white man didn’t want to throw to his dogs,” Porcupine muttered angrily.
“This is true! And now Black Kettle is dead!” Bull roared angrily. “Killed by the Yellow Hair on the Washita— because he believed in the word of the white man.”
“Yes,” Porcupine agreed. “Because Black Kettle thought he could have peace with the white man!”
“These old men who want peace … the ones who act like old women,” White Horse growled, “their villages are filled with those who want to make peace with the white man. I say it is good that the soldiers catch and destroy them!”
Bull’s voice rose. “We should not cry for any who die, for any who are caught by the soldiers—for they were stupid not to fight back with the last ounce of their strength!”
Tall Bull raised his hand for silence, ready to speak at last. “Perhaps High-Backed Bull’s words are right. We cannot go on wandering this prairie, trying to avoid the white man. Instead, as you say—we must attack … and attack again. Track down every one of his outlying settlements. Kill the white people squatting there on our buffalo ground.”
“Still, what of the great smoking horses that move back and forth across this land once grazed freely by the buffalo?” Bullet Proof asked.
“Because of the smoking horses, the herds have been cut in half,” Feathered Bear moaned with a wag of his head. “No more will the buffalo cross the iron tracks the white man has planted for his smoking horse.”
“It is as if the white man has laid down two lines on the prairie,” said Red Cherries. He pointed an arm. “One north of us in the land of the Lakota. One south toward the reservations. Now the herds can no longer move freely.”
“
“This was the land of our fathers at one time,” said Yellow Nose. “Will we be known as the sons who gave away this land of our ancestors to the white man?”
At that moment on the far side of camp, there arose a commotion. Muffled shouts were heard coming from the east, along with the metallic barking of dogs.
“Let our words rest now where our hearts lie,” said White Horse. “We must not be the last generation to ride free across this prairie. We must fight, Tall Bull.”
“Yes!” agreed Porcupine. “While other bands may run away, it remains for us to carry on the fight.”
Energized, his blood running hot with talk of the coming struggle, Bull said, “While other bands tuck their tails like scared rabbits, running away to hide on their reservations—we Dog Soldiers must take the fight into the lap of the white man!”
