Winter Rain

Women at the river turned from bathing young children, washing clothing or cradleboards, or filling skin pouches with water. Still others rose from morning fires or scraping the skins pegged out across the prairie, hides surrounding the three great camp circles. Children began crying out in the contagious excitement, darting here and there with the news of approaching riders, while camp dogs set to the howl and yip. So much clamor was it all that the old men who sat in the shade of the lodges rose finally with wonder, shading their eyes from the late-morning sun.

Then High-Backed Bull saw him—the tall, muscular one, emerging at last from his lodge near one horn of the camp crescent farthest to the east—the direction where the white man marched, coming on at a hurry.

As High-Backed Bull yanked back on the single horsehair rein, bringing with it his pony’s jaw, the animal skidded to a lock-kneed stop, prancing in a wild circle around Roman Nose. The war chief grabbed for the rein and held on as he peered into the light of the high sun, and the face of the young scout.

“You bring me good news?”

Catching his breath, finding his tongue so dry from the race that it stuck to the roof of his mouth, Bull asked, “I am first?”

Roman Nose nodded, impatient. “You are, High-Backed Bull. What do you, the first to ride in, have to tell me?”

The pony hurled flecks of foam as it threw its head from side to side—at a full gallop seconds before, then suddenly commanded to halt and stand obediently still by both rider and the man on the ground.

Bull gazed into the war chief’s dark eyes, wishing his own were as dark and truly Cheyenne as were those of Roman Nose. “The white men—”

“Yes, the half-a-hundred?”

Swallowing hard, Bull went on, “They are less than half a day behind now.”

“Do you think you know where they will camp tonight?”

Sensing pride that the war chief should ask such an important question of him, High-Backed Bull straightened on the pony’s back. “I cannot be sure, but I believe there is a place where they might find firewood along the shallow river, camp on the sandy bank.”

“How far?”

He thought a moment, rerunning the miles of race back through his mind. “Not far. I believe it would take us no longer than it would for a man to eat his supper.”

Roman Nose smiled, gazing off to the southeast, into the distance, as the Brule riders brought their ponies to a halt around him, kicking up dust in rooster tails, bringing the barking dogs and yammering, excited children as magnets would draw a scattering of iron filings.

“We must go tell Pawnee Killer!” shouted the war chief over the growing clamor. “Tell Tall Bull and Two Moon—get their ponies! We have a war council to attend.” He began to turn away into the crowd.

This time it was High-Backed Bull who reached down and snagged the war chief’s upper arm. “A war council?”

“Yes, my friend. We will plan our attack on the half-a-hundred who have followed us for many days, stalking our backtrail.”

“Then … at last we will fight these white men?”

For a considered moment Roman Nose stared back into the young warrior’s eyes, perhaps seeing there what few others might. “You hunger deeply to fight these white men, yes?”

“Any white man.”

Roman Nose nodded. “Perhaps for now any white man’s scalp will do, young one. Yet come a day, we both know you covet but one man’s scalp.”

“Come a day very, very soon, Roman Nose.”

“We will make quick work of these who follow us, like the meadowlarks follow the hawk … until the hawk finally tires of the game and turns—to strike!”

Around them the entire camp became pandemonium with the news on every lip. Young boys brought up ponies for the Northern Cheyenne chiefs, who mounted amid the wild cries for revenge, cries to punish the white stalkers. The Shahiyena sent their leaders off to hold a war council with Pawnee Killer and the headmen of the Brule camped upstream no farther than ten arrow-flights.

“May I come with you, Roman Nose?” Bull shouted above the commotion.

Turning his pony about, the war chief smiled. “You will not be allowed to attend the council, but—yes. Come. You will hold my pony while I sit with the others.”

“It will be an honor to care for your pony while you decide how the white men are to die.”

The emissaries from the Shahiyena camp reined their animals from the camp circle and loped upstream where moments before the excited Brule scouts had arrived carrying the news. Already the Killer’s headmen were hurrying to the chief’s lodge, where the buffalo-hide cover was being rolled up on one side to allow the breeze to cool the shady interior.

Just beyond the lodge stood a hide awning stretched across a framework of lodgepoles, providing shade for a half-dozen Lakota women scurrying about to start a fire to boil meat and fry bread for those attending the war council. First the men would fill their bellies, then smoke with prayers that the truth be spoken—and only then would there be talk of making a fight of it against the white men.