Winter Rain

“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.”

“Aiyeee!” cried Hair Rope nearby. “This time we will work to even the score for Pawnee Killer. This time we will attack and wipe these half-a-hundred off the face of The Mother of All Things!”

“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.