Winter Rain

As the war chiefs gazed over the combined forces of Shahiyena, Lakota, and Arapaho warriors, numbering more than ten-times-ten, and ten times over again, a thousand horsemen in all, they reluctantly gave in to the failing, red-earth light of that summer day. No man in fear of his own soul would consider fighting at night. If a warrior were killed during a battle after the sun had disappeared from the sky, his spirit would forever roam this earth, unable to walk the Seamon, the sacred road of the dead. He would not spend his forever days beyond the stars in Seyan. No man dared tempt such a fate.

That is, no man but High-Backed Bull.

“The rest won’t ride until the sun climbs out of its bed,” Bull told the first friend he felt he could trust with the horse raid.

Wrinkled Wolf’s eyes grew big. “You aren’t waiting?”

“We will go as soon as it grows dark enough,” the Bull answered. “There won’t be but a fragment of moon tonight—”

“We will get caught!”

“I won’t!” Bull whispered harshly, slapping his chest. “There are white men wearing scalps this night, scalps that I want to carry on my belt. I want to take that hair before the others have the chance. Are you with me?”

Wrinkled Wolf nodded reluctantly. “Yes. You said I would get the American horses we take.”

“You, and your brother, Four Bulls Moon. Get him to come along with us too. You will share the white man’s horses. I don’t want any—only the scalps. Only to cut out tongues and eyes. To hack off hands and feet, to slash off the manhood parts and stuff them in the lying mouths. That is all I want this night. Go. Get your brother. See if he has friends who still have courage to ride against the white man in darkness.”

As High-Backed Bull waited in a plum thicket at the edge of the Dog Soldier camp, his pony picketed nearby in readiness, tearing noisily at the summer-cured grass, the warrior listened as the great Shahiyena village assumed a festive atmosphere. With news of the white riders drawing close behind them, every man sixteen summers and older had prepared for battle, readying his medicine, caring for his weapons. Most of the firearms now possessed by 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!