Winter Rain

But High-Backed Bull had sternly refused to ride with them when the time came. He had decided his destiny could not lie in a land where the white man would not be found. Instead, with narrow, hate-slitted eyes, the young warrior had vowed to stay close to the land of the whites— there the better to kill them, one at a time … spilling their blood until he once more ran across the one white man he wanted more than all the others.

Until at last Bull could gaze into the fear-glazed eyes of the one who had fathered him.

^*Bighorn River

8

Moon of Black Calves 1868

“IT IS COLD, High-Backed Bull,” whimpered the young warrior to his friend walking beside him.

He was shivering too with the retreat of the sun, but still his blood ran hot, his heart burning in his ears as they drew farther and farther from the Shahiyena camp. “Soon enough. Little Hawk—you and Starving Elk won’t have time to think about the cold of this night.”

The two Cheyenne brothers walking their horses downstream from the village circles with the Bull had been on many raids against the white man’s wagon roads and his outflung settlements of dirt-scratchers. But not one of them had ever attacked a camp of white men who had so boldly stalked them. Of a sudden, the Bull held his hand up and stopped in the darkness, listening.

“I hear it too,” said Starving Elk.

“The white men aren’t coming to attack at night?” asked the young Little Hawk.

He was certain they would not. Yet the white man was known for often doing the unexpected. As the quiet plodding of hooves drew closer, he held his breath, following the sound around the brow of the nearby hill, knowing the horsemen would not dare expose themselves along the rolling skyline.

When he squinted into the starlit darkness, the Bull was certain he could not see a thing. Yet when he did not try so hard, in fact did not look directly at what he wanted most to see, then he saw them: movement at first, then the shadowy forms of horses, the smoky men atop moving slowly, yet steadily downstream.

And just as his own mind was attempting to sort out why the enemy probing at the warrior camps would not be marching upstream, the half-dozen horsemen halted, and the buzzing of their talk carried through the still summer night’s air.

He thought he saw the fluttering of feathers atop the head of one. Then the rustling fan of unbraided hair washing out from the shoulders of another. It all made him bold enough to call out.

“Who is there, in the darkness?”

“Shahiyena?”

“Yes.”

“Burnt Thigh, we are. We thought you to be enemies.”

The Brule Lakota urged their ponies back along the curve of the hill toward the three who remained on foot beside their animals.

“I thought you might be some of the white men, come to see how strong we are,” the Bull told the others as they halted before him. “My name is High-Backed Bull.”

The leader nodded. He was young too: that much the Bull could tell of the cheeks and nose under the dim starlight.

“Our camp, like yours, is celebrating the victory to come tomorrow when the sun arises from its bed,” the Lakota said quietly. “I am Bad Tongue.”

“The fight will be over all too soon,” the Bull replied sourly, perhaps a little too sharply. “And there are too few scalps to go around.”

“You wanted to take some scalps tonight?” asked the Brule.

“We came for the white man’s big horses,” Starving Elk replied quickly.

“I came to take a few scalps for myself before they are gone in the morning,” the Bull boasted. “Brought down like the buffalo cows that they are, hamstrung by the quick-footed wolf pack.”

“Ponies and scalps,” said another of the Lakota. “You come with us and we’ll find enough for all of us.”

The Bull turned to the two brothers.

When Little Hawk had nodded to his older brother, Starving Elk said, “Yes. Let’s join the Burnt Thigh.” He gazed out at the night sky, shivering, perhaps with more than the cold.

The Bull turned back to the Lakota leader. “One must be very brave to fight both the white man and the night spirits. It is good to have friends along, Bad Tongue.”

“Yes,” the Brule replied. “Good to have friends along. Come, ride with us.”

The three Shahiyena mounted their ponies, the two brothers on animals they had crept into the herd to catch without a sound—for had either of them been discovered, the punishment would be severe. The old ones and war chiefs wanted no foolish coup-hunters alerting the white men prior to the massed attack at dawn.

They inched over hill after hill, searching for the camp, looking for the faint glow of the white man’s fires, stopping from time to time to listen for the snuffling of his horses and mules, to put ears to the ground while others held their ponies quiet, to sniff the air for the distinct smell of fresh offal dropped by those weary animals driven in the chase up the Plum River. No sight of the white man here. No sound to hint they were drawing close. No smell to betray the big animals.

Sandy, grass-shrouded hill after bare knob they climbed until—