Winter Rain

Then the riders broke over the last rise. In the space of a moment, all was a furious blur, like a reflection on the surface of a wind-chapped pond. Bull saw them against the horizon in the graying light, more like wisps of shadow, like curls of greasy smoke from some creosote-soaked sagewood fire—black and mobile, stark and streaking between the carbonite earth they moved across and the starry sky that served as their only backdrop.

One after another each shadowy form raced fluid as spring water off a midstream boulder, sliding down the high ground on horseback, feathers in a breeze-whipped spray clustered at each warrior’s head as the eight emerged from the top of that far knoll. The sky oozed red of a sudden, smothering the gray of night, coming the dusty crimson of sunrise. Below the riders as those horsemen drove their animals down the long slope, beginning to screech at the top of their lungs, the valley of the Plum River lay drenched in bloody gray light.

“Here come the rest of ’em!” came a shout from among those at the far side of the white man’s camp.

Bull watched two more of the enemy bolt into motion as if they had been shot out of a gun. The curses of those coming awake of a sudden were now lost among the pounding of footsteps and the hammering of unshod pony hooves distinct on the cold morning wind.

The war cries cracked the air like fragmented shards of thunder, distant but drawing closer with every beat of a man’s heart.

“They’re after the horses, men!” a high-pitched voice cried out from among those on the west.

For Bull it was time to ride.

That same voice again hurled itself over the throbbing camp, men and animals startled into motion, curses and orders and shouts and cries of confusion creating pure bedlam.

“Turn out! The bastards are after our horses. Turn out! Get hold of the—”

For Bull the white war chief’s last few words were drowned under the onrush of the pony thieves. Bad Tongue and his Brule, along with Starving Elk and Little Hawk, all tore into the west side of the white man’s camp, every last throat of theirs shouting and shrieking. They flapped blankets and rattled dried buffalo hides, one of the Lakota beating on that small drum, the rest blowing on eagle wing-bone whistles they carried about their necks—making noise enough for twice their number.

A new voice bawled as Bull tore into the camp unheard for the deafening racket. “Get your asses up and moving, boys! Indians!”

“Turn out, men!” someone else ordered, a tall, thin one suddenly in the midst of the camp a heartbeat later.

It was he that Bull chose for his first ride-down on that sandy ground, as the figures ahead of him dropped to their knees, throwing rifles to their shoulders, spitting bright, blinding orange flame from the muzzles, a noise no louder than the pounding of his own heart in his ears.

White men—and he had his pick of them as he leapt the pony over a mound of baggage.

“I dropped that bastard!” someone yelled far ahead across the camp.

Then of a sudden the first of the white men turned, finding the lone warrior among them, the stone club at the end of his arm swinging in a red-orange, dizzying blur out of the coming sunlight.

“Jesus-God! The Injuns behind us too!”

Ahead of him the white men dived this way and that, some struggling to control their rearing horses as he rode them down. Again and again he swung the iron-studded war club, driving it at any target: white enemy, his horses and mules.

Across camp, on the west, one of the red horsemen trembled, then toppled from his pony onto the gray, unforgiving plain, where he was lost in the darkness of the grassy sage.

“Less’n a dozen of the bastards!”

“Hold those horses! Hold those—”

Bull’s throat hurt with the cry he bellowed at the white men—unable to remember when he had started to holler, knowing he had never stopped once he had begun that charge into their camp.

“Goddammit—shoot when you got something to shoot at!”

Bad Tongue and the rest of the warriors were rushing toward Bull, having reached the far western edge of the fire-dotted camp itself, having spooked the big horses and the braying mules.

Screeching horsemen rattled their rawhide and blew their shrieking, frightening death whistles, joining the whinnying horses and brass-lunged pack animals, along with the sporadic gunshots from the pickets—that entire camp thundered into instant pandemonium. Every white man had come to his feet and gone among the animals, furiously pulling at hobbles and reins. Likely some of the white enemy had lashed their horses to their belts through the night rather than trust to picket pins. As Bull charged among them screeching his war song, some of the white men waved pistols at him, seeming unsure of their shots as others stomped at the coals of their fires to kill the bloody backlight.

His pony collided against a big American horse, almost going down, High-Backed Bull nearly unhorsed as the pony careened sideways, then regained its legs. He whirled about, sawing the single rein.