Winter Rain

As his wind-stung eyes cleared of the tears and dust, he scanned the slopes of the surrounding hills. On the crests of most had appeared spectators from the villages. Besides women and the little ones come to watch, came the old ones and the boys eager but too young to fight. The chiefs proved themselves wise once again—bringing their people here to watch the battle.

With an audience of his family and friends, not to mention the young women a young warrior hoped to court—all of them there to cheer him on from the nearby bluffs—what man would not redouble his efforts to make a grand show of rubbing out the half-a-hundred?

Then as Bull watched, the cheers and war cries came of a single purpose. Most of the spectators on top of those ridges were turning, as if watching the approach of something. Or someone.

And in his heart High-Backed Bull realized it could be but one whose arrival caused such a thunderous reception: Roman Nose.

In his heart Bull cried for his war chief. Knowing the end had come for this the greatest ever to lead the Dog Soldiers.

Though he knew his medicine was gone now the way of the shortgrass in spring, his power gone the way of puffball dust on a summer wind, the great Shahiyena war chief had come at last to lead his faithful, trusting warriors, lead them down on that sandbar and the half-a-hundred.

While his heart leapt with joy at the arrival of Roman Nose, High-Backed Bull’s heart also sank. The white man’s iron fork had sealed the terrible, unstoppable fate of this bloody morning.

Clearly Bull knew there remained no way to alter the course of the war chief’s destiny. With his charge into the teeth of the white man’s guns on that sandy island, Roman Nose was fated to die.

11

Moon of Black Calves 1868

THERE HAD TO be at least a thousand warriors in the valley, counting the Dog Soldiers of Tall Bull and White Horse. Why, Roman Nose led at least half that number himself.

The fight should have been over sooner than it would take a man to eat his breakfast.

How was it that they hadn’t rubbed that sandbar clear of those half-a-hundred?

Why was it taking so long?

He glanced at the sun, found it halfway on its climb to zenith. A half day’s time lost and no scalps for any of them to brandish. That lay in his belly like the cold pig-meat the white man gave the reservation Indians imprisoned far to the south and east.

The taunting grew louder from the warriors sniping back in the cover of creekbank undergrowth, and for the next hour or more things quieted over the island while the Lakota and Shahiyena marksmen did their best to keep up a steady rattle of rifle fire from their brushy shelters. On the steamy sandbar, High-Backed Bull could watch the figures burrowing down like den mice as the white men silently scratched at the sandy earth with their hands, knives, tin cups … anything they could use to claw holes in the ground and scoop up walls of the damp sand against the snipers’ bullets. From time to time the half-breed son of trader Bent taunted the enemy in their own tongue. Charlie Bent cursed them, lured them, told the white men what awaited them when at long last Roman Nose’s charge came to ride them down.

Intrigued, Bull watched how those fragments of English spoken at them caused the white men such confusion, such enjoyable consternation. And for a few moments he wished he had paid better attention to his mother and sister, learning the white man’s tongue from them, if not from the man who had fathered him. To know more of it just might serve some real use one day soon, he decided: to be able to speak the language of the man who had fathered him, the language of the man he would seek among the whites.

Tying the long war club behind to the latigo on his pad saddle, he brought his Springfield carbine over his head and shoulder, where it hung from the rawhide sling. He never carried that many of the heavy lead balls, nor much of the powder the weapon took. Still, he itched to get a clear crack at one, just one, of those white men. Any of them. Like the snipers, waiting, waiting for the chance to blow a man’s head off.

He dismounted and tied his pony to some brush, where it could browse as he moved along the north bank at a crouch, slowly parting the willow with the rifle barrel to peer at the island. It struck him then just what a feat he had accomplished—riding onto the sandbar, over the carcass barricades and rifle pits, all the way to the end of the island—

Of a sudden, unshod hooves hammered the sandy riverbed. More than ten horsemen broke from the nearby trees shading the creekbank, darting into range of the sandbar, racing past the north side of the island. As they galloped closer to the enemy, one of the group swooped toward the near side of the island.