Winter Rain

Through tears Bull saw the war chief grip his pony’s mane as the animal careened sideways off the sandbar, losing the last of its strength now as it crossed the shallow riverbed and plunged into the willow on the far side. Roman Nose wavered unsteadily, his head wagging as if connected to his shoulders by nothing more than loose strings.

Bull whirled from the plum brush, sprinting downstream along the north bank, refusing to believe what he had seen. The hot breeze stung his face, making him unaware of the tears that spilled across the furred earth-paint on his cheeks as he reached the sharp cutbank opposite the far end of the island. There he hurled himself off, lunging into the shallow water, and splashed across while the terror of that fateful charge played itself out. By the time Bull clawed his way up the south bank and into the willow, the white men had broken Roman Nose’s greatest charge. Wounded ponies and bloodied men parted like water flowing past a great boulder, clearing both sides of the island, cleft before a sure and sudden death in the face of the white man’s weapons.

Seven terrible volleys had torn into their brown ranks: spilling warriors, turning row upon row of the naked horsemen to the side, like waves crashing against a rocky coast. Sweating, gleaming, crimson-smeared bodies tumbled onto the pale sand, bobbed in the shallow, churned waters beaten to a red froth by two thousand thundering hooves.

Bull cried in utter despair as the white man’s pistols began to bark, firing into the backs of the retreating warriors. As his heart came into his throat, he watched the half-a-hundred finish off those wounded horsemen who had fallen close enough to the sandbar’s rifle pits.

In anger, fury, and rage, Bull turned away, eyes smarting.

And heard the snuffle of the pony.

He found the animal, found Roman Nose nearby—his strong legs now useless. Pushing back the gall rising in his throat, the young warrior knelt to find the great war chief unable to move. Only his arms could he move. Eyes stinging in anger, vowing revenge for the murder of Roman Nose, Bull pulled his war chief from the willows where Roman Nose had dragged himself with one agonizing pull of his arms after another. There were many bloody pucker-holes in his back, more wounds than Bull took time to count.

Away from the bank, where he rolled Roman Nose to face the sky, Bull saw by the throbbing of the huge, muscular neck cords that the war chief experienced wracking spasms of great pain.

“I … have lost my legs,” Roman Nose whispered, his eyes half-lidded in pain.

“I will go for help.”

“No—do not go,” he began. Then attempted a smile. “Yes. Go for help, High-Backed Bull. You see, I cannot ride.” He coughed. “No more will I ever ride.”

Turning away for a moment to hide his own grief, Bull felt overcome. This tragic end for a man whose very name had struck such fear into white hearts, turning them to water across many raiding seasons. He nodded, unable to speak around the sour lump in his throat, then hurried away. Bull cried as he caught up his horse and rode upriver for help.

Now as the sun began to sink in the west with a rose-brown crack of light, after a long afternoon wherein he never left the war chief’s side while the gentle hands of women turned Roman Nose and bathed him, cooling the war chief in the shade of a leafy arbor, Roman Nose smiled up at Bull.

“How I have missed never taking a woman now,” Roman Nose said quietly, looking at the young warrior as a cool rag was brushed across his chest. “I miss never coupling. I never married. You must, my young friend.” Then the chief’s eyes fluttered to Porcupine. “See that High-Backed Bull finds a woman—one to enjoy his life with.”

“Roman Nose denied himself for his people,” Porcupine replied. “Roman Nose will remain the greatest warrior of the Shahiyena.”

The dying man turned his head slightly, gazing now at the young woman closest to him. At first it seemed he struggled to say something, but could not force the words out. After a moment Roman Nose appeared to grow content with his own painful silence, content in listening to the chants of the medicine men gathered nearby, their hand drums thrumming, buffalo scrotum and bladder rattles filled with stream pebbles. Beyond the whispered sacred prayers of the shamans, bigger and louder drums hammered to accompany angrier singing and women wailing in grief. The many dead and dying lay nearby on the bloody grass, scattered among the plum brush, those lost in the fateful charges now keened and prayed over by those who had watched the failure of one attack after another.

“Yours was a charge the Shahiyena will speak of for winters to come,” Porcupine told Roman Nose.