“For what?”
“Murder. You kill someone?”
His eyes must have given him up when he looked away, unable to look the white man in the face.
“Tell you what, mister,” the white man continued, “you best be on your way and now. These here posters is going up all over town. They’ll be up all over the hills afore the sun sets tomorrow. Likely you’ll be as easy for others to spot, just as easy to catch. Then some miner’s court decide to hang you.”
To this day Johnny remembered clear as sunrise how that white man with dirt caked down in those deep wrinkles on his face and the wattle of his neck had pantomimed a rope dropping over his head, tightened, then strangled at the end of that noose. As calmly as he could, Johnny had nodded and set his mop against the wall. Then turned away, not once looking over his shoulder.
He stole another horse that day, the biggest one of those tied at the side of the saloon. Not one of the horses out front at the rail, but back in the shadows, an animal with a blaze face and two front stockings. It looked strong enough to carry him fast and far. But the best thing that made Johnny decide on the horse was what was tied behind the saddle: a thick blanket roll, wrapped in an oiled slicker, along with those two saddlebags stuffed to their limit. Plain to see that horse and rigging were ready for the trail.
Bruguier kicked the animal into a gallop as soon as he put the last tent behind him, heading west toward the setting sun. East and north meant trouble. That’s where the white men were, with their pictures and their stories of murder, the nightmare of their hanging ropes that choked off the only chance his spirit could fly out of his mouth when he breathed his last. No man must die that way.
The only direction for him lay to the south and west. There was damned little of the white man north of the Platte or south of the Yellowstone, clear to the Big Horn Mountains. Especially that summer after the Lakota and Cheyenne had whipped the pony soldiers something fierce in two big fights. He set off to find sanctuary among his mother’s people—that, or this journey would be his suicide.
Beside his fire that first summer night after fleeing the white man’s settlements, Johnny unfurled the oiled rain poncho and rolled out the blankets inside their bedroll, a long canvas sack. Within he found a pair of well-worn batwing chaps.
“A cow-boy,” he murmured to himself as he stood to hold the chaps against his hips, admiring the way they fluttered as he pranced around the fire ring—just the way the long fringe on Lakota leggings fluttered with a man’s every step.
The next morning he put on the weathered chaps, running his hands over the dark oiled color of the leather. He had worn them ever since. Had them on that early morning he caught sight of the smoke rising from many fires beyond the low range of hills in the distance. By the time he reached the top of a far knoll, the smoke had dissipated and the village was already in motion for the day, slowly making its way north by west—back toward the Owl River.* Bruguier cautiously followed them all day, watchful of outriders protecting the massive line of march, all those women and children and travois, which would have stirred up a lot of dust had it not been for the season of the rains. By the time the procession went into camp, Johnny had them figured for Lakota. One band or another—but Lakota for sure. How he wanted to taste the words on his tongue once more, and forget the white man’s language for the rest of his days.
Riding down from the slope slowly, he saw several of the young warriors turn and notice him while lodgepoles were being set in their proper order, lodge covers being unfurled over the first. Johnny kicked that big American horse in its flanks and rolled into an easy gallop. With a burst of noise and a flourish of the hat he ripped from his head, Bruguier shot past the warriors coming out to challenge him—dashing straight into the camp, knowing enough to aim for the center of the great village. Dead in the middle of the two horns of the crescent, he would find the chief’s lodge. There he should be safe—despite the fact that he was dressed in white man’s clothes. Despite the whole summer of bloody warfare against the white man.
Already he could see that he could not make it to the center of camp. Suddenly there were too many horsemen forming up, galloping to meet him. His way was blocked.
In panic, his eyes shot over the nearby lodges being raised. But ahead, close at hand, there was a big one. Well painted with dream symbols. A tripod stood outside with many scalps hanging from it. This man must surely be a war chief. Besides, it was one of the few already erected and close at hand.
Outside the big lodge he dismounted before his horse even stopped, and ducked within the lodge door without ceremony. Outside the children screeched in their high voices, the women shouting to their men that a white man had just invaded their camp, a lone white man. But inside the lodge all remained eerily quiet.
Before him the middle-aged warrior looked Johnny over carefully. The wrinkled, copper-skinned woman said nothing at all, but went back to laying out the buffalo robes and blankets while her husband eventually went on loading his pipe.
“Welcome,” the warrior said finally as he raised a twig from the fire he had started with flint and steel.
When Johnny answered in Lakota, “Thank you,” no surprise seemed to register on the warrior’s face.
“Sit. We will have something to eat soon. Would you like to smoke with me?”
Bruguier answered, “Yes—”
But there would be no smoking, not just yet, for at that moment a wide-shouldered warrior burst through the open doorway and stood to his full height within the lodge, towering over the old warrior and his sudden guest.
“White Bull!” the young warrior cried, gesturing aggressively at Bruguier.
“You are welcome too, One Horn,” White Bull said, gesturing for the warrior to sit. “Even though you left your manners outside this afternoon.”
The young man sputtered angrily, “Is this man a friend?”
White Bull pulled on the pipe stem, drawing smoke into his mouth and lungs for several moments, then exhaled it and regarded the smoke that he cupped in a hand and dragged over the top of his head in a sacred fashion. “He is in my lodge. And we will eat soon. You are welcome to stay and eat with us.”
“Sitting Bull wants to know,” the young warrior spat. “If he is your friend, then the Bull wants you to bring this visitor to his lodge. But if he is not your friend, then Sitting Bull says we can kill him.”
White Bull’s eyes dropped to look at Bruguier. For a long time he seemed to study the swarthy-skinned intruder wearing the clothes of a white man. After interminably long minutes, he looked back at One Horn.
“We will go to Sitting Bull’s lodge … together.”
“S-sitting Bull?” Johnny asked in a croak. “The same Sitting Bull who crushed the soldiers at the Greasy Grass?”
“Yes,” White Bull said. “Come, now. We will go see my uncle.”
Plunging through the long, jostling gauntlet of angry, oath-spitting warriors and keening, screeching women and old men, White Bull and Bruguier followed One Horn, who wore a provocative headdress with its single buffalo horn jutting from the wearer’s forehead. While the trip did not require that many steps, it nonetheless seemed like an eternity to Johnny. These people screamed to take his scalp, his hide removed one torturous inch at a time. They wanted him to suffer horribly. That much he understood in their Lakota harangue.
Soon he could see the end of that gauntlet—the big un-painted lodge had its bottom rolled up some five feet all around its entire circumference so that the cool breeze could penetrate the interior. Perhaps so that onlookers could watch Sitting Bull’s conference with this sudden intruder to this camp of Miniconjou and Sans Arc who had joined the great chief’s Hunkpapa in their summer wanderings between the two armies—one army north, one army south.