In a few seconds Chance, crying, reined his horse sharply to the left, turning it to follow the travois tracks and the pressed grass that marked the trail of the Sioux.
In an hour he had rejoined the band.
Chapter Seventeen
The winter morning was crisp, the air as brittle and clear as thin ice. It was the 29th of December, 1890, at the banks of Wounded Knee Creek.
The lodges of the Minneconjou, also on the whole sheltering the Hunkpapa of Old Bear, irregularly dotted the still prairie, like some silent, natural formation, not the habitats of men. The barkless tepee poles showed like bones through the weathered hide of the old skins that clung to them.
The camp was quiet.
Not even a cooking fire rippled the still December air above the lodges. None of the dogs crept through the camp to smell for food. They lay curled in the ashes of last night’s fires, their eyes open, not willing to move.
Outside the perimeter of the camp, soldiers walked in pairs, calling the signals of their post. The sentries walked in short, shuffling steps to keep their feet warm. They carried their weapons at right shoulder arms, their free hands unmilitarily buried in the refuge of their blue greatcoats, except when officers checked the watch. The breath of the sentries hung about their rifles like gunsmoke, eventually drifting upward and behind them.
Yesterday afternoon the soldiers had appeared.
The Sioux had been on their second day of the march when the shout, “Long Knives!” hurtled like a volley of shots the length of the long, ragged line.
Chance had not counted on soldiers surprising the Sioux on the prairie, coming to escort them to Pine Ridge.
Chance supposed there were about five hundred of them.
On the left and the right they had appeared, dust moving into the sky about twelve hundred yards away, on both sides.
Old Bear had ridden the line of the Sioux, crying out, “Do not fire! Do not fight!”
About two hundred yards away, the two converging forces of cavalry reined in, their sabers out of the sheath, their colors flying.
Chance had strained his eyes to make out the small triangular flag in the distance.
Running Horse had read it easily. “Seven,” he said. And he had added to Chance. “That is bad.”
Chance nodded. He, like everyone else, had heard of the Custer Massacre, but it had only been a thing in newspapers when he had been fourteen or fifteen years old; then he had read about it in a book or two. It had always been distant, remote, something that had happened to someone else on the other side of the world, meaning nothing much to him, nothing that wasn’t abstract.
But somehow Chance felt that that event, that had been to him only a few lines of newsprint, a paragraph or two in a book, had not yet finished.
Not all of the Seventh Cavalry of course had been wiped out with Custer, only the detachments which he had personally led. There would be large numbers of career men left who would remember Custer, and their comrades, from fourteen years before. Chance could well suppose that these men might instill as a matter of course newer recruits with their own anger, their own vehemence. The Seventh might, for all Chance knew, suppose itself to have a score to settle; they might suppose, for all he knew, that there was a blot on that small, defiant triangular flag whipping in the wind some two hundred yards away, a blot to be rubbed out, a blot that had waited fourteen years for its cleansing.
Chance watched while Old Bear and Big Foot rode slowly out to meet the commander of the cavalry forces.
When the chiefs returned they told the braves to put away their weapons. The white man had come to go with them to Pine Ridge. There was to be no fighting. This pleased most of the warriors, who had little inclination to fight with an enemy four times as strong, particularly with one’s starving women and children at one’s back. Some of the men, the younger ones, like Drum, urged fighting, but they received for their show of bravery only the passive stares of the older men.
Chance melted in with the Indians, pulling the blanket more about his shoulders. He had wanted to go only as far as Wounded Knee and pull out before any soldiers arrived.
Old Bear rode through the ranks to Chance. He paused before him, his eyes sad. “There are men with the Long Knives who want to know if a white man is with us,” he said. “They want to find such a man.”
“What did you tell them?” asked Chance.
“I told them,” said Old Bear, “that we are going to Pine Ridge and that white men are the business of white men.”
“What did they say to that?” asked Chance.
“They want to look for you,” said Old Bear. “But I told them it would not be good. There are young men too ready to fight.”
“Thanks,” said Chance.
Old Bear looked at him, the trace of a smile cracking the leather of his face. “I did not lie, Medicine Gun,” he said.
Chance nodded, looking to where Drum and his braves were shifting on their horses, an angry knot of young warrior’s, glaring and shaking their rifles at the soldiers.
Drum rode a way into the prairie toward the soldiers, and then rode back. He did this twice, holding his rifle over his head, taunting them in Sioux. Then he returned to his young men. Chance guessed that Drum and his braves would not accompany the march to Pine Ridge, not if they could help it.
“Tonight,” said Old Bear to Chance, “it will be hard to leave camp because the guard will be heavy. Tomorrow night, near Pine Ridge, maybe the Long Knives will not watch so close.”
“All right,” said Chance. “I’ll wait, and move out when I can.”
He hoped there would be an opportunity.
Chance looked out toward the encircling cavalry.
Suddenly among them he spotted the brown coat of a civilian. Something about the shape of the man and his carriage in the saddle told Chance it was Grawson. The man was putting something back in his saddlebags, possibly a pair of binoculars.
“He has seen you,” said Running Horse.
After a while, the long lines of Sioux began to move again, and Chance, wrapped in his blanket against the cold, rubbing and blowing on his hands to keep the fingers flexible, rode with them.
“Where do we camp tonight?” asked Chance.
“Wounded Knee,” said Running Horse.
In the camp of the soldiers, corporals went from bundle to bundle, shaking them awake.
This morning, even before reveille, they would be awake and ready for action.
The soldiers stirred, grumbling out of their damp blankets, cursing between chattering teeth, pulling the stiff cold leather of their boots over their wool stockings. When the last buckles were fixed and the last greatcoat was buttoned, the troops massed for formation.
Then reveille cut the morning like a saber.
The announcement of the bugle was not lost on the Sioux, most of whom had been lying awake, their weapons wrapped inside their blankets to keep the trigger housings from stiffening. The white men had oil for their guns, but the Sioux used marrow and grease, and the warmth of their own flesh.
Chance parted the flaps of the crowded lodge he had shared with Running Horse, Winona, and a Minneconjou family. He stared out across the brown grass at the blue dots that formed rectangles in the distance. The bugle sounded again, spearing its notes clearly and quickly to his ear. “Roll call,” he thought. Next it would be mess call. Chance wished he had some of that black coffee that Running Horse called black medicine. He could go for some now. The last coffee he had had was at the Carters’, where Lucia was sleeping now, warm in her blankets, with her hair soft over her cottoned shoulders.
Chance had dreamed of her last night but the dream had not been a good one.