But Tall Bull was dead. And for weeks they had wandered aimlessly while some of the other war chiefs argued as to just where they should go. Some families broke off and went their own way. A few bands even returned to the south that autumn, to live with relatives down on the southern agency.* But not the true Dog Soldiers like Yellow Hair. They continued to raid on into that autumn. And early that winter he took his scalp down by the Little Dried River where five winters before the soldiers had attacked old Black Kettle’s village of peace-loving Shahiyena. A lot of good it did the old chief to tie that white man’s star flag from his highest lodgepole. Four years later Black Kettle was killed by Custer’s men.
Now both Black Kettle and Tall Bull were dead. A man could die fighting, or he could die doing what the white man ordered him to do. To Yellow Hair’s way of thinking, the old peace chief was a pitiful man, worthy only of scorn for his stupidity in believing in the white man’s word. Black Kettle deserved to die for putting his trust not in his own people, but in what the white man considered truth.
But Tall Bull—it mattered little that he was dead, for he had died an honored man: a warrior who never shrank from the task at hand, a man who always thought of his people first, a fighter who went down defending his people, his home, and the land where he had buried the bones of his ancestors. That was the death of a true warrior and patriot of the People: to die with honor, to lay down his life fighting off the white man.
That autumn after the defeat of the Dog Soldiers at the Springs, Yellow Hair rode with three others for many days to the south, on beyond the Cherry River.* There they came upon a camp of white buffalo hunters one cold, frosty evening. Slowly, the four warriors approached the white man’s camp, asking for coffee, even a little tobacco for their pipes. Instead they were given nothing but the loud words and the muzzles of the hunters’ guns, gestured away.
The next morning they killed the first as he crept into the bushes and settled over an old tree with his britches around his ankles to relieve himself. Then they slit the throat of the one sitting in the predawn darkness, watching over their horses and mules. After they had run these off into the hills, the four warriors waited for the five hunters to come for their animals. They did not have to wait long— for the white man is nothing without his animals. Especially these brave hunters who came to slaughter all the buffalo.
In their ambush all were soon killed except one who used the bodies of his friends to hide behind. It took a long time for the warriors to get close enough to that one whose hair seemed to shine like the white man’s crazy metal, so much like the rays of the sun was it. That lone hunter killed two of Yellow Hair’s friends that morning before Yellow Hair and the other warrior finally worked in close enough to hear the heavy breathing of the white man.
It had been a long time since the hunter had last fired a shot.
Carefully Yellow Hair crawled on his belly toward the bodies of the white men they had killed. Behind them he heard the quiet murmuring of the brave hunter. At last Yellow Hair raised his head over one of the bodies and was surprised to see the white man lying on his back, a bloody wound along the side of his head, an even bloodier and bubbling wound soaking the front of his greasy shirt. As Yellow Hair rose to his hands and knees, the white hunter looked at him with eyes as hard as river ice, then cursed him, growling something in the white man’s language with his bloody tongue, pointing that pistol at the warrior, its hammer cocked.
The hunter pulled the trigger and laughed. Laughed very loud because the weapon he let drop at his side was empty. For a moment Yellow Hair stared at the hunter, not understanding—then decided the white man laughed because he had left himself without any bullets.
Yellow Hair knelt over his victim as the man tried to push him off, but did not have the strength. Then, taking the white man’s own knife from the scabbard on his belt, he took the hunter’s hair. While the enemy was still breathing.
When he had finished, Yellow Hair had gotten to his feet, holding his trophy aloft, shaking it in the enemy’s face. Then slashed the white man’s throat, listening to him bubble and gurgle until he no longer struggled to breathe through the gaping, gushy wound.
“You have done a brave thing!”
Yellow Hair had turned to look behind him. His friend, Rain Maker, stood near, having watched it all.
“You have done a great thing!”
“He was a mighty enemy,” Yellow Hair said, holding out the scalp as if to show it off.
Rain Maker yelped, a low cry leaping from far back in his throat. Then he said, “From this day on your people will call you Yellow Hair!”
Ever since he had ridden a rising star among the Shahiyena.
In the late autumns most of the warrior bands wandered back onto one agency or the other, either at Red Cloud or over at Spotted Tail. Through the seasons his people remained closer to the Lakota than they did to their own southern cousins down in Indian Territory. And with the coming of the new grass that fed their ponies and made the animals strong, the warrior bands once more wandered west and north off the reservations.
It had been so this summer. He and the rest of his staunchest holdouts had been out hunting for scalps in the Paha Sapa,* killing those white men who scratched in the ground for the crazy rocks near the sacred Bear Butte. It was there they learned of the rumors that a great fight had taken place far to the west. In the country of the Powder and the Rosebud, on a river where the Lakota traditionally hunted buffalo and antelope—a place called the Greasy Grass.
In that country, the story was told, in the span of no more than eight suns, the warriors of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull had twice defeated great armies the white man had sent against them.
Now the word was being spread: Bring the people! Come north! Soon the white man will be gone forever!
Like some of his friends, Yellow Hair had family living with Little Wolfs band back there on the agency at Red Cloud. While most of the other warriors in that war party hurriedly rode off to the west to join the great chiefs in their defeat of the white man, Yellow Hair and a handful of his friends raced south to spread the word among their people still remaining on the reservation. Those women and children, the old ones and those too sick to help themselves, they would all need the courage of the warriors to flee from the soldiers of war chief Jordan at Camp Robinson.
So it was that they had finally gathered more than eight-times-ten-times-ten of Little Wolfs people and other stragglers behind the ridges north of the agency three days ago. And yesterday they had started north. The Shahiyena had a wide road to travel, a road wide-open as well! To travel so slowly, to bring their families along, these were warriors who had every reason to feel confident that no white man, no soldier would raise his hand to stop them from joining the Hunkpapa medicine man in the north. He was the one with power now—for hadn’t he seen the white man’s ruin in his vision?
For those last few days they had waited on the agency, deciding whether to go or not. Scouts brought word that soldiers were prowling the very same country the Shahiyena would have to cross if they hoped to reach the Powder River hunting grounds. Then scouts returned from the Mini Pusa,* bringing news that the soldiers had turned around and were marching back to the south, toward the Buffalo Dung River, and had abandoned that country between the reservation and the Paha Sapa. As if fleeing from the danger in those mighty villages to the north who had just crushed two armies.
The way was clear!
Yesterday Yellow Hair and the warriors had started them out. No soldiers from Camp Robinson came out to try stopping the People. They hadn’t even seen a single white man all that day. Then this morning, as camp was coming to life and the women were loading their travois for the day’s journey, scouts came in with a report of a train of white-topped wagons that was coming from the west. Coming from the white man’s forts and cities, bound for his settlements in the Paha Sapa.