Then Bull found himself in the shallow river again, alone this time. And on the shore he watched the many warriors rise from the willows and plum brush, holding aloft their rifles and weapons, cheering his brave, heroic ride as his pony sidestepped, fighting the grit and water, frightened of the bullets that hissed all about him now that he forced the animal into the teeth of the enemy guns.
“Wimaca yelo!” Bull cried back at those who cheered him. “I am a man!”
Pounding his heels into its flanks, Bull abruptly nosed the pony straight for the sandbar, its small hooves clawing at the side of the island, vaulting over the breastworks of two horse carcasses and down into the midst of the improvised rifle pits where the enemy dived and lunged out of the path of the lone, crazed horseman.
He astonished himself as well as his cheering brothers as he reached that lone cottonwood at the far end of the island without a bullet having touched him. He had taunted naevhan, sneered at death. His heart pounding like never before, High-Backed Bull urged his snorting, sidestepping pony into the stream, crossing to the north bank, where he reined it for a low hill. It was there he halted at last, stopping to survey the white men imprisoned on the sandy island.
Then he heard the raucous cheers of the women and children and old men gathered on the next ridge. They had watched his daring ride and celebrated that small victory with High-Backed Bull.
“Hotoma! Hotoma!” they cried, showering him in their celebration of the mysterious medicine bravery of the Shahiyena warrior.
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.
One of the whites, a man with a black beard hung to midchest, suddenly bolted up from his rifle pit, aimed, and fired. As the puff of dirty smoke spat over the rifleman’s head, the daring warrior pitched sideways into the shallow creek.
On instinct Bull aimed down the barrel at the cloud of gray smoke, at the bearded one, and snapped off his shot.
The smoke wreathed his own head as he angrily swiped it away, just as a man would swat at a troublesome buffalo gnat. Bull saw the bearded man slowly collapsing in his pit, a hand clamped at the side of his head while others lunged to help him. Bright crimson seeped across the man’s shoulder, shiny and mirroring the brightness of midday light.
The rest of the daring horsemen completed their rush past the sandbar before circling back to regather upstream. But without stopping, they made another sweep beneath the jaws of the white man’s guns. No warrior fell in this daring ride into the maw of death.
As the last rider turned and urged his little pony onto the north bank, another bugle’s blare resounded up the valley. Obeying the call, the milling horsemen turned and slowly made their way beyond the first bend of the shallow river. Other warriors appeared on both banks, hundreds upon hundreds of them, emerging from the cottonwood and plum brush where they had been waiting, every one of them now nosing his pony toward the mouth of a gorge hidden beyond the trees, just past that first bend upstream.