“Aiyeee-yi-yi-yi!” Bull cried at the advancing front of copper-skinned bodies, choking on the sentiment he felt for the valiant war chief.
More so he raised his voice in salute to the one who rode to his death. Proudly. Bravely. A leader of his people to the last. A man who had refused to take a wife, to have his own family—believing instead that the entire tribe was his own to watch over and protect.
A sworn enemy of the white man.
And in that moment Bull felt the certainty of it reach the very marrow of him: come the death of Roman Nose, that powerful spirit, that all-consuming hatred of the whiteskins would come to seize control of High-Backed Bull.
Rifle fire suddenly crackled from the creekbanks, increasing to a fiery intensity. It was plain to Bull as he ducked back into the plum brush that the snipers intended to force the white men to keep their heads down under a deadly barrage of lead hail. Still, that roar of the guns could not drown out the growing crescendo of pounding hooves bearing down on that narrow, unprotected mound of river sand and summer-washed gravel in a riverbed the white man called the Arikaree.
Then as suddenly as the rattle of rifle fire from the banks had resumed, it withered away into a frightening, stone-cold silence. No more than a breath later arose the first of the wild cries bursting from the women and old ones gathered on the surrounding hilltops. Another breath and their eerie, keening blood-songs rose in volume, rose to become a swelling death chorus enough to chill the blood of any white man still alive on that island.
Swallowing hard, his mouth gone dry at the mere sight of the oncoming charge, Bull looked back to the oncoming horsemen. Lazy, oily smoke drifting from the silenced Indian rifles wisped in dark clots across the steamy riverbed as row upon row of horsemen followed Roman Nose downstream toward his appointed moment with destiny.
Something told Bull as he watched that advancing phalanx of brown-skinned cavalry that he was seeing history made. Not just the fact that Roman Nose would ride directly into the teeth of those white-man guns … but that no man, white nor red, had ever before seen Dog Soldiers execute an orderly, massed charge. Like the white man’s own yellow-leg cavalry!
They would talk of this day, speak of this moment for generations to come among the Shahiyena.
Then a flicker of movement at the end of the island caught his attention. One of the white men dressed in soldier-blue rose slightly, as if in pain, his pistol in his hand. Turning, he gazed over those huddled in the rifle pits dug in a rough oval along the length of the narrow sandbar.
The white war chief, this one, Bull decided.
He stood above his half-a-hundred and bellowed his order above the thundering approach of the two thousand hooves.
“Now!”
With that command, some forty guns exploded on the island, their muzzles spewing brilliant tongues of yellow and orange-tinted fire.
Their first volley unhorsed but two riders.
On came the rest with even more resolve, racing into the face of those forty guns. Kicking their ponies into a full gallop without slowing for the two who had fallen.
Roman Nose spat back at the white man’s rifle fire with an unearthly war cry, popping his hand against his mouth as he arched his head back, flinging his death curse at the heavens.
In no more than a pounding heartbeat that blood-crazed cry was taken up by the five hundred who rode with him. Above the riverbed charge the hilltops reverberated as the renewed chant thundered from the throats of the women and old ones.
“Again!” the white chief screamed.
A second volley roared from the sandbar. The smoke from all those weapons hung in tatters in the still, breathless air above the white riflemen, staining the pale sky an oily, murky, smutty gray.
“Fire, by damned!” And another white man in soldier-blue had risen to holler his order to the others.
More horsemen spilled this second volley, their riderless ponies coming on with the mass flanks of the rest. The whole of them charged without slowing, heeding not the rifles nor their own fallen. Those throaty cries for blood redoubled now as gaps were ripped open in their ranks—yet every bit as quickly those holes filled anew with warriors surging up from behind. The copper phalanx quickly made solid once more.
Bull’s heart swelled at the sight, burned with pride at the fearless oncoming despite the wavering of their snorting ponies. A few animals stumbled on the uneven river bottom and tumbled into others. But ever onward the slashing hooves pounded, new horsemen and mounts come to take the place of those who went by the wayside. Glittering diamondlike river spray and mica-fine rooster tails of gold dust cascaded heavenward in the high sunlight of this momentous day.
“Now!”
The first soldier chief’s command had barely escaped his lips before the sandbar ignited for the third volley into the face of the five hundred.
The phalanx surged even closer now. Bull judged it to be something less than two arrow-shots from the end of the island. Certainly killing range for the white man’s big guns. With every one of the white man’s bullets, surely the horsemen had to fall.
In what little Bull could see through that thickening, murky haze of yellow sunlight slanting through the musty powder smoke, the naked, painted warriors began to spill over one another with that third volley. Ponies pitched into the riverbed too, collapsing as if their cords had been cut in bloody, tumbling, spinning heaps.
Piles of blood and sand and bodies and carcasses built up, a sight that brought shrieks from the hillsides as the women and old ones watched the slaughter of their chosen. Yet, with as much damage as the white man was doing to the horsemen, still Bull saw the horde coming, felt the unmistakable thunder vibrating up through the hard surface of the ground beneath his moccasins, heard the reassuring reverberation of their charge still ringing from the hills. And the closer they came, it seemed the more furious they drove their ponies, the louder rose their war cries.
“Fire!”
With that fourth volley the warriors ceased their mighty screeching, having drawn deathly close beneath the guns’ fire-spewing muzzles. Most not already hollering in pain and frustration now rode on grim-lipped toward death’s call on the sandbar. Bravely, without question, they came on, as if possessed—following their chosen leader still a’horse at the center of that front line. Every rider of them weaving back and forth, making it hard for the white man to take a bead on a copper-skinned target.
Brazenly racing on into the face of his own death, Roman Nose raised his arm, exhorting the hundreds come behind him across the sandy riverbed, splattering water and grit and gravel in a huge, stinging curtain as they charged down on the half-a-hundred.
“Now!”
A fifth volley cleaved the air like summer thunder.
Smoke of a dirty gauze obscured the island as Bull plopped down at the edge of the plum brush, bringing the Springfield carbine to his shoulder. If he had a chance at this range, he would pick off one of the white men.
If only to do what one mortal could to turn the day, what he could to change the fate of Roman Nose.
12
Moon of Black Calves 1868
THREE HEARTBEATS FROM the sandbar, Roman Nose ceased weaving.
His eyes locked on the great war chief from the riverbank willows where he crouched, High-Backed Bull watched Roman Nose clamp his legs tightly round his faltering pony. Dark splatters dotted the animal’s chest, each hole streaked with crimson.