Can it only be a year since we lost dear, dear Abigail? Truly, her passing was the end of an era.
How is Stratford? Do the redbuds and dogwoods and lilacs and scent bushes and apple trees and peach trees bloom as of old? How I wish I weren’t obliged to make my way through this tumultuous Capital.
You may have read that Mr. Chepstow was arrested for inciting the negroes to riot. Quoth Chepstow: “You colored people have no property. The white race has houses and lands. Some of you are old and feeble and cannot carry the musket, but you can apply the torch to the dwelling of your enemies. There are none too young. The boy of ten and the girl of twelve—can apply the torch.”
As punishment, the legislature canceled his state printing contract! Bless us, this will give Chepstow more time to campaign, as he intends, for the Republican nomination for governor.
O tempore, O mores,
Thomas Byrd
CHAPTER 28
THE IRONCLAD OATH
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I have never voluntarily borne arms against the United States since I have been a citizen thereof; that I have voluntarily given no aid, countenance, counsel or encouragement to persons engaged in armed hostilities thereto; that I have neither sought nor accepted nor attempted to exercise the functions of any office whatever under any authority or pretended authority in hostility to the United States; that I have not yielded a voluntary support to any pretended government, authority or constitution within the United States hostile or inimical thereto; and I do further swear (or affirm) that to the best of my knowledge and ability, I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of this office on which I am about to enter, so help me God.
CHAPTER 29
KI YA MANI YO
We heard the gunshots when the Cheyenne and Lakota attacked the haymakers. Later we saw a pillar of dark smoke and the Seizers closed the fort gates. The Seizers did not ride out to the hayfield until the gunshots were not so many. Though the haymakers had driven the Lakota away, the Seizers galloped back to the fort like frightened men and did not bring their dead with them.
Ben Shillaber came to our lodge to tell me Plenty Cuts had ridden for help and that neither Plenty Cuts nor his horse had been found. That night I prayed to JesuChrist and to Low Dog. If Low Dog would spare my husband I would dream for him whenever he wanted.
All next day the Seizers hid in their fort with the gate closed. That evening, a young Crow came with a message from my brother, White Bull. Plenty Cuts was alive.
It was a full moon when the young Crow and I crossed the Bighorn River and rode south. At first light we came to White Bull’s camp and the camp dogs barked and the pony guards ran at us yelling. Although my Crow guide had boasted of his courage, he was afraid and cried that we were under White Bull’s protection and that I was White Bull’s sister.
The pony guards were not quite boys, not quite young men, and the eldest was proud to escort me into the village. The Crow rode off on the spotted pony that was his price for fetching me.
White Bull’s village was in a grassy meadow beside Rock Creek, a circle of lodges with my brother’s lodge at the northeast horn of the entrance. The village was neither the biggest nor the smallest; perhaps twenty lodges and a hundred Lakota. Their pony herd was about three hundred.
Alerted by the pony guards, they were waiting for me.
Plenty Cuts was grinning like a fool. His trousers were torn at the knees and instead of his fine new corduroy shirt he wore a buckskin vest and one of his eyes was purple-black and he had a knot on the side of his head. When he put out his arms, I slid off my horse feeling that everything was as it should be.
SHE GOES BEFORE BLUSHED, BASHFUL AS A MAIDEN. “IT IS NOT proper to embrace before others,” she whispered.
“Oh, hell,” Plenty Cuts said, and hugged her, and while the warriors looked off into the heavens, giggles came from White Bull’s lodge where his wives were watching.
White Bull was thick-bodied and slightly bowlegged. He wore his hair in a single braid. His smile bent downward at one corner from the scar that ran from his forehead to his chin.
“Welcome to my tipi, Sister,” White Bull said. “Come inside and eat.”
She Goes Before wished to linger with her husband, but White Bull shook his head.
White Bull’s lodge was distinctively Santee. The big ends of the lodgepoles were at the top. Inside was dim and faintly smoky. The liner depicted White Bull’s brave deeds: every coup, scalp, and stolen horse. Rattling Blanket Woman and Fox Head were beading moccasins. Despite her desire to be with Plenty Cuts, She Goes Before made small talk.
Plenty Cuts had fought with the Washitu in the hayfield where several Cheyenne and Lakota had been killed, including Runs Him, a warrior from White Bull’s village.
White Bull was a powerful warrior. Red Cloud himself had praised his bravery at the Hundred in the Hand. White Bull was a Wicasa, a Shirt Wearer, a counselor who could speak for all the people. But Runs Him was dead, his family walked through the camp crying their loss; his lodge throbbed with grief and one of those who killed Runs Him was White Bull’s brother-in-law.
A young woman wailed in the street, hair hacked, blood dripping from her slashed arms and her mutilated hands.
“Runs Him’s wife,” White Bull said as he and Plenty Cuts hurried past. “I have met with the Big Bellies, the village elders. We counciled until the fire was ashes. You and I must go to Runs Him’s family.”
Outside their lodge White Bull called and waited for the invitation to enter.
Runs Him lay in the back of the lodge, his face painted red overlaid with blue stripes. His family had dressed him in his finest vest, softest leggings, and his funeral moccasins beaded on the soles. He wore four eagle feathers in his hair. The bullet hole in his forehead had been stuffed with grease and painted to match his face.
Runs Him’s kin glared at their visitors. Their anger sucked the air out of the lodge.
Singsong, White Bull chanted, “Runs Him is slain. The brave Runs Him is slain. Runs Him, who stood with me against the Crows; Runs Him, who first counted coup on an Arapaho when a boy of thirteen.” White Bull recited the dead man’s war honors, giving each due weight. He concluded, “It is better to die in battle than to live to carry a cane.
“I am White Bull, I am the Wicasa, White Bull. I have come to smoke with you.”
He filled the long decorated pipe, smoked, and offered smoke to the four directions. He passed it to Runs Him’s father. The pipe made its deliberate way about the circle until it reached Plenty Cuts, who smoked as he’d seen White Bull do.
White Bull counseled Runs Him’s family: the men were to hunt skillfully, the women were to fletch robes, bring in firewood, cook, and make clothing. White Bull promised that work would relieve their grief and would be good to have done after their mourning. He said they should demonstrate that Runs Him’s family should continue to be held in high regard. He spoke quietly but earnestly.
Runs Him’s brother, Shot in the Heel, reminded the Wicasa that until a scalp was taken in revenge, his brother’s spirit could not cross the Shadowland. White Bull said that was true and that after the fall hunt White Bull would lead a war party against the Crows in Runs Him’s honor.
Shot in the Heel was unmoved.
White Bull said, “My sister’s husband, Plenty Cuts, was a Washitu slave. When he tried to run away, the Washitu cut his back with whips. Now he wishes to be Lakota. He grieves for Runs Him and gives his only horse to Runs Him’s brother to express his sorrow.”
For the first time, Shot in the Heel looked Plenty Cuts in the face. “His hair would make a poor scalp anyway,” he said. One child laughed.
That night in White Bull’s lodge, the Wicasa told Plenty Cuts that a man’s
soul lived in his hair and that Plenty Cuts’s unusual hair would be a powerful scalp. Fox Head, who was in the corner playing with a puppy, said everybody had enjoyed Shot in the Heel’s joke. That joke—White Bull said—meant Shot in the Heel had accepted Plenty Cuts’s apology, but it would be well if Plenty Cuts accompanied the war party and took a scalp to help Runs Him through the Shadowland. That Crow scalp would replace his own.
WHITE BULL’S WAS a rich man’s lodge. The draft screen was painted with fast horses and enemies shot with arrows. White Bull’s medicine bundle and shields hung from the lodgepoles. The floor was covered with blackhorn robes whose crinkly hair tickled Plenty Cuts’s bare feet. Rattling Blanket Woman had hung bells from the tipi tightening rope and these jingled with the least wind.
When the fire died down, White Bull and Rattling Blanket Woman spread a robe over themselves. Plenty Cuts and She Goes Before took their place on the other side of the lodge. Fox Head shared her robe with the puppy and once everyone was settled, two camp dogs slipped just inside and lay down to keep watch.
In the morning, after the men went out, Rattling Blanket Woman told She Goes Before, “It is not good to have sex when the baby is due.” She pushed She Goes Before’s nose with her fist and laughed until the tears came.
FOUR DAYS LATER, scouts brought news that blackhorns were nearby and the Big Bellies sent a crier through the camp announcing the hunt.
The scouts went out again to fire the grass and drive the blackhorns from the river bottoms onto a high bench. Smoke from these fires flowed down Rock Creek into the village and women complained. At noon all able-bodied Lakota started toward the blackhorn jump. Mounted scouts rode on both sides of the hunting party because enemies might have found these blackhorns too. Plenty Cuts went with the women and children, who were led by the winkte, Shivering Aspen.
The children played games, the dogs barked, the women gossiped, and in this manner they proceeded along Sweetwater Creek until they reached the jump. The rimrock was eighty feet above them. The rocky talus below the bluff was littered with bleached bones. Shivering Aspen was a man of forty dressed in a woman’s dress; his warrior’s hawk face and stern features were belied by elaborately quilled, delicate clothing. The wintke had been a young man until, one morning, he came out of the lodge wearing women’s clothing. After another young man had him, the wintke’s parents had set up a separate lodge as they would for a married daughter.
Now the wintke sorted the women and children: some would remain with him, others must take places on the jump above.
Shivering Aspen was famous. He’d prophesied the Fetterman fight. After Chief Gall threw the wintke into Peno Creek, Shivering Aspen waded to shore saying he had seen nothing, so Gall threw him in again. The third time he was thrown in the icy water, Shivering Aspen had seen a hundred Seizers in his hand, which was why the Lakota called the fight a Hundred in the Hand.
Blackhorns feel safe on high places where they can see their enemies far off, and the broad bench rose gently to the rimrock. White Bull and others crossed behind the herd, drifting quietly back and forth, making the blackhorns uneasy. They moseyed uphill to safety.
On the rimrock a V of rock piles narrowed to the jump. Men stationed themselves near the point and women and children waited at the wide mouth. Wearing a blackhorn robe with horned headdress, Shot in the Heel escorted Plenty Cuts to the tip of the V, the final post before the rimrock quit and air began. “It is the place of honor,” he said.
“I thank you,” Plenty Cuts replied.
Below, the wintke was joking, berating a wife for the frequency with which her husband had visited his lodge. The wintke said her husband would move in with him pretty soon. The other wives hooted.
Shot in the Heel signaled and like a ripple, fifty Lakota lay down beside their rock piles. Wearing his blackhorn headdress, Shot in the Heel, the Blackhorn Caller, walked the precipice as a blackhorn walks, with overladen forequarters, tiny delicate feet, and skinny buttocks.
In no particular hurry, pausing to graze, the herd leaders—always cows—ambled into the mouth of the V and White Bull and his riders withdrew, removing their pressure. The Blackhorn Caller began to dance, not as a man dances, but as a blackhorn might dance. He threw his head like a rutting blackhorn, he lowered his head and pawed like a herd bull accepting a challenge, he bent over his newborn calf and licked it clean with the rough-tongued fastidiousness of a new mother. The intrigued blackhorns came nearer and the Blackhorn Caller redoubled his efforts, grunting now, as a blackhorn grunts satisfaction from succulent grass, bleating the bleat that means “Where is my calf?” The lead cows were drawn to this creature who was more blackhorn than they were.
When the herd was inside the wings of the V, Lakota women stood silently. This caused uneasiness, and since, as every blackhorn knows, safety is within the herd and stragglers might be cut off, anxious mother blackhorns shooed their calves deeper inside the V, and the deeper they came, the more silent Lakota rose to their feet and the higher the Blackhorn Caller pranced. Shot in the Heel became the Vision Blackhorn, the blackhorn who would lead her herd to better pasture and water than they had known before. The Vision Blackhorn could lead them to Paradise: no wolves, no mountain lions, no grizzlies, no hunters—only lush prairies of crested wheatgrass, ryegrass, and bluestem; higher than the grasses their grandmothers had known. The Vision Blackhorn danced for an end to danger, privation, and fear. He danced as a blackhorn who had never been afraid.
As the blackhorns drifted toward the point, as more silent Lakota stood, White Bull and his riders came behind and women fluttered their robes and the blackhorns’ uneasiness turned to fear.
The blackhorns fled and no blackhorn was willing to be last because stragglers were cut off and killed, every blackhorn knew that. That fluttering robe-wall made frightening noises, like magpies, like grizzlies, like wolves.
The blackhorns escaped toward the Blackhorn Caller.
When the leaders were almost on him, Shot in the Heel dropped his blackhorn disguise.
The earth shook from a thousand hooves and Shot in the Heel told Plenty Cuts, “Let us see if this is our day to die.”
Some blackhorns might have tried to break through the waving Lakota robes if they hadn’t known with blackhorn certainty they must stay with the herd.
The running that had satisfied them wearied their legs and emptied their lungs and they ran toward that patch of clear blue sky uncertain why they were running but knowing that they must.
The lead blackhorns saw the end of the earth and dug in their forefeet and for an instant tottered on the brink with nothing but air between them and the distant blue mountains.
What bellowing! What outrage and fear!
Not ten feet from where Plenty Cuts flapped his robe and yelled, the leaders locked their shoulders and dug in their forefeet, but, pushed from behind, they skidded, tumbling into space. The blackhorns were taller than Plenty Cuts, but his flapping robe was taller still, fluttering over them like an eagle’s wing. Sometimes a blackhorn’s eyes locked with Plenty Cuts’s, wishing to turn aside, to charge the fluttering wall, but Plenty Cuts stared him down.
The wings of the V collapsed inward and riders pushed and the blackhorn laggards could only think of escape. The Lakota cries were triumphant and when the blackhorn heard these, even the youngest calf knew it must die. The last few might easily have turned and run back, but they were resigned, and though two or three needed prodding with lances, they too escaped into the air.
The Lakota skinned and quartered blackhorns until dark, and dog-drawn travois hauled robes and meat back to the camp, where women cut meat into long strips for the drying racks and everybody feasted on blackhorn hump or tongue, even the dogs.
The next day’s work was the same, from daybreak until dark, and the night was the same.
Though they took all the blackhorn skins, they left much meat for the Real Dogs.
“What will you do when the blackhorns are gone?” Plenty Cuts aske
d White Bull.
“Blackhorns are sacred and live under the earth. We summon them forth to feed our people. Blackhorns hate the smell of white men. If we keep the whites out of our hunting grounds, blackhorns will come when we summon them.”
AFTER THE MEAT was dry and the robes scraped, the Big Bellies decided to move to winter camp on the headwaters of the Tongue where they had camped three winters previously.
Washitu traders came in the Moon of the Falling Leaves with four empty wagons for robes and one wagon with trade goods to exchange. They gave more for the cow robes because cow robes were softer and more pliable.
She Goes Before had prepared four robes, which Plenty Cuts exchanged for two cartons of bullets and a mirror for She Goes Before.
Though Plenty Cuts didn’t trade for whiskey, others did, and that night was loud with howling and fighting, One drunken man stabbed his wife in the breast. Next morning, the Big Bellies told the traders they wanted no more whiskey. White Bull said he would kill them and take their goods if they sold any more. The whiskey drinkers cursed White Bull to his face.
Later, some said the traders had brought the white scab sickness to the camp. Others said Old Woman Horn brought the sickness from the Brulés’ camp when she came to visit her daughter.
THE DAYS WERE MILD and though light snow fell, it lingered only where the sun didn’t touch it. Shot in the Heel had a Real Dog dream and announced a feast honoring Runs Him.
Plenty Cuts was invited to take part. After they smoked and feasted, the warriors boasted of the scalps they had taken and the coups they had counted. After a time, Plenty Cuts couldn’t remember which warrior had chased a Crow into the river and taken his hair and which had stolen an Arapaho’s warhorse tied behind the enemy’s own tipi. Shot in the Heel retold the Hundred in the Hand, how the Seizer bugler had fought until his carbine had no more bullets and his revolver had no more bullets and the Seizer beat a Miniconjou, Standing Bear, with his bugle until the bugle was flattened and Standing Bear howled. The warriors chuckled at Standing Bear’s discomfiture. “I took that bugler’s scalp,” Shot in the Heel boasted, “for he was the bravest Seizer that day.”