When it was Plenty Cuts’s turn he said, “Seizers gave me a Medal of Honor for courage. It is powerful medicine.”
“How many enemies did you kill?” Shot in the Heel inquired.
Plenty Cuts said he didn’t know. “Several,” he said.
This made everyone laugh because in Lakota, “several” can mean “two” or “a hundred.”
“It is well.” Shot in the Heel then sang, “The brother who flees the fighting is no longer a brother. Ki ya mani yo. Recognize everything as you walk.”
The next morning, Plenty Cuts joined the warriors outside Shot in the Heel’s tipi. White Bull had given Plenty Cuts his second-best pony and a blackhorn-hide shield with a hawk emblem because the hawk never runs away. She Goes Before gave him elk grease and white pigment to streak his face like the cuts on his back. Plenty Cuts’s pony was good but not as good as Shot in the Heel’s.
They dismounted out of sight of the village. They would lead their horses so the ponies would have speed and endurance when needed. The Washitu traders had spoken of a Crow village in the mountains. A warrior from that village, Chasing Crane, had taken three Lakota scalps and during a pony raid he’d tapped Shot in the Heel with his bow, counting first coup, and though Shot in the Heel had escaped alive, he had been shamed.
In Lakota country they walked and talked openly, but in the land between the tribes, they put scouts out and spoke in low tones. In this manner they walked fifty miles.
Each night they built a small fire under a bluff or deep inside an aspen thicket and ate pemmican. They joked about Plenty Cuts’s black skin, joked that in a night attack he would be invisible.
One of the young warriors had visited the wintke’s lodge and they joked about that too, telling the young man he might lose his taste for women.
When they were near the Crow village, Shot in the Heel scouted the enemy. The Crow village was in the mouth of a draw, protected by steep ridges on either side. Every evening, the pony herd was taken through the village into the narrow draw behind it.
“These Crows must think some Lakota want their ponies.” Shot in the Heel smiled.
That night Shot in the Heel had a Real Dog dream. In this dream, Real Dog looked up from the blackhorn calf he was eating directly into Shot in the Heel’s eyes. When he told his dream, Shot in the Heel said, “We will be successful, but I will be killed.”
The others said nothing. Shot in the Heel said, “Hoka hey. It is a good day to die.
That afternoon they climbed the east ridge above the Crow camp, and it was as Shot in the Heel had said. In the morning Crow warriors escorted the pony herd out and kept guards with them all day. Several hunting parties went out as well and some urged Shot in the Heel to follow and attack one of these, saying that the pony herd was too hard a target. Shot in the Heel said, “Ki ya mani yo.”
That night the Lakota made plans. The young braves wanted to climb down from the ridges and stampede the horses straight through the village. If anyone saw them, they would pretend to be Crows.
“Be hard for me to pretend I’m a Crow,” Plenty Cuts said. So they made a different plan.
CHASING CRANE’S TIPI stood at the village entrance. The next morning before sunrise his dogs started barking. Rising from his robes, Chasing Crane heard loud singing. It was not Crow singing:
We’re gonna hang Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree.
We’re gonna hang Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree.
We’re gonna hang Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree.
As we go marching on.
Chasing Crane’s wife shooed their children to the back of the tipi. The dogs’ hackles rose and they ran outside barking. Chasing Crane took his revolver and followed them.
A naked black man astride a white horse rode back and forth in front of the village, singing. His chest and legs were streaked with white paint. Other warriors joined Chasing Crane at the village entrance. Some carried bows or guns, some did not. Soon all the warriors were watching the naked black man singing his Washitu song.
The women were watching too.
Gradually the naked black man worked in closer and finally reined up before the Crow warriors.
“Chasing Crane!” he shouted, first in Washitu, then in Lakota.
Most of the Crows had never seen a black man.
Chasing Crane said, “Who calls for Chasing Crane?”
The black man pointed at him rudely and sang.
Gwine to run all night!
Gwine to run all day.
The Camptown ladies sing this song.
Doo-dah, doo-dah.
He raised his face to the lightening sky and yelled, “Oh, doo-dah dey!”
The ground shook with the rumble of running ponies and a pony guard screamed as he died and the Crows turned to face this new threat and those who hadn’t thought to bring weapons ran for their tipis. The pony herd burst through the village and flattened tipis. Shot in the Heel leaned over and struck Chasing Crane with his coup stick, but Chasing Crane fired and the bullet entered Shot in the Heel’s belly and came out his back.
The Crows came after their horses.
The weakened Shot in the Heel clung to his horse until they reached the cottonwood grove, which was the second part of their plan.
Most of Shot in the Heel’s warriors were hiding in the cottonwoods, and when the Crows came close, the Lakota rode out singing kill songs and shooting arrows and guns.
Since Chasing Crane had been humiliated by Shot in the Heel’s coup, he rode in front. The naked black man charged at Chasing Crane and killed him with a single bullet.
Another Lakota took Chasing Crane’s scalp and counted second coup on his body. The Lakota killed two more Crow warriors and scalped them.
The Crows thought the naked black man was the evil spirit Iktomi in human guise, so they didn’t pursue. They regathered some of their ponies, but the Lakota made off with fifty. Shot in the Heel died before sunset and the Lakota left him where he lay because it is good for a Lakota to die in enemy country. Ki ya mani yo.
When my water broke, Rattling Blanket Woman commanded the men and children to leave the lodge and told Fox Head to fetch Brings the Horses and Touch Dog because they were wise in these matters. This happened during the Moon of Frost in the Tipi.
When the Grandmothers came, they heaped the softest skins at the foot of the lodgepole and told me to kneel and grip the lodgepole. Rattling Blanket Woman lifted my dress and washed me. When the pains came, the Grandmothers knelt beside me and embraced me and drained the pains into themselves and breathed my breath and encircled my belly and pressed. When my sweaty hair stung my eyes, they washed the sweat away and bound my hair with yarn. Brings the Horses sang, “The old die / the new are born / the nation of men lives forever.” The Grandmothers sang loudly when I cried out so my cry could not be heard outside the lodge. This continued for some time. Brings the Horses said it was because I was old to be delivering my first, but Touch Dog said it was because Plenty Cuts was a big man, so his child would be as big as he was. Brings the Horses disagreed, saying that big stallions sometimes threw small ponies. Rattling Blanket Woman told them to stop quarreling and make tea. As I knelt on the furs, a convulsion gripped me. From my lungs and heart I bore down and my daughter left my body and Rattling Shield caught her and bore her into the world.
For a time, I rested while the Grandmothers rubbed bear grease and beaver castor over my baby and dusted her navel with puffball dust. They wrapped her in soft deerskin before laying her at my side. She smelled of love and fresh-cut mint. I wished to give her suck but did not because first milk waters the newborn’s bowels. They took her from me and Rattling Blanket Woman fed her a little soup from a bladder shaped like a nipple.
Brings the Horses knelt and massaged my belly until the afterbirth came. Since Rattling Blanket Woman was the eldest, she suckled my first milk until my aching breasts were empty.
IN THE FIRST DAY of her life, the women of White Bull’s family gave She Go
es Before’s baby six handsome willow cradles, each the value of a horse.
In the second day, her mother suckled her.
On the third day of her life, her dried navel cord was placed in a tortoise amulet which was presented to She Goes Before with a second tortoise amulet, identical but empty, to decoy evil spirits from the child.
On the fourth day, Plenty Cuts gave the naming feast, where the child was named Red Leaf after her grandfather.
In the second week, Plenty Cuts gave a horse to a poor man in honor of his daughter.
In the fourth week of her life, it snowed every day. When Red Leaf started to cry, her mother pinched her nose because Lakota babies must not cry.
In the fifth week, Red Leaf recognized her mother and smiled.
On the first day of her seventh week, her mother discovered red sores on her eyelids.
On the third day of the seventh week, Red Leaf became so hot that her mother took her out of the cradle board and rubbed her with snow.
On the fourth day, she lost her suck.
On the fifth day of the seventh week, Red Leaf’s life ended and her mother cut a lock of her kinky baby hair for the ghost-owning ceremony.
CHAPTER 30
MENU FOR A BANQUET HONORING
MR. CHARLES DICKENS, APRIL 18, 1868
Huîtres sur coquilles
Consommé Sévigné • Crème d’asperges à la Dumas
HORS-D’OEUVRES CHAUD
Timbales à la Dickens
POISSONS
Saumon à la Victoria • Bass à l’Italienne
Pommes de terre Nelson
RELEVÉS
Filet de boeuf à la Lucullus • Laitues braisées demi-glace
Agneau farci à la Walter Scott • Tomates à la Reine
ENTRÉES
Filets de brants à la Seymour
Petit pois à l’Anglaise
Croustades de riz de veau à la Douglas
Quartiers d’artichauts Lyonnaise
Épinards au velouté
Côtelettes de grouse à la Fenimore Cooper
ENTRÉES FROIDES
Galantines à la Royale
Aspics de fois-gras historiés
INTERMEDE
Sorbet à la Américaine
RÔTS
Bécassines • Poulets de grains truffés
ENTREMETS SUCRÉTS
Pêches à la Parisienne (chaud)
Macedoine de fruits • Moscovite à l’abricot
Lait d’amandes rubané au chocolat
Charlotte Doria
Viennois glacé à l’orange • Corbeille de biscuits Chantilly
Gâteau Savarin au marasquin
Glaces forme fruits Napolitaine
Parfait au café
PIECES MONTÉES
Temple de la Littérature • Trophée a l’Auteur
Pavillon International • Colonne Triomphale
Les armes Britanniques • The Stars and Stripes
Le Monument de Washington • La Loi du Destin
DESSERT
Fruits • Compotes de pêches et de poires • Petits fours
Fleurs
CHAPTER 31
LETTER FROM EBEN BARNWELL
TO MISS PAULINE BYRD
15 MADISON SQUARE
APRIL 20, 1868
Dearest Pauline,
I trust this finds you in good spirits. My fortunes have soared inversely to Erie bonds, which I sold short when so many “wise heads” wagered they would rise. Pauline, I do thank God every day for smiling upon me.
How is beautiful Stratford? How fondly I recall our conversations on its dear, dear porch while shadows gathered in the river valley and the sun sank majestically behind the mountains!
I’m no hand at letter writing. I am accustomed to business talk: “Buy this,” “sell that,” “Price per hundredweight.” But when I write you, my beloved, my pen is flustered and lifeless and I cannot say what I mean. What I mean is that I love Stratford as you do and will do all in my power to sustain it. Please reassure your esteemed grandfather that when certain speculations bear fruit, I shall remit the funds he desires. In the meantime, should he wish, I’ll give his banker my personal assurances. Do understand, Pauline, that bankers would rather have return on their capital than any plantation, even a plantation as charming as Stratford. There are so many Virginia plantations on the market!
Northern businessmen have lost enthusiasm for Southern investments. Business languishes where there is no civilian government and mundane transactions must be approved by military officers. When Congress decreed that Virginia must fall again under military rule, men who had been buying Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio bonds began selling. Capital fled to the Baltimore & Ohio, a railroad incorporated in Maryland, a state whose legislators don’t wrestle with negro rights nor whether ex-rebels can vote.
Little Billy blames me because I can’t sell his bonds. Am I the Congress? Do I give a “darn” whether negroes vote? I thank God my own eggs are not in the A.M.&O. basket!
Enough of dreary commerce! Saturday I supped with the august author Charles Dickens. No, dear Pauline; we were not tête-à-tête. Along with two hundred others—I attended a banquet at the uptown Del’s—surely the gastronomical highlight of the year! Chef Ranhofer pulled out every stop in his culinary organ. My waiter, Randolph, attended me and me alone.
On his previous visit to these shores, Mr. Dickens complained about our food, manners, even the rate at which we ate! On this occasion, among glittering crystal, burnished silver, damask drapes, the patriotic pieces montées, Mr. Dickens was graceful enough to offer an apology for his previous remarks!
I am endlessly grateful for the opportunity in our American nation! I cannot believe I would have come to anything in Mr. Dickens’s England. Our menu is enclosed so you might know what you might have enjoyed had you been there with me. It was, in every respect, a satisfactory, patriotic evening!
Dearest—for you are my dearest!—I am 30 years of age, portly, and partially deaf in my left ear from a blow I took in childhood. I have no kin with claims upon me. I am, in every respect, a free agent. In character I am energetic and determined.
As a husband I’d be dutiful and considerate. I’d tend to my business and my wife would rule our roost. Should God favor us with children, I would be an indulgent parent, for I am something of a child myself! Ha! Ha!
You may not have remarked my faults. I must confess them. I have been discouraged! Sometimes I have been discouraged! At dreary moments, dearest Pauline, I’ve thought myself a sham, a frightened child in adult’s clothing. I could see nothing in my fellows’ faces that was not mean, petty, or cruel. For me, the world held neither charm nor grace. Happily, these dismal episodes are infrequent.
I am not a subtle fellow and am perhaps too plain-spoken. According to the phrenologists I have a strong amative bump!
I‘d rather joke than weep.
I own my house in fee simple and it is furnished à la mode. My servants are capable and content. I have substantial capital of my own and can promise that if you accept my proposal, you shall lack for nothing.
There, I’ve said it! Though I am unworthy of you I shall try to become a better man should you consent to honor me with your hand. Dearest Pauline, you would make me the happiest man in old New York and I would walk these streets with a lighter step if you wrote that you feel—even in the least measure—as I do.
Anxiously awaiting your reply,
I am your earnest suitor,
Eben Barnwell
CHAPTER 32
IMPEACHMENT
And now this offspring of assassination turns upon the Senate, who have thus rebuked him in a constitutional manner, and bids them defiance. How can he escape the just vengeance of the law? Wretched man, standing at bay, surrounded by a cordon of living men, each with the axe of the executioner uplifted for his just punishment.
—THADDEUS STEVENS AT THE
IMPEACHMENT TRIAL OF
PRESIDENT ANDREW J
OHNSON,
MAY 8, 1868
“BUT MAMA,” FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD JIMSON BURNS PROTESTED.
“Boy, you best take your hands off your hips when you’re talkin’ to me,” Sudie said.
“But Mama. The boys’re going down to the canal. Might be they something to do.”
“Them Knockabout boys never did nothin’ but mischief. You bring this ironing to Miss Gordon. What she gives you for bringin’ it, you gets to keep.”
“Mama, that cross white woman ain’t never given me nothin’ ’fore. What makes you think she gonna start?”
When Sudie Burns smiled, the gap between her front teeth made her seem the girl she had been fifteen years ago when her master, Jimson’s father, first had his way with her. “Sometimes you get loaves and fishes”—she grinned—“and sometimes you gets enough loaves and fishes to feed a multitude. Jesse home soon. If you don’t want your father wonderin’ why you pesterin’ me instead of doin’ what you supposed, you better git.”
“Jesse ain’t my father,” the boy said, but left with the wicker hamper with Miss Gordon’s washed, ironed underthings.
Sudie Burns’s kitchen was her laundry and her big wash kettle was on continual boil. Finishing irons, large and small, crowded the stove’s front burners and drying linens obstructed passage to their bedroom.
Sudie wished she had a separate laundry house.
The footsteps weren’t Jesse’s and Jesse wouldn’t have knocked. “Why, Mr. Chepstow. I didn’t know you were comin’ by.”
“Evening, Sudie. I’ve come to speak to your husband.”