C
RAZY
H
ORSE SAT ON THE HILLTOP.
He watched Sitting Bull climb slowly toward him. The older man stopped every so often to turn and look at the thick grass rolling away like huge bolts of the white man’s green velvet cloth. It seemed to Crazy Horse that Sitting Bull was not just looking at the world, he was absorbing it, taking it into him and making it a part of himself. The great medicine man was so thoroughly entwined with the world around him that there was no way to tell where the one left off and the other began. That was what had drawn Crazy Horse to him in the first place. And the more time they spent together, the greater became the younger man’s respect.
Sitting Bull understood the old ways. He knew them inside out, but more than that, he respected them. He saw why they were the best ways. The relationship between the Sioux and the world in which they lived was more than a simple dependency. Each needed the other. The Sioux needed the plains, the open sky, the cold, rushing waters of the rivers, and the buffalo. But all those things had special meaning in relation to the Sioux. It was the
people who gave them their value. That was what made the Sioux so different from the white man. The whites had no respect for the earth. It was just something you stabbed and slashed and tore apart, ripping things from its insides the way a thief ripped things from a torn pocket.
Crazy Horse valued his friendship with the medicine man the way he valued no other human connection, not even that which he’d had with his
kola,
Hump, or with his brother Little Hawk. It was stronger even than his attachment to Worm, the man who had given him life and raised him to be what he was.
But the admiration was mutual. Sitting Bull was a brave man and a great warrior. And he saw that Crazy Horse shared those qualities with him, and felt the same devotion to the old ways. In some way that he couldn’t articulate, he realized that he and Crazy Horse were like two parts of the same organism, heart and brain of the same beast. Without either, the beast would die. And without either man, the Sioux were lost. What Sitting Bull feared, and what he had tried so hard to explain to Crazy Horse, was that the Sioux might be lost in any event.
As he drew closer, he raised a hand to acknowledge the younger man, then turned once more to look out over the valley, the blue-white band of the river like a strip of the white man’s shiny ribbon curling off to the southeast. A hawk cried high above the hill, and Sitting Bull looked up to watch it glide, its wings motionless as it rode the warm air rising from the valley floor. The great bird cried once more, and Sitting Bull waved toward the sky.
Crazy Horse wondered whether man and bird were communicating, or if the wave was just an accident that had nothing to do with the hawk.
Turning once more to look uphill, Sitting Bull climbed the last two hundred feet and sat on the grass beside Crazy Horse before saying a word. He was only seven years older than the young warrior, but he seemed almost ancient. It was not that his physical powers had begun to desert him. Far from it, they were at their peak. Not even forty years old, he was still vigorous, his broad shoulders and solid trunk almost like a slab of granite. He seemed so much more powerful than his young friend.
“It’s a beautiful day,” he said, by way of opening the conversation. They sat this way often, when time and duty permitted, and talked about whatever crossed their minds. Most of the talks had to do with the plight of their people, because neither man could afford to let his thoughts wander far from the impossible bind in which the Sioux had found themselves.
“The village looks so small,” Crazy Horse said. “When I was a boy, I used to make tiny tipis out of willow branches and scraps of buckskin. I could hold three or four in the palm of my hand, like a tiny village. I could make it float high above my head, where nothing, not even the dogs, could get to it.”
“We are in a greater palm,” Sitting Bull said. “Wakan Tanka holds us in his hand. But sometimes I worry that he will forget that we are there and clap his hands together to kill a fly, or roll his hand into a mighty fist. Maybe it will be something simple, as simple as a wave to a friend. But whatever it is, it will be the end of the Lakota people.”
“I worry more about the white man. I can’t interfere with what the Great Spirit will or will not do,” Crazy Horse said. “But the white man can be stopped.”
“I have heard that he is building another iron road. There are soldiers, too. Many of them. They are coming into the Yellowstone country, and soon there will be too many of them to stop or to drive away.”
“I have heard that, too. I think it is time we tried to do something about it.”
“The young men have their heads full of foolishness. It is hard to teach them to do things in a way that the white man won’t understand. They have no discipline. And Long Holy is filling their heads with his nonsense.”
“Long Holy has strong medicine.”
Sitting Bull nodded. “I know he does. I understand medicine. You know that. But I don’t think he knows what he is doing. He tells the young men he can make them bulletproof. “
“I have heard that he gave a demonstration.”
“He did. I saw it. He shot a gun again and again. And the young fools tried to catch the bullets in their palms.”
“And what happened?”
“The bullets bounced off. They made bruises, but did not break the skin.”
“But you don’t believe his medicine is powerful?”
Sitting Bull snorted. “Always, the young men want to think that they are bulletproof, or that a knife cannot cut them. They want to think that their heads are so hard that a war club will not
break their skulls like melons. And that is a good thing. It is important to believe that you are powerful, that you have strong medicine to protect you on the warpath. It lets you do things that you would not do if you were afraid of getting hurt. But Long Holy’s medicine is a fraud.”
“You said the bullets bounced off.”
“They did. But I know it is because we do not put as much powder in our bullets as the white man does. If there is not enough powder, the bullets don’t hurt. You have seen it yourself, how sometimes we shoot a bluecoat or a Crow and he does not bleed. That is because we don’t have enough gunpowder, and we weaken the bullets. But the white man has all the gunpowder he needs. If the young men ride in front of his guns thinking they will not be harmed, they will be killed.”
“Have you told them this?”
Sitting Bull shook his head. “I have told them. But they don’t listen. They hear me and they smile and they shake their heads. Then, behind their hands, they say ‘Sitting Bull is jealous of Long Holy.’ I am not jealous. But I am not a fool. I know what I know and what the young men do not know.”
“Maybe it is better that they believe in Long Holy’s medicine.”
“Sometimes I think so, but then I think what it will be like in the lodges when the women learn that their young men were wrong …”
Crazy Horse nodded his head. “Hou!”
Sitting Bull stood then, and started down the hill. It was a long walk, and Crazy Horse watched the medicine man every step of the way. He felt a
great weight on his shoulders and noticed that his friend’s shoulders, too, seemed to sag under some invisible burden.
When Sitting Bull started across the flats toward the village, Crazy Horse looked out across the valley. He saw the herds of ponies, their heads bowed as they tugged on the lush grass. He saw the dogs lapping at water by the river’s edge. He saw the children running along the riverbank, sometimes falling, sometimes slipping into the water and kicking great silver arcs of spray into the air with their bare feet. The sight made him sad, and he wondered if it could be saved or if one day the valley would be full of the white man’s white-painted buildings, with the white man’s fences carving the earth into tiny squares. He didn’t know the answer, and it frightened him.
As he got to his feet, he noticed some movement on the ridge across the valley. One, two, then three riders broke over and down, pushing their ponies at a full gallop. Crazy Horse started to run. Soon he was going so fast that he dared not stop for fear of falling over. The effort made his lip hurt where the bullet scar was a ragged slash of lightning, and his lungs felt as if they were full of fire.
Something was happening, and he raced to the village, reaching the first lodge as the riders slipped from their ponies.
The riders were scouts, and they were beside themselves. “Bluecoats,” they shouted. “Many bluecoats. On Arrow Creek.”
The word spread rapidly, and the Sioux warriors were infuriated by the invasion of their territory. Crazy Horse looked for Sitting Bull, and saw him
on the opposite side of the circle thickening around the excited scouts.
Slipping through the throng, he eased in beside the medicine man. “We should make a good plan before we ride out to meet these soldiers,” he said.
Sitting Bull nodded. “We should, but I don’t think the hotheads will listen.”
“We can make them listen.”
Sitting Bull shook his head. “No, all we can do is go with them, and try to save them from themselves. You’d better get your rifle and pony.”
The ride took three days. Each night in council, Crazy Horse pleaded for restraint, for careful planning, for an understanding of the white man’s way of fighting. And each night there was an argument. Sitting Bull argued on the side of Crazy Horse. Other warriors, too, like White Bull and Two Bows, were in favor of planning the attack. But the younger warriors, even Lone Bear, were too agitated to listen and to learn. Long Holy had filled their heads with his ideas, and they wanted to test his medicine.
On August 14, the word came back from the advance scouts. There were many bluecoats, horse soldiers and foot soldiers, maybe four hundred, maybe more. Crazy Horse tried one more time to create a reasoned attack, but the younger men were not to be restrained. They urged their ponies ahead and all Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull could do was follow them.
The vanguard swept over the last ridge above the mouth of Arrow Creek, a mile from where it met the Tongue River, and thundered down on the bluecoat herd. They succeeded in driving off some
American horses and some beeves, but the attack was too spontaneous to have much impact on the soldiers. Under the command of Maj. E. M. Baker, they quickly mounted a defense. Their superior weapons drove off the attackers with little to show for their efforts, and with all chance of a surprise swept away.
When the attackers fell back to rejoin the main body of Sioux, Long Holy announced that he and seven of his followers were going to ride up to the bluecoat defenses and circle around them four times. He told the warriors that all eight of them would return unharmed. “Maybe then,” he challenged, “you will see that what I have been saying is true. Maybe then you will believe.”
With that, Long Holy climbed onto his pony and led a charge. Long Holy had taught his followers a song, and they bellowed it at the top of their lungs as they circled Baker’s men. A hail of fire poured out from the defensive positions. One by one, the circling warriors were hit until four of the eight were wounded.
Sitting Bull, unable to bear it any longer, charged into the open space between the Sioux and the white soldiers. “Stop!” he shouted. “Stop this foolishness! You’ll all get yourselves killed.” He saw the blood streaming from the four wounded Sioux and could not restrain his contempt for Long Holy and his pride.
But Long Holy was not ready to give up. “I brought them here to make war,” he shouted. “Let them do it!”
Sitting Bull paid no attention, and argued with the young warriors. Frightened by the results of
their first foray behind Long Holy, and more than a little in awe of the great Sitting Bull, they obeyed.
For two hours, the two sides exchanged shots at long range, neither side causing much damage. Then, in an attempt to provoke pursuit, Crazy Horse drove his pony down toward the bluecoats and rode slowly across the entire width of the soldiers’ line. But no one came out to chase him. Instead, the bluecoats blazed away to little effect, and when he returned to the Sioux line, Sitting Bull was annoyed. He felt that Crazy Horse was getting too much attention for his heroics.
Dismounting, he took his pipe and walked slowly across the open field until he was about midway between the opposing lines, at the edge of the effective range of the bluecoats’ carbines, then sat down. Using a flint and steel, he lit the pipe and casually puffed away, until a wreath of smoke swirled around him. Turning to look over his shoulder, he shouted, “Anyone who wants to join me in a smoke, come on.”
Several warriors took the dare and came out to join him until six or seven were arrayed in a line. Sitting Bull handed the pipe to White Bull, who puffed hurriedly, then passed the pipe along. The others smoked as fast as they could while bullets whistled and sang around them, swarming like bees, but hitting no one.
When the pipe had finally made its way back to him, Sitting Bull took one more puff, and, when the others who had smoked had scampered back to safety, he got out his cleaning stick, scraped the bowl clean, and put the pipe into its beaded sheath. Then, slowly, he got to his feet and walked
back to join the others, a broad smile on his face. The whole war party was in awe. This was certainly the bravest thing any Sioux had ever done, they thought. Admiration spread like a flood among the warriors.
Then Crazy Horse played his trump card. Springing onto his pony, he called to White Bull, “Let’s make one more pass,” and he was off, charging across the open field toward one end of the bluecoat line. White Bull was behind him as he galloped the full length of the line, every soldier firing at him as he raced past. At the far end of the line, he turned back toward the Sioux, with White Bull, who had not gone as close, now in front of him.
Crazy Horse was almost home when a bullet caught his pony, killing it outright under him, and spilling him to the ground. Scrambling and crawling, he raced back unhurt, his face wearing a smile even broader than that of Sitting Bull.