Ride the Moon Down

6

From the moment they forded the half-frozen lichii’likaashaashe, every last one of them realized he was leaving Absaroka behind. With every mile, every step, every breath taken north of the Yellowstone, they were inching closer to enemy country.

North by northwest the war party marched from the moment it grew light enough to ride till it became too dark to safely cross the broken landscape. If there was a place where rocky outcrops or the shelter of trees would hide the flames from distant eyes, then the older men allowed the warriors to disperse and start half a dozen fires where eight to ten men gathered to warm their dried meat, their hands, their stiffened joints from sitting too long on horseback. Fire or not, through the endless winter nights they talked in low tones as Whistler and the white man moved from fire to fire, group to group, reminding the young that they were on an honor ride, calling upon the veterans to be watchful of the young men when it came time to fight.

Every morning three or four proven warriors were chosen to mount up before the others. In the dim light of dawn-coming, these wolves would make a wide-ranging circle of their camp to learn if they had been discovered, searching for any trail of enemy spies. When they had reported back that all was safe, the scouts for that day would lead out ahead of the others as the sun brightened the winter sky. Riding ahead on both sides of the march, their task was to choose the safest path of travel through dangerous country, scouring for sign of the enemy, some telltale smoke on the horizon.

Day after day they trudged farther and farther north, encountering nothing more than last autumn’s fire pits lying cold in old camps. Ahead they watched the clouds boil around the snowy peaks of two mountain ranges, then struck the south bank of the Musselshell.

As they stopped to water their horses at a spot along the river’s edge where the water slowed, remaining unfrozen, Whistler sent the scouts across to the north. He said, “We follow the Bishoochaashe toward its headwaters and cross to the far side of those mountains. From there we should see the Aashisee.”

“What your people call The Big River?” Scratch asked.

“I have heard it flows north for a long way,” Whistler explained as they started across the Musselshell with the rest, “then it turns east, through the land of the Assiniboine and the Arikara before it curves south at the land of the Hidatsa and finally enters the country of the Lakota.”

“From what you describe, that must be what my people call the Missouri.”

“Miss-you-ree,” the older man slowly tried the word out on his tongue.

“Good,” Bass said. “The Missouri. I lived beside that river for many winters. More winters than I should have before I broke free.”

Whistler smiled. “This Aashisee is a good river this far north … before it goes far to the south where it enters the land of the white man. But on the other side of this Miss-you-ree, we must hold tight to our hair.”

With a grin Bass said, “Many Blackfoot wanting our scalps, eh?”

Whistler glanced at the top of the white man’s head. “But this is nothing new for you, son-in-law.”

“No,” Bass replied as their horses slogged onto the north bank of the Musselshell and shook themselves like big dogs. “More times than I can count, these Blackfoot have tried to take what I have left for hair.”

Around the fires that last night before they reached the Missouri, the older warriors, those contemporaries of Rotten Belly and Whistler, spoke of Arapooesh. Not only did they speak in reverent tones for one who had died, but they recalled the departed chiefs sharp, cutting sense of humor, the youthful jokester he had been in years long gone. And they talked of his many war deeds.

Not content merely to defend Crow land from encroachment, Arapooesh was constantly organizing war parties to venture into enemy territory on pony or scalp raids. East toward the land of the Lakota, southeast to steal from the Arapaho and Cheyenne. Southwest to sneak into Bannock country. And there was always the northern land of the Blackfoot.

“He-Who-Is-No-Longer-With-Us made himself very popular among our people many long years ago by bringing back so many enemy horses,” Whistler explained to the curious young men come along on their first war trail.

Another old warrior, Turns Plenty, spoke. “Very rarely did he lose a scalp to the enemy.”

“Every young man wanted to ride with him,” Whistler observed.

“If a man steals the easiest horses,” Strikes-in-Camp said, “then he never has to worry about fighting the enemy.”

Biting his tongue for some moments, Whistler glared at his impudent son, then said, “Your uncle often showed he was as good a war leader as he was good at stealing horses.”

Yellowtail agreed. “He-Who-Is-Dead always chose the best men, put them on the best ponies, made them carry the best weapons … so his war parties would be ready to fight for their lives if necessary.”

Whistler continued. “Those times we rode into enemy land, my older brother always chose at least two ways to get out of that country so we could make our escape with the ponies we stole and our hair. He figured out places where we could all meet after we had split up to throw the enemy off our trail.”

“But if escape did not work,” Real Bird declared, “He-Who-Has-Died was ready to turn around and fight. That’s when his leadership proved itself—for he had made the effort to choose only the finest warriors with the best weapons.”

“Like us,” Strikes-in-Camp boasted.

Whistler gazed at his son. “Sometimes it is better for a warrior to let others do his bragging for him.”

“Perhaps it was that way in your day,” the young warrior argued, teetering on the edge of disrespect. “But today, with the coming of the white men and the Blackfoot pushing hard against us—I think our people need warriors who aren’t afraid to speak for themselves.”

Whistler opened his mouth to speak, but Bass put his hand on the old warrior’s forearm and got his words out first. “A man who speaks too much for himself might find that there isn’t anyone else willing to speak for him.”

Glaring at the white man as if his hatred for Bass was smoldering anew, Strikes-in-Camp announced to the group, “Perhaps we shall do better in the land of the enemy than He-Who-Is-Not-Here ever did. Perhaps our deeds will far outshine his.”

Scratch watched a few of the young heads nod, young faces smile.

Then Whistler stepped over to stand beside his son. “Maybe you are right, Strikes-in-Camp. Who knows? We who are old horses, like Pote Ant and me, have tired bones, so it’s not so easy making war anymore. Perhaps you are right that war is a job best left for the young men.”

“My father sees the wisdom in my words, does he?”

Whistler put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Perhaps. I will trust that you will be there to save my life if an enemy warrior is about to take my scalp.”

Swelling his chest like a prairie cock, Strikes-in-Camp said, “I will watch over both of you who are too old to make war—my father and the white man who has married my sister.”

Moving on around the circle, Whistler stopped behind Bass and Pretty On Top to say, “He-Who-Is-No-Longer-Here was never the sort to boast pridefully. Though he had many war honors, he rarely spoke of them before others.”

Bass added, “He made no big show of all that he had done, never prancing up and down like some young colts out to prove how strong they are.”

“As I said, white man—I will even save your life since you are married to my sister.”

“No wonder you don’t understand what your father is trying to teach you,” Scratch uttered with regret. “Your uncle was so much more a man than you will ever be.”

“But he was the one who taught me many things!” the young man snapped.

Whistler shook his head and said, “So why didn’t you learn to be more like my brother?”

“Because I am going to be a man in my own right,” Strikes-in-Camp spouted.

Bass watched Whistler turn and move into the darkness, heading for the nearby fire where another group sat out the long winter night. Looking back at Strikes-in-Camp, he said, “You have shamed your father with your selfish disrespect.”

“My family has shamed itself, white man,” he snarled. “My sister shames herself by fornicating with you. My mother and father shame themselves because they accept the white man who shamed their daughter into their lodge.”

“Your sister and I are married.”

“By the white man way?”

“No, not in the white man’s church,” Bass reluctantly admitted the truth. “We have promised our hearts to one another—”

“You white men are like rabbits in heat,” the warrior sneered. “You will say anything to our women to get your manhood under their dresses—”

Scratch found himself bolting to his feet before he realized it, but two sets of hands appeared out of the darkness to stay him. Struggling to free himself, he turned first to the right, finding Turns Plenty holding his arm. On the other side stood Whistler.

“He is not angry at you,” Whistler explained. “He is more angry at himself.”

“The white man is a coward,” Strikes-in-Camp said. “That day in our village, two winters ago, he could have fought us like an honorable man. Instead, he let us tie him up, him and his friend.”

“You will also remember how my brother came to free the two white men,” Whistler protested as he let go of Bass’s arm. He stepped over to stand before his son. “Already the white man and I have talked,” he told the young man. “There will be a ceremony for your sister when we return from this war trail to avenge the killing of He-Who-Is-Not-Here.”

“Ceremony?”

“She will marry the white man in the way of our people,” Whistler declared.

Bass swallowed hard, choking on the surprise of it.

“No matter,” the young warrior growled. “Too late to make my sister anything better than a whore who lays with white men—”

Scratch was lunging across the snow when he was jerked backward by Turns Plenty’s hold on his right arm. But as he shrugged that arm in a second attempt to free himself, he watched Whistler’s arm dart into the fire’s dim light, slashing out. His hand struck Strikes-in-Camp’s cheek with a pop as loud as an old cottonwood booming in the cold of a February night.

“Don’t ever do that again, old man,” the son snarled, laying his hand against his bruised cheek.

“Or what?” Whistler asked. “Perhaps it is you who should heed a warning. Maybe you should look over your shoulder more often when you are in enemy country. A man who so openly shames his family is surely the sort of man who has no friends to protect his back.”

That early morning when they crossed the frozen Missouri in the darkness, Bass discovered the tight knot in his belly along with the unshakable remembrance of that old shaman who had walked among the half-a-hundred warriors at dawn on that morning they had started north on this war trail so long ago.

Then, as now, it was snowing fitfully: not with huge, ash-curl flakes, but with those tiny, icy spears of cold pain as the wind whipped the glassy slivers sidelong across the ground. Slowly the old man moved between the rows of ponies and warriors quietly mumbling his songs as he shook an old rattle made of a buffalo bull’s scrotum. In his other hand he held a bull’s penis, stretched to its full length by inserting a narrow wand of willow. Both were his potent symbols of the bull’s power—the largest creature known to these people. The provocative maleness of those two objects, their utter masculinity plainly exhibiting that strength shown by the bull in his battles to assure his right to the cows, would now transfer their spiritual power to those men who were plunging into Blackfoot country.

So many more had wanted to come along, some who had all but begged Whistler to be included in the war party. Those he hadn’t selected for this dangerous journey had to stand back with the others in a wide cordon pressing in on either side of the five-times-ten who were the objects of a raucous send-off: cheering men, keening women, those boisterous children and yapping dogs darting in and out between the legs of the restive ponies.

Arapooesh’s successor, Yellow Belly, had parted the joyous, singsong crowd to stand before Whistler and the white trapper, holding aloft Rotten Belly’s sacred battle shield. No longer did it hang on the man-high tripod of peeled poles that stood outside the chief’s lodge. Instead, it had been passed down by the dying Arapooesh as a symbol of his office, as a token of the transfer of his power.

For a few minutes the noise had grown deafening as Yellow Belly held the shield aloft, hand drums beating and wing-bone whistles blown with shrill delight. Then as the chief lowered the shield, a hush fell over the crowd.

“Before you ride against our enemies,” Yellow Belly said, “each of you must touch the shield, touch the power of He-Who-Has-Died.”

First Whistler, then Bass, gently laid their hands on that round hoop covered by stiffened rawhide. Nearly the entire circle was covered with a pale-red earth paint; at the center stood a human figure with oversized ears and a single eagle feather, representing the moon who had come to the great chief in a vision and described the construction of this powerful shield and its medicine.

“Is it true,” Bass now asked Whistler as they pushed up the trail scuffed in the new snow by their forward scouts, come to that deadly land north of the Missouri, “true what your people say about the shield of He-Who-Is-Not-Here?”

“Its power to tell us the outcome of an event yet to happen?”

“Yes—I was told about the raid your brother wanted to lead against the Cheyenne in the south.”

Whistler stared into the cold mist ahead, then explained, “In the middle of camp he stacked a pile of buffalo chips, almost as high as his head. On the top he placed his shield and told us that he would let it roll to the bottom. If it landed with its painting against the ground, he would not lead the war party.”

“But years ago He-Who-Has-Died told me that his shield rolled down that stack of buffalo chips and landed with the paintings facing the sky.”

“Yes, and my brother led us to a great victory over the Cheyenne far to the south.” Then the warrior sighed and adjusted the heavy buffalo robe he had wrapped around the lower half of his body while they rode on horseback. “That shield was powerful enough to foretell its owner’s death.”

“How did he know he was going to die?”

“That summer morning we left to steal Blackfoot ponies, my brother again stacked up some buffalo chips, this time in the privacy of his lodge, and called his headmen to meet with him. When he laid his shield on top of the pile, he told us that if the shield rose into the air without his touching it, then his medicine had told him he was going to die in battle.”

Turning slightly in the saddle, Bass stared at Whistler a moment before he asked, “Is that what happened to your brother, to my friend?”

“We all saw the shield rise there before He-Who-Is-No-Longer-With-Us. No one touched it as it floated as high as the chief’s head. And no one spoke until I told my brother he should not lead the horse stealers.”

“Why didn’t he listen to you?”

“The One-Who-Died said that his death was already foretold,” Whistler declared. “He could not call off the raid. He would not allow his people to believe he was anything but brave enough to face his own death.”

Despite knowing the shield had predicted his death, Arapooesh nonetheless pushed ahead with the raid. And as much as other warriors tried to protect him once they were confronted by superior numbers of the enemy, Rotten Belly did not hang back and let others do his fighting for him.

Scratch gazed at Whistler, sensing that this same trait of honor must also course through this younger brother’s veins—

Suddenly two of the advance scouts bolted out of the trees a half mile ahead, sprinting back toward the head of the march. They raced their ponies around in a tight circle, then slowed to a walk to explain their excitement.

“We have discovered a trail!”

Whistler asked, “An enemy trail?”

“It must be,” explained the second scout. “Many riders.”

“Is it a fresh trail?” asked Yellowtail as he rode up and brought his animal under control.

The first scout nodded. “Very little snow in the tracks.”

“Are they dragging travois behind them?” Scratch asked.

“There are a few,” the second scout declared.

Bass looked at Whistler. “It might be a small band of the enemy.”

“Women and children—they are our enemies too,” Strikes-in-Camp said.

Turning suddenly on the young warrior, Titus asked, “So now you kill women and children too? Does this make you a mighty warrior?”

“Those children will grow up to be fighting men and the mothers of warriors. Those women will bear the seeds, giving birth to more of our enemy—”

“Quiet!” Whistler demanded, clenching a fist in his son’s face. The group gathered round them fell silent. “We won’t kill the women, nor children. Mark my words: a warrior kills only the warriors.”

“Those women—”

This time Whistler drew his hand back, prepared to slap his son across the cheek, but he suddenly stopped his hand inches away. “I should take your weapons and your ponies from you—make you walk back to Absaroka.”

It was so quiet Bass could hear some of the horses snort in the cold air, the vapor rising from their nostrils like gauzy wreaths as the sky continued to snow.

“But I won’t do that, Strikes-in-Camp,” Whistler continued. “Not because you are my son … but because you need to learn how a Crow makes war on his enemy that is more numerous, an enemy that is stronger.”

Strikes-in-Camp glared at that hand Whistler lowered. Yet he did not utter a word to his father.

“I am the leader of this war party—not my son,” Whistler announced. “We are here to revenge the death of my brother. Not to stain the honor of our people by killing women and children. No—we will capture those women and children, take them back to our country when we turn around for home. The young ones will grow to become Crow. And the bellies of those women will give birth to many Crow warriors!”

The half-a-hundred immediately yipped and trilled in triumph with a great ululation of their tongues.

Then Whistler turned back to those two scouts, asking, “How far away do you judge the enemy to be?”

“Before the sun is in its last quarter of the sky and the winter moon has climbed out of the east,” the second young warrior explained, “we could reach them.”

“Return to the others,” Whistler commanded. “And tell them to follow the trail carefully until they have found where the enemy will camp tonight. We will continue on your trail into the time of darkness. Only when our enemies have stopped for the night are you to return to us.”

Whistler’s scouts found the Blackfoot on that broad plain just north of the Sun River.

As the dimming orb continued its descent toward the horizon, the Crow war party crossed the frozen river, then cut sharply west toward the uneven rim of bare hills that bordered the narrow valley, following the young men who had raced along the backtrail to bring up the rest. As predicted, by late afternoon Bass and the others neared the crest of those hills with their weary ponies, hearing the faint, distant boom of the enemy’s guns.

“It is a good thing my brother realized how important it would be to have good trade with the white man,” Whistler huffed as they neared the brow of the hill on foot, having left their horses below with the others.

“Powder and lead,” Bass agreed. “To fight your enemies.”

“And guns!” the warrior cried in a sharp whisper as he went to his belly. “He-Who-Is-Not-Here decided long ago that we needed to be friends with the white man because we needed the white man’s guns.”

Dropping to his belly in the snow, Scratch inched to the brow of the barren hill and peered over. As the reports of the large-bored muzzle loaders echoed from the surrounding slopes, the scene below opened itself before them.

“That is not a village on the move,” Whistler declared quietly, his breathsmoke a thin stream of gray against the deep-hued blue of the winter sky that outlined the handful that had crabbed to the hilltop to join the white man.

“No, these are hunters,” said Pretty On Top. “Men. Warriors. And they are delivered into our hands!”

“But there are some women,” Bass warned.

On the far side of him Strikes-in-Camp scoffed, “Is this the warning of a woman who is afraid of the fight to come?”

“Take care that your father does not mourn your death in battle before the sun falls from this sky,” Scratch growled.

Strikes-in-Camp chuckled, saying, “I will be an old, old man before I will ever heed the woman words of the white man!”

“You will hold your tongue!” Whistler snapped. “And you will obey me as the leader of this war party, if you will not obey me as your father.”

“Perhaps the white man is afraid we will learn he is too afraid to fight the enemy—”

Whistler interrupted his son. “No more of your angry, foolish talk about my friend, Pote Anil Time and again he has proved himself a friend to our people, a friend to He-Who-Has-Died, and a friend to our family. I will not have you insult him.”

For a long moment Strikes-in-Camp was silent, un-moving; then he rolled onto his hip and slid away from the rest, hurrying downhill to rejoin those who waited with the horses.

“Forgive my son and his words,” Whistler begged as he peered at the Blackfoot below him.

“You are a good man, Whistler,” Titus told him. “I would not be near so patient as you.”

The older warrior chewed his bottom lip in contemplation, then confessed, “I feel it is my fault Strikes-in-Camp has become the man he is.”

“He is a man,” Bass reminded. “He cannot blame who or what he is on you. And neither should you. Your son’s sins will not fall upon his father’s lodge—”

“More are coming!” Pretty On Top announced, pointing across the snowy bowl.

Instantly they turned, the distant figures magnetizing their attention. On the far hillside a short string of horses and some twenty people started down at an angle, the figures stark across the brilliant snow shimmering with a golden hue as the sun continued its fall.

Wheeling to gaze at the west, Bass ripped off both blanket mittens, laid the edge of one hand along the horizon, then set the other on top of it. The sun was racing toward its rest.

They didn’t have long.

“If we are to fight these people,” Scratch said, yanking on the mittens in the severe cold as a gust of wind slashed over the bare brow of that hill, “we must do it soon.”

“Yes. For if any escape our slaughter,” Whistler agreed, “we might not find them in the dark.”

Real Bird asked, “How will you attack?”

The warrior considered that for some time, then pointed. “They have come from the north, looking for these buffalo. Their village must lie in that direction because we have not come upon it. So half of us will ride around to those hills and cut off their escape.”

“I will lead those men,” Pretty On Top volunteered.

“No. The white man will lead,” Whistler deferred. “But I want you to ride at the right hand of Pote Ani.”

The young warrior smiled, his eyes flashing at the white man. “This is good. After all these winters … we go into battle together.”

“And you will lead the rest?” Titus asked Whistler.

“Yes. We will wait until you have reached the far side of those hills across the valley.”

Bass nodded. “We must hurry to be in position.”

“Then I will bring the rest with me, riding through that saddle, and sweep down on the enemy.”

With a smile Scratch said, “Driving them right into our trap.”

“I see the fear in their eyes already!” Pretty On Top exulted.

“I can smell how they have soiled themselves in fear!” Whistler echoed.

“No more dried meat for us,” Windy Boy cheered youthfully. “Not only has the First Maker delivered this enemy into our hands to revenge the death of He-Who-Is-No-Longer, but tonight we can end our diet of cold meat.”

“Pretty On Top,” Bass said, tapping the young warrior on the shoulder, “it’s time to set our trap.”

Back among the others and the horses, Whistler and Turns Plenty divided the warriors, being sure there were proven veterans and newcomers to war in both groups.

“We will do our best to be in position before you ride down on the Blackfoot,” Bass assured Whistler as his warriors were mounting up behind him. “We don’t have much light left in the day.”

“Defend yourself, Pote Ani,” Whistler pleaded before he turned away to his group. “Both of us must return to our wives.”

Titus reached out and grabbed the warrior’s arm. “Know that in my heart, I am married to your daughter.”

“I don’t claim to know all what lies in a white man’s heart … but I believe that you truly love my daughter—”

“All you have to do is tell me what you want of me, how I am to marry her—I’ll do it.”

Whistler smiled. “I know. But for now, we have some Blackfoot to kill. We’ll talk again of this marriage upon our victorious homecoming.”

Backtracking to the south for about two miles, Bass was able to lead his band north again behind the range of low hills until he struck that trampled trail the enemy had taken through the snow to climb over the heights and drop into the valley where the Blackfoot had encountered the buffalo herd. From time to time the boom of distant guns echoed from beyond the heights. Minutes later as the sun was easing down upon the crowns of the western hills, they heard a massive volley of shots.

“That isn’t a buffalo shoot!” Bass roared, kicking his thick winter moccasins into the ribs of the pony with the spotted rump.

“Time to take scalps!” Bear Ground bellowed, leaping away with Pretty On Top.

Like water bursting through a beaver dam, some two dozen of them had their weary ponies lunging up that last slope, reaching the top to look below. On the western side of the valley Whistler and Turns Plenty were leading the others in a mad gallop that was just reaching the valley floor where the Blackfoot hunters had been engaged in shooting the snowbound buffalo while others, mostly women, were at work on the outskirts of the herd, skinning and butchering in tiny, trampled circles of crimson snow.

Enemy horsemen were mounting up, charging toward the onrushing Crow to throw a buffer between them and the women as those figures on foot hurtled themselves around and lunged away with their horses dragging half-laden travois of meat and heavy green hides. Calf-deep snow clawed at their legs, slowing their retreat as the Blackfoot horsemen closed ranks behind the women, then rushed the charging Crow in a full front.

As Scratch and his warriors swept over the brow of the hill, he watched the Blackfoot line collide against Whistler’s Crow with a great crash—men yelling and grunting, horses crying out, guns blaring and handheld weapons clattering.

Then the Blackfoot were behind the Crow lines, several of them yelling to the rest, ordering their comrades to halt and circle around on the rear of the Crow.

Just then the women fleeing from Whistler’s men spotted Bass’s Crow horsemen fanning out across the northern hillside, realizing they were being attacked from two directions. With a howl they dragged to a halt, screaming, turning round and round in fear and confusion.

Down, down the slope Bass’s line flowed as it raced toward the women who wailed and cursed the Crow warriors as those horsemen peeled past them in a blur, tearing on down to the valley floor where the buffalo were suddenly turning blindly, lumbering toward the southwest, making for the narrow saddle that allowed them their only escape from the snowy bowl.

Behind them the women shook their knives in their bloody hands, shouting their oaths at the Crow backs.

“Perhaps you’ll find a wife today!” Scratch hollered at Pretty On Top. “These Blackfoot love to copulate with brave Crow men!”

The young warrior laughed.

On the far side of him Windy Boy said, “I saw a pretty one! Maybe I will take her back to my lodge and we can make many Crow babies!”

Having raced halfway across the trampled snow on the valley floor, Titus realized several of the Crow and Blackfoot riders had been unhorsed in the brutal collision of their lines. In the midst of the butchered buffalo carcasses and the milling, riderless horses, the warriors were crawling out of the snow, whirling about in search of an enemy. Voices rang from the slopes, overwhelmed by the roar of smoothbore English fusils and American-made trade muskets. Once the weapons were empty, most of the combatants did not stop to reload. Instead, they pitched their empty firearms aside and pulled out a bow, a long-handled war club, a tomahawk, or a knife before they rushed on one of the enemy.

Even in the swirling maze of confusion, it was easy for Scratch to pick Crow from Blackfoot, even with both sides bundled in heavy blankets or capotes. The enemy was dressed for winter hunting, while the Crow were painted for war.

In shock, the Blackfoot warriors were realizing they were caught between the pincers of a trap rapidly sealing off their chance for escape. Those still on horseback were forming up, yelling boldly to one another, kicking into a gallop as they started across the snowy ground toward Bass’s mounted warriors.

If they collided with the Crow line and lunged on past it, they would rejoin the women and the chase would be on. The battle would then be a running fight instead of a decisive victory.

“Halt!” Scratch cried, his throat immediately sore in the superdry air. “Halt!”

He was waving as a handful of the warriors took up his cry, the Crow waving at the rest to return up the slope, to re-form in a ragged line somewhere between the fleeing women behind them and those oncoming horsemen sweeping across the valley floor.

“Hold the line—do not charge!” the white man ordered.

Bear Ground shook his head in confusion. “You want us to stand here while they ride down on us?”

“Yes!” he demanded. “If they get past any of you, if they break by our line, then they have escaped.”

“Tote Ani is right!” Pretty On Top yelled. “None of us wants to chase after the enemy! We must stand and fight them here!”