Black Hills

Chapter 9 East of Slim Buttes Along the Grand River, Ninety Miles North of the Black Hills

PAHA SAPA AND LIMPS-A-LOT RETURN FROM THE GREASY Grass much more quickly than they traveled there, but word of the rubbing out of Long Hair has already reached their village, carried by the fast-riding young warriors from the band and by other groups of Lakota passing by. The word of the defeat of the Seventh Cavalry and of Pehin Hanska Kasata, the rubbing out of Long Hair, travels faster in that week through the world of the Great Plains tribes than it does through the wasichu army or telegraph lines.

For some days after his return, no one has time for or interest in Paha Sapa’s tale of counting coup and catching a ghost.

Paha Sapa was always sorry that there had been no time that morning after his meeting with Sitting Bull, Long Turd, and the other men to go up the hill and show them the corpse of the Wasicun whose ghost had entered him. That morning there was a pillar of dust visible to the north of where Major Reno and his surviving men were still pinned down on the hill three miles from where Paha Sapa had touched his dying Wasicun, and while the wasichus feared that it was still more Indians, the scouts serving Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and the other chiefs knew that it was a large detachment of mounted bluecoats, almost certainly General Terry’s column coming from the same jumping-off point—the steamer Far West parked where the Yellowstone River meets the Rosebud—from whence Custer and his men had come.

Sitting Bull was too busy giving commands on breaking up the camp, leaving the honored dead in lodges, and arranging future rendezvous for the various groups of fighting men to go with Paha Sapa and Limps-a-Lot that morning, and when Paha Sapa led his tunkašila up that coulee in the sunrise, they saw the fresh wasichu troops on the northern horizon and quickly descended to their collapsed lodge and waiting ponies in the valley.

The huge village was broken down—except for those tipis and scaffolds left as lodges for the dead and tipi poles that some families simply had no time to carry with them, bringing only the tipi covers—within two hours, and by the time the wasichus descended into that valley in late afternoon, Sitting Bull had led all 8,000 or so Lakota and Cheyenne west toward the Big Horn Mountains and then divided the exodus into two columns, one heading to the southwest, the other—including Paha Sapa and Limps-a-Lot—to the southeast. From those main streams the bands and individuals broke off and scattered across the brown plains or toward the mountains.

In Paha Sapa’s village near the Slim Buttes, the nights were much as the first night at Greasy Grass had been: a strange combination of mourning and celebration, but since only two young men from Angry Badger’s band had died in the two big fights (the first fight with General Cook to the south, the second one with Custer), the late-into-the-night celebrations far outweighed the tremolo campfires and sunrise slashings of mourning.

By the early days of the new month, the Moon of Red Cherries, word arrives that while many of the warriors at the Greasy Grass are quietly returning with their families to the various agencies and reservations, Sitting Bull’s people and Crazy Horse’s warriors are still on the move, carrying on the fight. Some days after that, Lone Duck, a warrior from Angry Badger’s band (and another cousin of Three Buffalo Woman’s) who has ridden with Crazy Horse for three fighting seasons now, arrives to say that Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse have said their good-byes—the older chief’s last words to the younger fighting man were We will have good times!—and Sitting Bull will be leading his many families and relatively few young fighters to winter in Grandmother’s Country (the Grandmother being Queen Victoria) in the far north, while Crazy Horse, whose followers are almost all young fighting men, is roaming in the direction of Slim Buttes, killing wasichus whenever the opportunity arises.

But then word also arrives that the wasichus have been driven insane by the rubbing out of Long Hair and more than two hundred of his men. Soldiers are being marched everywhere. Warriors bring news that a band of Cheyenne has been attacked on the plains northwest of the Red Cloud Agency by elements of the Fifth Cavalry, who brag that they rode 85 miles in 31 hours to intercept the Cheyenne—who were not at Greasy Grass and who had nothing to do with Custer’s death.

Scouts passing through report that what is left of the Seventh Cavalry has mostly gone to ground at their base camp at the head of the Yellowstone, awaiting orders and drinking great amounts of whiskey (which is being sent upriver by various steamships). Lakota and Cheyenne and even some Crow, who have always been friends of Custer and his cavalry, report from agencies that they fear reprisals from the white men.

Three Stars, the General Cook whom Crazy Horse had soundly beaten on the Rosebud nine days before the death of Long Hair, and Long Hair’s commander General Terry are reportedly adding reinforcements to their fighting force and will soon be moving up the Rosebud Valley. What interests the Lakota scouts about this is that an old friend and enemy—a scout named Cody famous for shooting buffalo—has rejoined the army after many years to help Cook, Terry, and the others find the Lakota and Cheyenne and kill them.

All the men in camp agree that Cody is a worthy enemy and that his long, flowing hair—almost as luxuriant as Long Hair’s once was—would be a fine addition to any warrior’s tipi pole.

Despite his inability to sleep because of the ghost’s constant talking and babbling every night, Paha Sapa almost hopes that his ghost will be forgotten by others in all the excitement and fear and nightly celebrations and comings and goings of men from other bands.

But it has not been forgotten. The irony is that the very presence of these other bands and chiefs and holy men now brings attention to Paha Sapa and his ghost.

PAHA SAPA SEES and feels the confusion flowing over his small tiyospaye, lodge group, as these events dominate the Great Plains. The leader of their band, Angry Badger, rarely lives up to his name. The badger is considered the most ferocious creature on earth by the Lakota and its blood has magical properties. (Peering into a basin of it, for instance, will allow you to see yourself far in the future.) Badgers have been known to seize horses and drag them down into their badger holes while warriors can only look on in horror.

Angry Badger is a short, heavyset man of about fifty summers. His face is broad, flat, almost feminine, and his expression is set into a permanent scowl, but it is rarely one of unsupportable anger. He is given to melancholy and indecision and has never been chosen to be among the Deciders—those chiefs chosen each year to oversee the hunt of all the Oglala bands and to appoint the akicita tribal police—but he is cautious when he finally does decide and he has always relied upon the wisdom of the leading warriors and hunters in his small band, and especially the advice of Limps-a-Lot over the old and increasingly impotent Loud Voice Hawk.

Now Angry Badger is all but irrelevant as famous warriors and their bodyguards and fighting bands sweep into the Slim Buttes and south fork of the Grand River area where Angry Badger has led his men to hunt for buffalo before winter arrives.

Angry Badger was a courageous warrior in his youth—the band has composed songs commemorating his deeds—but he is a poor leader, and the freshness of his youthful glories have faded with each autumn since he last went on the war trail. Paha Sapa, not quite eleven summers old as they approach his birth month, is amazed by the names and faces and personalities that stop by their tiyospaye or camp nearby for short periods. (Decades later, reading Homer’s Iliad, Chapman’s translation, borrowed from Doane Robinson, Paha Sapa again feels sympathy for Angry Badger as he reads of Agamemnon’s jealousy in the presence of Achilles and other more-than-human heroes.

Among the famous fighters now within a few hours’ or days’ ride of their village is Crazy Horse himself—a charismatic warrior who now threatens to replace Sitting Bull as war leader, since the older chief is fleeing to Grandmother’s Country while Crazy Horse continues to harass and kill wasichus every day—as well as some of Crazy Horse’s feared and notorious friends and lieutenants, including Black Fox, Dog Goes, the intrepid Run Fearless, Kicking Bear, Bad Heart Bull, and Flying Hawk. Each of these men is a chief or leader of warriors in his own right and each now carries his own legends, as did Achilles with his Myrmidons. Along with Crazy Horse’s subalterns are groups of his akicita tribal-police bodyguards, each more fiercely painted and countenanced than the last, and these include the Oglalas Looking Horse, Short Bull, and Low Dog, as well as the odd Minneconjou Flying By, who is so eager to share in Crazy Horse’s growing glory that it is said that Flying By would ride east to try to capture the wasichus’ White Father if Crazy Horse ordered him to.

Other akicita leaders coming up to the south fork of the Grand River area that sweltering, humid, stormy midsummer include Crazy Horse’s close friends Kicking Bear and Little Big Man. This last man—named for his short but powerfully built physique (the Sun Dance scars on Little Big Man’s chest are the most formidable Paha Sapa is ever to see, and Little Big Man goes shirtless until the snow is deep to show them off)—is especially famous among the Lakota, and the women and children and old men of Angry Badger’s band crowd and jostle to see and touch him when he first arrives. (Paha Sapa listens to Little Big Man brag about his braveries at Greasy Grass around the central fire that first night of his visit and thinks that such an immodest manner is not nearly so becoming as Crazy Horse’s silence and unwillingness to speak of his own victories, but the boy does see how the two friends tend to balance each other. Little Big Man is the threatener and corrector of undisciplined or unruly young warriors who follow them; Crazy Horse is the silent and frightening living legend.)

Angry Badger, who was not at Greasy Grass or at the fight with Cook on the Rosebud the week before, since he’d chosen to stay with his small band and lead them north after the last buffalo of the season, remains silent and glowering during these visits.

The story of the fight at the Greasy Grass and the rubbing out of Pehin Hanska, Long Hair Custer, increasingly dwells on the match-up between Pehin Hanska and Crazy Horse, and less and less on the leadership of Sitting Bull, eight winters older than Long Hair and too weakened by his Sun Dance flesh-cutting sacrifice to take part in the fighting that day. Sitting Bull’s vision, Paha Sapa increasingly understands through Limps-a-Lot, will always be considered as wonderfully wakan, but Crazy Horse’s leadership and fighting that day are becoming the material that gods are made of.

Inevitably, during his first four-day stay at Angry Badger’s tiyospaye (another twenty lodges have been raised by the visitors here along the creek that runs near Slim Buttes, outnumbering the size of the original village), Crazy Horse hears that the boy Paha Sapa was infected by a ghost during the fighting at Greasy Grass, and the battle chief demands to meet with the boy in Limps-a-Lot’s lodge. This terrifies Paha Sapa. He remembers all too well T’ašunka Witko’s look of disgust when the near-naked heyoka warrior found Paha Sapa lying unwounded and gagging for air among the dead that afternoon of the battle.

But as terrified as Paha Sapa is, the summons to Limps-a-Lot’s lodge for his meeting with Crazy Horse has to be honored that second evening of the war chief’s first visit.

It is intolerably hot and humid, and though the sunset has thrown long shadows from the occasional cottonwoods and tipis and horses and grasses, the twilight brings no relief from the heat. Storm clouds move heavily in the south and north and east. Even though the sides of the tipis are raised as high as privacy and propriety allow, almost a grown man’s full arm length at Limps-a-Lot’s lodge, no cooling air moves beneath the heavy painted hides.

Paha Sapa is surprised to see that his interrogators consist only of Crazy Horse, one of his lieutenants named Run Fearless, their own leader, Angry Badger, the holy man Long Turd, old Loud Voice Hawk, and Limps-a-Lot. The women have been sent away. Even though it’s widely known that Crazy Horse loves his privacy and often goes off by himself for days or weeks at a time, there hasn’t been a moment so far in his visit to Angry Badger’s tiyospaye when the war chief has not been surrounded by his bodyguards, other chiefs, warriors, and Angry Badger’s people. Somehow the fact that it is only Crazy Horse, Run Fearless, Angry Badger, Long Turd, Loud Voice Hawk, and Paha Sapa’s tunkašila makes the boy even more apprehensive. His legs are shaking under his best deer-hide trousers.

Limps-a-Lot makes the introductions—although Paha Sapa was briefly introduced to Crazy Horse at the Greasy Grass—and then the six men and the boy sit in a circle. The tent hides have been rolled lower for privacy and sweat drips from the men’s noses and chins in the thick, still air.

There is no pipe, no ceremony, no prelude. Crazy Horse scowls at Paha Sapa as indifferently and apparently as disgustedly as he did on the battlefield more than two weeks earlier. When he speaks, the questions are directed directly at Paha Sapa, and the war chief’s voice is low but peremptory.

—Long Turd and others tell me that you can see people’s pasts and futures when you touch them. Is this true?

Paha Sapa’s heart pounds so wildly that he feels lightheaded.

—Sometimes…

He wanted to add an honorific to his answer, but Ate, Father, does not feel right with this fierce stranger. He leaves it off and hopes he does not receive a closed-fisted cuff for insolence.

—And is it true that a Wasicun’s ghost came into you near where I saw you lying and flopping around during the battle at the Greasy Grass on the day we killed Pehin Hanska?

—Yes, Tasunke Witko.

Paha Sapa prays that using Crazy Horse’s name with the proper tone of deference will be as respectful as an honorific.

Crazy Horse’s scowl remains the same.

—Was it Long Hair’s ghost?

—I do not know, Tasunke Witko.

—Does it speak to you?

—It speaks to… itself. Especially at night, when I hear it best.

—What does it say?

—I do not know, Tasunke Witko. It uses many words and all in a harsh rush, but the words are all in the tongue of the Wasicun.

—You do not understand any of them?

—No, Tasunke Witko. I am sorry.

Crazy Horse shakes his head as if angered by Paha Sapa’s apology.

—Are there any words that the ghost whispers more than once?

Paha Sapa licks his lips and thinks hard. Outside, thunder rumbles from the direction of the Black Hills. Somewhere a child laughs and two women squeal as if they are playing a game. Paha Sapa smells horseflesh and horse manure heavy in the thick summer air.

—There is the word… Li-BEE… Tasunke Witko. The ghost says it over and over. Li-BEE. But I have no idea what it means. It is as if he is saying it in pain, as though it were the source of a wound.

Crazy Horse turns to Run Fearless, Long Turd, and Loud Voice Hawk, but neither the chief nor holy man has heard this wasichu word before. Angry Badger also shakes his head while looking irritated at Paha Sapa and this entire conversation. Crazy Horse’s fierce glance moves to Paha Sapa’s tunkašila, but Limps-a-Lot only shrugs.

Crazy Horse barks to Run Fearless.

—Go bring in the Crow.

When Run Fearless returns, he is shoving and dragging along a Crow captive. The man’s hands are tied in front of him and his legs are hobbled like a horse’s. Paha Sapa guesses at once that this is one of the Crow scouts for the Seventh Cavalry whom Crazy Horse’s warriors captured and kept alive at the Greasy Grass; he has heard in campfire talk that there were three, but only one has been kept alive. This man is wearing torn and bloody clothes. His face is swollen with bruises, one eye looks to be permanently battered shut, and someone has been playfully torturing him—three fingers on his right hand are gone, two fingers on his left hand, and one ear has been cut away.

Not for the first time (or the last), Paha Sapa feels a strange reaction deep inside—a wave of disgust or disapproval, perhaps—but it is not his reaction. The Paha Sapa of almost eleven summers feels no compassion for this captured enemy. And it is certainly not his ghost’s reaction—Paha Sapa receives no emotions or thoughts from his ghost, only talk, talk, talk in the wasichus’ language. No, it is more as if there is another, perhaps older, but definitely a different Paha Sapa within Paha Sapa, always watching and reacting to things somewhat differently than does the boy named Paha Sapa. The effect is disconcerting.

Crazy Horse is speaking.

—This is one of Long Hair’s scouts. I only wish we could have captured those four who were closest to Long Hair—Curly, White Man Runs Him, Goes Ahead, and Hairy Moccasin. This one’s name is of no importance.

The Crow grunts as if in recognition of the other scouts’ names. Paha Sapa sees that all of the man’s front teeth are missing.

Crazy Horse turns to Run Fearless.

—Ask him in Crow language if Long Hair knew anyone called…

He looks back at Paha Sapa.

—Did you hear a wasichu name in your ghost dreams? What was it?

Paha Sapa’s heart is pounding wildly.

—Li-BEE.

Run Fearless asks the question in Crow. Paha Sapa recognizes a few of the words—the languages of the Lakota and the Crow are not so dissimilar—and then Run Fearless repeats the question in different words.

The Crow slowly smiles, showing the dark gaps and broken stumps of teeth. He speaks a short sentence that leaves Run Fearless looking dissatisfied.

Crazy Horse is impatient.

—What did he say?

—He says—Why should I tell you anything about Long Hair? You will just continue to torture me and then kill me.

Crazy Horse removes his long knife from its beaded sheath.

—Tell him that if he answers truthfully and with everything he knows, he will die quickly, like a man. If he does not, he will have no manhood to die with.

The Crow’s smile disappears as he listens. He barks a sentence, and Run Fearless repeats…

—Li-BEE.

Seemingly despite his pain and position, the Crow smiles again. Through his swollen lips and gums, he mushes out several sentences.

Run Fearless stares at the man for a second before translating.

—He says that this word was heard a lot at the fort and on the march. This Li-BEE was Long Hair’s woman… his wife. Elizabeth Bacon Custer. Long Hair called her Li-Bee.

All the older men in the room, including the Crow, are silent for a long moment. They are looking at Paha Sapa in a new way.

Long Turd breaks the silence a second before renewed thunder rolls across the village. The noise is so deep and so loud that the tipi hides vibrate like the skin of a drum.

—Black Hills carries the ghost of Long Hair Custer.

Crazy Horse grunts and speaks softly to Run Fearless.

—Take the Crow out and kill him. One bullet. In the head. Tell him that his body will not be mutilated but left in a proper burial scaffold. He has earned a warrior’s death.

The Crow appears to have understood Crazy Horse’s words and is mumbling his Death Song to himself as Run Fearless leads him hobbling out.

Limps-a-Lot motions to speak.

—Surely you do not believe that man, Tasunke Witko. The Crow has every reason to lie to you. Why would a lesser scout know the name of Long Hair’s woman?

Crazy Horse merely grunts at this. From outside the tipi there comes the short, flat sound of a single pistol shot. The constant noise of the village—as common and reassuring and unheard as the inevitable buzz of grasshoppers in late summer here on the plains—silences itself for a moment. Crazy Horse continues to stare at Paha Sapa.

—The rest of you go outside now. I want to talk to the boy alone.

Paha Sapa sees Limps-a-Lot’s reluctance to leave and notes the look his grandfather gives him—he sees it but cannot understand what the holy man is trying to say with the look—but Long Turd, Angry Badger, Loud Voice Hawk, and Limps-a-Lot stand and file out, closing the tipi flap behind them.

Paha Sapa looks into Crazy Horse’s eyes and thinks—This man may kill me.

Crazy Horse slides closer and grabs Paha Sapa by the boy’s upper arm. The grip is ferocious.

—Can you see into a man’s future, Black Hills? Can you?

—I do not know, Tasunke Witko. I believe so. Sometimes…

Crazy Horse shakes the ten-year-old until Paha Sapa’s teeth can be heard rattling like seeds in a gourd.

—Can you, damn you? Do you see a man’s fate? Yes or no?

—I think sometimes, Tasunke Witko, that I can…

Crazy Horse shakes him again and then grabs Paha Sapa’s bare forearm so fiercely that the boy can feel the bones bending.

—Fuck “sometimes”! Tell me now one thing I must know. Will I die at the hands of the wasichu? Just yes or no, Paha Sapa, or I swear to Wakan Tanka and the Thunder Beings whom I serve that I will kill you this very day. Will I die at the hands of a Wasicun, of the wasichu? Yes or no?

Crazy Horse pulls Paha Sapa’s open hands up toward the warrior’s scarred, heavily muscled chest and sets the palms of those small hands hard and flat against him.

Paha Sapa shakes as if lightning has struck him. The air inside the tipi suddenly stinks of ozone. The boy’s eyes roll back under his fluttering eyelids, and he tries weakly to pull away from the man, but Crazy Horse’s grip is too strong. From a great distance Paha Sapa hears the roll of actual thunder and the equally low growl of Crazy Horse’s demanding voice….

—Will I die at the hands of the wasichu? Will the white man kill me? Yes or no!

IT IS LIKE THE OTHER VISIONS Paha Sapa has had—flashes of images, explosions of sounds, a strange lack of color, lack of context, lack of control, lack of understanding of what is happening when or where—but this black-and-white image is stronger, faster, and more terrifying.

Paha Sapa tastes Crazy Horse’s fear and desperation. He recognizes faces and remembers names through Crazy Horse’s careering, terrified, defiant, leaping thoughts.

They are in some sort of wasichu compound—a fort, a camp, an agency—but Paha Sapa has never been in such a place and does not recognize it, nor do Crazy Horse’s increasingly desperate thoughts reveal the location. The heat is that of summer or very early autumn, but Paha Sapa cannot guess the year. He sees through Crazy Horse’s eyes, but he also is above the shoving crowds, looking down on Crazy Horse and the others as if he, Paha Sapa, were staring through the eyes of a soaring raven or sparrow, so he can see that Crazy Horse looks much the same age as he does at this very instant, as he continues shaking Paha Sapa and pressing Paha Sapa’s suddenly freezing-cold palms flat and hard against the warrior’s chest and…

—Am I a prisoner? That is Little Bordeaux Creek, fifteen miles out, where the scouts joined the rumbling, rocking ambulance; there is stock grazing at Chadron Creek. Lakota on horseback. Now they are in the camp, amid the log buildings, two hundred, three hundred Indians, Lakota but also Brul´e and others: Big Road, Iron Hawk, Turning Bear, the Minneconjou Wooden Knife, a Wasicun—the sounds Cap-tain Ken-ning-ton thud into Paha Sapa’s brain like tomahawk strikes—and more Brul´es: Swift Bear, Black Crow, Crow Dog, Standing Bear—Bordeaux, the interpreter Billy Garnett—and Touch the Clouds and his son there with Fast Thunder—Crazy Horse is being led, men are shouting, Crazy Horse is being pulled into one of the wasichu fort structures—where blue-shirted soldiers stand guard….

—What kind of place is this?

Is it Crazy Horse shouting? Paha Sapa cannot tell. He whirls above the masses of heads; black braided hair; wide-brimmed, sweat-stained hats; feathers; and now he is down behind Crazy Horse’s eyes again as Little Big Man and Cap-tain Ken-ning-ton keep pulling Crazy Horse forward, toward and into the little house.

—I won’t go in there.

Shoving. Shouting. A scout screams Go ahead! I have the gun! Do what you want with him! Crazy Horse is pulling away from grasping hands, leaping forward, away from the darkness, toward the opening and the light. Little Big Man is screaming Nephew, don’t! Don’t do that! Nephew! Don’t! Don’t do that!

—Let me go! Get your hands… Let me… go!

Blades are rising; rifles are rising. They are wasichu bayonets on rifles held by wasichus. Crazy Horse pulls out his blade for slicing tobacco, cuts Little Big Man’s flesh between the thumb and forefinger. As the older man shouts, Crazy Horse slashes Little Big Man’s forearm while he imagines cutting long strings of flesh away from a deer’s white bone.

—Kill the son of a bitch! Kill the son of a bitch! Kill the fucker! Kill him! Kill him! Kill the son of a bitch! It is Ken-ning-ton screaming. It is the language of Paha Sapa’s ghost, and Paha Sapa still cannot understand it. But he sees and feels and understands the spittle striking Crazy Horse’s face as the Wasicun continues to scream at the blue-coated soldiers and guards with their rifles and bayonets raised.

Perhaps the wasichu soldier-guard behind Crazy Horse only means to prod with the bayonet, but Crazy Horse is pulling violently backward at that second, losing his balance, and the blade possibly meant to prod tears through Crazy Horse’s shirt just above his left hip and keeps moving forward, piercing the war chief’s lower back, Crazy Horse’s own weight and movement driving the long steel blade deeper between his kidneys and into his bowels. Crazy Horse grunts. Paha Sapa screams but still hovers both as a bird above, beneath the roof but hovering, but also behind Crazy Horse’s own eyes.

Redness descending, Crazy Horse grunts in pain. The wasichu guard pulls the bayonet out, the butt striking the log wall of the inside of the guardhouse, then—as terrified as all the others but gifted with terrible action—by the drill—one, two, and three, but silently—thrusts the rifle and bayonet forward again, the point going deep into Crazy Horse’s lower back, between ribs, up into Crazy Horse’s wheezing left lung—depriving the chief of wind and words for a moment—then the guard is grunting and pulling the long blade free again, the steel sliding slickly and obscenely out of Crazy Horse’s bleeding flesh.

—Let me go now.

It is Crazy Horse, speaking softly amid the shouting and bedlam and shoving and screaming.

—Let me go now. You’ve hurt me.

The wasichu sentry circles, rifle extended, and lunges again, from the front this time, toward Crazy Horse’s belly. But the steel misses under Crazy Horse’s arm and embeds itself in the wood of the door frame. Little Big Man is holding Crazy Horse’s other arm and is screaming for the wasichu to do something—to stab him again?

Crazy Horse’s Minneconjou uncle Spotted Crow grabs the stuck rifle, pulls the blade free, and drives the butt of the long gun into Little Big Man’s belly, sending the short traitor whoofing into the dust on all fours.

—You have done this before! You are always in the way!

It is Spotted Crow screaming this as Crazy Horse falls backward into the arms of Swift Bear and two others. One of those three is saying haughtily, insanely, to the wounded warrior—

—We told you to behave yourself! We warned you!

Crazy Horse groans and finally leans, sags, and falls. The motion seems to take long minutes. Cartridges are being chambered and hammers clicked back on wasichu rifles all around. Crazy Horse holds both his bloody palms out toward the men around him, Indian and white man alike.

—See where I am hurt? Do you see? I can feel the blood flowing out of me!

Closed Cloud, a Brulé, brings a blanket to spread over the dying chief, but Crazy Horse grabs at the Brulé’s braids and shakes the warrior’s head back and forth even as Crazy Horse jerks his own head back and forth in agony and fury.

—You all coaxed me over here. You all told me to come here. And then you ran away and left me! You all left me!

He Dog takes the blanket out of Closed Cloud’s hands, crumples it into a pillow, and sets it under Crazy Horse’s head. Then He Dog takes his own blanket from his shoulders and spreads it over the fallen man.

—I will take you home, Tasunke Witko.

Then He Dog walks away across the parade ground toward a building there.

PAHA SAPA SHUTS HIS EYES, inner and outer, so that he cannot see more. But he does see more. He screams so that he cannot hear what he is hearing.

He awakens to Crazy Horse bending over him on one knee, just as he did at the Greasy Grass—the warrior’s face even more fierce than that time yet similar to the expression of disgust he showed weeks earlier. Crazy Horse is flicking water from a wooden bowl into Paha Sapa’s face.

—What do you see, Black Hills? Do you see my death?

—I don’t know! I can’t… It isn’t… I don’t know.

Crazy Horse shakes him harder, snapping Paha Sapa’s teeth together with the violence of the shaking.

—Will I die by the hand of the wasichu? That is what I need to know.

Crazy Horse’s shaking and slapping have hidden those final memories from Paha Sapa in a way that closing his eyes and covering his ears failed to do. The boy feels like sobbing. It’s not enough that he has become infected with a ghost that gibbers and mumbles all through his nights; now Paha Sapa knows that the flood of sensations and twice-removed memories that have poured into him during the contact with Crazy Horse almost certainly constitutes all of that weird warrior’s memories, from his earliest childhood perceptions to those of his death just moments or seconds beyond what Paha Sapa has just witnessed. There is no doubt that the white soldier’s wounding of Crazy Horse by bayonet thrust will be mortal.

—I don’t know! I did not see the… the final… the ending, Tasunke Witko.

Crazy Horse throws Paha Sapa back into the hides and robes and jumps to his feet. His killing knife is in his hand and his eyes are not sane.

—You are lying to me, Black Hills. You know, but you are afraid to tell me. But you will tell me, I promise you that.

The warrior turns and stalks out. Paha Sapa does sob now, weeping into his forearm so that Limps-a-Lot and the others outside the lodge will not hear him. He did not see how long it will take for Crazy Horse to die from the bayonet wounds—and the glimpses of Crazy Horse he was able to catch showed a warrior not much older than the man who just left the tipi, a year perhaps, no more than two—but Paha Sapa did see an absolute conviction in the heart and thoughts of Crazy Horse when the war leader forced him to use his gift.

Crazy Horse is going to kill Paha Sapa whether the boy tells him his future or not.

PAHA SAPA HAS BEEN ASSIGNED a lodge separate from the village. Limps-a-Lot visits him there that night, late. Crazy Horse and his men have ridden away to their own tiyospaye, but the chief said that he would return by midday the next day, bringing Long Turd and other wičasa wakan to identify the Wasicun inside the boy and then to drive the ghost out, even if the ghost-driving-out ceremonies take weeks. Paha Sapa has been told to fast and to purify himself in the sweat lodge that has been erected near his isolated tipi.

—Grandfather, I have seen that Tasunke Witko intends to kill me.

Limps-a-Lot nods and sets his huge hand on Paha Sapa’s thin shoulder.

—I agree, Black Hills. I do not have your gift of forward- or inward-seeing, but I agree that Crazy Horse will kill you if you tell him that the wasichu will someday kill him and he will kill you if you say that they will not or even if you keep silent. He is certain that the ghost within you is Long Hair’s ghost, and Crazy Horse is afraid of it. He wants the ghost to die with you.

Paha Sapa is ashamed of his girlish tears earlier. Now he only feels empty and very young.

—What shall I do, Grandfather?

Limps-a-Lot leads him out of the tipi. Hundreds of broad strides away, the northernmost campfires of the village glow. A dog barks. Two young men on guard duty out among the horses grazing across the stream call softly to each other. An owl hoots in a cottonwood along that stream. Low clouds have moved in like a gray blanket to hide the moon and stars. Thunder continues to rumble from the south, but no rain has fallen yet. It is very hot.

Paha Sapa realizes that there are two horses standing there in the dark. One is Limps-a-Lot’s favorite, the good-running roan he calls Worm, and the other is the broad-backed white mare belonging to Three Buffalo Woman. That mare is now piled high with carefully tied robes and gear, and Worm has Paha Sapa’s own blanket, bow, quiver of arrows, lance, and other items on his back.

Limps-a-Lot points to the south.

—You must leave tonight and take Worm and the mare that Three Buffalo Woman calls Pehánska. You are to ride itokagata, south, past Bear Butte to the Black Hills. Go all the way into the Black Hills, deep into them, but travel with care—Crazy Horse’s and Angry Badger’s scouts say that white men have poured into our sacred hills during the past few moons and even built new cities there. Crazy Horse has vowed before everyone to go to the Paha Sapa next week and to kill every wasichu he finds there.

—Grandfather, if Crazy Horse and his warriors are going to the Black Hills soon, why are you sending me there? Would I not be safer if I rode north, toward Grandmother’s Country?

—You would be, and I will tell Crazy Horse that I loaned you my horses so that you could go to Grandmother’s Country.

—He will kill you for helping me, Tunkašila.

Limps-a-Lot grunts and shakes his head.

—No, he will not. It would set the bands to fighting, and Crazy Horse wants to kill wasichus by the thousand this year, not other Lakota. Not yet. And you must go to the Black Hills because there you must have your hanblečeya…. Your Vision must come to you there and nowhere else. This I know. Do you remember all that I have taught you about purifying yourself, building the sweat lodge, and singing to the Six Grandfathers?

—I remember, Grandfather. When may I return?

—Not until after your successful hanblečeya, Paha Sapa, even if that takes weeks or months. And in both going south and coming back north, travel carefully—keep the horses off ridgelines, hide in willows and streambeds when you can, act as if you are in the middle of Pawnee country. Both Crazy Horse and the wasichus will kill you on sight. Our village will be somewhere between Slim Buttes and Arikara country to the north, but be careful even to the coming in when you return…. Hide and observe the village for a day and a night and a day to be sure it is safe.

—Yes, Grandfather.

—Now go.

Limps-a-Lot swings the boy up and onto the back of Worm and hands him the hide rope for Pehánska, White Crane. The holy man peers into the midnight-black south.

—I think it will begin storming tonight and rain for many days. This is good. It will be very hard for Crazy Horse to track you, and he was never that good a tracker. But head west to where the stream runs south from Slim Buttes and stay in the river for as many hours as you can, then try to stay on the hard, rocky land. Hide during the day if you have to. Good-bye, Paha Sapa.

—Good-bye, Grandfather.

—Toksha ake čante ista wacinyanktin ktelo, Paha Sapa.

I shall see you again with the eye of my heart.

Limps-a-Lot turns and walks as quickly as he can back to the lighted village. Clucking the horses into silence, Paha Sapa turns their heads southwest and rides into the night.