The Holy Road

Chapter LV

The abortive raid on Captain Bradley's column had plunged the hostile camps into chaos, and the news of Ten Bears' death, transmitted by spies filtering in and out of the reservation lands, was marked by a shorter period of mourning than would have been observed in better times. In the frenzy of trying to mount a defense on the run, every day was a desperate struggle, and grief was a luxury that no one could much indulge.

Hunting For Something hacked off her hair, as did Stands With A Fist, and both women gashed their arms and legs. But the cuts were fewer and not as deep as they might have been.

Owl Prophet was vehement in his conviction that the whites had murdered Ten Bears through the use of some magical agent but his ire was quickly shoved aside by demands from the many wounded men who had managed to make it back from the attack. It seemed that every other lodge held someone who needed attention and, in the coming weeks, the prophet was perpetually applying spells, potions, and even surgeries as his family picked the surrounding prairie clean of healing medicines.

Like many others, the Dances With Wolves and Smiles A Lot families had doubled up. It was the only way to meet the increasing demands of cooking and cleaning, hauling food and water, tending to the needs of exhausted husbands, and organizing the lives of Snake In Hands, Always Walking, Stays Quiet, and Rabbit.

In addition to their clearly defined and dangerous roles as providers and protectors, warriors were burdened with a staggering onslaught of decisions, all of which had to be made in the ever-shifting circumstances of evasion and escape. owing to new movements on the part of the white soldiers, camps were erected only to be struck a day or two rater. Keeping every camp supplied with the basic elements of food and fuel was a herculean task that never seemed fully accomplished. In addition, huge expenditures of energy were surrendered in restraining factions of young men, eager for combat, from running amok.

Some people went into the reservation, only to return disillusioned, while a few hardened warriors packed up their families and possessions and took the white man's holy road, never to return.

The one thing the Comanches and their allies did not need was the rain, which made every obstacle that much harder to overcome. It never seemed to stop, and after weeks of inundation, the people native to the land wondered if they hadn't miscalculated in supposing the Mystery had abandoned only them. It seemed the whole world was gradually submerging under the deluge.

Ponies sank past their ankles in the sucking mud that coated the prairie everywhere they traveled. People were never dry and their skin became so sodden that this time of their greatest trial was referred to through succeeding generations as “the wrinkled-hand chase.”

Ceaseless traveling in difficult conditions took its toll on possessions as well as people, and long before the running and fighting ended, people were often forced to sleep in the open. For a time, the comment that it was "cruel to wake a man before his puddle was warm” enjoyed wide popularity. But the joke quickly played out. There was too much struggle for levity. Every day of life was a grand achievement for the grim souls who had committed themselves to defiance.

Yet, if asked, it is certain that the people branded hostile would have agreed that the fierceness of their determination elevated them to a previously unknown spiritual plane. Mourning for the warriors who had fallen in the unsuccessful first attack of the campaign was conducted inwardly, privately. The desperate search for food and forage went on without complaint. Even the coughing sickness many had contracted from the wet and cold was ignored in the set-jawed atmosphere of defense.

Stands With A Fist and Hunting For Something and Wind In His Hair's wife, One Braid Trailing, rose unheralded to positions of leadership in the phalanx of women who kept the village intact and moving. Somehow they managed to nurture children, prepare food, provide shelter, create warmth, and strike or set up camp at a moment's notice in the muck and rain. The women organized and maintained a semblance of life in vague hope that the warriors, already overtaxed by the never-ending search for food, would find a way to defeat the white soldiers.

The fact that Captain Bradley's troops had repelled them so effectively forced Wind In His Hair and his inner circle to suspend plans for further attacks on the invaders. The fast-shooting guns of the whites were too powerful. Sixteen warriors had been lost in a fight that yielded no scalps and caused but a momentary halt in the enemy's advance.

Bad Hand had taken the field with hundreds of blue-coated men. They were driving down from the northeast while Captain Bradley's smaller force moved steadily up from the south. A third army of soldiers was coming from the northwest, but, fortunately, they were being held up by large groups of Cheyenne and Arapaho.

The situation was growing more dire by the day for Wind In His Hair's community. They knew they could not evade the white soldiers forever, nor could they fight them effectively. Groups of decoys, sent to draw the hair-mouths off the scent, had succeeded only in causing slight delays in the enemy advance. The warriors agreed that the best they could hope for was to stay out of range until the soldiers ran out of ambition, or food, or both. Sooner or later they would have to leave the country.

But even that strategy disintegrated on a rare, rainless night when Dances With Wolves, Smiles A Lot, and Blue Turtle returned from a long scout to report that a train of perhaps twenty soldier wagons, undoubtedly intended to resupply those already in the field, was driving toward them from the east. Dances With Wolves said he had not seen any of the fast-shooting guns and only a small force of soldiers was escorting the train.

That same night, after a council remarkable for its brevity, Wind In His Hair gave the order for camp to be struck. The whites had opened the only avenue of action available to the warriors. They had to move east and engage the wagon train. It was their best and, as each warrior knew in his heart, only chance.