Trumpet on the Land: The Aftermath of Custer's Massacre, 1876

Chapter 20

Moon of Cherries Blackening

Indians on the Offensive

OMAHA, July 17—Telegrams received here yesterday are to the effect that the Indians are moving on Medicine Bow, a station on the Union Pacific, almost due south of Fort Fetterman, it is supposed for the purpose of capturing or destroying the supplies which have been stored there recently in great quantities by the government, there being 50,000 rounds of ammunition among other things. A small force of Indians could seize and destroy these stores, as Medicine Bow is a small station, and the country round about sparsely settled. Their destruction at this time would seriously impede military operations against the Indians.

His name was Yellow Hair.

Not because yellow was the color of his own. No, Yellow Hair’s was as black as any Cheyenne’s. His skin as dark as his red earth home.

Hay-o-wei.

Instead, Yellow Hair was named for the scalp he wore. The hair of a white woman he had killed, so went one tale.

But Yellow Hair knew better—it was the scalp of an important man. Hair he had taken seven winters before along the Little Dried River.^* Among his people a warrior was known by the coups he counted, by the ponies he stole, by the hair he took and the women left to mourn. Yellow Hair knew there must have been mourning when he took that scalp.

Instead of cutting it up to tie along the sleeves of his war shirt, instead of stringing small pieces of it around the edge of his war shield, Yellow Hair instead stretched the scalp on a small hoop of green willow and to that hoop tied a long thong. This he wore around his neck. It was the biggest victory he had ever won—this fight with the yellow-haired man.

A tough and worthy opponent. So he proudly wore the hair of that enemy around his neck ever since. They had called him other names when he was a child, when he was a brash youngster wandering with Tall Bull’s band of Dog Soldiers raiding and stealing from Comanche country on the south, to Lakota country on the north.

Then Tall Bull was killed at the Springs on a hot summer’s day, much as this one promised to be. The soldiers attacked without the slightest warning from their herd guard. Yellow Hair and the others stayed behind long enough to protect the children and old ones as they fled into the sandy hills and crossed the river^† to safety. The pony soldiers and their scalped-head scouts^‡ did not pursue for long. He had learned the scalped heads would not—not when there was plunder among the lodges, not when there was something of a proud people to steal or destroy.

But Tall Bull was dead. And for weeks they had wandered aimlessly while some of the other war chiefs argued as to just where they should go. Some families broke off and went their own way. A few bands even returned to the south that autumn, to live with relatives down on the southern agency.^* But not the true Dog Soldiers like Yellow Hair. They continued to raid on into that autumn. And early that winter he took his scalp down by the Little Dried River where five winters before the soldiers had attacked old Black Kettle’s village of peace-loving Shahiyena. A lot of good it did the old chief to tie that white man’s star flag from his highest lodgepole. Four years later Black Kettle was killed by Custer’s men.

Now both Black Kettle and Tall Bull were dead. A man could die fighting, or he could die doing what the white man ordered him to do. To Yellow Hair’s way of thinking, the old peace chief was a pitiful man, worthy only of scorn for his stupidity in believing in the white man’s word. Black Kettle deserved to die for putting his trust not in his own people, but in what the white man considered truth.

But Tall Bull—it mattered little that he was dead, for he had died an honored man: a warrior who never shrank from the task at hand, a man who always thought of his people first, a fighter who went down defending his people, his home, and the land where he had buried the bones of his ancestors. That was the death of a true warrior and patriot of the People: to die with honor, to lay down his life fighting off the white man.

That autumn after the defeat of the Dog Soldiers at the Springs, Yellow Hair rode with three others for many days to the south, on beyond the Cherry River.^* There they came upon a camp of white buffalo hunters one cold, frosty evening. Slowly, the four warriors approached the white man’s camp, asking for coffee, even a little tobacco for their pipes. Instead they were given nothing but the loud words and the muzzles of the hunters’ guns, gestured away.

The next morning they killed the first as he crept into the bushes and settled over an old tree with his britches around his ankles to relieve himself. Then they slit the throat of the one sitting in the predawn darkness, watching over their horses and mules. After they had run these off into the hills, the four warriors waited for the five hunters to come for their animals. They did not have to wait long— for the white man is nothing without his animals. Especially these brave hunters who came to slaughter all the buffalo.

In their ambush all were soon killed except one who used the bodies of his friends to hide behind. It took a long time for the warriors to get close enough to that one whose hair seemed to shine like the white man’s crazy metal, so much like the rays of the sun was it. That lone hunter killed two of Yellow Hair’s friends that morning before Yellow Hair and the other warrior finally worked in close enough to hear the heavy breathing of the white man.

It had been a long time since the hunter had last fired a shot.

Carefully Yellow Hair crawled on his belly toward the bodies of the white men they had killed. Behind them he heard the quiet murmuring of the brave hunter. At last Yellow Hair raised his head over one of the bodies and was surprised to see the white man lying on his back, a bloody wound along the side of his head, an even bloodier and bubbling wound soaking the front of his greasy shirt. As Yellow Hair rose to his hands and knees, the white hunter looked at him with eyes as hard as river ice, then cursed him, growling something in the white man’s language with his bloody tongue, pointing that pistol at the warrior, its hammer cocked.

The hunter pulled the trigger and laughed. Laughed very loud because the weapon he let drop at his side was empty. For a moment Yellow Hair stared at the hunter, not understanding—then decided the white man laughed because he had left himself without any bullets.

Yellow Hair knelt over his victim as the man tried to push him off, but did not have the strength. Then, taking the white man’s own knife from the scabbard on his belt, he took the hunter’s hair. While the enemy was still breathing.

When he had finished, Yellow Hair had gotten to his feet, holding his trophy aloft, shaking it in the enemy’s face. Then slashed the white man’s throat, listening to him bubble and gurgle until he no longer struggled to breathe through the gaping, gushy wound.

“You have done a brave thing!”

Yellow Hair had turned to look behind him. His friend, Rain Maker, stood near, having watched it all.

“You have done a great thing!”

“He was a mighty enemy,” Yellow Hair said, holding out the scalp as if to show it off.

Rain Maker yelped, a low cry leaping from far back in his throat. Then he said, “From this day on your people will call you Yellow Hair!”

Ever since he had ridden a rising star among the Shahiyena.

In the late autumns most of the warrior bands wandered back onto one agency or the other, either at Red Cloud or over at Spotted Tail. Through the seasons his people remained closer to the Lakota than they did to their own southern cousins down in Indian Territory. And with the coming of the new grass that fed their ponies and made the animals strong, the warrior bands once more wandered west and north off the reservations.

It had been so this summer. He and the rest of his staunchest holdouts had been out hunting for scalps in the Paha Sapa,^* killing those white men who scratched in the ground for the crazy rocks near the sacred Bear Butte. It was there they learned of the rumors that a great fight had taken place far to the west. In the country of the Powder and the Rosebud, on a river where the Lakota traditionally hunted buffalo and antelope—a place called the Greasy Grass.

In that country, the story was told, in the span of no more than eight suns, the warriors of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull had twice defeated great armies the white man had sent against them.

Now the word was being spread: Bring the people! Come north! Soon the white man will be gone forever!

Like some of his friends, Yellow Hair had family living with Little Wolfs band back there on the agency at Red Cloud. While most of the other warriors in that war party hurriedly rode off to the west to join the great chiefs in their defeat of the white man, Yellow Hair and a handful of his friends raced south to spread the word among their people still remaining on the reservation. Those women and children, the old ones and those too sick to help themselves, they would all need the courage of the warriors to flee from the soldiers of war chief Jordan at Camp Robinson.

So it was that they had finally gathered more than eight-times-ten-times-ten of Little Wolfs people and other stragglers behind the ridges north of the agency three days ago. And yesterday they had started north. The Shahiyena had a wide road to travel, a road wide-open as well! To travel so slowly, to bring their families along, these were warriors who had every reason to feel confident that no white man, no soldier would raise his hand to stop them from joining the Hunkpapa medicine man in the north. He was the one with power now—for hadn’t he seen the white man’s ruin in his vision?

For those last few days they had waited on the agency, deciding whether to go or not. Scouts brought word that soldiers were prowling the very same country the Shahiyena would have to cross if they hoped to reach the Powder River hunting grounds. Then scouts returned from the Mini Pusa,^* bringing news that the soldiers had turned around and were marching back to the south, toward the Buffalo Dung River, and had abandoned that country between the reservation and the Paha Sapa. As if fleeing from the danger in those mighty villages to the north who had just crushed two armies.

The way was clear!

Yesterday Yellow Hair and the warriors had started them out. No soldiers from Camp Robinson came out to try stopping the People. They hadn’t even seen a single white man all that day. Then this morning, as camp was coming to life and the women were loading their travois for the day’s journey, scouts came in with a report of a train of white-topped wagons that was coming from the west. Coming from the white man’s forts and cities, bound for his settlements in the Paha Sapa.

That would mean those wagons were loaded with supplies: boxes and cans of food, bolts of cloth for the women, whiskey for the warriors, brass and iron kettles, tin cups and butcher knives, maybe even bullets and guns. What a gift the Everywhere Spirit had delivered Yellow Hair’s people as they began their journey to freedom!

They were fleeing the white man’s oppression and the slow starvation of the reservation … and this was the Everywhere Spirit’s reward—this train filled with supplies to take with them as they moved to the north country, never to be forced into returning to the agency again.

He was sitting behind the hill now, gazing at the small mirror he could hold in the palm of one hand, straightening his face paint, when one of the young scouts came tearing up on his pony.

“There are two of them,” the youngster said breathlessly. “They left the wagons and are now hurrying ahead of the rest.”

Yellow Hair asked, “Which way are they coming?”

The scout pantomimed, arching his arm west to east.

The war chiefs eyes narrowed gravely. “If they move their horses too fast, they will see our warriors behind these hills—and our surprise for the wagon train will be ruined.”

“We must kill the two riders,” growled Rain Maker.

“Yes,” Yellow Hair said to his good friend, the one who had seen him take the brave man’s scalp many autumns before. “And we will lead them.”

Quickly he pointed to a handful of others who would come—men like Beaver Heart, Buffalo Road, and other old friends. Not a large party, but enough that they could easily swallow up the two riders and kill them behind one of these rolling hills without alerting the others. The wagon men would roll on down the white man’s road toward the Paha Sapa, not knowing that death waited for them all this new day as the sun rose in the east.

“Come!” Yellow Hair shouted as he kicked heels into the ribs of his strong pony.

Behind him Rain Maker and the others yelped as they streamed out from the far side of that knoll and followed Yellow Hair into the shallow ravine. The sun was chasing shadows off the land, rising strong and confident this morning. The way his people were once more rising above the land.

This was to be their summer. The time of his people.

On they raced down the bottom of the ravine, listening to the fading shouts of encouragement from the warriors who would lie in waiting, hiding until the signal was given to attack the wagons.

Closer and closer they galloped toward the white man’s road at the mouth of this ravine.

In the coldest hour of that morning Bill Cody had awakened himself as he used to do all the time, at least before he had gone east to begin performing on the boards. It was a good life, and it paid him well enough.

But it was nothing like this: rising before the sun and saddling up, walking his mount through row upon row of sleeping soldiers, and finally climbing into the saddle beyond the pickets. To ride alone below the waning stars, just he and these grassy hills, having put Warbonnet Creek at his back so he could look to the south and have his eyes behold nothing but this great inland sea. Bill had enough time to circle west, ease on south, then angle over to the east, where the Cheyenne were sure to be somewhere on that road.

He wanted to know where they were, so he could tell Merritt how much time they had before the Cheyenne were up and moving. Before the Cheyenne bumped head on into the Fighting Fifth.

Sure enough, Bill found the village in the smudgy gray light of that dawn. But by the time he had wandered back to the west so he would not be discovered by any wandering scouts, and returned to the regiment’s bivouac, Bill found the soldiers already up, finishing breakfast, some having saddled their mounts while others were busy oiling the trapdoors of the Springfields, packing themselves down with ammunition.

He caught up with Merritt as the colonel was climbing into the saddle.

“I just received good news, Bill,” Merritt said in that Gatling-gun, rapid-fire speech of his when he grew excited. “Messenger came in with word from our forward post. They’ve spotted Indians.”

“Probably the advance party of the village I found waking up this morning, General.”

“I’m going to see this for myself,” the colonel said with a smile.

They had gone to the high ground, waited—and were rewarded quickly enough. The Cheyenne thought they were about to swallow up those two couriers, then ambush a wagon train. Were they going to be surprised!

And now he sat atop his buckskin, his hat tugged down on his long brown curls, pulling down the bottom of that short-waisted Mexican coat of black velvet drenched with a blood-hued scarlet braid, resplendent with silver conchos and white lace adorning the cuffs. None of the oncoming warriors he would meet in a matter of minutes could outshine him. Too bad these dowdy, dusty, frumpy soldiers knew nothing of the importance of such things. A man must look his best, wear his finest, when he rode into battle. Perhaps only a true warrior like himself understood these Cheyenne they would strike in a few heartbeats. A man always wore his finest when going against the enemy.

“All ready, General?” King asked above him at the top of the hill.

Merritt rose slightly in a crouch just down the slope from the lieutenant, gazing over Cody and the rest, then peering back to the line of troopers gathered in the middistance. “All ready, King. Give the word when you like.”

No matter what Bill did to prepare his weapons, to straighten his clothing in these anxious minutes, he never took his eyes off that lieutenant up there. A good soldier, King was going to give them the signal so he and the rest could get the jump on those warriors riding down to ambush the two couriers.

The hardest part was this waiting.

As it had been all these years. The hardest thing he had ever done—making a new life for Lulu and the children. Doing that for them, when all he really wanted was to be right here, right now. Waiting to lead the Fifth into battle. Suffering that exquisite burn of hot adrenaline pumping into his blood—there was nothing finer.

God, but life was sweet!

As much as he loved Lulu, as much as he loved the children and the applause and the hundreds of women swarming and swooning around him … it was here that he knew his heart was at rest. Here where there was still adventure enough for any man. Even a man who loved danger as much as William F. Cody.

King was turning … by God—he was turning!

Bill looped up another six inches of rein. The buckskin beneath him sensed it, sidestepped suddenly before Cody brought the big horse under control.

“Easy. Easy boy.”

The lieutenant was reaching to the side where he had laid his hat. Reaching for it at the same time he was starting to turn at the top of that knoll above Cody.

Sliding his tall boots back into the stirrups a wee bit, pressing down with the balls of his feet …

Then the lieutenant swept his hat off the ground, waving it as he clambered to his feet, his mouth opening in the new day’s light, hollering with a roar.

“Now, lads—in with you!”

Bill Cody didn’t need to be told twice.

*Sand Creek, Colorado Territory.

†The South Platte River.

‡Pawnee Indians.

*Darlington, Indian Territory.

†The Smoky Hill River.

*The Black Hills.

*The Cheyenne River.