In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse (8 page)

Crazy Horse and his decoys turned their horses back to the north. They galloped across the meadow and up the slope. Already they could hear the continuous gunfire
.

Crazy Horse saw warriors scrambling up the western slope. The eastern slope was obscured from his view. On the ridge all the soldiers had turned back south. They were scrambling as well, trying to hurry. The soldiers on foot were running. Those on horses were whipping their horses, trying to make them go faster. They were all trying to get back to the safety of the fort. Many of the soldiers were falling, hit by bullets and arrows
.

As he rode closer to the fighting, Crazy Horse could hear the screams and shouts of the soldiers. Frightened horses were screaming, too. Then he saw something utterly amazing
.

Many of the soldiers were running, crowding together on the narrowest part of the ridge, and warriors on both slopes were firing arrows at them. Crazy Horse saw a narrow dark line, the same shape as a rainbow. For a moment
he was puzzled by it, but then he knew what he was seeing. It was arrows. Thousands of arrows coming up from both slopes! Thousands of arrows flying at the soldiers! For a time they formed a black arc. Inside the arc soldiers were falling, hit by the arrows
.

Crazy Horse heard later that Lakota and Cheyenne fighters were hit by arrows as well. The arrows from the east slope arced and flew down the west ridge. Arrows from the west slope arced and flew down the east slope. Some of them hit warriors scrambling up the slopes
.

Crazy Horse and his fellow decoys joined the battle. Little Hawk stayed with his older brother. By then the soldiers were boxed in. Their initial frantic retreat southward had been blocked. They had nowhere to go. So the Long Knives tried to find cover from the enemy guns and arrows. Some of them hid behind rocks large and small. Some hid in any depression in the ground. Others huddled together in small groups and fired at their attackers. But many had already fallen, struck down by bullets and arrows
.

Crazy Horse and Little Hawk stayed to the west side of
the battle ridge. They joined a group of warriors firing at a few Long Knives behind a large rock. Those soldiers were firing rapidly and had wounded several warriors
.

Crazy Horse talked with a Cheyenne warrior leader. They decided to flank the Long Knives behind the rock. One group of warriors, with Crazy Horse, would move left, or east. The other group, with the Cheyenne leader, would move right, or south
.

At a nod from Crazy Horse, the warriors moved out, keeping low to the ground. Often they ducked behind bristly soap plants for cover. Crazy Horse spread out his men, instructing them to stay low and to aim carefully. They could not afford to waste their powder and bullets
.

The flanking maneuver was successful, though some of the warriors were wounded. After a steady exchange of gunfire, only two Long Knives were firing back. At a signal from Crazy Horse, the flanking warriors charged the remaining soldiers. Crazy Horse struck one down with his war club
.

That small victory was one of many that day. They were also battling the dangerous cold. Fingers and toes, not to
mention noses and ears, were numb. Cold fingers dropped bullets and lead balls. They spilled powder. Still, the firing was steady, though from the Long Knives it was less and less
.

Jimmy looked around from the narrow ridge on which they stood. He could imagine them, the warriors and the soldiers. He could hear the loud blasts of gunfire and even the shouting and screams of pain.

“How long did the fighting last?” he asked.

Grandpa Nyles was looking around, too. “Oh, less than an hour, I think. Maybe even only about half an hour from when Crazy Horse and his men gave the signal.”

“Is that a long time for a battle?”

Jimmy saw a strange look come into his grandfather's eyes. His grandfather was a Vietnam War veteran, a U.S. Marine infantry sergeant.

“Sometimes ten seconds feels like ten hours,” Grandpa Nyles replied softly. “So I think for both the warriors and the soldiers who fought here, the battle probably seemed to last forever.”

“The words on that monument said there were no survivors. That means that all the soldiers were killed, right?”

Grandpa Nyles nodded. “Yeah, they were all killed. All eighty of them.”

Jimmy stood silently for a while. “How did it end?”

“Oh, the last small groups of Long Knives were overrun by the warriors. It got down to hand-to-hand fighting. Scary and gruesome, at the end.”

“How many warriors were killed?”

Grandpa Nyles shaded his eyes and continued to look around. “Well, there were a lot of warriors wounded. Nobody knows exactly how many. Some say around forty warriors were killed. One of those was Crazy Horse's best friend.”

Jimmy looked up at his grandfather. “Who was that?”

“His name was Lone Bear. They'd been friends since boyhood. They were separated in the fighting. After it was over, Crazy Horse was looking around for him.” He pointed down the eastern slope of the battle ridge. “He found him, down there somewhere. Lone Bear had been shot through the chest. But it was so cold, the blood froze around the wound and stopped the bleeding.”

“For reals?”

“Yeah. He was still alive when Crazy Horse found him. He held his friend in his arms until he died. Everyone who saw that said Crazy Horse cried like a baby.”

Jimmy noticed that his grandfather had brushed something out of his eyes.

“I would be sad, too,” Jimmy said. “It's kind of sad just to think about it.”

“Yeah, it is. Come on, let's start back for the truck.”

Near the tall stone monument were some large rocks. They stopped, and from his trouser pocket Grandpa Nyles pulled out a bundle of gray sage wrapped in red cloth. He placed it gently on the largest rock.

“This is for the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors,” he said quietly. “We should never forget them and what happened here. But we have to remember the soldiers kindly, too. They fought hard. Their people shouldn't have been here, like they promised. If they had kept that promise, those eighty men probably wouldn't have died here.”

From the rocks they walked to the truck in silence. Jimmy could still hear the gunshots, the shouting, and the
screams in his imagination. Grandpa Nyles was very good at telling stories. When they arrived at the truck, Jimmy looked back toward the battle ridge.

“What happened to Crazy Horse after this?” he wondered aloud.

“Well, this was the battle that established him as a leader of warriors. Word spread quickly among the Lakota, the Cheyenne, and the Arapaho. He became a hero. But he was a reluctant hero. He didn't want to be a leader. He just wanted to be a good man and a good warrior.”

“He
was
a good warrior, wasn't he?”

Grandpa Nyles unlocked the truck. “One of the best. But he was a good man, too. He was quiet and humble. He didn't brag. He didn't even speak loudly. That's what I like about him. There were a lot of good and brave warriors in those days. But not all of them were really good men. Not all of them were humble, like him.”

5

The Tongue River Valley

JIMMY SAID VERY LITTLE AS THEY RETURNED TO INTERSTATE
25 and headed north. He was still thinking about the story of the Battle of the Hundred in the Hands.

“Why did they call it ‘Hundred in the Hands' ? ” he asked suddenly.

His grandfather smiled. “Before the battle happened, a Cheyenne holy man predicted a victory in a battle against one hundred men. He said the warriors were holding ‘one
hundred in the hands.' That meant a victory. The interesting part is that there were eighty soldiers who came out of the fort that morning. The holy man's prediction was close.”

Jimmy sat quietly until they reached the town of Sheridan. There Grandpa Nyles took an exit and then turned onto a narrow highway that went north out of the town.

“We're going to take a look at the Tongue River Valley,” he explained. “Most of the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho people who were here had villages in that valley.”

In less than fifteen minutes they came near to the river. On either side of it were broken hills. The grass was sparse but green, and there was sagebrush everywhere. Its gray leaves brightened the hillsides and meadows along the river. “This looks nice,” Jimmy commented.

“Beautiful country,” his grandfather agreed. “Crazy Horse liked it here—a lot. This was the western end of Lakota territory, which started at the Missouri River in the east. He wanted to live here for the rest of his life. His Oglala people were here when he was born, so he grew up around here.”

“Maybe I'll live here someday,” Jimmy declared.

After they had driven awhile, Jimmy spoke again. “Crazy Horse sure was in a lot of places. Way in Nebraska, Fort Laramie, and now here.”

“For sure. But this is where he spent most of his childhood, in what is now central and north central Wyoming. It wasn't Wyoming then, of course.”

“So what happened here?”

“A lot,” answered Grandpa Nyles. “He lost his birth mother. He learned how to ride horses, use and make weapons, be a hunter and a warrior. Had his first girlfriend.”

“Cool—well, except for the girlfriend part.”

“Hey, don't knock it,” his grandfather said, grinning and glancing at him. “It'll happen to you one day. But there was one thing he did that I thought was really ‘cool.' ”

“He learned to shoot bows and arrows?”

“Yes, but what I'm talking about is hunting. Starting as a young teenager, he was a really good hunter.” He pulled the truck over to the shoulder of the road and stopped. “Lots of elk and deer around here. So it was fun to be a hunter. But the best thing he did was supply meat for the old people and the widows.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, he sure did, and nobody told him to do that. He decided on his own to do it because his parents, and family, told him it was good to take care of the helpless ones. So he would kill an elk or a deer and bring it back for a family that didn't have a hunter—you know, the old people or a woman who had lost her husband and still had children to care for. He would just leave the meat at the lodge door of someone who needed it.”

Jimmy was intrigued. He thought for a moment and then said, “I can do that.”

“You can, and you will one day,” Grandpa Nyles predicted. “Long as you understand that Crazy Horse didn't do it because he wanted people to notice. He didn't even want people to thank him. He just didn't want anyone to go hungry.”

“Because he cared, right?”

Grandpa Nyles smiled. “Yeah, you got that right. Later in his life, after he got married, he and his wife would give away their food. He would give away his horses so that people could ride and haul their belongings.”

“Wow!”

“Yeah, giving away a horse in those days was like giving away a car today. I don't know anyone who would give away a car. Do you?”