Wolf Mountain Moon (22 page)

All around him the children coughed. And some of those would not last out this winter. There simply was not enough buffalo to feed and shelter all who needed that meat and those robes. There were simply too many soldiers. They kept coming and coming.

And coming.

So the doubt first planted itself in his heart.

Could it be true, he began to fear: no more were the
Titunwan
Lakota a mighty people. Had they already lived their finest days? Were those summers of greatness gone the way of breathsmoke on a sharp winter wind? Without counting the boys and old men, Crazy Horse had no more than six hundred warriors he could count on to fight. He knew that
six-times-ten-times-ten was not near enough to hold back the
wasicu
forever.

Would Sitting Bull stay to fight beside the Crazy Horse people? Or would the Hunkpapa medicine man flee with his warriors to the Land of the Grandmother, leaving Crazy Horse to fight on alone?

And in the meantime, how many of these children and women and old ones would die needlessly? How many of these blank-eyed people who looked to him for help would not live to see spring because he himself clung to a warrior's pride and vowed to fight on?

Looking down at the village from the snowy hillside where the wind swept past him, Crazy Horse fully realized how those people had put their lives in his hands. They trusted that he would do right by them to save the Oglalla from the white man's devastation. To save them from starvation … and soldier bullets.

Why must things be so hard? he brooded. It had not always been this way—not always difficult to decide what was best for his Hunkpatila. It had all begun with the Little Chief Grattan coming after a sickly Mormon cow and continued with the boasts of Little Chief Fetterman crossing Lodge Trail Ridge. No longer could the Lakota just try to stay out of the way of those
wasicu
passing through.

No, the white man had to own everything he saw, everything he touched, even that which could never be his.

Yet now the enemy was everywhere. Try as they did, the Lakota and the Shahiyela had not been able to hold back the mighty tide. Now the buffalo were disappearing from the hillsides.

With a sigh Crazy Horse resigned himself to listening … at least listening. Just the day before, two powerful Miniconjou chiefs had reached the village, come here on a long journey all the way from the agency at Cheyenne River. Important Man and Foolish Bear brought gifts of tobacco so they could talk of peace between the Crazy Horse people and the government.

“Your people and Morning Star's Shahiyela must surrender before all your warriors are killed,” Important Man had told Crazy Horse last night.

“Before all your people starve,” Foolish Bear had added.

They had said the Hunkpatila would have to do as Red Cloud had done: turn over their ponies and their weapons too. In return the
wasicu
soldiers would not punish them for killing the Long Hair at the Greasy Grass in the Midsummer Moon.

He hadn't slept for so many nights now. The weariness had seeped all the way to his bones. Why should this happen to him? He was nothing more than a warrior. They called him a Strange Man, but he was no more than a man who had begun to wonder, to despair for his people, and finally to doubt.

Perhaps, as the others claimed … perhaps the day had come to see what terms of surrender he could wrest from the Bear Coat. True was it that Three Stars was retreating from Indian country. He would not be back until grass grew green. But the offer made by the soldier chief at the mouth of Buffalo Tongue River for a reservation of their own in the Shifting Sands River country was beginning to sound like something his people would have to live with.

Crazy Horse bowed his head there in the wind scudding along the side of the hill above the upper Buffalo Tongue where Otter Creek joined the icy flow. He thought of nothing but the hollow eyes and the sunken cheeks of his hungry people. Not today—he could not bring himself to limp back to the village like a wounded man today. So maybe tomorrow … he would gather the chiefs and they would talk … about going to see the Bear Coat.

Go to the mouth of the Buffalo Tongue to make the best peace they could before they all died of empty bellies, or soldier bullets.

Or broken hearts.

Chapter 13
Big Freezing Moon 1876

A
t long last, eleven suns after fleeing Three Finger Kenzie's pony soldiers—soldiers guided to the
Ohmeseheso
village in the Red Fork Valley by their turncoat Indians—Morning Star's advance scouts came racing back to all those people stumbling across the hills on frozen feet, yipping with their exciting news in the bitter cold that had killed old ones and tiny babes … those nowhere strong enough to endure this greatest of winter hardship.

Descending from the high mountains where the
ve-ho-e
dared not follow their bloody footprints, down past the Big
Lake,
^*
over to Crow Standing Creek,
^†
finally to the Tongue, where they marched north to the mouth of Otter Creek. Following the east fork, Morning Star's
Tse-Tsehese
^#
crossed the high divide, where it was said they should find their friends and relations among the Lakota.

Morning Star's heart leaped in his chest—like a pink-bellied fish breaking the surface of a high-country stream. How he hoped for succor, for relief …

At the head of that sad procession of the
Ohmeseheso
^@
lurched the two Old-Man Chiefs, Morning Star and Little Wolf, coming to a clumsy halt on their frozen legs, the new snow nearly reaching their knees.

“There! Beyond that hill!” one of the three young riders cried joyfully as he came galloping up to the old men. “We have seen the Crazy Horse people!”

As that news shot back through the cold stragglers, many of the old warriors began to sing once more those strong-heart songs that had sustained them during the recent battle with the pony soldiers. Even though they had few robes and blankets among them, everywhere now the women joined in celebration, trilling their tongues in joy. Once more
Ma-heo-o
had delivered His people from the hand of disaster.

Trudging stiff-legged to the crest of that low hill, where he caught his first whiff of woodsmoke on the knife-edged breeze that made his eyes seep, Morning Star peered down, his limbs gone wooden with the terrible cold. There … below … along a bend on the east side of the upper waters of Box Elder Creek,
^{^}
among the leafless cottonwoods where the Lakota sought shelter from much of the winter's cruel wind, sat the hide and canvas lodges—smoke rising from each blackened crown of poles. Headed their way already was a handful of young Oglalla warriors and camp sentries, their strong ponies plowing through the deep snow, while behind and below them dark antlike forms of the Crazy Horse people emerged from
their lodges, coming out to see for themselves what was causing all the excitement among the camp guards.

“Come, Morning Star,” Little Wolf said quietly as he reached his old friend's side and tugged on an elbow. “Let us go tell Crazy Horse that the
ve-ho-e
soldiers have attacked us again.”

For the longest time that winter afternoon the
Tse-Tsehese
leaders sat with Crazy Horse and the other Hunkpatila headmen, discussing Three Finger Kenzie's attack on their Red Fork village. As the sun began to set on that cold land, they talked over the why and asked the Oglalla to consider just what they could do for their close cousins, the
Ohmeseheso
—just as the Crazy Horse people had done last winter before eventually deciding to go in search of Sitting Bull's Hunkpapa.

But this time Morning Star believed he heard a different sound come from the throat of Crazy Horse. This time the Oglalla Shirt Wearer did not speak with the same voice as he had when the pony soldiers attacked Old Bear's village beside the Powder last winter.

This time there was a chiseled hardness on the face of Crazy Horse. And nothing soft in the eyes of the Oglalla war chief.

“We have little,” the Lakota leader explained icily to his people as well as to their
Tse-Tsehese
guests. “After soldiers have chased us from camp to camp to camp since summer—forcing us to stay on the run all the time—there aren't many hides to give you to replace your lodges. And we do not have enough meat to feed your people.”

For a long time Morning Star was stunned into silence. Then he finally asked, “What can your people give us?”

Wagging his head icily, Crazy Horse said, “I do not have enough to feed my own people … so how can I feed the
Ohmeseheso
as well?”