Ashes of Heaven (The Plainsmen Series) Read online

  Because of their ancient position of honor among the warrior societies of the Northern People, the Kit Foxes were allowed to speak first. Wisely realizing that their leader, Last Bull, might well poison their position if he spoke before the assembly, the Kit Fox Soldiers decided that Two Moon should instead address the gathering.

  “For many summers we have fought the ve-ho-e soldiers while we went about our journeys, following the migration of the buffalo in our hunts,” Two Moon began as he gazed about his audience, speaking with understated eloquence. He wore a large feather tied to a forelock and attached to a piece of buffalo horn. “And when each summer was done, so was the fighting. The soldiers went back to their forts and they left us to our lives. But for the last two winters the soldiers have not let us be.”

  There arose the first shards of angry muttering.

  “The ve-ho-e have stalked our villages of women and children, finding our camps in the river valleys, driving our families into the wilderness with little but the clothes they wear. No more is war with the white man a summer occupation. The ve-ho-e promised to follow us, harass us, crush us in the snows of winter. And that is the one promise the white man has kept.”

  Many of the Kit Foxes were crying loud in response to his impassioned words. Beyond them, among the spectators, many of the women openly wailed, keening as they remembered the husbands and fathers, sons and nephews lost in battle after battle with the soldiers.

  “While for some of you, your burning hatred of the soldiers will lead you to fight on and on and on until there is not one Ohmeseheso left alive,” Two Moon continued, his strong voice cracking with emotion, “your burning hate will destroy us! But for me, I stand before these leaders to declare I will go to speak to the Bear Coat, to listen to his words. And if his words are straight and fair … I will surrender to the soldier chief at the Elk River Fort.”

  When Two Moon finished his long, impassioned speech, Wrapped Hair was the next to stand and recite his war deeds before this great assembly. Then he too added his voice in favor of surrender. Bear Who Walks on a Ridge spoke as afternoon stretched into evening, as the winter night descended upon their camp. Still more of the Kit Fox Warriors stood to speak, all echoing the sentiments of Two Moon.

  A cold, gibbous moon had risen in the east and hung against the cold sky by the time the last Kit Fox Soldier had finished his argument in favor of surrender. At last it was time for the Elkhorn Scrapers to express their views.

  Although Little Wolf and Morning Star were both members of the warrior society, as Old Man Chiefs they did not choose to speak before this council. Instead, Wild Hog stood. It was clear to White Bull to see that he was seething with the same rage that burned inside Little Wolf.

  “How does the Ohmeseheso talk of surrender to the ve-ho-e?” the Hog’s voice crackled with thunderous emotion. “How does any warrior of the People talk of making peace with the soldiers who have made war on our women and children?”

  Suddenly the Elkhorns came alive within the great lodge, sentiment strong and deep among those hardy spectators standing in the cold around the ring of warrior chiefs.

  “We did not choose to make this war on the ve-ho-e,” Wild Hog declared. “The white man came to our country, driving off the buffalo, killing off the game. We did not ask him to come to our country!”

  Many in the noisy throng did more than grunt their approval.

  Hog spoke for a long time, that place between his eyes deeply furrowed as he uttered each word the way a man might spit out a foul oath.

  “The ve-ho-e declared war on us. He sends his soldiers to destroy everything we have. And when we have nothing left but our lives, he sends Old Wool Woman and the half-breed to tell us we better surrender or he will keep making war on us. As for me, I will tell the Bear Coat to come kill me himself!”

  After the loud approval had quieted, Left-Handed Shooter spoke.

  “I am a warrior of the People. Many times have I offered my body to protect those who cannot protect themselves. In all the days left me, I will continue to give my life to my enemy to save the Okmeseheso. The white man will not go away on his own. He thinks this is his land when it does not belong to him. He thinks the buffalo belong to him, when the buffalo belong to Ma-heo-o. How can you teach such a creature what is right and what is wrong?”

  “You can never teach the white man how to live like a human being!” a voice called from the gathering outside the lodge.

  White Bull quickly turned in that direction, hoping to see who had cried out. He could not, but he did catch a glimpse of his younger sister. Antelope Woman stood at the edge of the gathering, a blanket clasped around both her and Old Wool Woman. On the other side of the old woman stood the clearly anxious half-breed. The fire-lit darkness accentuated the deep furrows of worry deeply chiseled into his face.

  Yes, White Bull thought as another of his fellow Elkhorn Scrapers prepared to argue for war over surrender, yes; this Big Leggings must feel like a crippled dung beetle trapped on a teeming anthill. Things did not look good for the advocates of peace.

  Yet as he listened to the harsh, strident arguments of the Elkhorns, White Bull saw not the procession of speakers but the weary, hunger-ravaged faces of those spectators crowded around the war council. True enough, there were many young warriors whose eyes ignited with each renewed call to carry on the fight. Some were young men who had only come of age in the past few winters of struggle against the ve-ho-e. There were some who hadn’t experienced war as White Bull and other older warriors had—the seasons of pain, tribulation, death, and mourning this war had visited upon the People.

  But, as he recalled his own youth, White Bull realized he could not tell much of anything to a brash young warrior. For some reason, they already knew all they needed to know. It had always been that way with the young hot-bloods, and it would always be so.

  While the Elkhorn Scrapers continued to denounce any talk of surrender, it was not the faces of those young men eager to carry on the struggle that drew this veteran’s attention.

  No, White Bull looked closely at the faces of the women—mothers, sisters, daughters, and aunts of the many warriors who had been killed in this ongoing fight with the ve-ho-e. There in the dancing light of the council fire, his heart was most touched by the faces of the little ones, some who were destined to grow to adulthood without knowing their fathers, some who might only have an uncle or grandfather as tutor and mentor. Those children who huddled beside their mothers or those clutched in the arms of grandmothers, yes, these members of the Ohmeseheso would be the ones who suffered the deepest for any difficult decision made by the wise and respected men of this council.

  Next White Bull looked here and there at the deeply lined faces of the few old ones left among the Northern People this second terrible winter of war. Not nearly so many as there had been when Old Bear began his march south for the White Rock Agency the previous year.* Night by freezing night, the bodies of the old ones began to fail. With so little to eat, with so much endless cold, with so far to travel after each attack of the soldiers—one by one the spirits of those old ones simply gave up their long and valiant fight to survive.

  Winter had devastated the People every bit as much as war had. Both were vicious, evil enemies that preyed not on the strong and bold of the tribe. Instead, winter and war alike preyed on the weak, the very young and the very old, preyed on those who could least defend themselves.

  As White Bull looked across at those shivering within their blankets and buffalo robes at the edge of the firelight, those listening to the long harangues on war versus surrender, he heard nothing but the endless voices of those prideful, strutting prairie cocks who made war out to be a man’s destiny.

  Yet here in this winter of despair, what White Bull saw so vividly was that war did not make the warriors its victims … but rather the old, the young, and the women.

  By the time the moon had set, all but one of the Elkhorn Scrapers had spoken in favor of continuing the war. Th
e society stood foursquare against the Kit Foxes’ desire to surrender at the Bear Coat’s Elk River Fort. The only Elkhorn yet to speak was White Bull.

  Outside the lodge in that deep cold, pricked with the distant shimmer of countless stars, outside that council lodge where nothing stirred but the frosty breath of the onlookers, the crowd now fell completely silent. Inside, the leaders of the three warrior societies remained respectful and hushed as this great and revered holy man of the Ohmeseheso cleared his throat after nearly a day of disuse.

  “It is very, very late and we have heard so much talk already today,” White Bull said to the startled throng. “My heart is very, very heavy with all that has been said. I yearn to say what weighs heavily on my mind. But because all of you must be tired, because what I have to say speaks directly to the hearts of those who are surely the most weary … tomorrow we will gather here in this place when the sun has risen two hands above the horizon. It is then that I will speak my heart on this matter of war or surrender for our people.”

  Chapter 12

  Mid-February 1877

  Johnny Bruguier walked to the large council tent with Old Wool Woman that winter morning as the crowd began to gather. Since dawn, the sky had been hinting that the heavy cloud cover would blow on over, freeing the sun to shine at last. But for now, as a half-dozen women started the fire in the big council lodge, the sun was nothing more than a hazy pewter button climbing toward midsky.

  For the past two days the half-breed had been brooding on just how smart he’d been to let himself get talked into helping the soldier chief at the Yellowstone. More than once Johnny had convinced himself that he had stepped right in it by putting himself within reach of, and at risk from, these Shahiyela warriors and their mourning women. During those long hours he spent by himself in the lodge Old Wool Woman had explained was sacred, Bruguier had time to worry, lots of time to grow increasingly more scared of just what might happen if the chiefs decided to continue to make war on the army—starting with that half-breed courier from the Bear Coat.

  Although he figured the chances were slim that the young, angry warriors would actually break a taboo by entering the Sacred Hat Lodge to snatch him, Johnny nonetheless sensed no real welcome as he sat in the old priest’s home. Coal Bear and his woman never spoke to Bruguier, rarely even glanced at their visitor as they came and went about their business; they ate, slept, prepared meals, smoked the pipe, received visitors, and, when the rest of the village gathered at the nearby council lodge, departed without a word.

  As hard as he tried through those first two days, pressing his ear right against the scraped buffalo hides of the sacred lodge, Johnny still could not make out what the various voices said when they grew loud with impassioned argument. About all he could be certain of was that he was listening to a lot of anger. Hour after hour that second day he grew more consumed with worry that such fury might well boil over and engulf him.

  After all, he was alone there in the sacred lodge, jumpy and startled each time the doorflap was pulled back, especially when the one called Antelope Woman ducked inside late the night after a long, long day of arguing among the Shahiyela. He had breathed a little easier when a second woman came in to stand by the first.

  “You remember my friend?” Old Wool Woman asked in her slow-spoken Lakota, so he could understand.

  Nodding to the young woman, Johnny then looked into Old Wool Woman’s eyes. “What is going on with the surrender talks?”

  As he watched, Bruguier saw some of the skin sag around her eyes again.

  Old Wool Woman answered, “There are many who say they will go south to the White River Agency once the weather warms and the ponies are stronger.”

  “To surrender at the Lakota agency?”

  “Yes, we are close to the Little Star People there,” she nodded. “But … there are many voices who have strong talk against surrendering at all.”

  Johnny had waited a few moments, expecting Old Wool Woman to go on. When she didn’t, he asked, “Are any of your people going to surrender to Miles at his fort?”

  Gazing down at the small fire, she replied, “Only the Kit Fox Warriors speak of surrender to the Bear Coat.”

  Something in the way she said it, in the way she refused to look him in the eye, convinced Johnny that what should be welcome news might not be all that much a blessing.

  “What could be wrong if the Kit Fox Warriors speak in favor of surrender?”

  “Last Bull, their leader, has been shamed.”

  “How?”

  “Because of him, because of his warriors not allowing our camp to retreat,” she said, finally fixing her gaze on him, “my people lost everything to Three Finger Kenzie’s soldiers.”

  He recalled hearing Miles’s officers talk about reports of that fight. How the soldiers figured the refugees from the destroyed village had fled into the wilderness to search for Crazy Horse. So when the Bear Coat’s soldiers went marching up the Tongue they had found Shahiyela warriors fighting alongside the Lakota men. If they now blamed the Kit Fox Warrior society, as well as the soldiers, for the complete destruction of their culture, then it stood to reason that most of them would now refuse to heed the arguments made by any of the Kit Fox leaders.

  Bruguier scratched at his bearded cheek, worried anew that he might not make it out of this village to ride north to the Yellowstone. “Those who speak against surrender to Miles, are they truly stronger than the Kit Fox Warriors?”

  “Yes,” Old Wool Woman said. “Ever since the destruction of our village in the mountains because of Last Bull and the Kit Foxes, the Elkhorn Scrapers have grown stronger.”

  “All of the Elkhorns are against going north to surrender at the soldier fort?” he asked.

  “All but one has spoken,” Old Wool Woman answered. “It is so late now. So many are tired and cold from the long day of long talks.”

  “This last Elkhorn Scraper, he will speak against surrender when he talks tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “White Bull—a powerful holy man who is a strong healer—he will be first to speak in the morning.”

  Johnny didn’t sleep all that well after hearing Old Wool Woman’s dire reading of the odds for getting her people to surrender to Miles. Back and forth he tossed beneath his blankets and a buffalo robe until the sky grayed where the poles were tied together above his bed in the Sacred Hat Lodge.

  Not that he could blame these Shahiyela for refusing to give up. Never before had he seen deep snow such as these people had endured. Never in all his years had Johnny experienced such cold as this. It was plain to see that this village had survived on horseflesh until they chanced to stumble upon enough buffalo to feed the tight bellies, to sew together more lodgeskins. Everyone in this camp was cramped together, two or more families in each new lodge, so only this Sacred Hat Lodge remained a quiet refuge from those who had somehow outlasted this terrible winter. Such deep, deep suffering.

  More than once he had stared in the bundle hanging from its tripod in that place of prominence at the back of this lodge.

  How these people had sacrificed, even unto their lives, to protect that sacred object. Some small voice of warning inside him said that a people as stoic and strong as they would not consider surrender unless no other path was open to them. And if that powerful holy man named White Bull offered these people strength, goaded them into believing that their best opportunity rested in turning south to the Lakota agency on White River … then Johnny would certainly fail.

  Old Wool Woman had come for him that morning after the sun came up, bringing Bruguier some meat in a kettle she set to boiling on the fire in the Sacred Hat Lodge. The four of them ate in all but total silence, except when Old Wool Woman would talk with Coal Bear or Sacred Hat Woman in their Shahiyela tongue, which Johnny struggled to follow. At times the old woman might translate something into her fractured Lakota, but most of that morning the four of them sat in silence, eating, or thinking, or tending the fire … and waiting.
/>   Coal Bear finally stood, said something to the two women, and gathered up his old robe, which he flung about his shoulders before leaving the lodge. Bruguier watched Coal Bear’s woman set a few more pieces of wood on the fire, then she too departed beneath the protection of a blanket.

  “It is time to go to the council lodge,” Old Wool Woman announced.

  “You will return here to tell me what your people decide today?”

  “No, Big Leggings,” she said as she draped her blanket over her head. “You come with me to listen for yourself.”

  “They … your men will allow me to attend their council?’

  “All my people will be there this morning, just as they have been there to listen since these talks began,” Old Wool Woman said. “Come now—we go together to hear what White Bull tells the other men is in his heart, what path he believes our people should take.”

  * * *

  White Bull was up before the first streaks of gray brightened the sun’s rising behind patchy, snow-laden clouds.

  He smoked and prayed about which direction his people were to turn. To go north to give themselves over to the Bear Coat who had come hunting for them in the snow? Or to march south toward the agency where Morning Star’s people often made their home among Red Cloud’s Lakota? And if they did not surrender in the north or to the south, then wasn’t it still a grand folly to keep on making war against the ve-ho-e and his soldiers?

  The more he prayed, the more White Bull became convinced he already knew his answer. Had known the answer for many, many days now. Finally, at first light, he realized the most difficult part of his decision was just how he would explain it to the others who were relying upon his prestige and power to sway those who had not yet made up their minds.

  “Antelope Woman!” he called in the dim light of the small fire he was rebuilding.