Black Hills: A Novel Read online

  Doane Robinson sounds concerned, perhaps embarrassed, as if he is worried that he has offended the Lakota man he knows as Billy Slow Horse.

  —I knew him slightly, Mr. Robinson.

  Paha Sapa makes his voice as friendly as he is able to.

  —I saw Sitting Bull from time to time, but I was, of course, only a boy when he fought and then surrendered and then was killed by the Indian policemen who came to arrest him.

  THE WIWANYAG WACHIPI SUN DANCE at Deer Medicine Rocks two weeks before they killed Long Hair lasted only two days.

  The older boys and young men who had come for their manhood ceremony lay down at the base of the tall waga chun now bedecked with paint and poles and braided tethers. The boys and young men had been similarly painted by Limps-a-Lot and the other holy men, and did not move or cry out as the wičasa wakan then cut strips out of their chests or backs so that loops of rawhide could be pushed in under the strong chest or back muscles and tied off, usually to a small bit of wood. These loops were then tied to the long braids running up to the top of the waga chun.

  Then the young men, streaming blood on their painted chests and backs, would stand and begin their dancing and chanting, leaning back from or toward the sacred tree so that their bodies were often suspended totally by the rawhide and horn under their muscles. And always they stared at the sun as they danced and chanted. Sometimes they danced the full two days. More often, they would dance and leap until the pain caused them to fall unconscious or—if they were lucky and Wakan Tanka smiled on them—until the rawhide and horn ripped through their powerful chest or back muscles and freed them.

  Sitting Bull had danced this way many times before in his youth, but now, as Paha Sapa and Limps-a-Lot and two thousand others watched in this summer of 1876, he stripped naked to the waist and walked to the waga chun and sat with his scarred back against the sacred tree. Paha Sapa remembers noticing that there was a tiny hole in the sole of one of Sitting Bull’s old but beautifully beaded moccasins.

  Sitting Bull’s friend Jumping Bull approached the chief chanting, knelt next to the man of forty-two winters, and used a steel awl to lift the skin on Sitting Bull’s lower arm. Taking care not to slice into muscle, Jumping Bull cut away a square of skin the size of the nail on Paha Sapa’s little finger. Then he cut another. Jumping Bull worked his way up Sitting Bull’s right arm, cutting fifty such squares.

  And during this, ignoring the streaming blood and never reacting to the pain, Sitting Bull chanted his prayers, asking for mercy for his people and for victory in the coming battle with the wasichus.

  The cutting of the flesh from Sitting Bull’s right arm, Paha Sapa remembers—thinking of the time now in Wasicun terms—took about forty-five minutes. Then Jumping Bull began cutting fifty more squares of flesh from Sitting Bull’s left arm.

  When Jumping Bull was finished with the slow cutting, when there was more red blood than ceremonial paint flowing down Sitting Bull’s arms onto his belly and loincloth and legs and spattering the ground all around the waga chun, Sitting Bull stood and—still chanting and praying—danced all the rest of that long June day and all through that night of the full moon and halfway through the next humid, sweltering, cloudless, fly-buzzing day.

  Sitting Bull’s old friend Black Moon caught him when the chief was finally ready to faint. And then Sitting Bull whispered to Black Moon, and Black Moon stood and shouted to the waiting thousands—

  —Sitting Bull wishes me to tell you all that he just heard a voice saying unto him, “I give you these because they have no ears,” and Sitting Bull looked up and saw, above him and above us all, soldiers and some of our Natural Free Human Beings and our allies on horseback, and many of the wasichus were falling like grasshoppers and their heads were down and their hats were falling off. The wasichus were falling right into our camp!

  And Paha Sapa remembers the cheering that had gone up from the camp at hearing this vision.

  The bluecoat soldiers had no ears in Sitting Bull’s vision, they knew, because the Wasicun had refused to hear that the Lakota and Cheyenne wished only to be left alone and that the Lakota refused to sell their beloved Black Hills. The women would drive their sewing awls through the eardrums of dead wasichu on the battlefield to open those ears.

  And then the wiwanyag wachipi ended after only two days and after Sitting Bull’s triumphant vision, and the thousands there moved southwest a few miles to the larger campground on the Greasy Grass, where Long Hair and his Seventh Cavalry wasichu soldiers would attack them and where Paha Sapa would become infected with Long Hair’s ghost.

  PAHA SAPA DROPS OFF THE HISTORIAN and the Nash just after dark. It is already snowing lightly but consistently. Doane Robinson follows Paha Sapa up the front walk to where Paha Sapa is pulling his oversize leather jacket, leather gloves, leather helmet, and goggles from the sidecar. Snowflakes fly horizontally beneath the glowing streetlamp above them.

  —Billy, the weather looks bad. Stay the night here. That road up to Deadwood is terrible even in the daylight and when it’s dry. It may not be passable in half an hour, even for a motorcar.

  —It’ll be all right, Mr. Robinson. I have other places to stay along the way—if I have to.

  —Well, it’s a very handsome motorcycle. I’ve never really looked at it carefully before. American made?

  —Yes. A Harley-Davidson J, made in 1916.

  —At least it has a headlight.

  —It does. The first of its kind to have one. Its beam is a little weak and shaky and, unfortunately, it’s broken right now. I keep meaning to fix it.

  —Stay with us tonight, Billy.

  Paha Sapa throws his leg over the saddle. The motorcycle is a beautiful machine—long, sleek, painted light blue with the HARLEY-DAVIDSON lettering in reddish-orange script. Over the nonworking headlight is a stubby horn that works quite well. The intake manifold is curved, a piece of true sculpture in Paha Sapa’s judgment, and feeds the reliable sixty-one-cubic-inch F-head V-twin engine. It is the first of its make to have a modern kick-starter. There’s a plush leather passenger seat attached over the rear wheel (although no back for it), and though the sidecar is detachable, Paha Sapa keeps it on as a carryall for his tools and gear.

  He reaches behind the engine and uses his key to switch on the magneto. Three kicks and the engine roars to life. Paha Sapa throttles it up and then down so he can hear the historian.

  —Billy, it’s beautiful! Have you owned it long?

  —It’s not mine. It’s my son’s. He gave it to me to keep for him until he came back from the War.

  Doane Robinson is shivering from the cold. He rubs his cheek.

  —But the War has been over for… Oh, my. Oh, dear.

  —Good night, Mr. Robinson. Please let me know if Mr. Lorado Taft writes you back.

  9

  East of Slim Buttes Along the Grand River, Ninety Miles North of the Black Hills

  July 1876

  PAHA SAPA AND LIMPS-A-LOT RETURN FROM THE GREASY Grass much more quickly than they traveled there, but word of the rubbing out of Long Hair has already reached their village, carried by the fast-riding young warriors from the band and by other groups of Lakota passing by. The word of the defeat of the Seventh Cavalry and of Pehin Hanska Kasata, the rubbing out of Long Hair, travels faster in that week through the world of the Great Plains tribes than it does through the wasichu army or telegraph lines.

  For some days after his return, no one has time for or interest in Paha Sapa’s tale of counting coup and catching a ghost.

  Paha Sapa was always sorry that there had been no time that morning after his meeting with Sitting Bull, Long Turd, and the other men to go up the hill and show them the corpse of the Wasicun whose ghost had entered him. That morning there was a pillar of dust visible to the north of where Major Reno and his surviving men were still pinned down on the hill three miles from where Paha Sapa had touched his dying Wasicun, and while the wasichus feared that it was still more Indians, the scouts serving S
itting Bull and Crazy Horse and the other chiefs knew that it was a large detachment of mounted bluecoats, almost certainly General Terry’s column coming from the same jumping-off point—the steamer Far West parked where the Yellowstone River meets the Rosebud—from whence Custer and his men had come.

  Sitting Bull was too busy giving commands on breaking up the camp, leaving the honored dead in lodges, and arranging future rendezvous for the various groups of fighting men to go with Paha Sapa and Limps-a-Lot that morning, and when Paha Sapa led his tunkašila up that coulee in the sunrise, they saw the fresh wasichu troops on the northern horizon and quickly descended to their collapsed lodge and waiting ponies in the valley.

  The huge village was broken down—except for those tipis and scaffolds left as lodges for the dead and tipi poles that some families simply had no time to carry with them, bringing only the tipi covers—within two hours, and by the time the wasichus descended into that valley in late afternoon, Sitting Bull had led all 8,000 or so Lakota and Cheyenne west toward the Big Horn Mountains and then divided the exodus into two columns, one heading to the southwest, the other—including Paha Sapa and Limps-a-Lot—to the southeast. From those main streams the bands and individuals broke off and scattered across the brown plains or toward the mountains.

  In Paha Sapa’s village near the Slim Buttes, the nights were much as the first night at Greasy Grass had been: a strange combination of mourning and celebration, but since only two young men from Angry Badger’s band had died in the two big fights (the first fight with General Cook to the south, the second one with Custer), the late-into-the-night celebrations far outweighed the tremolo campfires and sunrise slashings of mourning.

  By the early days of the new month, the Moon of Red Cherries, word arrives that while many of the warriors at the Greasy Grass are quietly returning with their families to the various agencies and reservations, Sitting Bull’s people and Crazy Horse’s warriors are still on the move, carrying on the fight. Some days after that, Lone Duck, a warrior from Angry Badger’s band (and another cousin of Three Buffalo Woman’s) who has ridden with Crazy Horse for three fighting seasons now, arrives to say that Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse have said their good-byes—the older chief’s last words to the younger fighting man were We will have good times!—and Sitting Bull will be leading his many families and relatively few young fighters to winter in Grandmother’s Country (the Grandmother being Queen Victoria) in the far north, while Crazy Horse, whose followers are almost all young fighting men, is roaming in the direction of Slim Buttes, killing wasichus whenever the opportunity arises.

  But then word also arrives that the wasichus have been driven insane by the rubbing out of Long Hair and more than two hundred of his men. Soldiers are being marched everywhere. Warriors bring news that a band of Cheyenne has been attacked on the plains northwest of the Red Cloud Agency by elements of the Fifth Cavalry, who brag that they rode 85 miles in 31 hours to intercept the Cheyenne—who were not at Greasy Grass and who had nothing to do with Custer’s death.

  Scouts passing through report that what is left of the Seventh Cavalry has mostly gone to ground at their base camp at the head of the Yellowstone, awaiting orders and drinking great amounts of whiskey (which is being sent upriver by various steamships). Lakota and Cheyenne and even some Crow, who have always been friends of Custer and his cavalry, report from agencies that they fear reprisals from the white men.

  Three Stars, the General Cook whom Crazy Horse had soundly beaten on the Rosebud nine days before the death of Long Hair, and Long Hair’s commander General Terry are reportedly adding reinforcements to their fighting force and will soon be moving up the Rosebud Valley. What interests the Lakota scouts about this is that an old friend and enemy—a scout named Cody famous for shooting buffalo—has rejoined the army after many years to help Cook, Terry, and the others find the Lakota and Cheyenne and kill them.

  All the men in camp agree that Cody is a worthy enemy and that his long, flowing hair—almost as luxuriant as Long Hair’s once was—would be a fine addition to any warrior’s tipi pole.

  Despite his inability to sleep because of the ghost’s constant talking and babbling every night, Paha Sapa almost hopes that his ghost will be forgotten by others in all the excitement and fear and nightly celebrations and comings and goings of men from other bands.

  But it has not been forgotten. The irony is that the very presence of these other bands and chiefs and holy men now brings attention to Paha Sapa and his ghost.

  PAHA SAPA SEES and feels the confusion flowing over his small tiyospaye, lodge group, as these events dominate the Great Plains. The leader of their band, Angry Badger, rarely lives up to his name. The badger is considered the most ferocious creature on earth by the Lakota and its blood has magical properties. (Peering into a basin of it, for instance, will allow you to see yourself far in the future.) Badgers have been known to seize horses and drag them down into their badger holes while warriors can only look on in horror.

  Angry Badger is a short, heavyset man of about fifty summers. His face is broad, flat, almost feminine, and his expression is set into a permanent scowl, but it is rarely one of unsupportable anger. He is given to melancholy and indecision and has never been chosen to be among the Deciders—those chiefs chosen each year to oversee the hunt of all the Oglala bands and to appoint the akicita tribal police—but he is cautious when he finally does decide and he has always relied upon the wisdom of the leading warriors and hunters in his small band, and especially the advice of Limps-a-Lot over the old and increasingly impotent Loud Voice Hawk.

  Now Angry Badger is all but irrelevant as famous warriors and their bodyguards and fighting bands sweep into the Slim Buttes and south fork of the Grand River area where Angry Badger has led his men to hunt for buffalo before winter arrives.

  Angry Badger was a courageous warrior in his youth—the band has composed songs commemorating his deeds—but he is a poor leader, and the freshness of his youthful glories have faded with each autumn since he last went on the war trail. Paha Sapa, not quite eleven summers old as they approach his birth month, is amazed by the names and faces and personalities that stop by their tiyospaye or camp nearby for short periods. (Decades later, reading Homer’s Iliad, Chapman’s translation, borrowed from Doane Robinson, Paha Sapa again feels sympathy for Angry Badger as he reads of Agamemnon’s jealousy in the presence of Achilles and other more-than-human heroes.

  Among the famous fighters now within a few hours’ or days’ ride of their village is Crazy Horse himself—a charismatic warrior who now threatens to replace Sitting Bull as war leader, since the older chief is fleeing to Grandmother’s Country while Crazy Horse continues to harass and kill wasichus every day—as well as some of Crazy Horse’s feared and notorious friends and lieutenants, including Black Fox, Dog Goes, the intrepid Run Fearless, Kicking Bear, Bad Heart Bull, and Flying Hawk. Each of these men is a chief or leader of warriors in his own right and each now carries his own legends, as did Achilles with his Myrmidons. Along with Crazy Horse’s subalterns are groups of his akicita tribal-police bodyguards, each more fiercely painted and countenanced than the last, and these include the Oglalas Looking Horse, Short Bull, and Low Dog, as well as the odd Minneconjou Flying By, who is so eager to share in Crazy Horse’s growing glory that it is said that Flying By would ride east to try to capture the wasichus’ White Father if Crazy Horse ordered him to.

  Other akicita leaders coming up to the south fork of the Grand River area that sweltering, humid, stormy midsummer include Crazy Horse’s close friends Kicking Bear and Little Big Man. This last man—named for his short but powerfully built physique (the Sun Dance scars on Little Big Man’s chest are the most formidable Paha Sapa is ever to see, and Little Big Man goes shirtless until the snow is deep to show them off)—is especially famous among the Lakota, and the women and children and old men of Angry Badger’s band crowd and jostle to see and touch him when he first arrives. (Paha Sapa listens to Little Big Man brag about his b
raveries at Greasy Grass around the central fire that first night of his visit and thinks that such an immodest manner is not nearly so becoming as Crazy Horse’s silence and unwillingness to speak of his own victories, but the boy does see how the two friends tend to balance each other. Little Big Man is the threatener and corrector of undisciplined or unruly young warriors who follow them; Crazy Horse is the silent and frightening living legend.)

  Angry Badger, who was not at Greasy Grass or at the fight with Cook on the Rosebud the week before, since he’d chosen to stay with his small band and lead them north after the last buffalo of the season, remains silent and glowering during these visits.

  The story of the fight at the Greasy Grass and the rubbing out of Pehin Hanska, Long Hair Custer, increasingly dwells on the match-up between Pehin Hanska and Crazy Horse, and less and less on the leadership of Sitting Bull, eight winters older than Long Hair and too weakened by his Sun Dance flesh-cutting sacrifice to take part in the fighting that day. Sitting Bull’s vision, Paha Sapa increasingly understands through Limps-a-Lot, will always be considered as wonderfully wakan, but Crazy Horse’s leadership and fighting that day are becoming the material that gods are made of.

  Inevitably, during his first four-day stay at Angry Badger’s tiyospaye (another twenty lodges have been raised by the visitors here along the creek that runs near Slim Buttes, outnumbering the size of the original village), Crazy Horse hears that the boy Paha Sapa was infected by a ghost during the fighting at Greasy Grass, and the battle chief demands to meet with the boy in Limps-a-Lot’s lodge. This terrifies Paha Sapa. He remembers all too well T’ašunka Witko’s look of disgust when the near-naked heyoka warrior found Paha Sapa lying unwounded and gagging for air among the dead that afternoon of the battle.

  But as terrified as Paha Sapa is, the summons to Limps-a-Lot’s lodge for his meeting with Crazy Horse has to be honored that second evening of the war chief’s first visit.