Wind River Read online

  CHAPTER 5

  Little Wolf sat silently watching the sun settle into the distant hills on the horizon. Soon it would suddenly disappear and the light would be gone from the plains, replaced by a darkness so deep that objects a stone’s throw away would melt into the blackness, becoming all but invisible to the untrained eye. He turned to glance at the encampment in the basin behind and below him. The cook fires were already burning outside the tipis. Soon, when the darkness came, they would glow like a blanket of stars on the prairie floor. This was Black Kettle’s village, almost one hundred tipis. Little Wolf felt at ease with the darkness. He welcomed it. He liked to look at the encampment below him where he could see the figures moving about the fires and know they were his people and they felt secure knowing that he was on sentry duty.

  He was not the only sentry, of course. There were eight others. Red Shirt always did things in nines. There were always nine sentries posted at night. Whenever scouting parties were sent out under his leadership, it was always nine. Red Shirt believed the number nine held a special power for him. When he was a young man, while fasting and purifying his body in quest of his power, he had a vision. In the vision he had seen nine hawks attack and devour nine sparrows. It was an unmistakable message for him.

  Red Shirt was highly respected among the council members and his primary responsibility was the safety of the camp. When there was no immediate threat of danger, he would often use the young men of the Kit-fox Society as lookouts around the perimeter of the village. Little Wolf was proud to be a member of the Kit-foxes. His friend Black Feather was Red Shirt’s son and the two of them were looked upon as the leaders of the Kit-fox Society. In recognition of their standing in the young warrior society, Little Wolf and Black Feather had been permitted to go on several scouting parties with the older warriors of the village. These were training sessions for the two young boys in preparation for the time when they would take their places beside the veteran warriors of the tribe. The scouting parties they were delegated to were usually for food for the people of the village, tracking the buffalo herds or following the elk to find their summer ranges.

  The more important scouting parties were usually the exclusive responsibility of the Dog Society, a group of older men, men who had proven themselves in battle or had done some other brave deed, like saving the life of one of their fellow tribesmen. They were charged with the responsibility of knowing the whereabouts of the white soldiers and were the village’s first line of defense. Someday, Little Wolf thought, he would be invited to be a member of the Dog Society. But for now, watching over the village was an important responsibility and only those members of the Kit-foxes like himself and Black Feather were deemed brave enough and mature enough to be awarded that assignment.

  The low, throaty call of a night bird caught his attention and he immediately brought his concentration to bear on it. It was still not dark although the sharp outline of the distant mountains was already softened into gray. Soon they would blend into the night and become lost in the darkness. He was confident the sound he had heard was indeed a bird and not a signal from an enemy raider. Still, his responsibility was to be alert in the event it was the latter. He smiled and silently congratulated himself when his sharp eyes finally spotted the bird perched in a laurel scrub.

  He relaxed and let his mind wander back to the summer just passed. The birdcall reminded him of the signals used by the men of his tribe to communicate with each other during the great buffalo hunts. He loved the hunts. There would be medicine dances for several nights before the hunt and, when the scouts had located the herd, all the men in the village participated in the killing. Little Wolf remembered the first hunt he had participated in. The men had circled around to come upon the buffalo from downwind. Before the herd was in sight he could smell them. It was a strange pungent odor, one that would be unmistakable from that first time forever after. It was fully another half hour after first picking up their scent until the animals were actually seen.

  The hunters slowly worked their way up to a ridge in the rolling hills. Beyond the crest, in a broad grassy basin, Little Wolf saw buffalo for the first time. There were hundreds of animals, filling the basin with a solid sea of dark brown and black shapes. Their movement caused the prairie to take on the appearance of a boiling body of muddy water. The men broke up into smaller groups of five or six and began to work their way down to the head of the basin where it funneled into a narrow pass. This was to be the killing site. Far to the south, at the mouth of the basin, a group of hunters on horseback, led by Black Feather’s father, came into position to stampede the animals toward the waiting hunters.

  Little Wolf was in a group with his friend, Black Feather, and three older men of the village. One of them, a short bull of a man called Owl Speaks, was wearing a buffalo robe with the head attached. The disguise seemed a cumbersome burden to Little Wolf but Owl Speaks was strong enough to manage it. It allowed him to slip in closer to the herd. Little Wolf thought it a useless attempt when the whole herd was stampeding toward the head of the narrow basin anyway. But Owl Speaks always wore it in the hunt. Spotted Pony laughed when Little Wolf told him about it, saying that Owl Speaks was such a poor shot with a bow that he had to get close. He couldn’t hit a buffalo with his bow if the animal was in the tipi with him, Spotted Pony joked. Little Wolf found out later that day that Owl Speaks could account for himself as well as any of the other hunters at the close range they fired from. Little Wolf himself shot all his arrows in the span of no more than a few minutes’ time. Caught up in the excitement of the massive flow of buffalo, amid the dust and the excited shouts of the hunters and the pounding hoofs, he felt he was a part of a mighty storm. The rolling tempest ended almost as suddenly as it had started as the last of the herd thundered through the draw and up through the hills beyond.

  Afterwards, as the dust settled, there was much whooping and laughter as the hunters darted from carcass to carcass to finish off the dying animals with their knives. There was a lot of joking and bragging about who killed the most as the hunters identified their arrows in the carcasses. There were often as many as four arrows in the same animal, resulting in a loud good-natured argument over which shot had been the lethal one.

  Within minutes after the killing was finished, the women appeared to begin the skinning. They chattered gaily among themselves, bragging about the performance of their respective husbands and sons. Buffalo Woman was particularly pleased to find Little Wolf’s arrows in six carcasses, one more than his friend, Black Feather, had killed.

  Little Wolf marveled at the efficiency with which the women prepared the meat and hides from the day’s kill. They cut the meat from the carcasses in large thin strips and hung it over pole racks to dry. Everyone, hunters and women, ate as they worked, for the organs of the animal were considered great delicacies and were devoured immediately. The women worked hard for they had to prepare as much meat as possible to feed the village during the long cold winter. Once the meat was properly dried, it would be stored in secret caches, protected and hidden from predators as well as from enemies. Some of the meat would be pounded and ground with berries and mixed with hot tallow. It was called pemmican and would keep for a long, long time. Thinking back on that first hunt, Little Wolf could not remember a time when he had been happier.

  Little Wolf called his thoughts back to the endless stretch of prairie before him and scanned the horizon for any irregular shape that might indicate something out of the ordinary. He knew every hill and gully around his section of patrol and he wanted to make sure everything looked as it should while there was still enough light to see. All looked peaceful. None of the elders of the village expected attack from the soldiers. There had been none sighted by the scouts for many days. Still, they thought it prudent to be alert even though the word received from other villages was that the soldiers had their hands full trying to combat raids from the Dakotas to the north and the Southern Cheyenne to the south.

  The thought
of battle with the soldiers brought on deeper thoughts. It had been several summers since Little Wolf came to his first summer encampment. Those years had been happy ones for him. He had grown to love and respect his Indian father, Spotted Pony, and a deep affection had developed for Buffalo Woman. In fact, he barely thought of his white parents anymore. It was a totally new experience, not only to be accepted, but wanted by his new family and Little Wolf had thrived in his adopted lifestyle.

  At first it was fun to think of himself as an Indian boy. It was like playing make-believe with his friends back in St. Louis. Before very long it became a natural way of life for him and he didn’t think of his former childhood. The language was easy to learn. It was almost as if he wasn’t aware he was learning the tongue when, suddenly, he realized that he spoke fluently. Also, just as suddenly, he began to grow. Already he was as tall as most of the grown men in the village and he was still growing. Buffalo Woman laughed when she saw how his feet hung over the sleeping platform she had made for him when he was younger. Spotted Pony joked that if he kept growing, he would make an excellent lodge pole for the council tipi.

  “Ahhh . . . I think I have found a dead Arapaho. Maybe I’ll take his scalp and hang it from my lance.”

  Little Wolf was startled but he checked himself before showing any emotion, taking great care to conceal his surprise. Without bothering to look around, he answered, “Even a dead Arapaho could hear the plodding feet of Black Feather. I was waiting to see if a herd of buffalo were coming but I see it is only you.”

  In truth, Little Wolf had not heard Black Feather until he spoke but he would never admit this to his friend. No one in the village, not even any of the Dog Soldiers, could move as silently as Black Feather. It was a talent Little Wolf envied. He had seen his friend creep right up to a prairie hen and simply reach down and catch it in his hands.

  “I just wanted to make sure you were not asleep,” Black Feather joked as he knelt down beside his friend. He would only visit for a few minutes before getting back to his post. He took a piece of dried buffalo jerky from a pouch and offered it to Little Wolf. Little Wolf took it and bit off a chunk, then returned it. Black Feather tore off a bite with his teeth and the two of them chewed the tough leathery meat in silence for a few moments. When the jerky had softened enough to allow room for speech, Black Feather asked, “Is all well?” It was nothing more than polite conversation for he knew, if all had not been well, he would have heard a signal from Little Wolf.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think the soldiers will come?” The thought excited Black Feather for he was anxious to prove himself in battle. Not waiting for an answer, he added, “I don’t think the elders expect it. If they really thought the soldiers would come, the Dog Society would be guarding the village tonight instead of us.”

  “I don’t know,” Little Wolf replied thoughtfully. “Spotted Pony says that the soldiers know that Black Kettle wants peace.”

  Black Feather looked worried. “I know. There has been much talk that Black Kettle will lead the whole village to the white man’s fort instead of separating into our winter camps. If he does, I don’t think I will follow him.” His voice lifted in his excitement. “Red Shirt will never follow him. There is no honorable peace with the white man. They just want us to be their slaves.” A long silence followed while both boys thought about the possibility of the tribe splitting up. When there was no response from his friend, Black Feather asked, “If it comes to fighting the soldiers, are you going to fight the whites?”

  Little Wolf thought for a long moment before answering. This question had worried his mind many times before. This summer had been a troubled one for the Cheyenne. More and more wagon trains were rolling through the land of the Indian, land that had been guaranteed to be theirs exclusively, and there had been many raids by the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers to punish these trespassers. Then there had been more talks and treaties with the white man, resulting in an uneasy peace. The white governor of the Colorado territory, a man named John Evans, met with Black Kettle in Denver. White Antelope and Bull Bear made the journey with the chief and they informed the governor that the Cheyenne only wanted to be left in peace to hunt and live as they had always lived. The chief of the soldiers in Denver, Colonel John Chivington, was there also and he told Black Kettle that if he brought his people to Fort Lyons, they would be safe there. Black Kettle believed the white men to be sincere but not all the men agreed with their chief. Some, like Spotted Pony and Red Shirt, were talking about making their own winter camp as they had always done.

  Black Feather pressed for an answer to his question. “You will fight. I know you will. You are a Cheyenne warrior!”

  “Arapaho,” Little Wolf corrected.

  Black Feather laughed. “I know, Arapaho, but you will fight with your Cheyenne brothers.”

  Little Wolf paused. “I have thought about it and thought about it. You know I would love to fight beside you but I’m not sure I can kill whites. I will go with Spotted Pony. He is my father.” Little Wolf had embraced the Indian way of his adopted father wholeheartedly. But could he go so far as to draw his bow on white men? It had only been a few years since he was Robert Allred. Life as a white child was still alive in his memory even though each passing month pushed that memory further and further from his conscious thought.

  Black Feather was disappointed but this was not the first time they had discussed the matter. He shrugged. “I understand. Maybe you will change your mind.”

  “Maybe.”

  * * *

  Living as an Indian for the past several years, there was no way he could keep up with the months. The Cheyenne noted the passing of a year by the moons. They knew nothing of months. Little Wolf knew that his birthday was September twenty-eighth. There was no way he could know when it was September or October but, when the women took down the tipis for the summer camp, the days were already getting chilly with some mornings greeting the tribe with frost. So he was sure he had passed his sixteenth birthday.

  In spite of the talk in the council lodge that summer about going to the reservation, no decision was made to do so. There were too many of the village’s leaders, like Red Shirt, who were against giving in to the white soldiers’ demands. When the tribe broke up into the customary small bands to move to winter quarters, Black Kettle still talked of saving the peace and urged the leaders of the individual bands to meditate and seek wisdom from the spirits on the matter. He reminded them that the buffalo had not been as plentiful that summer as before and the white chiefs had promised to feed his people if they respected the treaties.

  Little Wolf said his good-byes to Black Feather and his family just as he had done the summer before. But for some reason he could not explain, this summer he was a little more reluctant to see his friend leave. There was so much talk of troubled times on the horizon that he could not escape the nagging feeling that this might be the last he would see of Black Feather. Black Feather must have sensed the same reluctance although he attempted to maintain the air of confident casualness that had come to be his trademark.

  “Don’t let the coyotes eat you this winter,” he tossed at his friend in an effort to make light of the parting.

  “The coyote makes water on himself when he faces the power of the grizzly,” Little Wolf yelled back and laughed as he walked away.

  “Take care of yourself,” Black Feather called out. “I’ll see you in the summer.”

  “I will.” Little Wolf hurried to catch up with Spotted Pony. As he broke into a comfortable trot, he began to feel the void left by the departure of his friend. He stopped and turned back toward Black Feather. “I’ll come to visit you after Spotted Pony has made our camp. We’ll hunt together.”

  Black Feather’s face lit up with a smile. “I’ll look for you.” He couldn’t resist adding a tease. “Are you sure you can find our camp? Maybe I should come to lead you.”

  Little Wolf laughed and waved good-bye to his friend.

  * * *
/>   After splitting off from Black Kettle’s band on the second day of the trek, Spotted Pony led his small group of followers west and north. One more day’s journey found them in the foothills of the great mountains and Little Wolf and another boy his age, Sleeps Standing, were sent on ahead of the main party to scout out possible winter campsites. There were favorite campsites that were often used but never in consecutive winters for that would soon kill off the available game in the area. This year, Spotted Pony had decided to winter further south than the year before. Little Wolf guessed that the reason was partly to be closer to the other segments of the tribe in case there would be a reason to unite. After scouting for the greater part of three days, a site was selected that offered water as well as some protection from the cold winds that swept through the mountains. They sighted no animals in the valley they had chosen but there were plenty of signs to indicate that meat was available. Little Wolf and Sleeps Standing agreed that it was a good place so they rode back to the main party to get Spotted Pony. Spotted Pony looked over the area thoroughly, riding up into the hills all around the valley, surveying it from every vantage point. His concern was not only food and protection from the weather, but also the defense of the camp. When he was satisfied with his inspection, he complimented the two boys on their selection and the band settled in for the winter.