30

Moon of Popping Trees 1874

IT SEEMED THE wind had howled for days, the frozen icy snow driven against the crusty side of the buffalo-hide lodge, rattling like hailstones against a hollowed log.

It was February. The heart of winter on the central plains.

She was alone again.

Long before last winter young Pipe Woman had bundled up her few possessions and rode off with Porcupine and his band of Dog Soldiers, heading north into the land of Two Moon and the rest of the wild tribes. It was said Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapa and Crazy Horse’s Hunkpatilla Oglalla roamed that land up there. Shell Woman remembered that country from her childhood. With the fondness of those memories, she had allowed her daughter to go with the young Hotamitanyo warriors hurrying north to the last great hunting ground of the roaming bands.

After all, she had reasoned with herself, what else could she do? No one believed the thin one called Hook would be coming back. Gone more than four winters, with no word of where he was, when he would return. Pipe Woman was growing old waiting for a ghost to return. Reluctantly, with a real pain in the parting, Shell Woman let her daughter go, to roam the north country with the bands wandering in the footprints of the nomadic old ones.

She had not let her daughter see the tears. But that was more than a winter ago and long enough to get over it.

So now she was alone again.

Six sleeps ago Shell Woman had watched her husband ride off to find work, called to the place called Kan-sas by the army, to guide the Bear Coat General.

Outside her lodge the rattling, bare-bones wind was finally dying, like a living creature itself, slowing its raging howl into a keening whine. For a night it had lowed like a snuffling rodent outside the frozen lodge walls. And now the wind whimpered in its last gasps of the blizzard.

Miles: the American name her husband used when he spoke of the soldier chief. Her man had gone off to find work in a faraway place he said was called Kan-sas, where he said the army was preparing to crush the southern tribes. Kiowa. Comanche. And her own people too—the Shahiyena. All those who would not come back in to register themselves on the reservations staked out for them in Indian Territory. It was common knowledge that many bands had never ventured in to the reservations, had vowed they never would.

The army knew they were out there raiding, stealing, killing—kidnapping again. And the Bear Coat General was gathering his warriors to take up the war road against the southern tribes one last time. He needed scouts: eyes and ears and noses—wolves to track the scent of his enemy, the warrior bands.

Her man, the one her people had named Rising Fire, had held her body close against his through that last long winter night before riding off of a cold gray dawn that grew no brighter for Shell Woman.

For the most part he hadn’t left her side ever since that autumn day four winters ago when he returned to her camp in the shady copse of trees where she had raised her lodge. Already the cottonwood had begun changing, going to gold when the man named Sweete had come riding slowly into her camp where she waited, there near the soldier fort called Laramie. He had an extra pony with him: a gift for High-Backed Bull’s mother that he said came from Porcupine.

“Why does Porcupine send me a gift of this pony?” she had asked the big white man who stood over her, reaching to take her in his arms.

In his eyes Shell Woman had seen the answer.

Through the days of her grief that followed, time and again her husband repeated the story. Telling and retelling the details to give them permanence in the heart of Shell Woman. It was there in the heart of a mother that High-Backed Bull would live on.

It was the scars she touched now, running her callused fingertips slowly, gently over the long, stiffened worms of discolored flesh that laddered up the length of her arms the way the ancient rivers made a lattice across the great plains on their relentless march to the big water she had only heard stories of, but had never seen. In time her hair had grown after she hacked off the long braids in mourning the loss of one born of her womb. Now it hung nearly gray, streaked with the iron of more and more snow come every winter. So old now, she thought—and never would she see the children her son might have fathered.

Had he not hated his own blood. His own father.

Shell Woman lay back down; resting her head on an arm, and closed her eyes. Time enough to venture into the cold for more firewood. Enough left there by the door if she was frugal—for she ate so little anymore. And if she stayed wrapped in her buffalo robe, she would not need to keep a big fire burning day and night like those in other lodges. Only what was needed to drive most of the frost from the inside of the dewcloth.

Time enough to look outside at the world. She had seen many, many snows in her lifetime—remembering how it was to be a child and push aside the hide door flap after a blizzard, to gaze outside happily at the dazzlingly white world that’ stretched pristine and unbroken clear to the horizon in all directions. Overhead would dome the inside of that virginal blue bowl, so close and pure that she was sure this was how the world must have looked the day after the Everywhere Spirit had created all things.

A world not yet marred by the tracks of man nor disturbed by the passing of animals—it was so new it made her heart ache looking at it. Beneath that white blanket of winter’s might lay the renewal of life that throbbed in the endless flow of the seasons.

And now she chose to lie here instead of going out to look upon the new world. Shell Woman had seen it before. Instead, she would sleep and think about the renewal of the world another time.

Outside, the commotion of the loafer camp told her the others were moving about. Poking her head from beneath the robe, Shell Woman saw her breath in the murky darkness of her lodge. With the door flap closed and the smoke flaps laid one over the other, little light penetrated the thick, smoke-cured buffalo hides. From the texture of the sky above and quality of what light snaked in at the top fan of lodgepoles, she knew it must be late afternoon. That meant she had slept again for more than a day without waking.

A night and another day come and gone.

She heard voices of women and children, the yips of camp dogs, and occasionally the sound of young men. Burnt Thigh of Spotted Tail’s clan: these people who hugged close to the soldier fort at Laramie. They were Lakota words, and most she understood.

“Shell Woman.”

The scratch came at the antelope hide over the lodge entrance. After a moment they called out her name again. It was a voice she had not heard before. And it spoke to her in her own tongue: Shahiyena.

Though she did not allow herself to hope, she had to ask, anyway. “Rising Fire?”

“No, Shell Woman,” the man answered. “It is Porcupine.”

“Is Pipe Woman with you?”

“No. Your daughter did not come south with us.”

Her heart cracked, as did her voice when she replied, “Come … come in.”

The setting sun’s light seeped in through the east-facing lodge door as the warrior pulled back the stiffened antelope hide and stepped into the dark interior. She sat up, clutching the buffalo robe to her with a cold shudder.

“Porcupine,” she said, a smile adding its light to her face. “It is good to see you. The rest? They come with you?”

He wagged his head and came to sit at her left hand. “No. Not all. A few rode with me. To see family. Visit old friends.”

“The storm.”

“Yes,” he replied, and smiled. “The skies were very angry for many days, weren’t they? We waited them out at the forks of a stream a day’s ride west of here. Had to kill one of our ponies for food. But we kept warm, and out of the wind. And our bellies were full enough that we sang and told stories and made fun of one another.”

“Young men,” she said with a sigh.

“You are all right?” he asked, his eyes falling to the cold ash mound in the fire pit.

“I am well. Warm and fed.”

His eyes bounded over the dewcloth rope strung the circumference of the lodge, in search of what might hang from it. “Is the white man here?”

Her eyes dropped from his as she answered. “Six … no, seven suns now. He went to …” Then Shell Woman decided not to say any more about her husband to the warrior. That they fought, she knew. That these two had clashed at the springs where Tall Bull’s village had been destroyed—that much was certain. But she had vowed not to let either of them put her between her people and her husband.

“Yes. I see,” Porcupine replied. “The army is thinking of marching again. It is no secret.”

“You have been fighting?”

“Not since last summer—far to the north on the Elk River.^* The pony-soldier chief called Yellow Hair by the Shahiyena, he led his warriors along the river for a long time while the days grew hot.”

“Yellow Hair. The same who rode into Black Kettle’s camp on the Washita?”

“The same,” he answered. “My small numbers joined Crazy Horse, Gall, and others as we followed the pony soldiers and the ones they escorted. The Lakota grow very angry, for it appears the white man will bring the tracks for his smoking horse across those northern lands.”

“Will the Lakota stop the white man?”

“With the help of the Shahiyena, they will stop the white man for ail time.”

“You scared the soldiers off?”

“Yes—I think we drove them off, back to the east they fled.”

“For now, Porcupine,” she sighed. “The day is coming when—”

“Do not tell me, Shell Woman,” he interrupted. “I do not believe it will happen.”

She sensed the raw, open nerve she had dragged a fingernail across and sought to talk of something else. “Where do you go from here?”

“We will move east, then north once more. Back to the Paha Sapa, the black-timbered hills—where we can worship at Bear Butte, praying for strength before the coming of the shortgrass time.”

“Before the coming of another raiding season.”

“Yes.”

How well she knew this cycle of the seasons of war. “From time to time here at this Laramie fort, I see white men coming through, marching north to the black-timbered hills.”

“More soldiers?”

“No. These are not the army. Just white men with their horses and supplies and tools. What do you think they are looking for in that land north of here?”

He shrugged, rustling his one rattail warrior braid. “I do not know what they are looking for, Shell Woman. I only know what the white man will find if he trespasses in those sacred hills. For a long, long time that has been medicine ground to both the Lakota and the Shahiyena. A white man would be very foolish indeed to trespass on that sacred land. If they are stupid enough to come into our hunting and medicine grounds, they will find only death.”

“Perhaps you only fight the inevitable.” And as she said it, Shell Woman was sorry, watching the gray cloud cross the warrior’s face, his brow knitting in a deep furrow as he glared at the dead fire pit.

Then with even, thoughtful words, Porcupine asked, “Do you speak those words as a Shahiyena, a mother to a brave warrior? Or do you say that as the wife of a white man, one who first leads the pony soldiers to attack our villages and the next day buries the body of his son as only a Shahiyena father would do?”

With surprise she looked up, staring evenly at him. “You know what Rising Fire did to protect the body of his son?”

“I saw everything from the hills overlooking the ruin of Tall Bull’s camp, where your husband protected his son’s body from the Shaved-Heads who wanted a brave warrior’s scalp. I followed, to watch him bury Bull in the crevice of a great ledge that faces the rising sun.”

“Above the river that will always flow at his feet.”

“Yes. I am sure he told you that Bull is safe for all time to come.”

She nodded. “He told me. And brought me the pony you gave him as a gift for me.”

Porcupine tilted his head, eyes narrowing as he asked, “A pony I gave him for you?”

The first teasing tickle of confusion arose in her. “You did not have a pony brought to the mother of High-Backed Bull?”

He swallowed and straightened, his mouth a thin, grim line on his otherwise impassive face. “May I see this pony I sent you?”

“If you did not send the gift for my grieving, then why—”

“Will you show me this pony?” he interrupted.

“It has been many winters, Porcupine. The pony—”

“It lives?”

“Yes,” she answered finally.

“Take me to see it. Now,” he directed, standing in the deepening darkness of that cold, shadowy lodge.

Without saying another word. Shell Woman dragged up a blanket and wrapped it about herself, lashing at the waist with a wide belt studded with many brass tacks. The cold shocked her as she stepped from the lodge. How quickly the warmth left the earth when the sky cleared the day following a terrible storm. The snow lay trampled in most every direction she looked, except along the narrow trail leading down to the riverbank itself. Here only a few feet had troubled the surface of the deep, wind-driven snow. She listened to his deep, rhythmic breathing as he followed her into the bare cottonwoods, down to the small corral where some of the Brule kept their special breeding stock separated from the herds allowed to pasture in the river bottoms.

It was there she had built her own small pen for the three ponies: the young gelding that pulled everything she owned on her travois, the old mare she rode, and the present from Porcupine that autumn day long ago, when she learned she was no more the mother of a warrior son.

The three animals had fared the blizzard well enough. In the beginning hours of the storm, as the wind began to rise with the icy bite of snow in the air, Shell Woman took the ponies cottonwood branches and bark shavings to eat, not knowing how long the sky would remain tormented. Now she was relieved to find them still there, a bit cramped against one side of the pole corral for the tall snowdrift that iced over a good half of their pen.

“It is the gray one?” Porcupine asked.

“No,” and she pointed.

“The red one?”

Shell Woman nodded, watching him approach the pole corral and climb through onto the snow trampled by those unshod hooves. The old mare came up to nuzzle against the warrior. He stroked her long gray muzzle, then sidled around her. The gray gelding bobbed its head, eyes widening as the man approached, but stood its ground, scenting the warrior. He patted its neck, then ran a hand down the length of its spine, crossing behind it for the corner of the corral.

“Yes, I remember this pony,” he told her quietly as he approached the strawberry roan.

“It is a beautiful animal, Porcupine. I thank you for remembering the mother of High-Backed Bull in such a way. My son would be proud to own such a pony.”

At first the roan wanted to have nothing to do with the warrior, trotting first this way, then that, moving along the short corral fence walls. Finally Porcupine reached inside his woollen capote and took something out. Holding it aloft and speaking soothingly to the pony at the same time, he gradually moved closer and closer.

She could not tell what it was at first, until the warrior finally reached the pony, looped an arm over its short neck, and stroked its mane. Then she recognized what Porcupine held in his hand—the horse medicine. A small skin bundle, trimmed with red wool, two small hawk’s feathers strung from the drawstring at the top.

High-Backed Bull’s horse medicine.

Her hands gripped the top pole of the pen to keep from falling. “Where did you get my son’s horse bundle?”

“From his pony.”

“The pony his father killed at the entrance to Bull’s resting place?”

He nodded, still stroking under the jaw of the pony, then tied the bundle into the roan’s mane before walking back across the trampled snow to stand near her, on the inside of the corral.

“Shell Woman,” he began, laying a hand atop one of hers, “this pony was not mine to give.”

Already her eyes had filled with tears from the cruel slash of the wind as the light died behind the mountains far to the west and twilight failed in this cottonwood grove beside the river. But more than the sting of the wind, she sensed the sting of something else rising within her.

Porcupine continued. “My friend’s father buried his son as only a Shahiyena father could treat his warrior son.”

“You told me. But why did you follow him?”

“I followed, afraid of what a white man might do to the body of my best friend.” He bowed his head. “Soon I was sorry that I had doubted the father of High-Backed Bull.”

“This is why you took the horse medicine from the pony Rising Fire killed by our son’s resting place?”

“Yes. And I kept it all these years, wanting to bring it to you—but not knowing what to say to you.”

“You have been here many times since my son was killed. And still you did not give it to me—even when Pipe Woman took her things and rode off to the north with you!” The anger and sadness rumbled through her belly.

With a wag of his head Porcupine answered, “Only because I selfishly wanted to keep Bull with me—not wanting to give him back to you. Not just yet. If I kept something special of him—something of his love for ponies and the special way the animals loved him back—then maybe I could in some way keep Bull alive.”

“If you remember him, he will always be alive in your heart.”

“Yes, Shell Woman.” He stared off into the darkening sky to the east. Perhaps conjuring up those places whence the enemy came. “Bull died hating the white man.”

“No, Porcupine. My son died only because he hated the white man in himself.”

He seemed to contemplate on that, then bent and came through the corral poles to stand beside her. “Perhaps you are right. Many times Bull told me he would rather die than father any children who would carry the white man’s blood in his veins. He vowed he would never marry, never have a child of his own. To do so, he said, would be to stop cursing the man who was his father. To have his own child would be to accept his own legacy.”

“Then, tell me—is it true you did not send the pony to me with my husband?”

He shook his head and looked directly at the woman beside the pole corral in the growing darkness.

“No.”

“But it is one of your ponies, is it not?”

“No, Shell Woman. It belonged to High-Backed Bull.”

“I don’t … understand. The one Rising Fire says he killed beside the resting place—”

“Was a favorite of your son’s.”

She gazed at the strawberry roan, its thick winter coat a dark umber against the snowy ground and white-shawled tree branches illuminated with the dim starshine come of a winter evening.

“And this red one … if not yours—why did my husband bring it to the mother of High-Backed Bull?”

“This one,” Porcupine explained softly, “he is the animal Bull always rode into battle against the white man.”