A Cold Day in Hell (6 page)

Beside his fire that first summer night after fleeing the white man’s settlements, Johnny unfurled the oiled rain poncho and rolled out the blankets inside their bedroll, a long canvas sack. Within he found a pair of well-worn batwing chaps.

“A cow-boy,” he murmured to himself as he stood to hold the chaps against his hips, admiring the way they fluttered as he pranced around the fire ring—just the way the long fringe on Lakota leggings fluttered with a man’s every step.

The next morning he put on the weathered chaps, running his hands over the dark oiled color of the leather. He had worn them ever since. Had them on that early morning he caught sight of the smoke rising from many fires beyond the low range of hills in the distance. By the time he reached the top of a far knoll, the smoke had dissipated and the village was already in motion for the day, slowly making its way north by west—back toward the Owl River.
*
Bruguier cautiously followed them all day, watchful of outriders protecting the massive line of march, all those women and children and travois, which would have stirred up a lot of dust had it not been for the season of the rains. By the time the procession went into camp, Johnny had them figured for Lakota. One band or another—but Lakota for
sure. How he wanted to taste the words on his tongue once more, and forget the white man’s language for the rest of his days.

Riding down from the slope slowly, he saw several of the young warriors turn and notice him while lodgepoles were being set in their proper order, lodge covers being unfurled over the first. Johnny kicked that big American horse in its flanks and rolled into an easy gallop. With a burst of noise and a flourish of the hat he ripped from his head, Bruguier shot past the warriors coming out to challenge him—dashing straight into the camp, knowing enough to aim for the center of the great village. Dead in the middle of the two horns of the crescent, he would find the chief’s lodge. There he should be safe—despite the fact that he was dressed in white man’s clothes. Despite the whole summer of bloody warfare against the white man.

Already he could see that he could not make it to the center of camp. Suddenly there were too many horsemen forming up, galloping to meet him. His way was blocked.

In panic, his eyes shot over the nearby lodges being raised. But ahead, close at hand, there was a big one. Well painted with dream symbols. A tripod stood outside with many scalps hanging from it. This man must surely be a war chief. Besides, it was one of the few already erected and close at hand.

Outside the big lodge he dismounted before his horse even stopped, and ducked within the lodge door without ceremony. Outside the children screeched in their high voices, the women shouting to their men that a white man had just invaded their camp, a lone white man. But inside the lodge all remained eerily quiet.

Before him the middle-aged warrior looked Johnny over carefully. The wrinkled, copper-skinned woman said nothing at all, but went back to laying out the buffalo robes and blankets while her husband eventually went on loading his pipe.

“Welcome,” the warrior said finally as he raised a twig from the fire he had started with flint and steel.

When Johnny answered in Lakota, “Thank you,” no surprise seemed to register on the warrior’s face.

“Sit. We will have something to eat soon. Would you like to smoke with me?”

Bruguier answered, “Yes—”

But there would be no smoking, not just yet, for at that moment a wide-shouldered warrior burst through the open doorway
and stood to his full height within the lodge, towering over the old warrior and his sudden guest.

“White Bull!” the young warrior cried, gesturing aggressively at Bruguier.

“You are welcome too, One Horn,” White Bull said, gesturing for the warrior to sit. “Even though you left your manners outside this afternoon.”

The young man sputtered angrily, “Is this man a friend?”

White Bull pulled on the pipe stem, drawing smoke into his mouth and lungs for several moments, then exhaled it and regarded the smoke that he cupped in a hand and dragged over the top of his head in a sacred fashion. “He is in my lodge. And we will eat soon. You are welcome to stay and eat with us.”

“Sitting Bull wants to know,” the young warrior spat. “If he is your friend, then the Bull wants you to bring this visitor to his lodge. But if he is not your friend, then Sitting Bull says we can kill him.”

White Bull’s eyes dropped to look at Bruguier. For a long time he seemed to study the swarthy-skinned intruder wearing the clothes of a white man. After interminably long minutes, he looked back at One Horn.

“We will go to Sitting Bull’s lodge … together.”

“S-sitting Bull?” Johnny asked in a croak. “The same Sitting Bull who crushed the soldiers at the Greasy Grass?”

“Yes,” White Bull said. “Come, now. We will go see my uncle.”

Plunging through the long, jostling gauntlet of angry, oath-spitting warriors and keening, screeching women and old men, White Bull and Bruguier followed One Horn, who wore a provocative headdress with its single buffalo horn jutting from the wearer’s forehead. While the trip did not require that many steps, it nonetheless seemed like an eternity to Johnny. These people screamed to take his scalp, his hide removed one torturous inch at a time. They wanted him to suffer horribly. That much he understood in their Lakota harangue.

Soon he could see the end of that gauntlet—the big un-painted lodge had its bottom rolled up some five feet all around its entire circumference so that the cool breeze could penetrate the interior. Perhaps so that onlookers could watch Sitting Bull’s conference with this sudden intruder to this camp of Miniconjou and Sans Arc who had joined the great chief’s Hunkpapa in their summer wanderings between the two armies—one army north, one army south.

“This one is your friend, White Bull?” the chief asked when all were seated.

“No, he is my guest.”

“How is he your guest?” a very old man demanded from the far side of the fire.

“He came to my lodge,” White Bull answered. “Therefore, he is my guest.”

Sitting Bull looked at the intruder. “What is your name?”

“Johnny Bruguier.”

Even though he said his white-man name, and spoke it in English, it caused the chiefs and advisers to mutter among themselves … for the intruder must surely have understood Sitting Bull’s question spoken in Lakota.

The Bull asked, “You speak our language too?”

“Yes. It is the language of my mother.”

With a nod Sitting Bull replied, “This is why you speak our tongue as good as a Sioux.”

“I am a Sioux,” Johnny replied.

“You are a half-blood,” growled another old man across the fire. “You are neither white, nor Indian. So you are not a Lakota. This one is like the Grabber! You remember him, Sitting Bull—the Grabber who leads the soldiers down on our villages.”

One Horn pointed his finger angrily at Bruguier. “I say we kill this one!”

There arose an instant and loud agreement from many of those squeezed together at the lodgepoles, pressing in a great circle surrounding the Bull’s conference. The chief regarded White Bull’s guest, then stared at the small fire, considering. Again he regarded the intruder once more while the crowd fell to utter silence.

“Well,” Sitting Bull finally said in a loud voice filled with an awesome command all by itself, “if you are going to kill this man, then kill him. But if you are not—then give him a drink of water. Give him something to eat. And give him a pipe of peace to smoke with us.”

So it was that from the crowd immediately appeared a canteen that was passed hand-to-hand to Johnny. Bruguier pulled the cork chain from the tin container wrapped in wool and stamped with the initials
U S
. A bowl of dried meat was set before him, and Sitting Bull motioned for him to eat as the chief went about putting the redstone bowl onto his short pipe stem and loaded it with tobacco.

“Do you have a Lakota name?”

“My mother had no brothers to name me at Standing Rock, and my father’s people are white from far to the north. I have no Lakota name.”

Sitting Bull smiled and his eyes flashed over at White Bull. “This guest of yours, what shall we name him, nephew?”

For a moment the middle-aged warrior studied Johnny, then motioned for him to stand, there beside the fire, for all to see. Only then did he turn back to Sitting Bull. “Do you see what I will name him?”

“The way this half-blood dresses?”

White Bull nodded. “Look at his big leggings.”

A smile crept over Sitting Bull’s face as he stuffed a twist of dried grass into the flames to light his pipe. “Yes—this is good. Half-blood, you are now called
Big Leggings.”

Bruguier had gazed down at his wide, floppy batwing chaps and saw how appropriate the name was. Johnny smiled. White Bull motioned for him to sit and eat.

Bruguier settled again, repeating his new name in Lakota. “Big Leggings.”

Now this morning in the cold of early autumn Johnny again thought back fondly on that first day among these people, as a guest welcomed in White Bull’s and Sitting Bull’s lodges. Their welcome had helped to drive away most of his fear of the white man’s strangling rope. As the days became weeks, and the weeks became months, Johnny Bruguier thought less and less on what he had left behind in the white man’s mining settlements. Too, he thought less and less in the white man’s tongue.

Earlier this autumn Bruguier had taken up arms against the soldiers when Three Stars Crook had attacked American Horse’s band of Miniconjou camped on Rabbit Lip Creek at the Slim Buttes. No matter that there were more soldiers than warriors from the surrounding villages, Three Stars had retreated, run away to the south, fleeing Lakota land.

Many believed there would be peace now as the Lakota wandered north by west, back toward the Elk River while the air turned cold and the first snows lanced out of the sky. Winter was coming, and they must hunt the buffalo once more to make meat in preparation for the time of great cold. The herds were gathering north of the Elk River.

But so were the soldiers, scouts had reported.

Sitting Bull vowed his people would stay out of the way of the soldiers if they could. But in this same camp Gall still mourned the loss of his wives and children at the fight along the
Greasy Grass. In a flux of rage the fierce war chief said the soldiers would drive the buffalo away and make it a very hard winter for their people. He wanted to lead the warriors down on the soldiers soon and drive them off the Elk River for good.

Still, Sitting Bull said they would wait. And see how the hunting went. So far they had not had much success. Which made for a restless anger growing among the people.

That cold morning a day after they had crossed to the north side of the Elk River, Johnny was one of the few in camp awake to hear the distant call shouted by the scouts returning from the hills.

“Soldiers!”

Bruguier swept up his big blanket coat and mittens, pulling that big floppy hat down on his head, and jabbed his way out of White Bull’s lodge into the cold autumn air.

“Soldier wagons!” came the cry as the scouts swept into camp.

Already men were bursting from their lodges, weapons in hand, singing out to one another in excitement and blood oaths.

“Soldier wagons in the valley beyond the eastern hills! Many mules! Food, blankets, and
guns!”

Then Gall was among them, raising his soldier carbine high overhead, shrieking that now was the time to finish what the white man had started.

“Come! Let us make war again!” he cried.

They answered him with hundreds of throats.

“Come!” Gall bellowed for all to hear. “Let us finish what we started on the Greasy Grass!”

“W
e’re ready to roll, Captain,” said the lieutenant, who sported a thick and jaunty mustache as he saluted his superior officer.