AMERICAN BY BLOOD by ANDREW HUEBNER

Author:ANDREW HUEBNER
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: SIMON & SCHUSTER
Published: 2000-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Gentle and the Crow camped in a red clay gulley cave in a snowstorm. They rode through lush green piney hills where the snow had frozen on the branches and weighed them down blue. They stalked the woods and the walls of the canyon; the Sioux held their ground.

The army left next morning and rode all day. It was almost dusk when they reached Box Elder Creek. More than fifteen hundred regulars entered the valley in a long winding line in the pass between two tall buttes.

Gentle met Bradley in the pass there shadowed by the northern-side butte.

How’s it look, Corporal Gentle? Bradley asked, saluting.

We ready now, sir, Gentle said and nodded toward the Crow, who sat grazing his horse in a patch of tall grass beneath a twisted cotton-wood tree.

Where are they? asked Gibbon.

Right up yonder hill. Gentle took off his hat and pointed toward a long snow-covered rise.

Waitaminute son, Gibbon spat out. Whose man is that?

Can’t say.

What’s he doing up there?

Wait, look, on the hill, there’s Indians up there too.

That’s why we couldn’t git close, Cap’n.

Is he alive Gentle? Bradley asked.

He is wearing a blue coat. He looks like one of our’n. We haven’t been able to risk it.

Sioux surrounded the soldier on the hill. Despite the biting cold the braves were stripped to the waist, their chests painted red. A ravine cut into the rise behind, where the ancient glacial earth had folded in upon itself. The wind rushed down the hill and swirled around the soldiers at the bottom. Every time Gentle opened his mouth it burned his lungs.

Do you think we should rush it? Gibbon asked.

That’s what we’ve been waiting on, sir, Gentle said.

All right then, Gibbon said. He motioned over an officer and word was passed. A gray sun had dipped all the way behind the bare rock tip of the butte.

Hell, it’s a little late, but we can’t leave him there.

At the Colonel’s signal the troops kicked their mounts and dashed up the wall of the canyon. They made progress for maybe fifty feet before the snow started to give all at once under the hooves of their horses. When the snow loosened from the pounding of the horses’ hooves there was a sheet of ice underneath. The men and horses started to slide on top of one another. There was an avalanche of horses and men.

An ear-piercing scream sounded on the hill and an Oglala brave put a torch to the soldier and set him afire.

Only one man made it to the top. A fellow name of Ames, someone said. He was shot and left for dead at the foot of the burning soldier.

The troopers were in chaos for the next few hours as the sun set red over the darkening high plains. The horses with broken legs had to be shot, the soldiers’ wounds attended to in turn.

August Huebner saw the man named Ames fall.

I’m going after him, he said to Bradley.

You’re going to what?

Damnit sir, we can’t just leave him up there.

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