BLOOD SONG by Terry C Johnston

Author:Terry C Johnston
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 2013-07-22T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Sore Eye Moon

He felt his insides shrivel up like a gut pile under a summer sun each time he thought about that wide trail of iron-shod hooves that slashed the snowy countryside, going north toward the Elk River.

“Soldiers,” He Dog had said as he stared at the wide scar, said it almost in a whisper. “Many pony soldiers.”

He and another veteran warrior, both Oglalla from Crazy Horse’s Hunkpatila band, had been out hunting three days before when they crossed the wide, torn-up scar of a trail cut by thousands of hooves. They had returned to the Cheyenne camp of Two Moon there on the west bank of the Powder River with the startling news. Late that same afternoon, three more hunting parties returned with the same report: the wide trail of white man’s iron-shod horses marching north.

That bit of news was the only hopeful glimmer in the worrisome reports. North.

“You worry too much,” chided White Cow Bull with his easy humor as he walked along beside his friend.

Still, He Dog could tell the Bull’s thoughts were somewhere else, as were the warrior’s eyes. White Cow Bull watched only the Cheyenne woman—the one said to have come north from the reservation where her father had been killed by the soldiers seven winters gone. It was spoken that Monaseetah’s mother had been killed by soldiers on a winter day beside the Little Dried River.* People gone now, Shahiyena and Lakota all, people once occupying a place between earth and sky.

Perhaps if he believed hard enough, then it would come true: that this land would always belong to his people as promised. At least in He Dog’s warrior heart, he wanted to believe, as his people had believed since time began its journey across the stars.

Good that the Cheyenne mother brought her two young sons north where they would live long enough to grow into young warriors who would in turn protect the old and sick. They could one day take the place of warriors fallen, warriors who once stood between the people and the white soldiers. But for now it was up to men like White Cow Bull and himself to join with Wooden Leg and warriors of the Northern Cheyenne in herding Two Moon’s village south, away from the path of the pony soldiers, south to the White Rock agency where their people would be safe for the rest of the winter.

Each time he thought on the taste of kukuse, the white man’s pig meat, his stomach lurched. True enough, the grease on his tongue tasted good on occasions, he had to admit. And he did like the bread the women fried in their pans from the flour given them at the reservations. But the pig meat did not sit well in his belly. Not like wild meat: deer and elk, antelope and buffalo. Lean and red. If a man grew hungry for grease—he could slice off some of the rich fleece from the hump ribs of a tender cow. Now, that was eating, He Dog thought with yearning.

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