Summer of the Sioux by Tim Champlin

Author:Tim Champlin [Champlin, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Action & Adventure
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2013-12-12T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

No sooner was supper over and all of us had rolled wearily into our blankets than a mournful wailing started up from the Crow and 'Shoshone camps. In addition to their own warriors killed—how many, we didn't know—a young Shoshone boy had been killed and scalped while holding horses in the rear area. Some of the Cheyenne had ridden completely around the command and caught him defenseless near the river.

"It's not so much that he was killed," Wilder remarked, raising his head at the sound. "There's some superstition about his being scalped. They believe he can't get into the happy hunting grounds without his scalp."

Some of the men nearby were grumbling about the noise, but I was awake just long enough to notice that it prevented none of them from falling into an exhausted sleep immediately. I could have slept on a bed of nails myself.

Reveille sounded at four A.M. on a frosty Sunday morning, and we were all up and under arms quickly. But, as General Buck had correctly predicted, there was no dawn attack by the Sioux. The Snake Indians waited until sunrise to bury the boy they had mourned the night before. All the relatives appeared in hideous black paint, many of them weeping openly. The boy was buried in the shallow ford of the streambed, and afterward. several Indians rode their ponies back and forth across to be sure all traces were obscured.

Each seriously wounded soldier was carefully loaded onto a litter slung fore and aft between two surefooted mules. It was no spring ambulance, but it was the best that could be devised under the circumstances. The less seriously wounded were put on travois behind horses and mules and the entire command slowly began a withdrawal, its pace regulated by the slowest of the injured.

Instead of riding in formation with our Company B, Mac and I decided to ride off to one side of the column. We had gone only about a half-mile when I noticed some dismounted Crows clustering around something in the deep grass off to the right of us. Mac and I rode over and found them grouped around the stiff corpse of a Sioux warrior. The body had a bullet hole in its breast, but was otherwise unmarked. The Crow, chattering among themselves, gleefully started their mutilation. First they stripped the body of all clothing and ornamentation. Then they scalped it. One Crow sliced off the warrior's ears and put them in a pouch he carried at his belt. Others hacked off his fingers, toes, and nose. Mac and I protested, but they only laughed at us and pretended not to understand.

Finally, one big buck cut off the penis and held it overhead, a grin splitting his brutal features. He shouted something in broken English to the effect that there would be great distress among the squaws when they found out what had happened. They all cheered and laughed. Just then Captain Wilder, attracted by the commotion, rode up with a squad of men.

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