recognized her, in spite of her mask, as the first woman who had fed him soup. Now she held the spoon about six inches from his hand. He reached for the spoon and took it gently from her hand. He looked at the mush, smelled it, then took a taste. It tasted like nothing. It was neither sweet nor spicy. But it slid down his throat and warmed his belly. He had another spoonful and nodded to the woman. “Café,” he said.
“Non, non, monsieur,” she said in an excited voice. She said something else, then she rubbed her own belly and shook her finger.
“Café,” he said again.
She said something, then stopped. After a moment, she stood and hurried toward the end of the room where the yellow light had been the night before. Charging Elk watched her. Then he dipped the heavy iron spoon into the mush and ate. He ate half the mush and drank his orange juice. He left the hard bread—he had seen it before, a small slice curved on top and flat on the bottom, like the sign for sunrise—to dunk into his pejuta sapa, black medicine.
He thought of sunrise in another place. A place of long views, of pale dust and short grass, of few people and no buildings. He had seen that sunrise over the rolling simple plains, he had been a part of it and it had been a part of him. Many times he had seen it and he had been with his people.
Charging Elk suddenly moaned as he remembered the ikce wicasa, the natural humans, as his people called themselves. He remembered his mother and father, his brother and sister. He remembered the villages, the encampments, one place, then another. Women picking berries, men coming back with meat, the dogs and horses, the sudden laughter or tears of children, the quiet ease of lying in the sunny lodge with the skins rolled up to catch a breeze. He had been a child then too and he had spent his days riding his horse, playing games, shooting arrows at gophers, eating the sarvisberry soup that his mother made.
He remembered the big fight with the longknives on the Greasy Grass, the naked white bodies the women counted coup on with their butcher knives and axes. He and two of his friends, Liver and Strikes Plenty, had fought over a soldier’s agate ring. They had cut off his finger to get it. But one of the older boys, Yellow Hand, had taken it away from them.
Charging Elk lay back on the pillow and closed his eyes. He had been proud to be an Oglala then and he thought they would never surrender. The young boys talked about Crazy Horse and how he would lead them far away from the longknives. They would grow up to be hunters and to make war on their enemies. They would kill off the soldiers when they got old enough. Meanwhile the people spent the summer and fall moving from place to place, at first high up in the Bighorns and the Wolfs, then when the weather changed and the snows capped the peaks they moved back onto the plains. Sometimes they would camp for six or seven sleeps, sometimes only one or two. The scouts kept track of the longknives and they were never far away. But the game was plentiful during those warm times and the people didn’t suffer. Wakan Tanka, the Great Mystery, rode with them. The Oglalas seemed almost exhilarated, as though they knew this was to be their last time together as a free people and they were determined to make the most of it. They had won a great victory and they were prepared to face the consequences, even if death came to live with them. Charging Elk, in spite of his youth, felt this spirit and had never been so close to his family, his people, the land. He hung on to every experience, every change of country, every night under the stars or in his father’s lodge.
But when the weather changed, everything changed. The buffalo seemed to disappear soon after the first snowfall, the deer and elk, even the rabbits and prairie hens, grew scarce, and the winds blew bitterly and constantly. Many of the people grew sick, some died, and they became frightened of what lay ahead. When the soldiers finally caught up with Crazy Horse’s band on the Powder River that winter, the people escaped into a blizzard with few casualties but the sentiment around the meager fires now was more about coming in to the fort on the White Earth River rather than remaining free, which amounted to running and running. But Crazy Horse refused to listen to this talk. He began to spend more time away from the camp, riding off by himself into the surrounding hills—some said he was searching for a vision that would save the people; others thought he didn’t like to be around their suffering. Charging Elk’s own father said that Crazy Horse was too stubborn to be a good leader, that he put his own pride before the welfare of the people. Still, Charging Elk and his friends vowed to follow Crazy Horse, even to death if he wanted it that way. Like most of the young ones, they idolized Crazy Horse and thought he could bring forth a miracle when spring came. He would lead them somehow to a land where there were no white people, a land filled with blackhorns and berries and good water. There would be plenty of enemy horses to be taken, many enemies to be struck.
But that spring Crazy Horse led the weary, ragged people to Fort Robinson and Red Cloud Agency. They surrendered their horses and weapons, everything but their garments, cooking utensils, and lodges. The piece of paper that the leaders marked was dated May 6, 1877. Four months later, in the Moon of the Black Calf, Crazy Horse was killed by the soldiers with the help of some of his own people.
Charging Elk sighed and opened his eyes. The tray and the woman were gone, but two men in suits stood at the foot of the bed, looking at him.
“Bonjour,” said one of them.
“Hello,” said the other.
Charging Elk recognized both greetings but he said nothing.
The one who had said hello said, “Charging Elk?”
Charging Elk considered a moment. He knew it would be futile but he asked how long he had been in the sickhouse. Both men just exchanged glances. The one who had said hello was dressed in a bulky brown suit. He had a mustache that curled down around the corners of his mouth. The other wore a dark neat suit. His tie was neatly knotted between the collar points.
“Canyou speak English? American?” The man in the brown suit leaned closer, and said again, in a loud voice, “American? Do you speak American?”
Charging Elk gestured toward himself with his hand. “American. Lakota.” As he thought of something else to say, he remembered how he had gotten there. “Pahuska. Buffalo Bill.” Then he remembered the Lakota who had been appointed the chief of the show Indians. He had no power over the Indians—only the white bosses did—but the wcbticuruf, the fat takers, liked him because he was very handsome and his buckskins were heavy with beadwork. Surely these men would know him. “Rocky Bear,” he said. “Big medicine. Oglala. Wild West.”
“Buffalo Bill, yes. But you are Charging Elk.” The man spoke slowly and loudly.
“Charging Elk. Yah.” But it was becoming clear that he would not be able to communicate with these men, even though he knew of their languages. He could do nothing but look at their suits, even though his eyes took in their somber faces.
After Crazy Horse’s death, the Oglalas were taken from the Red Cloud Agency to their own agency at Pine Ridge. The children were put into the white mans school, and so Charging Elk became a student and learned some of the American words. But less than a year later, when he was thirteen winters, he and Strikes Plenty ran away and went to live with Strikes Plenty’s people at the Whirlwind Compound, far from the agency and the school. Later they would move again, when the wcwichud threatened to come get them, along with the other children. They moved to a place in the badlands called the Stronghold, a long tall grassy butte with sheer cliffs on three sides that could be easily defended. But the white men, soldiers and settlers alike, were afraid of the Stronghold. The Indians out there were considered bad Indians, even by their own people who had settled at the agency and the surrounding communities. Charging Elk and Strikes Plenty lived off and on at the Stronghold for the next nine years, hunting game, exploring, learning and continuing the old ways with the help of two old medicine people. Sometimes they rode into the Black Hills, Paha Sapa, and
