Читать книгу The War of the Mormon Cow - Richard Jr. Jepperson - Страница 5

The day dawned with a sky as red as the coals of a fire. A very bad sign. The smoke from the lodge fires rose straight up then flattened into a haze over the camp of a thousand lodges. It was late summer and we were camped since spring to receive the annuities promised by the Peace Paper. By the time the day wind whispered to the night wind and left, only one lodge remained.

Everyone knew there would be great trouble. Lodges were pulled down and laced for travel. There was a great milling of people, women, children, old ones, horses, travois and dogs. Little Thunder rode back and forth across the Shell River marking a path through the quicksand with standing poles of willows. Only the lodge of the wounded and dying Conquering Bear stood, guarded by the men of his Akacita. The night wind whispered fitfully and jerked at the lodge flap.

The flickering fire cast shadows of caregivers onto the lodge skin. Man Afraid, Big Partisan and Ice, the strange and powerful medicine man, stayed with Conquering Bear, who was the Peace Chief that had placed his mark on the Peace Paper at the Big Council and talked long for others to do so. Now he lay with a great wound in his stomach, a leg torn off and his side leaking yellow blood.

Ahead, in the dark, the whole of the Lakotas traversed north. It had been a day to remember. The happenings raced back and forth in my mind…