DURING THE WINTER FOLLOWING the treaty council at Fort Laramie, Dane’s second daughter was born while they were camped in the Ghost Timbers. Sweet Medicine Woman named her Susa, and shortly afterward Dane took his family over to Fort Carrothers for a celebration with Jotham and Griffa’s family. During the several days they were all together, Sweet Medicine Woman lost much of her shyness with her husband’s Sanaki relatives. She became especially fond of seventeen-year-old Pleasant because he spent so much time romping with his half brothers, Swift Eagle and Little Cloud, carrying them about for hours on his back. She told Pleasant that she was adopting him as a son, and he bragged about this to everybody who would listen.
One day Bibbs and his Seminole-Negro wife brought in a rocking horse they had made of strong blacksmith’s iron, carved wood, and blanket cloth, as a birth present for Susa. Wewoka had painted the horse in brilliant reds and yellows, and everyone exclaimed over its beauty. Three-year-old Amayi thought the horse was meant for her, and Dane told her that she could ride it until she was old enough for a live pony, and then she must give the make-believe horse to Susa.
On the morning that Dane was preparing to return to the Timbers with his family, Pleasant sought him out in the corral. “Is it because of my pale skin that you don’t like me as well as your Cheyenne sons?” he asked.
Dane was startled by the question. “I like you equally as well as my other children,” he said.
“Then why do I not live with you?”
“I thought you were happier here,” Dane replied, although he admitted to himself that he had never considered the matter.
“Sweet Medicine Woman told me of the good times you have every summer in the north. I think she would like me to come with you this year.”
“Then by all means come,” Dane said. “It is different from any life you have ever known. You may not like it, but a summer of buffalo hunting under the sun will darken that pale skin you worry about.”
And so that spring, Pleasant rode north with the Cheyennes. He would not wear a breechclout because he did not want too much of his pale skin to show, but Dane found him a pair of old buckskin trousers and a long-sleeved shirt made of bighorn skin and he seemed satisfied.
Although Dane was apprehensive that Pleasant might not be accepted, the boy quickly won the approval of almost all of Big Star’s Cheyennes. The girls liked his tawny hair and blue eyes, and the young men admired the reckless way in which he hunted buffalo. Then Lean Bear took him under his tutelage, helping him with Cheyenne ways and ceremonies. One day after they made a permanent camp on the North Platte, Lean Bear came to Dane and announced that the Dog Soldiers were planning a horse raid against the Shoshones. He wanted to take Pleasant along as a guest.
“We promised the treaty agents at Laramie,” Dane reminded him, “that we would remain at peace with our old enemies.”
“Oh, we are not going to war with the Shoshones,” Lean Bear answered. “We will merely capture some of their horses. They have more than they need. Where else would we get horses if not from the Shoshones and Crows?”
Dane laughed. “All right. You may take my son along if you promise to look after him and curb his recklessness.”
“I will treat him as my own son,” Lean Bear promised.
Lean Bear and his Dog Soldiers found a Shoshone camp with many horses over on the Sweetwater. The raid ended up in a running fight, with each side inflicting minor wounds on the other. Lean Bear cleverly maneuvered the foray so that the choicest pair of horses, Appaloosas with beautiful symmetrical markings on their rumps, fell into Pleasant’s hands. Pleasant got his ropes on them in a flash and raced off with all the coolness of a veteran raider.
The attitudes of the other Dog Soldiers toward the good fortune of their young guest varied from envy to admiration, but if any of them suspected that Pleasant’s luck was largely the result of Lean Bear’s maneuvering, they said nothing of it.
Soon after they broke away from the pursuing Shoshones, they came upon a temporary camp of Arapahos who had ventured up the Sweetwater for the same purpose as the Cheyennes. Lean Bear decided to spend the night with the Arapahos for added support in case the Shoshones managed to enlarge their forces for a renewal of the chase.
The captured horse herd immediately attracted the Arapahos, and Pleasant’s Appaloosas became the center of attention. Several warriors were eager to trade for one or both of the mottled horses. At first Pleasant declined all their offers, and then one of the older Arapahos brought out a parfleche container, unlaced the rawhide fastenings, and removed two strange glittering objects. One was a Spanish coat of mail, the other a metal headpiece with a flap to protect the wearer’s neck. The Arapaho had obtained these things from a Mexican many years before, trading ponies for them. He had kept them well, burnishing away any evidence of rust whenever it appeared. But now he was ready to exchange them for a Palouse. All his life he had wanted a Palouse. He would trade the iron shirt and headpiece for Pleasant’s two Appaloosas.
Pleasant examined the coat of mail carefully. It was made of small metal rings and scales closely interwoven and then sewed upon a shirt of thick goatskin. He put it on and found that it reached to his waist, suiting his small frame as well as it fit the Spaniard who had brought it to America two centuries before. In the end, Pleasant got the coat in exchange for one of his horses. He had no use, he said, for the iron hat.
Next day when the Dog Soldiers left the Arapaho camp, Pleasant wore the coat of mail, cantering proudly along on his remaining Appaloosa. Late in the afternoon as they were approaching the place where Poison Spider Creek flows into the North Platte, not far from the Oregon Trail bridge crossing of the river, they saw a patrol of bluecoated cavalry coming toward them. The Cheyennes had heard that some soldiers were stationed at the bridge, but this was the first time they had seen any of them. Lean Bear signaled his Dog Soldiers to a halt and they waited in line for the soldiers to come up to them. While they waited, Lean Bear counted the Bluecoats. Twenty-six, or six more than the number of Dog Soldiers he had brought along for the raid. The cavalrymen would be much better armed and were not burdened with a herd of captured ponies. Lean Bear signaled his warriors to make ready their guns and bows.
The cavalrymen halted about forty yards away, a young lieutenant moving a few paces to the front of them. “We want to inspect your horses,” he called out.
Lean Bear, not being certain what the lieutenant meant, glanced at Pleasant.
“We took them from the Shoshones,” Pleasant replied. He remembered that three of the horses had U.S. brands on their flanks. A Dog Soldier named Sata had captured one and then traded for the other two. Sata admired the U.S. markings.
“We’re coming up!” the lieutenant shouted, evidently relieved to hear English spoken, but he was also puzzled by Pleasant’s coat of mail. “We’ve lost a dozen mounts, stolen by somebody.”
The cavalrymen approached at a slow pace, circling around into the horse herd until they sighted the U.S. brands. They began cutting out the three horses from the herd. A sergeant was looping ropes over their necks when Sata danced his mount over beside him, seizing the ties. “They are my horses!” he shouted in Cheyenne. “We took them from the Shoshones.”
The sergeant unslung his carbine and waved him away. Sata pulled an old pistol from his belt. “Shoot him!” the lieutenant ordered. The carbine bullet knocked Sata off his horse.
For a moment there was a confusion of movement. The frightened horse herd began to scatter. The lieutenant shouted orders in a high excited voice, and his men drew away, forming a line of defense, the sergeant leading the three army horses off to one side.
Sata was badly wounded, but he forced himself up on his knees, screaming for his horses. Lean Bear signaled his warriors into a single rank, facing the soldiers.
“I’m going to make them empty their guns,” Pleasant said, reaching for Lean Bear’s lance. “When they have emptied their guns, rush them and take back Sata’s horses before they can reload.”
“No!” Lean Bear cried. “Today I am your father and I forbid it!”
Pleasant kicked the Appaloosa into a fast run, holding the lance straight, heading for the lieutenant. “Kill him!” the lieutenant shouted. Pleasant swung the Palouse to the right, leaning out of the saddle so as to use his mount for a shield. Carbines crackled along the line, and then he heard the cries of the onrushing Dog Soldiers, the pounding of their ponies’ hooves.
When the cavalrymen fled in disorder, Lean Bear killed the sergeant himself to stop him from taking Sata’s horses. But the Appaloosa went down, blood gushing from its neck, and died with Pleasant sitting beside its outstretched head, crying. Not long after they rounded up their scattered herd, Sata died. They put him on a burial scaffold, led the three horses with the U.S. markings up beside it, and slew them with arrows. That night when they camped, Pleasant found two bullets enmeshed in the interlaced rings of his Spanish coat of mail.