7

THE VISION

At first there was blackness, but then somewhere in that darkness Joshua Strongheart could hear the sounds of the drums and the chants of the singers. He could see a purple mountain range in the distance and a small dot in the cloudless sky flew toward him. It took a long time to get near him but it kept getting larger, and he saw it was a bald eagle. As it flew closer, he saw a human face on the eagle, and it was his beloved Annabelle Ebert. She had never looked more radiant or beautiful than now. She was in human form wearing a shiny gold dress, and she was mounted atop Gabe, his red-and-white overo paint, which had also been killed by We Wiyake.

Belle rode right up to him and smiled the whole time. So did Joshua.

He spoke first, saying, “I love you, Belle. I always will, I can never love another. I am so sorry I got you killed.”

Then he felt tears spilling down his cheeks but they started turning to ice. He realized he was back above timberline in the Sangre de Cristo mountains, where he had gone to meditate and grieve.

Strongheart started saying, “I’m so sorry,” over and over.

Belle spoke very sharply and emphatically, “Joshua! Hush up right now. You did not get me killed. Blood Feather did.”

Joshua cried, “I am leaving the Pinkerton Agency. My job got you killed.”

Belle started laughing, and he got irritated. Why was she laughing?

Belle said, “You silly man. Do you suppose I would have fallen in love with you if you were working as a desk clerk at the St. Cloud Hotel, or running a freight line out of Pueblo?”

“What?” Joshua replied. “Is this a dream? It seems so real.”

Belle said, “It is a dream, my love, but I am real. I am not there now, but I am real, Joshua.”

He cried tears of relief and saw that her skin was unblemished, and she had no wounds anywhere, like she did the last time he saw her.

Gabe whinnied as if to let him know he was real, too. Suddenly, Gabe was gone, and they were in her café in Canon City sitting at their private table in the kitchen.

Belle came closer and smiled warmly.

She said, “Joshua Strongheart, I fell in love with a gentle kind man, who is a mighty warrior, too. My first husband was a cavalry officer. I never would have married a hotel desk clerk. If you were not a Pinkerton agent, you would be a sheriff, or frontier scout, or Sioux war chief. You can love again, and you must be good at your job, for that is what made me love you, too. You are a hero and cannot help that.”

She started to back away, and he wanted her to stay, but now she was back on Gabe.

He said, “Wait.”

Belle smiled and said, “There was never anything to forgive, Joshua. You must live and smile and be my hero.”

He heard the beat of the drums and felt warmth on his face. She was gone just like that, and he realized he was dreaming. He tried very hard to bring Belle back but his body wanted to make his eyes open. He looked up at the blue sky and realized the sun was positioning itself to decide where to drop down and find a hiding place behind the distant mountains to the west. There was activity all around him, and he saw the medicine man from his father’s circle sitting cross-legged smiling at him as well as Yellow Horse, his father’s friend.

Joshua sat up and his chest ached. He looked down at dried blood all over his chest.

The medicine man puffed thoughtfully on his pipe, stating, “You had a vision.”

It was not a question but a statement of fact.

Strongheart said, “Yes, I did. A strong one.”

The medicine man said, “Sitting Bull had a vision, too, and wants us to eat with him when the sun goes into its lodge and smoke. He will speak.”

The meat in Sitting Bull’s teepee was steak from a pronghorn antelope and it was delicious. He also was given coffee and a dish made out of sliced apples and grapes. He had cleaned in the river and bandaged his chest, putting a poultice on the wounds, which was very soothing. He could see Sitting Bull was cleaned and patched up, too, very much unlike the bloody mess he had been earlier.

As they smoked, a man painting a winter count on a piece of stretched hide was painting symbols of Sitting Bull’s vision as he related it.

The Hunkpapa shaman puffed on the pipe and blew a tendril of blue out, the smoke slowing to a snail’s pace and curling into a lazy climb upward toward the teepee airhole.

Sitting Bull waved smoke over his head and face with his other hand and then spoke, “I had a vision.”

Everybody in the teepee stared at the popular medicine man with intense interest and hung on to every word.

“The wasicun came to our lodges firing their rifles. Many warriors braved up and many coups were counted. There were many circles of lodges along the water and bluecoats falling upside down into our encampment like grasshoppers falling from the sky. They were lying all around the circles with their heads pointed in toward the center.”

Joshua heard the rest of his words but thought about the statement “their heads were pointed in toward the center,” and that they fell headfirst out of the sky. That meant that many white men were killed in his vision.

Religiously, Joshua Strongheart was a Christian and raised in church by his mother and stepfather, but he never judged or demeaned his father’s spiritual beliefs. He always wanted to be open-minded, and he truly wondered if Sitting Bull had had some kind of premonition. Sitting Bull was actually named Tatanka-Iyotanka, which meant “a buffalo bull sitting down on its haunches.” He had been chosen before the sun dance by the united tribes to be chief of all the Lakota while defying the wasicun. He was noted for many courageous deeds in battle, including walking out between battle lines of Lakota and cavalry soldiers during a lull in one battle where he sat down and ate lunch just to intimidate the “long knives.” What was most important to Joshua Strongheart, Sitting Bull earlier had been made the chief of the elite warrior society that transcended tribes within the Lakota nation referred to as the Stronghearts. Joshua’s father was one of its first members, and it was where his white man’s name was derived from. His mother gave him the first name Joshua from the Bible, and always read the verse to him Joshua 1:5: “There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life: as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.”

These last months, more than a year actually, since Annabelle Ebert was butchered, Joshua had really been soul-searching, questioning his own religious beliefs. He also was really leaning toward leaving the Pinkerton Detective Agency, blaming his occupation for what had happened to Belle. The vision he had had during the sun dance gave him a new clarity of purpose. He would pursue his career as a Pinkerton with a vengeance.

Yes, he met with a lot of prejudice in his travels, but Strongheart also knew that most white people back east assumed all cowboys out west were white men. However, many were actually Indians who had learned to live in white society, former black slaves, and Mexicans who preferred it north of the border. Truth be told only one third of all American cowboys in those days was white. He had been treated well by the Pinkerton Agency and there would be opportunity for him there. Belle, in his dream or vision or whatever it was, was correct. He was a man of action and would become very bored in a normal job after the life he had lived.

Now, Sitting Bull shooed everybody but Joshua from the lodge. He smiled at the half-breed and offered him the long-stemmed pipe. Joshua took a long puff and as the smoke wafted out of his mouth he waved it over his head. The two smoked for a full ten minutes before a word was spoken.

Sitting Bull said, “Wanji Wambli has been asked by the wasicun chiefs to speak to his father’s people, to your people, and tell us we are bad Indians and we must go back to our reservations.”

Strongheart chuckled, then replied, “No, Sitting Bull, there are some bad wasicun as there are Lakota whose hearts are bad, too. They hate and see with angry hearts, not their eyes and their minds.”

He puffed on the pipe to let those words sink in.

“There are white men among the chiefs who steal from the nations, from all nations. They take blankets that Washington buys for the Lakota, the Apache, the Cherokee, and more.” Strongheart went on, “They sell the new good blankets and take a little money to buy old bad blankets and give these to the red people.”

Sitting Bull smoked thoughtfully then said, “Why do they kill so many buffalo?”

“To kill you and all our people,” Joshua replied. “They feel if the buffalo dies, the Lakota and all plains tribes will die.”

Sitting Bull puffed again several times, then said, “This could be true, but if all buffalo are taken away, we will ask Mother Earth to give us new animals for our meat, hides for our lodges, and clothes. The Great Spirit did not give the buffalo to the Lakota to hunt them. He gave the buffalo to the Lakota to feed and clothe them.”

Joshua thought about this simple, logical, positive thinking when faced with the enormity of the problem, and he understood he was in the presence of a great man and a true leader.

He said, “Yes, they want me to speak peace with you, but they want me to find these bad white-eyes and catch them.”

Sitting Bull said, “And then what?”

Strongheart said, “They will go to jail, or they will die by my guns.”

Sitting Bull grinned and then chuckled softly, “The wasicun and their jail.”

Strongheart went on, “The wasicun call them the Indian Ring. We know now William Belknap, one of the white chiefs in Washington is the chief of the Indian Ring, and he is no longer any type of chief. He had a subchief named Hartwell who has been the real chief of the Indian Ring. They want to eliminate the buffalo, thinking it will kill the plains tribes. Many greedy men are getting much money by stealing your blankets and supplies and replacing them with cheaper ones and other things like that.”

Sitting Bull said, “The leaders of the Long Knives are foolish, too. They think the Lakota, the Chyela (Cheyenne), and the Arapaho are cowards because we flee when they attack our villages. They do not understand we leave so we do not lose warriors that we must have to fight. Now, many have come together, and we will not leave if the Long Knives come. We will fight and many Long Knives will die. We are Lakota. We will die fighting not freezing and starving on the reservation.”

Strongheart said, “My chief, they want me to tell you not to fight, but I do understand. White men have found gold in the Black Hills and come here all the time. That is sacred ground, but they do not care. The Indian Ring likes this, encourages it, but hear me, my chief: Not all wasicun hate the red man. Some do, but many do not.”

“I know this, young friend,” Sitting Bull replied. “But when they come to kill us or put us back on the reservations, our arrows will not ask who hates us and who likes us.”

They both smoked for several minutes without speaking.

Then, the chief said, “You must kill these men. This Indian Ring.”

“I cannot kill them all, but I will kill the Indian Ring,” Strongheart replied. “It must die before more of our brothers and sisters die.”

Sitting Bull rose and blew smoke toward the smoke hole, watching its egress.

He said, “Many more will die. We made peace and we made a treaty. The wasicun broke that treaty. They must fight us now. The thief does not say, ‘He is a good man and I have stolen from him.’ The thief hates him instead. You should leave soon. We will break the camp tomorrow and go to the valley of the Greasy Grass. I think the Long Knives will come soon and many will die. I saw this.”

“I wish all men could live together,” Strongheart sighed.

Sitting Bull smiled, saying, “Maybe, someday the eagle and the rabbit will lay down together and have many babies.”

Joshua chuckled at that one.

He said, “I will leave tomorrow.”