RATCLIFF CAUGHT SHILLABER IN THE STABLES SCOOPING CORN into panniers. It was so cold the air snapped. “So,” Ratcliff said. “You’re goin’ with Yellow Hair.”
“Maybe I’ll scout for Terry or Crook. That’s up to the army. Hold my reins while I check the pack.”
Streaks of pine pitch had frozen hard as white amber on fresh-cut log walls. This Red Cloud Agency had opened for business in November, three months ago. Shillaber hefted one side of the packsaddle, then the other. He took three boxes of ammunition from the left saddlebag and pushed them into the right one. He slung panniers of grain over the horse’s withers.
“They won’t come in,” Ratcliff said. “Can you picture Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Gall as blanket indians?”
“I reckon they won’t.”
“Ben—”
“We talked about this until I’m plumb sick of it. This ain’t gonna be no cakewalk.”
Ratcliff growled, “You sayin’ I’m ’feared?”
Shillaber snorted.
“I don’t get ’feared. I get mad. On New Market Heights, I recall lookin’ around for the white officers, but they was dead and a couple colored sergeants was kneelin’ beside the corpse of this dumb boy lieutenant. They was weepin’. I’d never seen anything stupider. Like a couple chickens, they were, and it made me mad. So I took command. Led them through the abatis and through the Reb’s guns and, hell, Ben . . . I didn’t know till afterwards I might of got kilt.”
Shillaber put a boot against his horse’s belly and cinched the surcingle. After the horse let out its breath he took up another notch.
“You sayin’ you don’t want my company?” Ratcliff chuckled. “Maybe I ain’t white enough for you?”
The horses’ breath rose from them as if they were steam locomotives.
“I’m a good interpreter.”
“Top, your wife almost went back to her brother after the Yellowstone Expedition, and that one was relatively peacable. This time is different. The army’s unleashed Yellow Hair.”
“Hell, Ben. She Goes Before, she don’t care for me no more. She all the time prayin’. Prayin’ to Low Dog and Jesus like they was one and the same. We don’t ever . . . Ah, the hell with it. Tells Him’s supposed to have a bone game this mornin’. Maybe I’ll go watch.”
“You don’t play, do you?”
“Naw. After you done what you and me done, betting on which man’s hand has a bone? The bone game passes the time.” He started for the stable door.
“Wait.”
He spun around angrily. “I ain’t gonna beg you, Ben. When old Master laid the bullwhip on my back, I never begged. When White Bull was goin’ to cut my damn throat, I never begged. I ain’t beggin’ now.”
“Oh, God Damn it to hell.” Ben Shillaber reached in his saddlebag for a flask, took a drink, rubbed it with the heel of his hand, and passed it to Ratcliff. “It’ll cost you. You know it will. If you ride with Yellow Hair you’ll never be a Lakota again. She Goes Before . . . Baby Tazoo . . . she’ll have to choose you or her own people.”
Ratcliff barked a laugh. “Which you think she’ll choose? The Lakota . . . are finished. They ain’t enough buffalo left to keep ’em from starving. They gonna be locked up on these reservations for God knows how many generations with nothin’ but the bone game.”
“You could go back East.”
“Back East, out West. Ben, It ain’t no different. This ain’t my world. It’s General Custer’s world. It’s President Grant’s world. Hell, even flat busted it’s still Jay Cooke’s world. Got no room in this world for me nor She Goes Before, nor any other nigger be he red or black.”
“Jesus, Top. Hang on to that flask. You need it more than I do.”
“No, Ben. What I need is the army.”
Ben Shillaber eyed his friend for a long time. “Go tell She Goes Before,” he said. “Get your horse. I’ll be waitin’ at the sutler’s.”
PLENTY CUTS TOLD his wife he was leaving with Shillaber. He said he would interpret, he would not fight the Lakota. They needed money. On the Yellowstone Expedition he’d been paid fifty dollars a month.
Their lodge was outside the new stockade. It was less ragged than the blanket indians’ lodges. They spoke outside it, as if it weren’t his home anymore. She Goes Before told Plenty Cuts she would not be here when he came back.
Smoke rose straight into the air from fifty lodges.
Plenty Cuts tried to think of reasons why she should be his wife but could not think of any.
She raised a hand in farewell. “Ki ya mani yo, Top. Ki ya mani yo.”