In 1840, when the new spring grass was well up, a Northern Cheyenne named Running Antelope led his wife, infant son, and thirty braves on a journey to counsel with their Southern Cheyenne kin living below the Platte River.
Running Antelope was a peace leader, not a war chief, and his band rode under a white flag. Nor had they painted or dressed for battle, nor made the all-important sacrifices to the sacred Medicine Arrows. Nonetheless, they were forced to fight when blue-bloused pony soldiers attacked them in a pincers movement near the North Platte.
It was the Cheyenne way to flee during battle until a pursuing enemy’s horses faltered. Then the Cheyenne would suddenly turn and attack. But a hard winter had left their ponies weak. Nor were their stone-tipped lances, fire-hardened arrows, and one-shot muzzle-loaders any match for the Bluecoats’ percussion-cap carbines and big-thundering wagon guns that shot screaming steel.
Still, the braves fought the glorious fight, shouting their shrill war cry even as they sang their death song. When flying canister shot cut down their ponies, they used them for breastworks and fought on. But eventually Running Antelope, his squaw, and all thirty braves lay dead or dying. The only survivor was Running Antelope’s infant son, still clutched in the fallen chief’s arms.
Pawnee scouts were about to kill the child when the lieutenant in charge interfered. He had the baby brought back to Fort Bates near the river-bend settlement of Bighorn Falls in the Wyoming Territory. John Hanchon and his barren young wife Sarah, owners of the town’s mercantile store, adopted the child. His Shaiyena name lost forever, he was raised as Matthew Hanchon.
His parents were good to him, and at first the youth felt accepted in his limited world. He worked for the Hanchons, earning hostile stares and remarks from some customers, but also making friends in Bighorn Falls. Then came his sixteenth year, when tragedy struck his safe little world.
Matthew fell in love with Kristen, daughter of the wealthy rancher Hiram Steele—the Hanchons’ most important customer after Fort Bates itself. Caught in their secret meeting place, Matthew was severely thrashed by one of Steele’s hired hands. And Steele warned Matthew: Stay away from Kristen or he was a dead man.
Afraid for Matthew’s life, Kristen lied and told him she never wanted to see him again. But even then the youth’s misery was not complete. Seth Carlson, a jealous cavalry officer with hopes of marrying Kristen, issued an ultimatum: Either Matthew left Bighorn Falls for good, or Carlson would use his influence to ruin the Hanchons’ mercantile contract with Fort Bates.
Saddened, but determined to know if the tribe of his birth would accept him, Matthew fled north to the up-country of the Powder River—Cheyenne hunting grounds. Captured by braves from Chief Yellow Bear’s tribe, he was declared a spy for the hair-faced soldiers and sentenced to death. But at the last moment Arrow Keeper, the tribal shaman, interfered and ordered the prisoner freed.
Arrow Keeper had just returned from a fateful vision quest at sacred Medicine Lake. His epic vision promised the arrival of a mysterious Cheyenne youth—one who carried the mark of the warrior on his body. And one who would eventually lead the entire Shaiyena nation in one last, great victory against their enemies. For despite the prisoner’s white man’s clothing and language, Arrow Keeper had spotted a mulberry-colored birthmark buried well past his hairline: a birthmark in the perfect shape of an arrowhead, the mark of the warrior.
Arrow Keeper insisted that the youth must be allowed to live with Yellow Bear’s tribe, to train as a warrior. His white name was buried forever, and the tall youth was given the Indian name Touch the Sky.
This infuriated those who wanted him executed as a spy. These included Black Elk, the fierce young war leader who hoped to marry Chief Yellow Bear’s daughter, Honey Eater. Black Elk noticed the glances Honey Eater gave this handsome stranger. And early on, Black Elk’s younger cousin, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling, stepped between Touch the Sky and the camp fire, thus announcing his intention of killing the white man’s dog.
From the beginning of his training, Touch the Sky faced many trials and much suffering in his quest for acceptance in the Cheyenne world: He helped to save his tribe from destruction by Pawnees and white whiskey traders and land-grabbers; he fought against Crow Crazy Dogs, Comanches, and bloodthirsty Kiowas. But throughout all of this, the hatred and jealousy and mistrust of his tribal enemies only strengthened.
Now Black Elk, hard but fair at first, has finally succumbed to jealous rage over Honey Eater. Touch the Sky’s recent rescue of Honey Eater, when she was a prisoner of Kiowa and Comanche slave traders, has further humiliated Black Elk in the eyes of his fellow warriors. And Wolf Who Hunts Smiling, realizing that Touch the Sky is the main obstacle to his ambitions for tribal leadership, has vowed to eliminate this obstacle once and for all.