V
As Charles walked through the squalor of the Lakota camp, his feet grew heavier with each step, and it was not from the mud. Downtrodden, starving people hung their heads and would not meet his eyes. It was as though death had followed him here from home. It pulled at him like a tether. Among the tents, the air reeked of human waste, smoke, and disease.
His heart clenched at the suffering around him. And yet these soldiers, these “good Christian men,” many of them little more than boys themselves, were party to degradations, torture, and persecution. Indians of all tribes were barely human beings in the eyes of the law. The White Man had brought medicines, and advancements, and civilization, but whenever Charles began to think about the costs, his mind went gray and numb.
The entire countryside, the reservations of White River, Rosebud, and Pine Ridge, the town of White Pine, were still recovering from the wounds of the Wounded Knee massacre and the unrest that had led up to it. Charles could hardly blame the Lakota for their actions. The government had egregiously violated every treaty it had signed with the Sioux nation: land stolen and given to railroad companies and white settlers, promises of cattle that when they were delivered were half-starved themselves, their meat wasted away to nothing, promises of foodstuffs and supplies in perpetuity only to have their rations cut by a third and then cut again, promises of winter clothing that never materialized.
The agent installed at Pine Ridge, October last, bore a significant share of the blame, one D. F. Royer; he had clearly been the beneficiary of a new government administration and found himself in a position for which he was destitute of any qualities necessary to succeed—experience, courage, force of character, or sound judgment. Within a month, the Lakota had begun calling Agent Royer “Young-Man-Afraid-of-Indians.” As the aftermath of the massacre continued to rumble through the newspapers and halls of Congress, Charles dearly hoped there was a reckoning in store for that spineless buffoon whose actions had contributed to so many needless deaths.
Early last year, the emergence of a mysterious new cult had spread throughout all the tribes, terrifying the white population across the West, fueling rumors of unrest and rebellion. Its origin was unknown, but there were rumors of the Lakota gathering in remote places to dance some secret ceremony. The Indians refused to speak of it to whites.
Red Horse waited beside a dilapidated canvas tent. The Lakota at the White River camp possessed few of their traditional lodges; most of them had been destroyed by the Army. They lived in Civil War-era canvas tents, likely dragged out of some government storehouse, designed to be used in the mild climes of the South, ill-suited for harsh prairie winters. Even most of the Lakotas traditional clothing had been confiscated or supplanted by government handouts. They were forced to live like beggars, interned prisoners, wearing cast off clothes to keep back the cold. South Dakota winters were not to be taken lightly.
Red Horse opened the tent flap for Charles.
Charles entered the shadowy interior, stepping around the mound of ragged blankets and half-rotten hides that stirred and breathed. He knelt beside the woman. Red Horse’s wife was so pale and thin that she resembled a corpse. She lay feverish and delirious, clutching a battered Bible to her chest, struggling not to cough. A crucifix hung prominently over her head. The Bureau of Indian Affairs had done its level best to beat their ancestral heathen religion out of them, but nowadays Charles could not see that his own ancestral religion offered any solace or hope of redemption.
He said, “Born-with-a-Smile? Can you hear me?”
Red Horse spoke from behind. “She sick long time. Not talk or she coughs.”
Born-with-a-Smile’s eyes opened, bleary. Her voice was dry, raspy. “Mitakuye oyas’in.”
Charles could not be sure she knew he was there. “What?”
“Mitakuye oyas’in.”
“Red Horse, what’s she saying?”
Red Horse shook his head. “Don’t know English. Maybe ‘all my family.’”
Charles sighed and felt the glands on her throat. “Family is everything.”
Her eyes fluttered with recognition, and he gave her a smile. She gave him one back, however feeble. He put on his stethoscope and listened to her breathing for a moment. Charles did not like what he heard. He backed out of the tent, and Red Horse followed.
Charles said, “She’s been taking her medicine regularly?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll talk to the major about getting her a space in the infirmary.”
“He say ‘no’ many times.”
Charles sighed again and rubbed his chin.
Approaching footsteps caught his attention, and he turned in time see a familiar face. Little Elk’s eyes reflected maturity, wisdom and intelligence, shadowed by dark circles under them. Her hair had been raggedly hacked, an expression of mourning that gave her a wild appearance. Her dress was less ragged and had once been more elaborately decorated with beads and ribbons, but those adornments had been stripped away. Her only remaining piece of jewelry was a bracelet of wood, beads, and a dark, polished stone. She said, “You care for our sick like your own children. You are so kind, Doctor.”
Charles did his best to conceal the stab that went through him, unable to meet her steady gaze. “Hello, Little Elk.” Even in her disheveled, bereft state, she was a handsome woman. He handed another bottle of laudanum to Red Horse. “This will help her rest.”
Red Horse took it with a solemn expression.
Little Elk said, “Can the white man’s medicine help her?”
Charles said, “Can yours?”
“There is more to living than laudanum and powders. We need food and water. Real food. People will get sick more.”
Charles took Little Elk by the arm and led her some distance away. “I know. She’s getting worse.” When he noticed a patrol of two soldiers nearby looking his way, suspicion crossing their features, he realized that his hand was still on her arm. He removed it. “If she doesn’t get proper rest in a proper bed, isolated, she’s going to spread her sickness to the rest of the tribe. The old will die first.”
She cast the guards a scornful glance. “I know you want to help us.” Her gentle, calloused hand fell upon his arm, her bracelet delicate and beautiful around her slender wrist. His gaze fell upon the truncated lengths of her two smallest fingers. The scars on the stumps were fresh.
Suddenly Red Horse was there, snatching her wrist, glaring at her.
Charles drew back. “Red Horse, what are you doing?”
Red Horse kept his hard, glittering eyes on Little Elk.
Little Elk pulled her hand gently away from Red Horse’s grip. Their eyes locked for a long moment, then Red Horse stomped away.
Charles said, “What was that about?”
“He is my husband’s brother. They were warriors. Red Horse was not … with us, with Spotted Elk.” Her face blanched, and her eyes went dead.
“You were there?” Charles stepped back, unable to contain his shock. So many bodies, all of them frozen solid by the blizzard that had kept the burial party away for three days, bodies that had to be pried from the frost by iron crowbars and pickaxes. So many ravaged faces and contorted, frozen limbs. Such a thing would melt a man’s heart even if it were made of stone, all those little children with their bodies shot to pieces, women young and old, some of them pregnant, all tossed naked into the pits like rubbish. Had his hands touched Little Elk’s husband at the side of one of those mass graves? His voice was thick. “I was there, too. On the third day. How did you—?”
“I ran, and I hid, and I ran.” Her voice was tight and clipped, her fists clenched, her eyes fixed to the ground. She stood silent for several pregnant moments, tears glistening in great bulging droplets that refused to fall. “I came to White River because I was ashamed. I could not be at Pine Ridge anymore. And Red Horse was here.”
The bodies of fleeing women and children had been found two miles and more from the site of the camp where the violence began. After the warriors were all dead, soldiers had hunted the women and children like vermin.
“His hatred for white men runs deep,” she said, her eyes flicking to him. “Even if he is grateful to you, Doctor, he can never truly trust you.” Her gaze fell away into a dark distance, and the tears finally trickled down.
“I’m sorry for what happened to your husband. It was a terrible thing the Army—”
She cleared her throat. “Red Horse thinks it is too soon for me to touch another man.”
Silence hung between them for a long moment, her words sinking deep into him. Somehow, for a just a moment, the fog of pain around her parted, and she stood there as warm and lovely as any woman Charles had ever seen. Her anguish dispelled, her eyes bright and brimming with life, he saw her as she had once been. And he imagined that she turned that warmth upon him, and how lucky he would be if he were its recipient. He could not remember when last he had enjoyed a woman’s warmth. Then his ears warmed, the spell retreated, and it was his turn to clear his throat. “Why are there so many guards today?”
“You have not heard? I thought you are here for that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Last night there was shouting and screaming from the barracks. Then many gunshots. For several hours all the soldiers were awake, angry, and afraid.”
Charles drew back in surprise. The Major was the kind of officer to frown upon indiscriminate use of ammunition. “Gunshots?”
Her expression was grave. “I have heard that they buried something.”