In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse Page 4

  Two smaller groups of warriors rode farther south. Nine were led by Crazy Horse. They were the decoy warriors: five were Lakota, two were Northern Cheyenne, and two were Arapaho. All were skilled riders and experienced fighters. Little Hawk, Crazy Horse’s younger brother, was the only teenager in the group. As a small boy he had been called Whirlwind.

  There was another small group of warriors that was also an important part of the plan. This band would attack the horse- and mule-drawn wagons that came out of the fort. Those wagons regularly drove west toward the forested slopes, where they loaded wood for the stoves in the fort. When the wood wagons had been attacked before, soldiers always came out of the fort to save them.

  Grandpa Nyles gestured, indicating the north-south ridge. It was very narrow in one spot, with steep slopes going down on both sides.

  “This is where the battle started and ended,” he said. “On this ridge. But we have to imagine the land covered with snow, though not completely. And remember, it was very, very cold.”

  Crazy Horse took his warriors to a thick stand of leafless bushes. Hidden there, they waited. The other group—the wagon attackers—kept going and found another place to hide. Then everyone waited to see if the wagons would emerge from the fort. Everything depended on that.

  Before noon the wagons did roll out of the fort, through a large double gate. They rumbled west on the road toward the forest. Two or three men rode in each, along with their axes and saws. They were going to gather wood.

  The wagons followed the road. Soon they were even with the long, low ridge to the right. From a thicket of shrubs, the wagon attackers burst from hiding. Making their horses gallop over the frozen ground, they rode toward the wood wagons. Gunfire erupted from the warriors’ rifles and pistols. More gunshots blasted as the men in the wagons shot back at the attacking warriors.

  The gunshots cracked loudly across the ice-covered landscape. A battle between the attacking warriors and the wagon men ensued. After several minutes, the fort’s west gate opened and soldiers hurried out. They moved in a column of twos, eighty in all. The first forty were mounted. The forty behind them were on foot. The column hurried toward the gunfire.

  The Long Knives had carried out such tactics before. Each soldier had a rifle and a pistol in a holster. All wore heavy blue overcoats, thick leather gloves, and fur caps.

  Crazy Horse and his warriors saw the soldiers emerge through the gate. An important step in the plan was happening. He held his men back, waiting for the soldiers to get farther away from the fort. If he attacked too soon, they might run back to the gates.

  The commander of the Long Knives was in a hurry, so the soldiers on foot had to run to keep up. Before long, the mounted soldiers were far ahead. From his hiding place Crazy Horse could see them. He waited until he could see most of the column.

  In spite of the intense cold, Crazy Horse tossed off his buffalo robe so he could handle his weapons more easily. His warriors did the same. He turned to them as he took out his pistol.

  “Follow me,” he called out. “We do this for our people!” Without looking back, he urged his horse out of the thicket. In the open he coaxed it into a gallop. The nine other warriors were close behind him, all of them with rifles in hand.

  Though it was warm, Jimmy shivered, imagining how cold it was for those warriors and soldiers.

  “Was it really cold, like you said?”

  “Sure was. Thirty degrees below zero, according to the thermometers in the fort. The decoys and Crazy Horse had been in that cold since leaving their villages before dawn. It had to be brutal for them.”

  “Does it ever get that cold at home?” Jimmy asked, trying to remember if he had ever been so cold.

  “A few times,” Grandpa Nyles replied. “Any temperature below zero is dangerous. You can get frostbite and lose fingers and toes. I saw a man who lost the tip of his nose. Worse yet, you can freeze to death.”

  “Man!” exclaimed Jimmy. “I hope that never happens to any of us. Did those warriors get frostbite?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. The stories don’t say, specifically. But they were all outside in that cold for the entire day. I’m sure some of them suffered frostbite.”

  “So what did Crazy Horse and his men do, exactly?”

  “Well, they distracted the soldiers, tricked them into turning and chasing them, the decoys. If that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be telling you this story.”

  Crazy Horse led his warriors into a meadow thinly covered with snow. The horses’ hooves sounded like two dried sticks hitting together. The blasts of gunfire were loud, too, in the cold air.

  The mounted Long Knives followed them, as Crazy Horse had hoped they would. Now came the most dangerous part of the plan. Crazy Horse and his decoy warriors had to act like the wounded grouse. They had to stay just ahead of the oncoming soldiers. To avoid being hit by a bullet, the warriors kept moving. They scattered over the meadow. Each warrior rode in a different direction, then turned and went in another direction. This made it very hard for the Long Knives to aim their guns. Moving targets are very difficult to hit. Amazingly, so far, none of the warriors had been wounded or killed. Now and then a warrior fired back.

  Between the boom of the guns, Crazy Horse could hear the shouting of the Long Knives. Their leaders were in front, yelling at their men. Crazy Horse assumed the leaders wanted their men to move faster.

  In the middle of the meadow, Crazy Horse did a very brave thing. He stopped his horse and dismounted. Then he lifted one of his horse’s front feet, curling it back at the hock. Yanking his knife from its sheath, he scraped snow and ice from the bottom of the hoof. The snow and ice could make the horse slip and fall, taking its rider with it. When he finished scraping that foot, he picked up the other front foot.

  Meanwhile, the Long Knives were still coming, and gunfire still blasted the frigid mountain air. The lead Long Knives saw that one of the warriors had dismounted and was attending to his horse. That made a very easy target. Much of the gunfire was aimed at Crazy Horse.

  Bullets whined through the air above Crazy Horse, like angry mosquitos. Those bullets were very high. The ones that hummed like yellow jackets were close, very close. Now and then, a bullet erupted in the snow and bounced off into the air. That kind of bullet made a very high-pitched whine, almost like a scream.

  Crazy Horse finished with his horse’s front hooves and next took up the back feet. The bullets were getting closer and closer. His tan-and-white mare did not flinch at the booming of rifles as her rider scraped the ice from her hooves.

  “Wow!” exclaimed Jimmy. “He really did that?”

  “He did,” affirmed his grandfather. “But he was smart, an experienced warrior. He watched the soldiers. As long as they were firing from moving horses, he knew they couldn’t aim very well. And the foot soldiers, who were still running, were too far back to be on the mark, especially since they were panting from the effort. So overall, the odds were in Crazy Horse’s favor. Still, one of them could have gotten off a lucky shot. But, as we know, that didn’t happen.”

  “Did the soldiers know it was Crazy Horse?”

  “No. They hadn’t heard of him. No one among the whites had . . . yet. All they could see were ten warriors, a small force against eighty well-armed, well-supplied soldiers. Their commander, Captain William Fetterman, was confident. He was sure his soldiers could defeat any number of warriors. By all accounts he hated Indians. He didn’t think they were as good as soldiers.”

  “Oh. So then what happened?”

  “Well, when the bullets were getting really, really close, Crazy Horse finally, calmly, mounted his horse and loped—not galloped—farther away. By then, the other nine decoy warriors were pretty much doing the same kinds of things.”

  “They were?” Jimmy’s eyes were big.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Grandpa Nyles. “They were doing everything they could to make the soldiers angry. To make them keep chasing them. Remember, the place where the other fi
ve hundred or so Lakota and Northern Cheyenne fighters were waiting was four miles away. Also, all of this was happening when it was thirty degrees below zero.”

  “They did, didn’t they, Grandpa? I mean, they took the soldiers to the ambush place, right?”

  “Yeah, they did. Over four miles of frozen and uneven ground, covered with snow and ice. When they came near the ambush place, the warriors went down a steep slope. It was hard for the horses and men not to slip and fall. It wasn’t easy for the foot soldiers, either. But they followed. They were angry—or too afraid not to follow their commander’s orders.

  “So on they came, following Crazy Horse and his warriors. They followed until they came to a long flat hill. It was called Lodge Trail Ridge.”

  The northern side of Lodge Trail Ridge sloped down to a wide gully. There it led to the Bozeman Trail, used by white gold seekers heading farther north. It was a familiar trail to the Long Knives.

  From the bottom, Crazy Horse looked up and saw the Long Knives. Several of them were at the edge of the crest, looking down. They finally seemed to be hesitating. Perhaps they had spotted some of the warriors waiting in ambush. Crazy Horse and his men fired their pistols at the soldiers. Return rifle fire splattered bullets in the snow near the warriors. After another moment, the soldier in the lead rode toward the decoys. Others immediately followed him. Soon there was a line of soldiers coming down.

  Crazy Horse signaled his men to fire again. Then they rode onto the Bozeman Trail and turned north onto a very narrow ridge. It ran north to south. On either side were very steep slopes and deep gullies. In those gullies on the eastern and western sides, the warriors were hiding. They had been waiting in the frigid cold since dawn, their weapons ready. They were eager for something to happen. They were waiting for Crazy Horse’s signal to spring the trap.

  For the first time since early morning, Crazy Horse felt confident that the ambush would happen. Now, on the trail, he and his men acted confused. To the soldiers they appeared to be uncertain what to do. Meanwhile, the column of soldiers and horses poured down the slippery slope. Crazy Horse let them get close, and then the decoys galloped away, as if trying to escape. The mother grouse was luring the coyote closer and closer.

  Crazy Horse stayed back and sent his men on along the trail. He waited as the soldiers came closer. Suddenly he felt the intense cold as the wind blew across the ridge. He heard guns firing, and bullets hummed by. Still he waited. When he could see their faces clearly, he turned and urged his horse into a lope.

  The last of the foot soldiers came off the ridge. Crazy Horse stopped again to watch them. He heard the thud of horses’ hooves on the frozen ground. His heart thumped in his chest. The plan was succeeding.

  He urged his horse on again. Catching up with his men, he raced northward with them. At the bottom of a slope, a creek curved across a low meadow. They rode for it, five men in one line, the other five in another line. They came to the frozen creek and crossed the ice carefully. Once on the other side the two lines of warriors separated. Then they rode toward each other, with one line crossing the other, like the fingers of two hands interlacing.

  Two warrior scouts, one on each side of the ridge, saw Crazy Horse and his warriors. That was the signal! Rising up from hiding, the two scouts each fired two rifle shots.

  All the soldiers were past the narrow ridge now, hurrying after the fleeing warriors.

  From behind leafless shrubs and out of narrow old creek beds, the waiting warriors emerged. Many had been hiding and waiting under buffalo- and elk-hide robes. All of them had been holding their weapons beneath the robes, to keep them warm.

  In a few heartbeats, the gullies were suddenly filled with warriors. Everyone was scrambling up the slopes. The warriors on the south side closest to Lodge Trail Ridge climbed upward. Their task was to get behind the soldiers.

  As soon as the warriors could see the soldiers on the ridge above them, they started shooting. Once the Lakota and Cheyenne guns started firing, and their arrows started flying, they did not stop.

  Crazy Horse and his decoys had carried out their plan. The soldiers were in the trap!

  The old man looked at his grandson. Jimmy was completely enthralled by the story.

  “Are you with me so far?” he asked.

  “Yeah, Grandpa. The battle was starting, right?”

  “Darn right! Our warriors scrambled up the slopes from both sides. The footing was treacherous, slippery. Their winter moccasins didn’t have lug soles, you know. And it was cold, really cold! But that didn’t matter to them.”

  Jimmy looked down the slope to the west and turned and looked down the slope to the east. He could see them, hundreds of Lakota and Cheyenne men. He could see the mist from their breaths as they panted. They scrambled up the slopes, some of them slipping and falling. All of them were carrying weapons.

  “What kind of weapons did the warriors have?”

  “Most of them had only bows and arrows. Some did have guns of some kind, a six-shot pistol or a rifle. But ammunition—lead balls and powder—was hard to get. So everyone had bows and arrows. It was said Crazy Horse had only four round balls for his rifle, so he used his pistol until he ran out of powder. Then he used his war club and bow.”

  Crazy Horse and his decoys turned their horses back to the north. They galloped across the meadow and up the slope. Already they could hear the continuous gunfire.

  Crazy Horse saw warriors scrambling up the western slope. The eastern slope was obscured from his view. On the ridge all the soldiers had turned back south. They were scrambling as well, trying to hurry. The soldiers on foot were running. Those on horses were whipping their horses, trying to make them go faster. They were all trying to get back to the safety of the fort. Many of the soldiers were falling, hit by bullets and arrows.

  As he rode closer to the fighting, Crazy Horse could hear the screams and shouts of the soldiers. Frightened horses were screaming, too. Then he saw something utterly amazing.

  Many of the soldiers were running, crowding together on the narrowest part of the ridge, and warriors on both slopes were firing arrows at them. Crazy Horse saw a narrow dark line, the same shape as a rainbow. For a moment he was puzzled by it, but then he knew what he was seeing. It was arrows. Thousands of arrows coming up from both slopes! Thousands of arrows flying at the soldiers! For a time they formed a black arc. Inside the arc soldiers were falling, hit by the arrows.

  Crazy Horse heard later that Lakota and Cheyenne fighters were hit by arrows as well. The arrows from the east slope arced and flew down the west ridge. Arrows from the west slope arced and flew down the east slope. Some of them hit warriors scrambling up the slopes.

  Crazy Horse and his fellow decoys joined the battle. Little Hawk stayed with his older brother. By then the soldiers were boxed in. Their initial frantic retreat southward had been blocked. They had nowhere to go. So the Long Knives tried to find cover from the enemy guns and arrows. Some of them hid behind rocks large and small. Some hid in any depression in the ground. Others huddled together in small groups and fired at their attackers. But many had already fallen, struck down by bullets and arrows.

  Crazy Horse and Little Hawk stayed to the west side of the battle ridge. They joined a group of warriors firing at a few Long Knives behind a large rock. Those soldiers were firing rapidly and had wounded several warriors.

  Crazy Horse talked with a Cheyenne warrior leader. They decided to flank the Long Knives behind the rock. One group of warriors, with Crazy Horse, would move left, or east. The other group, with the Cheyenne leader, would move right, or south.

  At a nod from Crazy Horse, the warriors moved out, keeping low to the ground. Often they ducked behind bristly soap plants for cover. Crazy Horse spread out his men, instructing them to stay low and to aim carefully. They could not afford to waste their powder and bullets.

  The flanking maneuver was successful, though some of the warriors were wounded. After a steady exchange of gunfire, only two Long Knives
were firing back. At a signal from Crazy Horse, the flanking warriors charged the remaining soldiers. Crazy Horse struck one down with his war club.

  That small victory was one of many that day. They were also battling the dangerous cold. Fingers and toes, not to mention noses and ears, were numb. Cold fingers dropped bullets and lead balls. They spilled powder. Still, the firing was steady, though from the Long Knives it was less and less.

  Jimmy looked around from the narrow ridge on which they stood. He could imagine them, the warriors and the soldiers. He could hear the loud blasts of gunfire and even the shouting and screams of pain.

  “How long did the fighting last?” he asked.

  Grandpa Nyles was looking around, too. “Oh, less than an hour, I think. Maybe even only about half an hour from when Crazy Horse and his men gave the signal.”

  “Is that a long time for a battle?”

  Jimmy saw a strange look come into his grandfather’s eyes. His grandfather was a Vietnam War veteran, a U.S. Marine infantry sergeant.

  “Sometimes ten seconds feels like ten hours,” Grandpa Nyles replied softly. “So I think for both the warriors and the soldiers who fought here, the battle probably seemed to last forever.”

  “The words on that monument said there were no survivors. That means that all the soldiers were killed, right?”

  Grandpa Nyles nodded. “Yeah, they were all killed. All eighty of them.”

  Jimmy stood silently for a while. “How did it end?”

  “Oh, the last small groups of Long Knives were overrun by the warriors. It got down to hand-to-hand fighting. Scary and gruesome, at the end.”

  “How many warriors were killed?”