Free Wolf Mountain Moon by Terry C. Johnston Page B

securing the box to the bank with those icy ropes.
    There were still fifteen on the river.
    â€œHo—for General Miles!”
    The cheer went up as the raft inched closer.
    â€œHurraw for our shipwrecked general!”
    Suddenly there were two dozen or more splashing into the current as Baldwin’s men inched toward the bank. Slowly they worked their way out toward the raft—water up to their knees, then waists, and finally icy chunks bobbing at their armpits as they lunged out to help.
    Not for a moment did the men onshore stop cheering as the first in the water reached out and grabbed hold of the blue, frozen hand offered by one of the soldiers on the raft. They clasped, then cheered themselves. In a heartbeat others were there, pulling and pushing on the raft as Baldwin’s men wearily unlocked their cramped, cold, icy fingers from the rope and sank back with a sigh, and some with tears in their eyes, as around them men danced in the shallow water and slapped their backs, laughing at the jokes many made of this biblical flood and how flimsy was this Noah’s ark.
    Baldwin dragged a hand beneath his nose as he jumped into the shallows and turned, sputtering his thanks to all those soldiers who together had brought that raft in to shore here late in the day after they had been imprisoned midriver since morning.
    â€œHuzzah!” Frank croaked with emotion above the noisy clamor.
    â€œHuzzah for our shipwrecked general!” came the cry from a nearby enlisted man.
    Baldwin tore his sealskin cap from his head and whirled it aloft. “Hazzah for the Fighting Fifth!”

Chapter 5
Waniyetu Wi
1876

    W hen the Bear Coat’s soldiers reached Fort Peck, the foxy old Sitting Bull instructed some of the agency Indians to give the army scouts some bad information.
    â€œTell them the Hunkpapa are fleeing west,” he ordered.
    They did just that, and the scouts believed them.
    But when the Yanktonais hurriedly returned to the Hunkpapa village, they carried news that cut Sitting Bull to the core.
    Big Leggings had turned against his mother’s people and agreed to help lead the Bear Coat on Sitting Bull’s trail.
    â€œThe half-breed says he has not turned against you, Uncle,” declared White Bull, his arm still aching from the bullet wound suffered at Cedar Creek. “Big Leggings tells the agency Indians that he is only helping the Bear Coat so he can talk you into surrendering.”
    â€œWhy should he want me to surrender?”
    White Bull scoffed, “Because Big Leggings thinks it is a good thing for our people.”
    He stared at the fire a long, long time, watching blue flames lick along the dry cottonwood limbs.
    Finally the Bull spoke. “Sometimes I am not always right.”
    â€œWhat is not right now?”
    â€œPeople,” he replied morosely. “I get fooled by people.”
    â€œThe
wasicu?”
    With a sad, mirthless grin, Sitting Bull shook his head. “No—I always expect the worst from a white man, always expect that he will not tell me the truth … and I have never been disappointed.”
    White Bull leaned closer, asking, “If not the
wasicu
—then who have you been fooled by? The agency Indians?”
    â€œNo. By the half-breeds. The ones who have their Lakota blood fighting their
wasicu
blood. Men like the Grabber.”
    Leaning back, White Bull nodded. “You saved his life that snowy day long ago.”
    â€œI thought I did right, even when he ran away from the Hunkpapa and made a home among the Crazy Horse people.”
    White Bull nodded. “His
wasicu
blood is evil: he brought the Three Stars down on Old Bear’s Shahiyela last winter—and he stays with Three Stars’s soldiers all through the summer.”
    â€œYes, I saw him with the soldiers at the Narrow Buttes,” * Sitting Bull admitted. “And now … another half-breed I trusted has turned his back on me.”
    White Bull