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Chapter One
She spoke and loosened from her
bosom the embroidered girdle of
many colors into which her
allurement was fashioned.
—Homer, The Iliad
June 1876
The Battle of the Little Big Horn was now over.
The battlefield was eerily quiet. Bodies lay everywhere.
General George Armstrong Custer lay amid those who had battled alongside him . . . red-skinned and white alike.
Among them lay Night Horse, one of Custer’s head scouts. He was pretending to be dead as the victors moved through the bloody field, taking valuables from some whites, scalping others.
Night Horse, who had chosen the road of the white man instead of traveling that of his Crow brothers, scarcely breathed as his people prepared many travois upon which to carry their fallen warriors back to their families for mourning and burial rites.
Night Horse hoped no one would realize that he was still alive. His life would be gone in an instant if he was spotted, for he was hated now by both the red man and the white eyes. The Crow, who resented his companionship with the white pony soldiers, would relish the pleasure of seeing him dead.
The white pony soldiers might also wish to see him dead. They might feel that Night Horse had betrayed the cavalry and was somehow responsible for the deadly attack.
It would be especially bad for Night Horse now, for among the dead was the revered leader General George Armstrong Custer who was called Yellow Hair by some red men and Long Hair by others.
To the white eyes, Yellow Hair was a hero. To the Indians, he was a cowardly murderer who killed not only warriors, but also their innocent women and children.
With someone else’s blood spattered all over his buckskin clothes, yet no mortal wounds on himself, Night Horse breathlessly waited for that moment when he could leave this place of death.
And then finally he heard the horses’ hoofbeats as they were guided from the battlefield, dragging behind them the travois piled with fallen warriors.
Night Horse still lay quiet on his belly until the hoofbeats faded away and he knew that it was finally safe to rise. Slowly he crept up from the ground. He flinched with alarm and cowered as a brown and white spotted eagle descended from the sky, talons out, its hooked beak open, then swept as quickly away.
Night Horse stood and stared at the death all around him. He had known to expect the worst, but nothing could have prepared him for what he was seeing, or just how horrifying it would be to see the outcome of the battle.
Over and over again he vomited until nothing was left inside him.
Wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt, dashing away the tears spilling from his eyes, Night Horse at first stumbled along the bloody ground, wincing when he had to step over one body and then another.
Then he broke into a mad run.
Even when he reached the fresh green grass waving gently in the breeze, he ran. He continued until his legs would hardly carry him any farther, until he found himself safely hidden in a blue-black pine forest of spruce, where sunlight scarcely penetrated the dark tangle of interwoven branches and overgrown needles.
