Warren Murphy: An Old Fashioned War

"I guarantee that everything will be taken care of," said the President.

"And if it isn't?"

"Ah, but it always is," said the President.

"Perhaps I can give some assistance."

"They don't need help. It's all taken care of."

"Very good," General Buel said, and hung up laughing. He knew the last crew who had tried to enter the tight Indian bivouac ended up tied to a tree with their throats cut. He would give the President until noon and then open fire. A battle at high noon, he thought.

It would be like an inferno in these Dakota hills. The sun would be directly overhead, and fighting men always consumed more water anyhow. He would drive them away from the riverbank. He would get them into a small valley without water, then let them suffer under the sun as his great-grandfather must have done in these very hills, many years ago.

Chapter 3

It was a long way from Oklahoma to the Dakotas, but as the stranger said:

"It's always a long way into courage."

He always made so much sense just when someone was ready to call the whole thing off. After all, how could a small band of Indians beat the United States government today, when the odds were even worse than a hundred years ago? But he pointed out that the odds were never good at the beginning of a victory, only at the end.

An engineering student from a college in Iowa pointed out this was absolute nonsense. He was a Plains Indian who had felt overwhelmed by his studies and just enlisted in the cause to get away. He was willing to fight alongside his brothers, but he wasn't going to believe nonsense.

"Look around you. That's the real U.S. Army out there. They got tanks miles deep, and behind them infantry, and behind them artillery. We're not trapping them like a hundred years ago. They're trapping us."

"We beat 'em before," said one brave.

"Custer was outnumbered. We had the numbers then. Now they got 'em."

And some of the young men, who had been thinking there would be only victories and glory, suddenly had second thoughts.

"I thought they always outnumbered us, but we beat 'em because we were braver, cleaner, closer to the earth. But finally their numbers prevailed."

"We outnumbered them at the Little Big Horn. Custer was the one showing foolhardy bravery. That's why he died and we didn't."

The revelation threatened to send panic through the new Indian army, but as always the stranger seemed to be able to turn things around.

He pointed out that the Israelis were almost always outnumbered, but they won regularly. The engineering student commented that they were better trained. How much training did this new army have?

"It has the training of its fathers. It has the rightness of its cause. Others may want to spend time playing with guns, but the Indian nation has wasted too much time already. You wouldn't be living in reservations today if you hadn't waited too long. What do you have to lose? The white man's pickup trucks? The white man's whiskey, which makes you crazy? You have nothing to lose but your shame."

The stranger in the suit was brilliant, better even than back in Oklahoma, Little Elk and Running Deere had to admit. He could take anyone and make him want to run straight into the guns.

They had decided by now that the stranger had to be an Indian spirit come back to help them in their struggle. After all, he did appear in the sacred fire, and the sacred fire went out when he arrived. He did come with the chanting of the medicine man. He did seem to have some very special powers. He never tired, and he knew who everyone was.

The question was, which Indian spirit? And the answer was to ask the medicine man, if they could find him. But somehow the stranger found out about their concerns and got them aside just before the big battle with the federal troops, even as the sun was breaking over the Dakota plains, even as the tanks over the hills made the ground tremble and half-tracks created dust storms that looked like the end of the world.

"Look," he said, his face almost shining with joy. "What are you guys worried about? Do you care who I am? Would it help to know who I am? I've got my needs and loves just like the rest of you. I'm a lot like all of you. Maybe with you guys I've found a place I haven't had for a long time. Whatever it is, know this, above all: I am with you in your war."

"Do you have a name?" asked Little Elk. He had a clipboard in his hand. He was going to let the first waves of tanks go through into the center, and then break out along a U.S. highway and try to circle back on the rear of the federal columns. The stranger had thought it was a brilliant plan. Little Elk was discovering, as the stranger predicted, that he was, after all, a military genius. If so many people didn't get killed in wars, he would like to fight one a week.

"What name would you like?"

"You have more than one?" asked Running Deere.

"Sure, but lately I haven't had one. I think you great guys ought to have your own name for me. Your special name."

"We asked your name. This isn't playtime," snapped Little Elk. He had became a brusque, efficient leader in the last few weeks, and he didn't like to waste time anymore. Losing time was like losing life itself, especially when a major battle was about to begin.

"Arieson," said the stranger. "Call me Mr. Arieson. And I'm an old friend of the Ojupa."

"Well, we certainly need you now," said Little Elk, going back to his command post, back to his new platoon leaders, back to all the braves who looked to him now that their hour of destiny was near. He loved it.

Chiun was worse than ever. It was more than the complaining. Remo had never seen him attack furniture and machines before. While packing, he broke the washer-dryer that came with the villa in Flora del Mar. He said he was not a washerwoman. He shredded the air conditioner. He sent the television flying five times, until he finally ended up throwing the pieces into the steamy canal outside their stucco abode.

It took fifteen golf carts to carry Chiun's steamer trunks to the airport limousine. The resort's registration desk had lost their account and thought they could make Chiun wait.

He just walked out. They made the mistake of sending a manager after him. Chiun kept the manager.

"You can't keep someone. It's called slavery," said Remo. "I'll carry the trunks."

"I didn't give you Sinanju so you could be a slave," said Chiun.

"You've got to give back the manager. He's not yours. It's stealing."

"They sent him. He's mine."

"What's wrong?"

"Have you read the histories of Sinanju? Have you examined the stars? Don't you know what's wrong?"

"No," said Remo.

"Then read our histories. At least you didn't let them get stolen."

And then, in South Dakota, at the airport, Chiun seemed to go too far, even for Chiun. He refused to leave the parking lot, refused to let any cars move by him, and looked around, ready to take on the world. "There. Even here in this backward part of America they desecrate your parking lots with those signs. You are a decrepit culture. And you're going to get worse."

Chum's long fingernail pointed down to a painting of a wheelchair in the parking lot. The sign showed the space was reserved for the handicapped.

"What's wrong with that?" asked Remo. Even as they were landing, Remo had seen the army forces massing for miles down the roads leading to the Little Big Horn. It was a war he intended to stop. And if he wanted to succeed he didn't have much time to waste in parking lots.

"These are the best spots. They are closest to everything. And they are reserved for the wrong people. They should be given to your best people, your prize athletes, perhaps even to your assassins if your culture had advanced far enough to start producing them."