Dan Simmons - Black Hills

Crazy Horse is speaking.

— This is one of Long Hair’s scouts. I only wish we could have captured those four who were closest to Long Hair—Curly, White Man Runs Him, Goes Ahead, and Hairy Moccasin. This one’s name is of no importance.

The Crow grunts as if in recognition of the other scouts’ names. Paha Sapa sees that all of the man’s front teeth are missing.

Crazy Horse turns to Run Fearless.

— Ask him in Crow language if Long Hair knew anyone called…

He looks back at Paha Sapa.

— Did you hear a wasichu name in your ghost dreams? What was it?

Paha Sapa’s heart is pounding wildly.

— Li-BEE.

Run Fearless asks the question in Crow. Paha Sapa recognizes a few of the words—the languages of the Lakota and the Crow are not so dissimilar—and then Run Fearless repeats the question in different words.

The Crow slowly smiles, showing the dark gaps and broken stumps of teeth. He speaks a short sentence that leaves Run Fearless looking dissatisfied.

Crazy Horse is impatient.

— What did he say?

— He says—Why should I tell you anything about Long Hair? You will just continue to torture me and then kill me.

Crazy Horse removes his long knife from its beaded sheath.

— Tell him that if he answers truthfully and with everything he knows, he will die quickly, like a man. If he does not, he will have no manhood to die with.

The Crow’s smile disappears as he listens. He barks a sentence, and Run Fearless repeats…

— Li-BEE.

Seemingly despite his pain and position, the Crow smiles again. Through his swollen lips and gums, he mushes out several sentences.

Run Fearless stares at the man for a second before translating.

— He says that this word was heard a lot at the fort and on the march. This Li-BEE was Long Hair’s woman… his wife. Elizabeth Bacon Custer. Long Hair called her Li-Bee.

All the older men in the room, including the Crow, are silent for a long moment. They are looking at Paha Sapa in a new way.

Long Turd breaks the silence a second before renewed thunder rolls across the village. The noise is so deep and so loud that the tipi hides vibrate like the skin of a drum.

— Black Hills carries the ghost of Long Hair Custer.

Crazy Horse grunts and speaks softly to Run Fearless.

— Take the Crow out and kill him. One bullet. In the head. Tell him that his body will not be mutilated but left in a proper burial scaffold. He has earned a warrior’s death.

The Crow appears to have understood Crazy Horse’s words and is mumbling his Death Song to himself as Run Fearless leads him hobbling out.

Limps-a-Lot motions to speak.

— Surely you do not believe that man, Tasunke Witko. The Crow has every reason to lie to you. Why would a lesser scout know the name of Long Hair’s woman?

Crazy Horse merely grunts at this. From outside the tipi there comes the short, flat sound of a single pistol shot. The constant noise of the village—as common and reassuring and unheard as the inevitable buzz of grasshoppers in late summer here on the plains—silences itself for a moment. Crazy Horse continues to stare at Paha Sapa.

— The rest of you go outside now. I want to talk to the boy alone.

Paha Sapa sees Limps-a-Lot’s reluctance to leave and notes the look his grandfather gives him—he sees it but cannot understand what the holy man is trying to say with the look—but Long Turd, Angry Badger, Loud Voice Hawk, and Limps-a-Lot stand and file out, closing the tipi flap behind them.

Paha Sapa looks into Crazy Horse’s eyes and thinks— This man may kill me.

Crazy Horse slides closer and grabs Paha Sapa by the boy’s upper arm. The grip is ferocious.

— Can you see into a man’s future, Black Hills? Can you?

— I do not know , Tasunke Witko. I believe so. Sometimes…

Crazy Horse shakes the ten-year-old until Paha Sapa’s teeth can be heard rattling like seeds in a gourd.

— Can you, damn you? Do you see a man’s fate? Yes or no?

— I think sometimes , Tasunke Witko, that I can …

Crazy Horse shakes him again and then grabs Paha Sapa’s bare forearm so fiercely that the boy can feel the bones bending.

— Fuck “sometimes”! Tell me now one thing I must know. Will I die at the hands of the wasichu? Just yes or no, Paha Sapa, or I swear to Wakan Tanka and the Thunder Beings whom I serve that I will kill you this very day. Will I die at the hands of a Wasicun, of the wasichu? Yes or no?

Crazy Horse pulls Paha Sapa’s open hands up toward the warrior’s scarred, heavily muscled chest and sets the palms of those small hands hard and flat against him.

Paha Sapa shakes as if lightning has struck him. The air inside the tipi suddenly stinks of ozone. The boy’s eyes roll back under his fluttering eyelids, and he tries weakly to pull away from the man, but Crazy Horse’s grip is too strong. From a great distance Paha Sapa hears the roll of actual thunder and the equally low growl of Crazy Horse’s demanding voice….

— Will I die at the hands of the wasichu? Will the white man kill me? Yes or no!

IT IS LIKE THE OTHER VISIONS Paha Sapa has had—flashes of images, explosions of sounds, a strange lack of color, lack of context, lack of control, lack of understanding of what is happening when or where—but this black-and-white image is stronger, faster, and more terrifying.

Paha Sapa tastes Crazy Horse’s fear and desperation. He recognizes faces and remembers names through Crazy Horse’s careering, terrified, defiant, leaping thoughts.

They are in some sort of wasichu compound—a fort, a camp, an agency—but Paha Sapa has never been in such a place and does not recognize it, nor do Crazy Horse’s increasingly desperate thoughts reveal the location. The heat is that of summer or very early autumn, but Paha Sapa cannot guess the year. He sees through Crazy Horse’s eyes, but he also is above the shoving crowds, looking down on Crazy Horse and the others as if he, Paha Sapa, were staring through the eyes of a soaring raven or sparrow, so he can see that Crazy Horse looks much the same age as he does at this very instant, as he continues shaking Paha Sapa and pressing Paha Sapa’s suddenly freezing-cold palms flat and hard against the warrior’s chest and…

—Am I a prisoner? That is Little Bordeaux Creek, fifteen miles out, where the scouts joined the rumbling, rocking ambulance; there is stock grazing at Chadron Creek. Lakota on horseback. Now they are in the camp, amid the log buildings, two hundred, three hundred Indians, Lakota but also Brul´e and others: Big Road, Iron Hawk, Turning Bear, the Minneconjou Wooden Knife, a Wasicun —the sounds Cap-tain Ken-ning-ton thud into Paha Sapa’s brain like tomahawk strikes—and more Brul´es: Swift Bear, Black Crow, Crow Dog, Standing Bear—Bordeaux, the interpreter Billy Garnett—and Touch the Clouds and his son there with Fast Thunder—Crazy Horse is being led, men are shouting, Crazy Horse is being pulled into one of the wasichu fort structures—where blue-shirted soldiers stand guard….

—What kind of place is this?

Is it Crazy Horse shouting? Paha Sapa cannot tell. He whirls above the masses of heads; black braided hair; wide-brimmed, sweat-stained hats; feathers; and now he is down behind Crazy Horse’s eyes again as Little Big Man and Cap-tain Ken-ning-ton keep pulling Crazy Horse forward, toward and into the little house.