Dan Simmons - Black Hills

Paha Sapa now understands the word infantry , which Curly has used several times, not even attempting to put it into the Lakota language. Most of Crook’s men are foot soldiers. No wonder, he thinks, they were so willing to eat horses.

Eventually the grumbling and idle chatter and cursing and farting die down until there is only the sound of the heavy rain on two thousand and more slickers, the nicker of horses spooked by the wasichus’ stink of fear, and then the snoring. Curly and his three Crow scouts fall asleep quickly, lying in the mud with their heads on wads of wet wool—their horses still saddled and held by one of the wasichu troopers ordered to hold the reins through the darkness and downpour. But although Paha Sapa is more tired than he’s ever been in his life, he does not even try to sleep.

He has to think.

Curly continued babbling at him right up to the second he started snoring loudly. Paha Sapa’s head aches almost as much from the new information he’s received in the past ten hours as from the rifle stock blow to his skull.

It seems that there are different tribes of wasichus. For some reason, young Paha Sapa, in his eleven summers, has never considered such a thing, and none of the wise men in his life, including Limps-a-Lot, has ever mentioned it. But, through Curly’s effeminate gabbling, Paha Sapa knows it now and he thinks about this as he looks around on the hilltop at the hundreds upon hundreds of lumpish figures huddled under tarps and soaked blankets in the continuing rain.

Different tribes and different languages, according to Curly, although the tribe that speaks what Paha Sapa hears as “the In Glass language” seem to be in control, the way Sitting Bull and the Lakota were over the Cheyenne at the Greasy Grass. But there are also Fat Takers here in blue coats who come from tribes named (and who speak and think in) Ire Itch, Jure Man, Dutch, Pole Acky, Sweee ’D, Eye Talyun, and even a tribe called Niggers.

Paha Sapa saw these men from the Niggers tribe when the detachment joined up with General Crook’s main body this evening, and when he saw the soldiers with brown and even black skin, with their nappy hair, he was reminded of the black- Wasicun scout named Teat whom Sitting Bull called friend. And he remembers that despite Sitting Bull’s claim of protection for the wounded and slowly dying Teat at the Greasy Grass, back in the Moon of Ripening Cherries only two moons ago, the Hunkpapa woman called Eagle Robe shot and killed the black white man.

But Teat was respected in Lakota villages and, Paha Sapa presumes, as a scout for Long Hair and the Fat Takers. This makes it doubly hard to understand why he just saw some of the other wasichu cavalry and walking soldiers here berating and insulting the few buffalo soldiers he saw here from the tribe of Nigger. Certainly anyone with such black skin and hair that so very much resembles the kinky, tightly curled hair of the sacred tatanka buffalo bull itself must be considered wakan , holy, even by these Fat Taker savages. Do they not see the strange as part of Mystery and therefore sacred? Are the Fat Takers so ignorant of the universe that they don’t see blackness itself— sapa —as a harbinger of holiness, as in the paha sapa to their south as they huddle here in the night rain?

Paha Sapa’s head hurts.

But he does not allow sleep to come. Rather, he lets down some of the barriers he’s kept up for two weeks now in his attempt to keep the flood wash of Tashunke-Witke’s life memories separate from his own few years of memories.

Crazy Horse’s violent thoughts, emotions, and memories threatened to overwhelm the boy and threaten to do so now. But he needs to look there. And something about the injury to his head and arm—or perhaps something left over from the terrible Vision he has had of the wasichu Stone Heads and Giants emerging from the Black Hills—has made it easier for him to sort through the mass and mess and morass of Tashunke-Witke’s life thoughts, back to his youngest years, forward less than a year now, to five September, the Moon of the Brown Leaves, next year, when Crazy Horse will be killed while trying to surrender to this same General Crook at the Red Cloud Agency.

Somehow, Paha Sapa thinks, somewhere in this flood wash of dark thoughts and hatred and triumphs that made up the confused thoughts and future-memories of Crazy Horse at the time the war chief touched him, somewhere there is an answer to Paha Sapa’s current dilemma.

Allowing Crazy Horse’s memories to wash over him like this, even as the pounding rain does in the night, is painful. Paha Sapa leans against the wagon wheel he propped himself up against and vomits up the little bit of hardtack that Curly gave him. Now his belly is so empty, Paha Sapa thinks, that he can feel his belly button scraping against his spine.

First there are all the faces and names to glance at and thrust aside, the way a man elbows his way through a crowd: other akicita leaders like Little Big Man and Kicking Bear and He Dog. His father, called Worm now—Paha Sapa thinks of Limps-a-Lot’s solid horse, dead from the Crows’ arrows and bullets, another failure of his—and leaders Crazy Horse knew, only some of whom the boy knows, such as Man Afraid of His Horse and Red Cloud himself and Red Dog and Lone Bear and High Backbone.

That last name triggers other names associated with loss in Crazy Horse’s jumbled memory—Rattle Blanket Woman and Lone Bear and Young Little Hawk and, above all others, They Are Afraid of Her.

Paha Sapa weeps silently, his tears mixing with and being swept away by the rain, but the weeping is not for his own loss, not for the terrible Vision or for the certain death of Three Buffalo Woman and Raven and Loud Voice Hawk and Angry Badger and the other corpses flood wash of Tashunke-Witke’s life memories separate from his own few years of memories.

Crazy Horse’s violent thoughts, emotions, and memories threatened to overwhelm the boy and threaten to do so now. But he needs to look there. And something about the injury to his head and arm—or perhaps something left over from the terrible Vision he has had of the wasichu Stone Heads and Giants emerging from the Black Hills—has made it easier for him to sort through the mass and mess and morass of Tashunke-Witke’s life thoughts, back to his youngest years, forward less than a year now, to five September, the Moon of the Brown Leaves, next year, when Crazy Horse will be killed while trying to surrender to this same General Crook at the Red Cloud Agency.

Somehow, Paha Sapa thinks, somewhere in this flood wash of dark thoughts and hatred and triumphs that made up the confused thoughts and future-memories of Crazy Horse at the time the war chief touched him, somewhere there is an answer to Paha Sapa’s current dilemma.

Allowing Crazy Horse’s memories to wash over him like this, even as the pounding rain does in the night, is painful. Paha Sapa leans against the wagon wheel he propped himself up against and vomits up the little bit of hardtack that Curly gave him. Now his belly is so empty, Paha Sapa thinks, that he can feel his belly button scraping against his spine.

First there are all the faces and names to glance at and thrust aside, the way a man elbows his way through a crowd: other akicita leaders like Little Big Man and Kicking Bear and He Dog. His father, called Worm now—Paha Sapa thinks of Limps-a-Lot’s solid horse, dead from the Crows’ arrows and bullets, another failure of his—and leaders Crazy Horse knew, only some of whom the boy knows, such as Man Afraid of His Horse and Red Cloud himself and Red Dog and Lone Bear and High Backbone.