Little Wind shook his head.
Toad was stretched out in the back of the wagon. One arrow had pierced sideways all the way through his neck; two others were lodged in his chest. Toad’s eyes stared to the left; his mouth gaped open, as if he were still surprised to be dead.
Johnson had never seen a dead man before, and felt odd as he closed Toad’s eyes and turned away. He was not sad so much as he felt that he was not here in this desolate Western place, that he was not alone with some Indian scout, that he was not in mortal danger. His mind simply refused to accept it. He sought something to do, and said, “Well, we better bury him.”
“No!” Little Wind seemed horrified.
“Why not?”
“Sioux find him.”
“Not if we bury him, Little Wind.”
“Sioux find place, they dig him, take scalp, take fingers. Women come, take more.” He pointed to his crotch.
Johnson shivered. “Where are the Sioux now?”
Little Wind pointed to the plains above the cliffs.
“They leave, or they stay?”
“They stay. They come in morning. Maybe bring more warriors.”
Weariness overcame Johnson, and his leg throbbed. “We’ll leave as soon as it’s light.”
“No. Leave now.”
Johnson looked up. The clouds were heavier, and there was a faint blue ring circling the moon.
“It’ll be pitch-dark in a few minutes. There won’t even be starlight.”
“Must leave,” insisted Little Wind.
“It’s a miracle we’ve survived this far, but we can’t go on through the badlands in darkness.”
“Leave now,” Little Wind said.
“But we’ll die.”
“We die anyway. Leave now.”
They moved through utter blackness.
Johnson drove the wagon, with Little Wind walking a few paces ahead. Little Wind carried a long stick and a handful of rocks. When he could not see the terrain ahead, he threw rocks.
Sometimes, it took a long time for the rocks to land, and when the sound came back, it was distant and hollow and echoing. Then Little Wind would edge forward, tapping the ground with the stick like a blind man until he found the edge of the precipice. He would then point the wagon in a different direction.
Their progress was exhausting, and painfully slow. Johnson could not believe they were making more than a few hundred yards in an hour’s time; it seemed pointless. At dawn, the Indians would charge down the ravines, pick up their trail, and find them in a matter of minutes.
“What is the point?” he would demand when the throbbing in his leg became especially bad.
“Look at sky,” Little Wind would say.
“I see the sky. It’s black. The sky is black.”
Little Wind said nothing.
“What about the damned sky?” he demanded.
But Little Wind explained no further.
Shortly before dawn, it began to snow.
They had reached Bear Creek, at the edge of the badlands, and they paused to water the team.
“Snow good,” Little Wind said. “Unkpapa warriors see snow, know they follow us easy. They wait, stay warm by fire one, two hours in morning.”
“And meanwhile, we go like hell.”
Little Wind nodded. “Go like hell.”
From Bear Creek they headed west across open prairie, as fast as they could with the horses. The wagon jolted over the prairie; the pain in his leg was severe.
“Where are we going, Fort Benton?”
Little Wind shook his head. “All white men go to Fort Benton.”
“You mean the Sioux expect us to go there?”
He nodded.
“Then where are we going?”
“Sacred Mountains.”
“What sacred mountains?” Johnson asked, alarmed.
“Thunder Mountains of Great Spirit.”
“Why are we going there?”
Little Wind did not answer.
“How far away are these sacred mountains? What will we do when we get there?”
“Four days. You wait,” Little Wind said. “You find many white men.”
“But why are you going there?”
Johnson noticed now that Little Wind’s buckskin shirt was seeping red, staining with blood.
“Little Wind, are you hurt?”
In a high falsetto voice, Little Wind began to chant a song. He did not speak again.
They turned south, across the plains.
Little Wind died silently on the third night. Johnson awoke at dawn to find him lying stiffly by the smoldering campfire, his face covered with snow, his skin cold to the touch.
Using his rifle for support, Johnson dragged Little Wind’s body to the wagon, painfully hoisted it up into the bed, next to Toad’s, and drove on. He was feverish, hungry, and often delirious. He was sure he was lost, but he did not care. He began to remind himself to keep sitting up, even as his mind separated itself from his ordeal, creating distracting and confusing visions. At one point he believed that the wagon was approaching Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, and that he was searching unsuccessfully for his family’s mansion.
Early in the fourth day, he found a clear wagon track, freshly used. The track wound eastward, toward a range of low purple hills.
He went into the hills. As he continued on, he found places where timber had been cut and initials had been carved in trees—evidence of white men. It was very cold and the snow was falling heavily when he climbed a final ridge and saw a town in the gulley below—a single muddy street of square, utilitarian wooden buildings. He whipped up the horses and rode down to it.
And that was how, on August 31, 1876, William Johnson, nearly fainting from hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and blood loss, rode with a wagonload of bones, and the dead bodies of a white man and a Snake scout, into the town of Deadwood Gulch.
Deadwood
Deadwood presented a bleak aspect: a single street of unpainted wooden buildings surrounded by bare hills—the trees had been cut down to provide lumber for the town. Everything was covered in a thin crust of dirty snow. But despite the dreary appearance, the town had the charged excitement of a boomtown. The main street of Deadwood consisted of the usual mining-town variety—a tin shop, a carpenter shop, three dry goods stores, four stables, six grocery stores, a Chinatown with four Chinese laundries, and seventy-five saloons. And in the center of it all, boasting a wooden second-story balcony, stood the Grand Central Hotel.
Johnson staggered up the front steps, and the next thing he knew he was lying on a padded bench inside the hotel, attended to by the proprietor, an older man with thick glasses and thinning greased hair.
“Young fellow,” he joked, “I seen men in worse shape, but a percentage of them was dead.”
“Food?” Johnson croaked.
“We got plenty of food here. I’m going to help you into the dining room and we’ll get some vittles into you. You got any money?”
An hour later, he was feeling distinctly better and looked up from his plate. “That was good. What was it?”
The woman clearing the table said, “That’s buffalo tongue.”
The proprietor, who was named Sam Perkins, looked in. Considering the rough surroundings, he was extremely polite. “I’m thinking you need a room, young man.”