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  MAN ON TWO PONIES

  MAN ON TWO PONIES

  DON WORCESTER

  M. EVANS

  Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

  Published by M. Evans

  An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield

  4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

  www.rowman.com

  10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom

  Distributed by National Book Network

  Copyright © 1992 by Don Worcester

  First paperback edition 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  The hardback edition of this book was previously cataloged by the Library of Congress as follows:

  Worcester, Donald Emmet, 1915–

  Man on two ponies / Don Worcester.

  p. cm.—(An Evans novel of the West)

  I. Title. II. Series.

  PS3573.0688M3 199I 91-41370

  813’.54—dc20

  ISBN: 978-I-59077-398-7 (pbk.: alk. paper)

  ISBN: 978-I-59077-399-4 (electronic)

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Roger Russell (Nas Naga), who gave me the title.

  A Word About Sources

  The books that were most helpful in keeping the story historically accurate are: George H. Hyde, A Sioux Chronicle (University of Oklahoma Press, 1956), Robert W. Mardock, The Reformers and the American Indians (University of Missouri Press, 1975), James Mooney, The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890 (14th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1896), Luther Standing Bear, My People the Sioux (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1925), Rex Allen Smith, Moon of Popping Trees (Reader’s Digest Press, 1975), Robert M. Utley, The Last Days of the Sioux Nation (Yale University Press, 1963), and Stanley Vestal, Sitting Bull: Champion of the Sioux (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1932).

  Contents

  A Word About Sources

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  Wide-eyed, his heart pounding, ten-year-old Running Elk pressed his face against the cold window—the train was rushing headlong at the full moon, which was sitting on the track ahead. He held his breath, but gasped when the train whistle screamed. The moon defied the whistle and seemed to be growing larger—the train couldn’t miss it. Trembling, Running Elk glanced quickly at the other Brulé and Oglala boys—all were tensely staring out the windows as if paralyzed by fright. Then Spotted Tail’s eighteen-year-old son Stays-at-Home, who had a scar across the bridge of his nose that turned white when he was angry, sang a brave song to mask his fear. “Enemies tremble at my name,” he began, and other boys joined in, but their voices weren’t convincing. They know we’ll hit the moon and be killed. Quivering in anticipation, Running Elk sat back, pulled his blanket around him, and closed his eyes—he didn’t want to watch.

  His thoughts flew back, as they often did, to that day in the Moon of Thunderstorms three summers ago when his father Pawnee Killer had ridden away. Tall, muscular, with the dignity of a fearless warrior, Pawnee Killer had placed his hands on Running Elk’s shoulders, his bear claw necklace clicking softly. He wore moccasins and his powerful legs were encased in fringed leggings of elk skin. On his breast were two scars made by tearing through his own flesh to free himself from the Sun Dance pole. To the Brulés, Oglalas, and other Tetons, or Prairie Sioux, Sun Dance scars were a mark of honor, signifying that Pawnee Killer was among the bravest of the brave.

  “My son,” he said softly, “We may not meet again. Bluecoat soldiers are marching toward our last hunting ground. We must fight them or become like women.” He paused, while Running Elk looked up at him, feeling he would burst with love and admiration.

  “Take me with you. I can shoot a rifle.”

  “No, my son. You have seen only seven summers. Your time will come. Be brave always. Remember that it is better to die fighting your enemies than to run and live to be old and feeble.”

  Across the tipi from them his mother, Scarlet Robe, sat in buckskin blouse and skirt, her oval face bent over the moccasin she was sewing. Her hands stopped moving as she listened, but she didn’t turn her head. Leaving Running Elk, Pawnee Killer leaned over her tenderly. “I go,” he said, his voice husky.

  Scarlet Robe looked up longingly at his face, which had lost its usual stem expression. “Come back to us safely, my man.”

  As he followed his father from the tipi to watch the warriors ride away on their spirited war ponies, Running Elk glanced back at his mother. She was bent over the moccasin again, but he saw a tear roll down each cheek. Buffalo robe over his shoulder, and holding his Winchester in his right hand, Pawnee Killer headed north with the others. I want to be a warrior like my father. Nothing else matters.

  Remembering his father’s admonition to be brave always, Running Elk forced the moon from his thoughts. Exhausted by the tiresome train ride from Dakota Territory to Pennsylvania, he fell asleep. He didn’t awaken until he felt a hand on his shoulder shaking him. Short, stocky round-faced Whistler, his fourteen-year-old friend, leaned over him, nodding toward the window.

  “Look back,” he said.

  Rubbing his tired eyes, Running Elk fearfully peered out the window—the moon was behind them! They’d passed the edge of the earth where the moon rose and hadn’t fallen off! What could that mean? He stared at the moon, unbelieving.

  Long Chin, or Charles Tackett, a solemn mixed blood of medium height and scraggly beard who was married to Brulé chief Spotted Tail’s daughter Red Road, entered the car. He’d been hired as interpreter for the boys who were to attend the new Indian school at the former cavalry post of Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania. Running Elk knew that his father never trusted any interpreter hired by the government, but Long Chin seldom smiled, so maybe he didn’t lie.

  “We turned west at Harrisburg,” Long Chin told the boys in Lakota, the language of the Teton tribes. “That’s why the moon is behind us. In the morning we’ll be at Carlisle.”

  I don’t want to be at Carlisle. I want to be back at Rosebud. Running Elk thought of that day not many suns ago when he and others had been running races among the tipis near Rosebud Agency. A twelve-year-old boy named Winter, whose forehead was pockmarked and who had an undying curiosity about the whites, joined them.

  “There’s a big crowd at the agency,” he told them. “Let’s go see what’s going on.” He was off on the run, breechcloth sailing behind him.

  They trotted after him to the log buildings and saw many Brulé men and women standing outside the council room. The boys boldly walked up to the windows, shielded their eyes with both hands, and pressed their faces against the glass. Seated at a table were two Wasicuns—white men—one a tall anny officer with a big nose. With them was a white woman who sm
iled at the boys and held out sticks of candy with one hand, motioning for them to come in with the other. The boys squealed and ran off to talk about it.

  “I wonder why those Wasicuns are here,” Running Elk said. “They never bring good news.”

  “I don’t care why they’re here,” Plenty Kill replied. “I want some of that candy.” His father, the mixed blood Standing Bear, had a little store at the agency. Plenty Kill, a long-faced, bright-eyed boy of twelve, who was always among the first in any adventure, led the way. Running Elk brought up the rear. I’ll probably be sorry if I talk to the Wasicuns, but I’d like some candy. Long Chin met them at the door of the council room.

  “Come in boys,” he said in Lakota. “I want to show you something.” Thinking he meant the candy, they trooped in, but what he showed them were two short-haired, solemn-faced Indian boys dressed like whites. Long Chin nodded toward the tall officer, who forced a smile. There were some men Running Elk instinctively liked at first sight. Captain Richard Henry Pratt was not one of them.

  “Captain Pratt asked me to tell you that if you go east to his new school you can learn to talk like whites and wear clothes like these Santee boys,” Long Chin continued. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Running Elk looked for the candy, but it had disappeared. Just like the Wasicuns.

  The boys left the room to talk about it. “I’m going to ask my father to let me go,” Plenty Kill said. “I know he’ll want me to learn to talk like the Wasicuns.”

  “Mine won’t,” Running Elk said. “He hates all Wasicuns. I’m sure my mother won’t want me to go either. Or my grandfather.” Since Pawnee Killer had ridden away three years earlier and had remained in Canada with Sitting Bull after defeating Long Hair Custer on the Greasy Grass, Running Elk and Scarlet Robe had lived with her father, Two Buck Elk, and his wife.

  No Brulé parents were willing to send their children far away to learn to talk like the Wasicuns—only the squawmen and mixed bloods were. Captain Pratt then appealed to Spotted Tail. A large, handsome man, a famous warrior, and head chief of the Brutes, he was known as Speak-with-the-Woman because of his attachment to the opposite sex. He had four wives and was “speaking with,” or courting, another. Ever since he had been held at Fort Leavenworth for two years, Spotted Tail had refused to fight the whites. “We must get along with them,” he often said. “They are more numerous than the leaves on all the trees. If we fight them we will be destroyed.” But Spotted Tail, who was able to manipulate agents, didn’t allow them to rush his people into becoming made-over whites.

  How it happened Running Elk didn’t know, but when Captain Pratt hired Long Chin as interpreter for the boys, Spotted Tail agreed to send four of his sons and a granddaughter to the new Carlisle Indian School. “If they learn to read and write and talk like the whites we won’t have to rely on government interpreters,” he explained. “They lie to us and change our words.”

  Other chiefs and headmen naturally followed Spotted Tail’s lead, among them the wrinkled old warrior Two Buck Elk, whose left ear had been disfigured by an enemy arrow. “Grandson,” he said, touching the ear as he spoke, “I want you to go with the others. Be brave and learn to talk like the Wasicuns.”

  Dismayed, Running Elk went to his mother. “I don’t want to go. I want to find my father.”

  Since Pawnee Killer had failed to return Scarlet Robe seldom smiled, and her eyes seemed perpetually sorrowful. She looked at him sadly. “I don’t want you to go either, my son, but if your grandfather says you must, we have no choice. I can’t stop it; I’m only a woman.”

  That night Running Elk tied his pony to a stake near the tipi so he wouldn’t’ have to hunt for it. Before dawn he filled a small buckskin bag with dried meat, hoping it would last until he found other Brulés or Oglalas. Taking his bow and arrows, with his blanket over his shoulder, he mounted his pony and rode north. Pawnee Killer was with Sitting Bull’s people in Grandmother’s Land, and it might take many suns to find him. But it was better to go hungry searching for his father than to be sent far away to the east.

  Because his pony had been tied all night, he stopped to let it graze for a time along a stream. He watched it hungrily cropping the tall grass, feeling elated that in a few moons he’d be with his father again. He heard hoofbeats and looked up to see two riders approaching at a trot. In blue jackets and black hats, at a distance they looked like soldiers. As they approached he felt suddenly weak—they were Indian police. He eyed their unsmiling faces with mounting fear. The police worked for the agent, so all fullbloods resented them. Both had pistols strapped to their waists and Win chesters in their scabbards. They stopped their ponies and looked down at Running Elk, hands on the pommels of their saddles, their faces expressionless.

  “You come with us,” one said.

  “I can’t. I’m looking for my father.”

  “Agent says you go to school. You go.”

  Back at the agency thirty-four boys and girls, including Running Elk, were loaded in wagons along with their families for the journey to Black Pole on the Missouri. The younger children looked frightened; the older girls appeared resigned. The glum expressions on the faces of the older boys made it clear to Running Elk that they would escape if possible. There was little talking as the wagons rolled along over the hills and prairies. The afternoon of the third day they reached Black Pole, where the families huddled together in silence. Oglala children and their parents soon arrived from Pine Ridge Agency. Sick at heart and dreading what was coming, Running Elk kept his eyes on his moccasins, glancing occasionally at uprooted trees floating down the Missouri.

  The sun was near the horizon when Whistler shouted, “It’s coming! It’s coming!” Running Elk looked at the approaching river-boat, with smoke pouring from its stack, then at his mother, who gasped and placed a hand over her quivering lips. He looked wildly around for some place to hide.

  “Remember what your father said,” Scarlet Robe whispered. “Be brave, my son.” Her voice trembled.

  The rivetboat docked and men lowered the gangway. Long Chin stepped forward. “Come with me, boys,” he said.

  Heart pounding, Running Elk followed him along with the others, while Red Road and their interpreter brought the girls. Once on deck they spread out along the rail, all anxiously looking at their families. As the sun dropped below the horizon and the last rays turned the clouds red, the mothers began wailing loudly. The girls and small boys cried piteously for their mothers. The boatmen ignored the clamor and pulled in the gangway; the crying on board and ashore grew louder. When a shrill whistle blew overhead all flinched and looked up at it in fear; then the paddlewheel at the stem of the rivetboat started turning. Terrified, Running Elk looked at his mother, who stood forlornly on shore weeping as she faded from sight. Running Elk gripped the rail with both hands, leaning forward and straining his eyes.

  The boys rolled up in the blankets they wore and tried to sleep on the floor of a big room, but the motion and noise of the paddle-wheel kept them awake. In the morning the rivetboat docked and they sleepily followed Long Chin ashore. He led them up some steps into a little Wasicun house with two rows of seats covered with fuzzy red cloth and a window by every seat. The girls went into another little house just like it, and there were many more in a long row, all of them resting on strips of steel that stretched as far as Running Elk could see. He was wondering where the Wasicuns slept, when with a sudden jerk the houses all began to move. He leaped to his feet, ready to run to the door.

  “Maza Canku!” Stays-at-Home exclaimed. “Iron Road.” Running Elk had heard of the Wasicuns’ Iron Road, but he had never seen it. The boys sitting by the windows ducked back every time a big pole flashed by as the train picked up speed. Soon it was racing along faster than the swiftest Brulé buffalo ponies. Running Elk’s skin tingled at the thought of hurtling through space like an arrow from a bow.

  They had traveled on day after day, seeing town after town, eating the strange foods given them, and trying to sleep in th
eir seats. Running Elk was stiff and his muscles ached. When the train stopped in the morning after they’d seen the full moon, Long Chin entered the car. “This is Carlisle,” he told them. “Everybody off.” My father is farther away than ever. How will/ever see him again?

  Wearily they trudged the two miles from the railroad to Carlisle Barracks, a number of two-story brick buildings surrounded by a high brick wall with an iron gate. The untrampled grass around the buildings made it clear they hadn’t been lived in for years, and there was an air of lifelessness about them that reminded Running Elk of abandoned cabins he’d seen. Ghost houses! He felt gooseflesh on his arms as he stared at them.

  Long Chin led the boys into one of the silent buildings, while the girls followed Red Road and their interpreter into another. Tired and sleepy, the boys ran into the building, eager to lie down on beds like the Wasicuns used. They ran from room to room, upstairs and down, but all were empty. Long Chin left them for a time, then returned and herded them into a big room on the first floor that had a cast-iron stove in the center. Running Elk glanced around the empty room, then at Long Chin.

  “This is where you’ll sleep,” he told them. “I’ve just learned that none of the supplies Captain Pratt ordered have arrived, not even the food.” Murmurs of protest arose.

  “We’re hungry,” the pockmarked Winter said.

  Long Chin held out his hands, palms up, and shrugged. “There’s nothing I can do about it. I’m hungry too, but we’ll just have to get along the best we can.”

  Running Elk and the others wandered hungrily among the buildings. People came from the town and stared at them like they were strange animals. Some smiled and tried to talk to them, but no one could understand what they said. When a woman offered Running Elk a piece of candy, hungry though he was he ran to the stables and kept out of sight. Stomachs empty, and with only the blankets they wore, they tried to sleep on the floor that night. It was the Moon of Falling Leaves and the air was cold, but there was no fire in the stove.