Whips His Horses made another thrust but Stone Eagle stepped aside, then stuck out his foot, tripping Whips His Horses. Whips His Horses fell facedown and dropped his knife. Stone Eagle reached down and grabbed it, quickly, before Whips His Horses could recover. Now, with both knives, he reached down and laid the flat of the blade on the back of Whips His Horses’ neck.
“I claim coup,” he shouted, and turning his back to Whips His Horses’ prone form, he held both his arms up over his head, his knife in one hand and Whips His Horses’ knife in the other. “I have won!” he claimed, triumphantly.
Whips His Horses got to his feet quickly, then reaching out of the circle, grabbed a lance from one of the warriors who had been watching. With a shout of triumph, he rushed across the circle and thrust the lance into Stone Eagle’s back, doing so with such force that the bloody point came through Stone Eagle’s stomach.
Stone Eagle looked down in surprise, grabbed the lance point, then fell dead.
“Ayiee! It is I who have won!” Whips His Horses shouted.
There was some discussion among the elders of the council, but it was pointed out that the requirement was a fight to the death. And it was obvious that Whips His Horses had met that requirement. He was now the new head of the Big Dog Warrior Society.
“Will you now do as Stone Eagle would have done?” Iron Bull asked. “Will you take twenty warriors to kill Liver Eater?”
“I will do this,” Whips His Horses said.
“Send runners to all the villages,” Iron Bull declared. “Let the word go out to the Gros Ventre, the Piegan, the Lakota, and the Blackfeet, that twenty Big Dog Warriors of the Apsáalooke village of Iron Bull will avenge the death of our brothers!”
Fort Shaw
“What would you have me do about it?” Major Clinton asked the two civilian representatives from Helena. “Wage a full-scale war?”
“But don’t you understand? The Indians attacked three wagons of whites. That is already an act of war,” Babcock, one of the two civilians, said.
“From all that I’ve been able to learn, it was no more than a few renegade Indians,” Major Clinton said. “It wasn’t a full-blown war party. I have four companies of infantry here. And I stress that we are infantry, not cavalry. We are not a mobile force. I can detach one company of infantry and assign them to protect the town of Helena, but I don’t really think the town of Helena is in any danger. Do you?”
“I don’t know,” Babcock said. “Is it true that what has gotten them all riled up is some crazy mountain man who has turned cannibal? He’s actually eating the bodies?”
“From what I’ve heard, he’s only eating their livers,” Major Clinton said.
“Then I think if you can do nothing about the Indians, you should do something about this crazy mountain man,” Jones said. Jones was the other civilian from Helena.
“Do something about the mountain man?” Major Clinton replied. “Do what? What are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting that you find him and kill him,” Jones said.
“Definitely not!” Major Clinton said. “I’m appalled that you would even suggest such a thing!”
“It seems like a pretty good bargain to me,” Jones said. “One crazy white cannibal against the lives of how many more whites will the Indians kill?”
“I’m going to ask you two men to leave this post, now,” Major Clinton said, angrily.
“You’ve got no right to order us off this post,” Babcock insisted. “We have come to seek army protection.”
“You have two choices,” Major Clinton said. “You can leave of your own volition, or I will have you escorted off this post under armed guard.”
“All right, all right, we’re going,” Babcock said. “But I intend to write a letter to the War Department protesting your refusal to protect us.”
“Sergeant Major?” Major Clinton called.
“Yes, sir?” Sergeant Major Porter replied, stepping into Major Clinton’s office.
“See that these”—Major Clinton paused, setting the next word apart from the sentence to show his disdain—“gentlemen . . . are shown safely off this post.”
“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Major Porter said. “This way, gentlemen.”
Major Clinton walked to the front of the headquarters building and stood in the doorway as he watched the two civilians cross the quadrangle toward the gate. Lieutenant Philbin approached him with a salute.
“Do you know what those two men wanted?” Major Clinton asked.
“No, sir, not exactly. I know they were concerned about the people who were killed at their wagons.”
“They wanted me to send the army out to kill Mr. Jackson. The very idea.”
“Yes, sir, well, it might all be beyond our hands anyway,” Lieutenant Philbin said.
“Why? What do you mean?”
“My Indians tell me that Iron Bull is sending twenty of his Big Dog Warriors out to find and kill Jackson.”
“Do you think we should warn Jackson?”
Philbin chuckled. “In the first place, I’m damn sure Jackson already knows that he is the enemy of the Crow right now. In fact, I’m pretty sure he welcomes it. Major, he brought this war on himself, you know.”
“No, he didn’t,” Major Clinton said. “I did, when I sent him and his wife to meet with Iron Bull.”
“If he had just killed the ones who killed his wife and child, that would have been the end of it,” Philbin said. “But he didn’t stop there. He has made a personal war on all the Crow. And, don’t forget, he is eating their livers. That is a slap in the face of every Crow alive.”
“We don’t know that he is actually eating their livers.”
“It doesn’t matter whether he is or not, now,” Philbin said. “The Crow believe that he is, and that’s enough.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
[One of the mysteries of the last century is how quickly information could spread from place to place. In a time before telephones were commonplace, before radio, and even when newspapers were few and far between, there was something referred to as the “underground telegraph.” John Jackson’s activities were limited to Montana, but word of his unique and very personal battle with the Indians spread quickly, from Montana through Wyoming, into Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California, and even down into Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.—ED.]
Buford, Colorado
The Pair of Tens Saloon in Buford, Colorado Territory, was already filled with customers, even though it was no later than three o’clock in the afternoon. A clean-shaven man whose eyes were enlarged by the thick lenses of the glasses he wore, was plinking away on a piano in the corner of the room while a glass of warm beer, its head gone, sat beside him. Two cowboys who were standing at the bar, were engaged in a vociferous discussion.
“They say the reason the Injuns attacked and kilt them folks in the wagons, is ’cause this feller, whoever it is, is a-killin’ Injuns, then he’s carvin’ out their gizzards and eatin’ ’em.”
He put an exclamation mark to his statement by spitting out a large quid of tobacco into a nearby spittoon, making it ring with the impact. A soiled dove, whose profession had already caused dissipation beyond her years, had stopped making her rounds of the tables, just to listen in on the discussion the two cowboys were having.
“You don’t mean he’s actual eatin’ human beings, do you, Pete?” she asked.
“Well now, I reckon that all depends on whether or not you call Crow Injuns human bein’s. They’s some that say that Crow ain’t nothin’ but heathens, through ’n through, ’n the words ‘human bein” don’t quite fit with them. You take Ned, here. He don’t hold much truck for Crow, do you, Ned?”