Prairie Moon
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About this ebook
All profits from Prairie Moon donated to Friends of Pine Ridge Reservation, which supports reservation organizations in need.
Barbara Bergan
Born in Columbia, South Carolina, Barbara Bergan grew up as an "army brat" traveling the world with her mother, sister, and career offi cer father before settling in Wilmington, Delaware, with her husband, Lee, and mothering twins. Now retired, their children grown, she and her husband reside in beautiful, balmy Southeastern North Carolina, where Barbara enjoys the simple pleasures of gardening, music, reading...and writing. Her prize-winning stories, some of which are included in Moonbeams, have appeared in the online literary journals Retrozine and Toasted Cheese and in Delaware Beach Life magazine. Her fi rst novel is to be published in late-2010.
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Book preview
Prairie Moon - Barbara Bergan
Copyright © 2010 by Barbara Bergan.
ISBN: Softcover 978-1-4535-8658-7
Ebook 978-1-4653-2045-2
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book was printed in the United States of America.
To order additional copies of this book, contact:
Xlibris Corporation
1-888-795-4274
www.Xlibris.com
60374
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
Afterword
Bibliography
For Donna, at Rosebud, and Stephen, at Pine Ridge
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly
in the night.
It is the breath of a buffalo
in the winter time.
It is the little shadow
which runs across the grass
and loses itself in the sunset.
Crowfoot, Blackfoot Chief
April 1890
Prologue
DECEMBER 1890
They had heard tales of the Messiah, sent an envoy to learn more . . . and they believed. That if they lived in peace with their neighbors, danced the dance and sang the songs, then the whites would be gone and the buffalo would return. Entranced by visions of departed ancestors, they circled in the dust and waited for their world to be made whole.
Spreading west to east, reservation to reservation, by autumn of 1890 the new religion had reached the Lakota. At Cheyenne River, Spotted Elk’s band of Miniconjue grew in number each day as more joined in the dance. At Standing Rock, the Hunkpapa holy man Sitting Bull, though doubtful, voiced no objections to this one bit of hope offered his otherwise hopeless people. And at Pine Ridge, wary dancers took to the Badlands as a frenzied government agent telegraphed for help: Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy. We need protection.
The Ghost Dance—introduced by a self-proclaimed Messiah, the Paiute Indian called Wovoka—preached of a peaceful place, but was interpreted by many whites as a threat. Outlawed by the government, it provided excuse to a revengeful cavalry.
In mid-December, Sitting Bull, wrongfully blamed for perceived disturbances in Dakota Territory, was awakened by Indian police. A confrontation followed in which the old chief and some of his people were killed. Others fled. Among those killed was one called Fire Thunder who had fought against Custer along the Greasy Grass, the river called Little Big Horn by whites. Among those who fled were Fire Thunder’s wife, Spirit Walking, and their young son, Thunder Bear.
Mother and son made their way to Cheyenne River, and from there, beneath a flag of truce, moved south with Spotted Elk’s band. Intercepted by the 7th Cavalry—the same command that had been lost to Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse at the Little Big Horn—the uneasy travelers who had sought only safety were led to the banks of Wounded Knee Creek. There, Indians set up camp as soldiers set up Hotchkiss guns on the heights above them.
In the cold morning light of December 29, as soldiers searched the men for weapons, one called Two Deer sought the faces of his wife and children among those huddled near the water’s edge. A shot was fired. Then another. Then the whole of the army’s wrath was brought down upon the helpless captives. Two Deer darted toward his family. He did not see the mounted soldier who struck him from behind.
Bird That Sings watched her husband fall. Frightened two-year-old and squalling infant slipping from her grasp, she raced along the creek bank, but she could not outrun the soldiers.
A short distance away, Spirit Walking and her son stood beneath the muddied white cloth she had entrusted with their safety. Hoping to save her son and herself, she reached to touch it just as the bullet found its mark.
As he crawled from beneath his mother’s body, Thunder Bear heard the crying and reached out to the younger boy who sat beside his own dead mother and baby sister. Young Two Deer wiped at grimy tears and took his hand. Through smoke and dust, over horse-trampled bodies, the boys scrambled to the rocky place found when they’d first made camp. Wedged into the narrow crevice, they clung to each other and listened to the boom of big guns and the rattle of sabers, the death songs of old men and the helpless cries of mothers and children. At last the carnage ended. The older boy signaled for silence as hooves stopped short of their hiding place. The horse stomped, then shook its head and blew.
Come out. You will be safe,
said the soldier. Thunder Bear muffled the younger boy’s cries as those who ventured forth were cut down where they stood.
At day’s end, as a blood-red sun descended over the eerie stillness below, Thunder Bear and Young Two Deer, his foot bruised and swollen from the rocks, crept from their hiding place and wandered among the hundreds of dead and wounded. Many of them were women and children; most of them were unarmed.
Found by Ghost Dancers who had come down from the hills, the boys were taken to the Pine Ridge Agency where, along with the other few survivors of that day, they were treated by Dr. Charles Eastman and his wife. The Indian dead were left along the creek, beneath a soft white shroud of new-fallen snow.
In the chapel that had become a hospital of sorts, Thunder Bear watched as the good doctor’s wife wrapped Young Two Deer’s injured foot. He could see that the doctor was Indian and trusted him, but he did not know what to make of the doctor’s wife—a white woman whose kind face and gentle hands dispelled the younger boy’s fears as they eased his pain.
Later that night, sharing a blanket with the little one who slept beside him, Thunder Bear watched from the chapel window as the Moon of the Popping Trees rose in a clouded sky. He wondered what would become of them . . . the last of their families.
For days, the frozen bodies of Spotted Elk and his band lay where they had fallen. Finally, as if no more than fagots of firewood, they were picked up by the soldiers and thrown into wagons, then dumped into a mass grave.
But they would not be forgotten. More than eighty years later, Wounded Knee Creek would again run red with blood . . . and the Thunder Bear and Two Deer families would again experience tragic loss.
PART ONE
Chapter 1
MAY 1945
From the window of a slow-moving train, Second Lieutenant C.J. Allen watched the prairie landscape fade into darkness. He thought of his father standing on the station platform, his hand raised in goodbye; his mother’s face, tinged with sadness as the train pulled away. Then another face, one with eyes of obsidian . . . dark gemstones that had transfixed him with only a glance.
Home from the war, in his pocket a beaded feather and a crumpled envelope, the young soldier had driven a hundred miles to the Rosebud Indian Reservation to fulfill a promise. He had taken the feather from the pocket of his friend’s field jacket as he lay dying; scrawled his words on the back of the envelope. C.J. dreaded delivering these painful reminders and had put off the trip as long as possible; and just as he had feared, the visit had not gone well. He was unsure who’d been more uncomfortable that evening, Joe Two Deer’s family or himself.
Emma Rose, Joe’s mother, had thanked him as he placed the crumpled envelope in her hand, but the woman’s deeply-lined face offered no hint of her feelings. Unable to put his own feelings into words, C.J. had simply said, I’m sorry. Joe and I were friends; I miss him, too.
How inadequate those words; they could not possibly convey the burden of loss he carried. Yet when Joe’s sister, Donna, plucked the feather from his fingers, C.J. had seen that loss mirrored in her dark eyes.
A noisy magpie flitted in the branches warning of a coming storm as he and Donna lingered in the doorway talking. Then, as the sky darkened and the wind sent dust devils whirling, Donna’s grandfather, Daniel, let it be known that the visit was over. The first fat raindrops began to fall as C.J. closed the gate and ran to his father’s old Ford pickup truck. Through rivulets of rain that ran down the truck’s windshield, he sat and watched the slender figure in the open doorway and knew that, along with the feather, he had given his heart.
Wispy strands of magenta wove themselves into the evening sky marking the place of the setting sun, and C.J.’s thoughts turned from Donna to her brother, Joe. Had it not been for the war, he and Joe Two Deer might never have met. Though both were South Dakotans, they had grown up miles apart. But on the battlefield, where, or even how, you’d grown up did not matter. Only your actions mattered. Anger and fear, even revenge, played a part in the bonding of one soldier to another. The friendship between C.J. Allen and Joe Two Deer, though sprung from the circumstance of war, had grown to become a feeling of kinship. C.J. remembered the promise they had made that fateful night: To watch out for each other until the very end . . . whatever that end might be.
Private First Class Joe Two Deer was one of almost 40,000 American Indians who had gone to war for their country. The same country that had, in another time, made war upon them; that had not even recognized them as citizens until 1924. Joe had once remarked to C.J. that he could not understand the government’s need to draft fighting men. On some reservations, more than half of those eligible had volunteered for military service and, for awhile, the way of the warrior was once more. But the way of the warrior is not always glorious.
Lulled by the wheels of the train, C.J. nodded, then drifted off to the nether world inside his head as the peaceful prairie, lit by a thin sliver of moon, gave way to the sounds of war and his dream came at him again. It was always the same dream. Red. The red of gunfire against a dark night sky, of blood spilling onto rocky ground. Deafening sounds of artillery fire rolled over him as he searched among the broken bodies for his friend. He heard his name called; put an ear to Joe’s lips and listened to the whispered words he would write on the back of an envelope . . . an envelope that had brought his own mother’s words to him. As always in his dream, the sounds of war faded to his mother’s gentle hum, a tune that had lulled C.J. to sleep as a young boy. He closed Joe’s eyes and reached for the feather tucked inside his friend’s shirt . . .
Awakened by the conductor’s hearty voice, C.J. rubbed his eyes and handed over his ticket, then felt in his pocket for the envelope and feather. What had once seemed almost part of him was gone.
Mostly because he felt it his duty, partly because he wondered what lay beyond the small Dakota town that was all he knew of the world, C.J. Allen had enlisted in the U.S. Army on his nineteenth birthday. Eager but apprehensive, after completing Basic Combat Training and then Officer Candidate School at