The Dying Grass, page 76
yellow fat and purple meat ripped open in a grandmother’s heart,
another dead boy, eyes shut and mouth open, and
the small boy, open-eyed, almost smiling, his skull unlocked by a tumbling bullet; he lies in a puddle of his own brains
(the web of his hand tattooed with specks of burned powder where he grabbed at the barrel of the Bluecoat’s rifle, struggling to turn it away)
—exactly here stands silent Wottolen, he who remembers, so that our children’s children will know this—
and
we are crying out
(the fat of dead children still sizzling like resinous wood);
now we shall tear the Bluecoats loose from their lives.
16
Still fearing for his mother Swan Woman,
who cannot now be helped,
White Thunder springs out of the willows, his heart hurting him like a wound;
John Dog has been shot in the forehead; all the same he will not trade his full gun for White Thunder’s empty one
(he means to die fighting, not to run away)
and in the river before them floats the dead boy with the hole in his skull (one of Toohhoolhoolsote’s People);
still he keeps hunting Bluecoats to kill
—until his Uncle Ollokot shouts: Yellow Wolf,* why are you crawling there? Here is your rifle; Wottolen has sent it for you. Nephew, your heart is strong; we have need of you; come help us wipe out these murderers!
so that White Thunder runs toward him, happy to be back among our best men who will now try to drive Cut Arm’s killers under the ground:
Chase them out!
Where is Cut Arm?
(Toohhoolhoolsote roaring like a grizzly bear,
but he can bewitch no one with his hand)
—and as White Thunder chants his WYAKIN song, he begins to feel in his heart that he has been singing it since his birth; indeed it has become the very heartbeat of his life,
his WYAKIN, the WOLF, helping him to hunt and drink the Bluecoats’ blood,
and then Ollokot tells him who has been harmed, in order to better enrage his heart:
he sorrows for his lovely Aunt Springtime and his dear Aunt Fair Land,
she who almost surely cannot live
(about Swan Woman Ollokot has not heard):
it is as if all the blood in his heart has clotted into grief.
There! See him running away!
Raising the Winchester, he shoots while running: pim!
(Ollokot is smiling),
so that this Bluecoat leaps up eagerly to bleed from his heart; now he is dying with the musical rattle of a crane.
During that Big Water battle one moon ago, after Fire Body crawled up to him at Cliff Place, encouraging him to die well and advising him to aim for officers, White Thunder raised his rifle and knocked down one officer, then a second, after which the Bluecoats boiled away in confusion! Thus exactly here at Ground Squirrel Place his heart hopes to kill officers,
Cut Arm most of all
(that maimed old moldy one with the star on his hat)
or Tsépmin who was our brother,
but it begins to seem that neither one can be killed.
17
Heinmot Tooyalakekt and No Heart have saved our horses,
while Hahtalekin’s People, who heard the Bluecoats whispering just before they attacked, drove them out of their part of camp, so that most of their lodges remain undestroyed;
now they are helping others;
therefore Peopeo Tholekt,
his eyes huge above his white gorget,
blows his eagle-bone whistle five times, then runs uphill, returning to the fight,
over him now his dark WYAKIN, like a cormorant raising up its wings to dry,
and Bluecoats firing from behind the pines, two sprawled out dead, one staring at the blood gushing from his shoulder; a pallid Bluecoat kneels down, watching us wide-eyed as he fumbles another cartridge out of his belt, and the nodding golden grass kisses his boots
exactly here where Peopeo Tholekt meets the Two Red Blankets, against whom the People keep crying out: You who began this trouble, go fight! Here is the work you thirsted for! Fight for us now—
so that they run furiously down upon the soldiers, and Red Moccasin Tops destroys one most easily,
Strong Eagle and Peopeo Tholekt all the time shooting down into a Bluecoat trench,
until Strong Eagle has spent his cartridges, at which they quarrel, and he takes Peopeo’s rifle and ammunition
while somewhere nearby, Red Spy is yelling the scalp halloo;
and leaving Strong Eagle, Peopeo Tholekt sprints weaponless,
worrying about his favorite yellow horse,
past Wottolen and Over The Point, who shoot while singing their WYAKIN songs
(clear in his heart because Heinmot Tooyalekekt has saved his son Black Eagle),
down to the People to see how they are
(in that row of dead children, the black soiling of gunpowder around an especially close-range forehead wound records the mercy of instant death)
and finding Black One still alive, he leaps onto him bareback, riding back up toward the voice of a big gun
where Temettiki and Stripes Turned Down are seeking to capture the Bluecoats’ cannon,
looking down past the ankle-high green grass with the dead wood lying in it and the dark wood showing through, shaded by lodgepole pines; then the world drops off into the wide green light of Ground Squirrel Place, going yellow at the horizon
(where is Cut Arm the Moldy?);
and Peopeo Tholekt,
who was wounded first in the arm by Cutthroats,
then in the thigh by Bluecoats,
feels ready to die without much fear
in the shade of his tall WYAKIN with the green eyes and the mouthful of bear’s teeth,
and then Stripes Turned Down kills the Bluecoat who has been loading the gun as Temettiki shoots some mules and steals others,
our bullets saying shláyayaya, which is what icicles say when they strike together,
the last Americans running away uphill (they were never men).
Peopeo Tholekt says: Hear me, brothers; let us bring down this cannon and make it kill!
But their hearts are all mule-greedy! Now they are driving their captured animals down to the women, leaving him alone with the big gun, which he cannot move, so he removes the wheels, rolls the gun downhill on its side, and sadly buries it
as Young White Bird’s father, riding up to see what has been done, finds a good Army rope, coils it up and carries it to be packed on one of the horses
and others come for ammunition:
a fine present from Cut Arm!
—and then Peopeo Tholekt, still sorrowing with all his heart for the killing they could have done,
looks down from there to see how Ground Squirrel Place grows greener and greener the farther one’s gaze goes, the river bends taking on a greenish cast, even though the grass on the steep slope down has long since gone brownish-gold, and the aspen leaves have already begun their dying,
some tipis still smoldering, pinecones lying in the grass.
18
Now Red Moccasin Tops,
Chief Yellow Bull’s son,
and second of the Three Red Blankets
(some call him the best of our best men, although others preferred Rainbow),
lifts up his head to shoot, and two bullets meet him,
so that only one Red Blanket remains: Strong Eagle, who gets shot in the hip as he runs downhill; he will ride with the People to their last battle.
19
And we are covering them up; we are weeping as we dig,
as a dark, dark crow watches them richly;
although we cannot paint their faces red, we are wrapping them in our best buffalo robes, which we close tight:
Sun Tied’s sister, and his wife, and her newborn baby girl;
About Asleep’s mother,
whom we found floating in the bloody river, with four other dead women beside her,
Shore Crossing
(his eyes and forehead gone)
and Red Moccasin Tops
(fist-size holes in his chest and arm, the face untouched, eyes and mouth wide open as if in expectation),
Welweyas’s mother Agate Woman
(clubbed to death with a rifle butt; perhaps the Bluecoats caught her shooting)
Ta Mah Utah Likt,
killed with the same bullet that slew her baby as she ran with both sons toward the willows
(the older boy is here to bury her),
Hahtalekin, who was chief of the Palouses,
and Rainbow,
he who protected us,
broken open,
and
sixty or ninety others
(perhaps a hundred have been killed:
how are we to mention so many no more?— how shall we avoid their teeming ghosts?);
but Five Wounds we cannot bury, for the Bluecoats keep shooting whenever we approach his body:
stone and earth on top
(not daring to kill their favorite horses for fear that the Lice-Eaters will find their graves);
shovelling the riverbank over them,
our children grubbing for sugar and hardbread in the pockets of dead Bluecoats
(About Asleep turning over one dead Boston, then cutting at his shirt, treasuring up his buttons as black as an antelope’s eyes: payment for his mother
as Heinmot Tooyalakekt lifts up the boy’s younger brother onto the father’s horse),
snatching up canteens, matches, trowel bayonets and silver dollars,
the women then running back to the tipis to save what they can, leaving their lodgepoles, throwing down their digging-sticks,
holding horses, hoisting up their children, rolling up blankets,
some men keeping the Bluecoats under fire, the others helping their People to make ready,
and Cloudburst, still weeping, lassoos and packs as many horses as she can
(Welweyas hoists the cradleboard up onto Springtime’s horse:
the battle-deafened baby stares without moving)
while Fair Land, whom we have dragged out, lies groaning in the grass
(stripe of dark blood under her nose, and great foul bubble of pallid foam between her parted lips:
Welweyas, almost screaming, rushes to pick yarrow for her)
and Good Woman,
that good woman indeed, who can dress a deerskin quick and clean,
helps Springtime onto her horse, saying: Ride now!
Cloudburst padding Fair Land’s saddle with grass so that she will suffer less on the trail
(she has put on the necklace of two dozen bearclaws which her husband gave her at Split Rock);
old Swan Woman is whipping as many horses as she can,
and now Sound Of Running Feet has returned, swinging out the cylinder of her Colt, plucking out the dead brass casing and inserting a new round
in silence, all in silence;
until she says: Mother, they have killed Ocher One
and her mother says: Ride now, my dearest daughter! Help Springtime—
and so the girl and the wounded woman ride away on Fair Land’s horses, following the other People who are not warriors down the trail toward Willows Place,
Heinmot Tooyalakekt packing up racehorses for Lean Elk, who is up there fighting,
Cloudburst and Good Woman now lifting Fair Land into the saddle, with Welweyas’s man-strong help;
and Cloudburst, remembering how Ollokot warned her at Cottonwood Place not to bring a horse broadside to a line of shooting Bluecoats, looks over her shoulder at the hated ones,
and the smoldering hides,
the dead,
the grasslike flames around the Bluecoats’ holes
—until a bullet comes: kíw!
so that Cloudburst must now make herself brave;
and like a common nighthawk opening his wings to show his white stripes, so her WYAKIN rises over her, comforting and encouraging her,
making her ever more herself.
20
Grey Eagle has been shot; he knows that he will soon die. His daughter White Feather has been shot in the arm, like Springtime; she can live. Splinting her arm and lashing it over her heart, he calls her brother and they lift her up onto a fast horse. He sends her away with her stepmother and the other women, old ones and children. Then Grey Eagle turns away. He will help the other wounded, until he dies.
21
Well, the bucks have rallied, boys,
and Gibbon upraises his field-glass, thereby discovering how in much the same fashion that those looting railroad-harridans of Pittsburgh lift up the hems of their skirts to scoop away loose flour, then run down the alleys, hoping to escape the clubs of our brave police, so Joseph’s squaws are now dodging cunningly away, somehow loading whatever trash they can onto their ponies and hitting the trail to delay their encounter with justice,
withdrawing, shooting into the Big Dust,
but then a bullet knocks the glass out of his hand.
22
To the top of the hill, the top of the hill, or we’re lost!
Corporal, shut up; you’re not in command. Now dig trenches, men! We’ll need to make a stand. Doublequick now!
as the Army members of this command (the volunteers are out of luck) employ their experimental Rice bayonets, forting themselves into the dirt of the lower slope,
cursing, tearing off their shirttails with trembling fingers to wipe the fouled breeches of their Springfields,
prying out spent shells with hunting knives,
never turning their backs on the brown-silver shine of water in the green of Big Hole:
Logan got a bullet in his brain!
Woodruff’s shot in both legs—
and hardly anybody still cares to watch through a field-glass the way that Joseph’s horses bunch up their backs when they run
because the red snipers keep shooting,
Gibbon wishing he could plunge his wounded leg back into the cold river or drink a swig of cocaine,
English convulsing in his final agony
soldiers dying in the low wet grass, seeing the pulsing golden grass all around the edge of the world,
but hearing a sound which resembles the way a mule groans when one tightens his cinch, Doc lets fly: must be a wounded red. The sound stops.
Our heroes hide in holes,
lost to the smell of mint in the river-grass and to the dark shinings of smooth shallow water-windings in late afternoon, and the wavery green reflection of grass wriggling from each bank,
because now the Indians have fired the golden grass, and the sky is all silver smoke.
23
Indeed we are setting fire; we are burning the dying grass; we shall kill these Bluecoats as they have killed our People; we shall catch them all on fire
even as Good Woman packs another six horses;
and Welweyas comes back running, clutching to her flat chest many long cakes of dried serviceberries from the Salish country
(they are still faintly fragrant with horsemint):
Good Woman wraps them in a dead Bluecoat’s shirt and ties them onto Agate Woman’s bay horse
while Springtime, who has ridden nearly out of sight, grips the cantle one-handed, biting her lips for pain, fearing most of all for her baby.
Their chief wears a yellow coat and rides a grey horse; he is not Cut Arm—
Kill him!
Red Spy rushes low to fire the grass;
and from behind a lodgepole pine Ollokot is watching, his dark round eyes alert and cautious as he squeezes the trigger of his .44 Remington—missing his kill—
Toohhoolhoolsote’s best men are shooting and shouting: Cut Arm, come out and die!
—but our fire goes out.
24
White Cloud and Two Moons fight side by side, while Peopeo Tholekt kills another Bluecoat, shooting joyously down into a trench,
as Ollokot incites the young men: Remember how you left the battle at Big Water, so that Cut Arm destroyed our camp! You have made us all fight, so fight!
and Over The Point now stands beside Yellow Bull, who has begun to avenge his slain son Red Moccasin Tops:
I am flying up, flying up to kill;
My YELLOW BULL runs before me;
I am spinning round;
My WYAKIN will help,
while Toohhoolhoolsote fights by himself,
and just as a cornered grizzly rips open a dog’s belly, so this grim wide old chief throws himself upon any of Cut Arm’s killers who are not yet cowering in holes:
he gashes them to death, devouring the life within their hearts
from which their blood comes out dark red like a prairie dog’s nose
even as Red Spy, thumbing the first explosive bullet into his trapdoor Springfield, sights on a young Bluecoat in a hole:
Pim! . . . taq! . . .
Áhaha! He has destroyed this soldier boy’s face.
25
Johnny, boy, did you take my advice and save you some cartridges?
I surely did, Doc.
Good, ’cause now’s when you’ll truly value ’em. Keep one for you, boy. Then them Injuns can’t never do you no harm.
But the boy groans and pales, shot through the guts.
Doc?
What is it now?
Doc, I’m hurting powerful bad.
Well, I knowed Howard Morton, who got blinded in one eye by an Indian bullet back in ’68. Didn’t never hear him cryin’ about it.
Then I won’t say no more.
That’s the way. You just bear up as good as you can and be a man.
26
Now TRAVELLER THE SUN is departing Ground Squirrel Place, the many white loops of Ollokot’s necklace catching twilight just a little as he overwatches the enemy, warning the young: My dear brothers, this time you must not turn away from the fight. Remember your People, who can no longer travel quickly. They are wounded and dying because we failed to keep watch. Looking-Glass, can you hear my words? Look down at the river, where so many of us now lie dead. This is a shame upon your leadership. Looking-Glass, what do you say?
