A Hard Winter

Life slowed for the Lakota.
A cold wave descended upon the plains, and many bands moved to winter camps sheltered in the leeward corners and valleys of the Black Hills. Snow began to drift against the lodges, and the ponies’ coats grew shaggy. Under the frigid temperatures their breath condensed to form blankets of ice pearls on their backs as they pawed crusted snow in search of forage.

The boy spent most days huddled in his wikiup, wrapped in hides, his eyes stinging from small, smoky fires. Hurried walks to the cooking pot and to answer nature’s call, and occasional, brief rabbit hunts constituted the only intervals spent outside his small shelter.

His appearance deteriorated; despite the low temperatures lice infiltrated his robes and small sores erupted on his unwashed body, face and scalp. Nor was the damage confined to his physical mien: The cold and insuperable isolation began to affect his mind. The fragile connections that defined his identity as a being among other beings were dissolving, and in the absence of other communication he began to hold conversations with himself, at times in anger, sometimes laughing until tears came.
His world was shrinking, but the Lakota paid small attention; madness, especially when induced by seasonal hardship, was not uncommon and was considered intensely personal - mystical, perhaps visionary, always solitary. Unless he became violent, there would be no intervention.

Then came the time called the Hardship moon, Tehi wi, and the boy’s misfortunes multiplied as the cold deepened its hold on the land. Frigid darkness seemed to swallow everything, and daylight snuck upon the camp like an enemy, the color of ashes, concealing the line between earth and sky. Freezing gales flogged every living thing. Women and children stripped bundles of willow and cottonwood bark for the ponies, yet many died in the drifts, the boy’s gray among them.
---
Winter confinement brought trouble to the outlaws’ road ranch as well. Quarrels erupted. Cole and the two whores were the first to become prickly, the cause being Cole’s unceasing pursuit of sexual favors sans compensation. Their spats grew combative under the influence of whiskey, until finally Cutter drew a pistol and declared a moratorium on the consumption of spirits without his personal say-so.

And no more free rides, Teddy, he added, or I’ll nip off your pizzle and feed it to the roosters.

But Cutter’s difficulties were far from over: Unknown to him, ancient enmities presaged the finish of his Laramie scheme.
Eli Jumper’s tribe, the Osage, the Wah-Zha-Zhe, were a plains people, and by the 1850’s their relations with the I’n-Shta-Heh, the heavy eyebrows, as they called the whites, led many warriors like Jumper to scout for army expeditions against enemy tribes – the Kiowa, the Cheyenne, and, when the opportunity presented itself, the Lakota.

Edwin Tabonneau had been raised among the Oglala, and from the moment he saw the murdered woman’s shell ornament on Jumper’s ear, he knew how the Osage had acquired it. Worse yet, subtle details told him it had likely been fashioned by a woman of the Bad Face clan, his mother’s family.
Not a word had passed between Tabonneau and Eli since Ft. Laramie, but Jumper knew the risks his presence in Lakota country imposed.

Unfortunately the snow that curtailed visits of soldiers and emigrants to the ranch also forestalled the extended hunting trips that kept distance between the two men. Now, instead of supplying meat for the ranch, Jumper tended the stock, keeping himself separate from the others, even sleeping in a special hide shelter in the dugout stable. He prepared his own meals and seldom entered the main building, yet his presence was marked.
Tabonneau had for some time committed himself to the murder of Eli Jumper; furthermore, he reasoned that Jumper’s wasichú collaborators should suffer as well.

The fact that Tabonneau himself had joined with these men to kill and rob carried no favor; he was, after all, a Lakota - never truly partnered with his mother’s enemies.