The Indian Ring by Don Bendell Page B

delicious. He also was given coffee and a dish made out of sliced apples and grapes. He had cleaned in the river and bandaged his chest, putting a poultice on the wounds, which was very soothing. He could see Sitting Bull was cleaned and patched up, too, very much unlike the bloody mess he had been earlier.
    As they smoked, a man painting a winter count on a piece of stretched hide was painting symbols of Sitting Bull’s vision as he related it.
    The Hunkpapa shaman puffed on the pipe and blew a tendril of blue out, the smoke slowing to a snail’s pace and curling into a lazy climb upward toward the teepee airhole.
    Sitting Bull waved smoke over his head and face with his other hand and then spoke, “I had a vision.”
    Everybody in the teepee stared at the popular medicine man with intense interest and hung on to every word.
    â€œThe
wasicun
came to our lodges firing their rifles. Many warriors braved up and many coups were counted. There were many circles of lodges along the water and bluecoats falling upside down into our encampment like grasshoppers falling from the sky. They were lying all around the circles with their heads pointed in toward the center.”
    Joshua heard the rest of his words but thought about the statement “their heads were pointed in toward the center,” and that they fell headfirst out of the sky. That meant that many white men were killed in his vision.
    Religiously, Joshua Strongheart was a Christian and raised in church by his mother and stepfather, but he never judged or demeaned his father’s spiritual beliefs. He always wanted to be open-minded, and he truly wondered if Sitting Bull had had some kind of premonition. Sitting Bull was actually named
Tatanka-Iyotanka
, which meant “a buffalo bull sitting down on its haunches.” He had been chosen before the sun dance by the united tribes to be chief of all the Lakota while defying the
wasicun
. He was noted for many courageous deeds in battle, including walking out between battle lines of Lakota and cavalry soldiers during a lull in one battle where he sat down and ate lunch just to intimidate the “long knives.” What was most important to Joshua Strongheart, Sitting Bull earlier had been made the chief of the elite warrior society that transcended tribes within the Lakota nation referred to as the Stronghearts. Joshua’s father was one of its first members, and it was where his white man’s name was derived from. His mother gave him the first name Joshua from the Bible, and always read the verse to him Joshua 1:5: “There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life: as Iwas with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.”
    These last months, more than a year actually, since Annabelle Ebert was butchered, Joshua had really been soul-searching, questioning his own religious beliefs. He also was really leaning toward leaving the Pinkerton Detective Agency, blaming his occupation for what had happened to Belle. The vision he had had during the sun dance gave him a new clarity of purpose. He would pursue his career as a Pinkerton with a vengeance.
    Yes, he met with a lot of prejudice in his travels, but Strongheart also knew that most white people back east assumed all cowboys out west were white men. However, many were actually Indians who had learned to live in white society, former black slaves, and Mexicans who preferred it north of the border. Truth be told only one third of all American cowboys in those days was white. He had been treated well by the Pinkerton Agency and there would be opportunity for him there. Belle, in his dream or vision or whatever it was, was correct. He was a man of action and would become very bored in a normal job after the life he had lived.
    Now, Sitting Bull shooed everybody but Joshua from the lodge. He smiled at the half-breed and offered him the long-stemmed pipe. Joshua took a long puff and as