Little Big Man

But Lavender, he made himself an Indian wickiup, which is a bush or a couple branches stuck into the ground and your blankets throwed over the top, creating a little hut therein. Now since it wasn’t raining he obviously done that for privacy; nor did he invite me to share it with him though I was what at least passed for his only friend.

Wandering about that evening I spotted his establishment, off by itself. He had left the closure open at the top, and as I come up smoke was rising from inside. I thought he was cooking his bacon underneath, and thought: damn me, but he is right queer, for there was hardly room in that type of dwelling for a person to sit upright. But shortly I smelled tobacco rather than pork and figured: oh, he is just taking a smoke—still, I wouldn’t burst in upon him, but rather I stamped my foot and called out, and the blanket slowly opens to reveal his dark face a-shining sweaty, for it was warm enough even outside a wickiup.

Lavender was holding an Indian pipe with two-three foot of wood stem and a red stone bowl, and he looks dully at me and never says a word.

Now I took this lack of hospitality amiss, for I knowed him from away back and had lived with the Indians myself and felt just as strange about returning with an army sent to punish them. But he was in a more compromising position than me; I had joined up under false pretenses, but he was getting paid. So for his conscience’ sake he could play at Indian rituals, but in practical effect all that mattered was his membership in this command a-tracking down his former friends.… That’s what it seemed like to me at the time, but I guess you are smart enough to understand, as I then did not, that when I looked at Lavender, I was seeing myself.

Yet right now I was annoyed, and says: “Well, if you are busy—” and starts to leave, but his eyes cleared and he says: “Come on and set.” So I did and we exchanged that Sioux pipe now and again, and at length I says: “I guess it wouldn’t do no good for us to run off.”

“No,” he says, “no, it would not.”

I blew out some spicy smoke. He had got the real Indian mix somewhere, maybe from the Ree scouts.

“Look, Lavender,” I says. “I asked you once and you never really answered: Why did you come on this campaign?”

He says: “I wanted to see this country again before I die.”

I appreciated what he meant, though not everybody would have when they saw the cactus and sage and bullberry bushes, along with a few cottonwoods and box elders, which constituted the growth of that district, and the ravines and cutbanks of the terrain.

“Say,” I asks, “did you ever find any descendants of that kin of yours who went with Lewis and Clark?”

“Not a one,” Lavender says, “that I could verify, though some Sioux is right dark of skin. But I didn’t look much, for the thing is, when you join the Indians, you got all the relatives you need. There might be people in the band what ain’t overly fond of one another, but they save their real spite for the enemy.”

Lavender had throwed back the blanket when I set with him, though that bush was still arched over us, and a tribe of mosquitoes was also sharing the wickiup. I had took several bites already.

“It is otherwise with this here bunch,” I says.

“Oh my yes,” says Lavender. “The way they hate General Custer, and they ain’t nobody thinks well of Major Reno, who was slapped once in the face by Captain Benteen at the officer club at Lincoln. And Captain Benteen wrote the newspapers a bad letter on what happened at the Washita. And General Custer was a-fixing to horsewhip him for it, but the Captain put his hand onto his pistol and he say: ‘Come ahead,’ but the General decided not to.”

Lavender shook his head. “I’ll tell you this about Captain Benteen. Did you ever know he come from a Southern family what was Rebel in the War and called him a traitor when he joined the Union Army? His old Daddy put a curse upon his head, hoping he’d be killed. So the Captain worked it that his Daddy was arrested and throwed into a Federal prison till the War was over. Think of it!”

“The Cheyenne killed my Pa, but took me for a son.” I don’t know why I said that.

“I never knowed my Daddy,” says Lavender. “My master sold him to another before I was born.”

Then I got to telling him about Olga and Gus on the one hand, and Sunshine and Morning Star on the other, and as long as I had started, related the rest of it, Denver and Wild Bill and Amelia and, yes, the Washita.

“Well,” says Lavender when I had finished, “I never knowed being white was so complicated.”

“I don’t reckon it is for everybody,” I allowed. “Take General Custer. He not only knows who his family is, but he takes most of them along when he goes to war.”

“That’s right,” Lavender says, and he looks uneasy.

I says: “You like him don’t you.”

His pipe had went out and he scraped the ash from it and took his time. Finally he says: “He has always treated me well, Jack. That’s all I got to go on. You got to remember he is a soldier.”

“Good at killing,” I says.