Chapter 13: The Gathering Storm

1878 - Ten Years After Little Bird’s First Vision

The Oklahoma sun was merciless, beating down on the parched earth with an intensity that made even breathing feel like work. Firebird stood in what little shade the agency building provided, watching the line of Cheyenne waiting for their rations.

They looked like ghosts. Thin, hollow-eyed, moving with the slow shuffle of people who had given up hope. Children with distended bellies from malnutrition. Elders who should have been respected, honored, reduced to begging for moldy flour and rancid meat.

This was what “peace” looked like. This was what the reservation had done to her people.

“Mama, how much longer?” Little Bird asked, her voice weak. At fifteen, she should have been vibrant, full of life. Instead, she was rail-thin, her cheekbones too prominent, her eyes too large in her face.

“Soon,” Firebird lied. The line hadn’t moved in over an hour. And when it finally did move, when they finally got their rations, it would be the same: weevil-infested flour, meat that was half-spoiled, amounts that were never enough to actually feed a family.

Tall Elk stood nearby, his hand on the knife at his belt, his eyes constantly scanning for trouble. At sixteen, he was already taller than most of the men, broad-shouldered and strong despite the poor food. He had his father’s build, his father’s intensity. And increasingly, his father’s anger at injustice.

“This is wrong,” he said, not for the first time. “We were promised food. Real food. Enough food. But they give us garbage and call it generosity.”

“Keep your voice down,” Morning Star warned, though her own face was tight with suppressed rage. “The soldiers are watching.”

Indeed, blue-coated soldiers stood around the agency building, rifles ready, watching the Cheyenne with the wary contempt of men who saw them as dangerous animals rather than human beings.

Ten years. Ten years since they’d been forced south to Oklahoma. Ten years of broken promises, inadequate rations, disease, death. Ten years of watching their people fade away, one by one.

Firebird’s chronic stomach problems had worsened in Oklahoma. The poor quality of food, the stress, the heat—all of it aggravated her damaged digestive system. Some days she could barely eat at all. Morning Star watched her with constant worry, trying to find anything Firebird’s body could tolerate.

But there was so little. And what little there was had to be shared with the children first.

Finally, after another hour of waiting, they received their rations. Firebird looked at the small sack of flour—riddled with weevils—and the chunk of meat that smelled off even in the open air. This was supposed to feed four people for a week.

It was a death sentence delivered with bureaucratic efficiency.

“Come on,” she said quietly to her family. “Let’s go home.”

Home. The word was bitter in her mouth. Home was a drafty wooden structure the agency had built, nothing like the comfortable tipis they’d once lived in. Home was a small plot of land they were supposed to farm, though the soil was poor and they’d never been farmers. Home was this hot, disease-ridden place a thousand miles from where they belonged.

As they walked back through the reservation, they passed the small cemetery where so many Cheyenne had been buried. Chief Tall Bull, who had died of pneumonia their second winter here. Roman Nose, who had simply stopped eating one day and faded away within weeks. Gentle Rain, carried off by a fever. So many others.

The Oklahoma reservation was killing them. Not quickly, not dramatically, but steadily, relentlessly, one death at a time.

That evening, as Firebird tried to make something edible from their rations, Little Bird suddenly gasped and went rigid.

Firebird and Morning Star both recognized the signs immediately. A vision.

Tall Elk moved to steady his sister, keeping her from falling as her eyes rolled back and her body went still. They’d all learned to manage her visions over the years, to protect her during them, to wait patiently for her to return.

After perhaps thirty seconds—though it always felt longer—Little Bird gasped and came back. But her face was white, terrified.

“What did you see?” Morning Star asked gently, pulling her daughter close.

“Death,” Little Bird whispered. “So much death. A fort. Winter. Soldiers shooting people who are trying to escape. Women. Children. Elders. All running, desperate, freezing, and the soldiers just ... shooting them down like animals.”

Firebird and Morning Star exchanged grim looks. Little Bird’s visions were rarely wrong.

“When?” Firebird asked.

“I don’t know exactly. But soon. This winter, maybe. And...” Little Bird looked at her brother. “And we’re there. Or we could be there. The vision splits—I see us there, I see us not there. Like two different paths.”

“What fort?” Tall Elk asked, his voice hard.

“I don’t know the name. But it’s north. Much farther north. It’s ... it’s cold. So cold. And there are people—our people—trapped inside buildings. And they’re trying to break out because they’re starving, dying. And the soldiers...” She stopped, shaking. “The soldiers slaughter them.”

Morning Star held Little Bird tight, making soothing sounds. But her eyes met Firebird’s over their daughter’s head, and Firebird could see the same thought she was having:

If there was a vision of them possibly being there, that meant they would be going north. Leaving Oklahoma. Trying to reach home.

The question was: would they be at this fort when the massacre happened, or would they avoid it?

Two days later, word spread through the reservation like wildfire: Chief Little Wolf and Chief Dull Knife were calling a secret council. Every Cheyenne who still had the strength to care, who still had the will to fight, was to attend.