Chapter 9

Colorado Territory, June, 1872

The aftermath of a hard fought battle is as hard on the winners as it is on the losers. It was at least an hour before anybody within the fort was able to move about. The women and children recovered first simply because they had expended the least physical effort. The children were hungry, so the women started preparing a meal. Nobody knew whether it was lunch or supper, it was just time to eat.

The aroma of cooking food revived the men who were able to respond to any stimulus. There were no unwounded men within the fort. Everybody had scratches, scrapes, and cuts, if he had no worse wound. Fortunately for the Cheyenne, there were no serious injuries; all men with those had died already. About 40 percent of the Cheyenne fighters had been killed, but the remainder had gotten off lightly. It was obvious to everybody that there was no way that the Cheyenne could cope with so many dead men and horses at the fort.

The only practical solution was to remove the dead Cheyenne warriors from the pile and have a decent funeral for them. Then, just walk away from the rest. It would be easier to move the village than to remove the dead Utes and the dead horses.

Cletus asked the people to gather around the cooking fires so that he could count the survivors. Once they had gathered and the women could see who had been killed, there was a great wailing and crying among all the women. Even those who had not lost her man was mourning in sympathy with the widows. It was obvious that this was going to last for hours, maybe through the night, so Cletus and the other men moved off a little ways and lay down to try to sleep.

The next morning, the worst of the public mourning was over. After everybody had eaten a breakfast, the men began pulling the dead Cheyenne from the combat area. It took most of the day, but finally the last of the dead had been recovered and the women had started preparing the bodies for the funerals.

The men rested a bit, and then Cletus asked them to go through the battle field and recover the weapons, both Cheyenne and Ute. The warriors should feel free to keep anything else they found and wanted, but it was very important to the living members of the tribe that all of the weapons be recovered and stacked together for inspection and salvage. Cletus told them that every man was going to get a repeating rifle from the battle, so there was no need to grab one as loot. Cletus expected to recover enough Henry rifles for every warrior to get one, but he didn't say anything in case he was wrong.

The rest of the day and most of the next were spent in recovering weapons and ammunition and stacking them in one place. Mountains of other loot were recovered so that there were plenty of trophies for everybody. Cletus inspected every rifle and assigned it to one of three stacks: usable Henrys, usable Spencers, unusable rifles of any type. When Cletus and his helpers were finished, there were 52 Henrys and 93 Spencers in good condition. Cletus made sure that the 40 surviving warriors got a Henry and a Spencer and ammunition for each. The 12 remaining Henrys and 53 remaining Spencers were saved for storage against future need.

Two days later, travois were rigged and the whole tribe moved a few miles away—far enough to escape the stench of the decaying bodies.

Life returned to pretty much the routine it had before the preparations for the raid. However, Cletus noticed a subtle change in attitude among the Cheyenne. Though nobody said anything, Cletus suspected that many people subconsciously blamed him for the raid and the subsequent deaths of so many of the warriors.

Early in September, Laughing-Eyes sent Cletus to fetch the midwife; the time was near. Now that he was an experienced hand in this father business, Cletus fetched the woman and got the Hell out of the way. A few hours later, Cletus was called back and presented with a son. Laughing-Eyes wanted to give the new son two names, one Cheyenne and one English. She had chosen Roaring-Bear for his Cheyenne name, but wanted Cletus to pick an English name for him. Cletus thought for a while and selected Roland. He had no particular reason; he just liked the sound of the name. Thus Roaring-Bear/Roland was presented to the world.

Laughing-Eyes recovered quickly and was back to her wifely "duties" in short order. While she was occupied with their new son, fall buffalo hunting season came and went, so Cletus missed that to be with his wife. The Cheyenne thought that this was a peculiar attitude for a man to take and just added it to Cletus' list of oddities.

When they returned from the hunt, the women built the winter lodge that Laughing-Eyes would normally have built. There was nothing special about this; they would have done it for any woman in a similar situation.

That winter was pretty much normal with not much need for Cletus to provide food for the village. Now that every man had a repeating rifle, they were all capable of providing an adequate food supply for their lodges. This resulted in even greater alienation for Cletus. By the time spring rolled around, Cletus was a nonentity in the village. At first, Cletus ignored the treatment, but it finally began to nag at him, until he could take it no longer.

Laughing-Eyes, too, had noticed the change in attitude by the Cheyenne and was at a loss as to how to counter it. She sympathized with Cletus' unhappiness and had come to love him so much that it hurt her just as much as it did him. They discussed what they could do to regain Cletus' status among the Cheyenne, and finally decided that there was nothing that could be done. Laughing-Eyes suggested it first, but Cletus knew that she was right—they had to leave the village, maybe the whole Cheyenne nation.

They discussed the proper way to handle the crisis and agreed on their action. Cletus went to the chiefs' council and said that they were leaving. He wanted to take his two horses and one pack animal, plus one of the Henry rifles. They would leave most of their other goods for distribution among the tribe. Cletus said that he expected to leave within ten days.

Amid the polite protestations of sorrow that Cletus was leaving, there was an undercurrent of relief. Cletus had become a burr under the saddle of conventional thinking and behavior, and they would be happy to see him go. If pressed, they would acknowledge the good things that Cletus had done for them, but he was just too much of an irritant to be comfortable around. Like most people, the Cheyenne just didn't want to admit that they were living in an outdated style and needed to change. Only the children would be truly sorry to see Cletus leave; they enjoyed the novelty he introduced.

Colorado Territory, May, 1873

Cletus, Ellie, and Roland left without a single well-wisher to see them off. Cletus had Ellie mounted on the second horse and riding beside him as they left the Cheyenne. Many of the Cheyenne, both male and female, were shocked to see Ellie riding and not walking; this was just another example of Cletus' strangeness. Ellie had Roland slung on her back in typical Indian fashion; that was her only concession to convention.

Ellie was sad to be leaving the only life she could remember, but she was too much in love with Cletus to regret her choice. Cletus felt the same way about her and Roland—he would not go anywhere without them! Cletus insisted that she ride at his side and not behind him. He also insisted that they now speak only English. He wanted her to shed her Indian habits as soon as possible, since she would now have to live another way.

They had no particular destination in mind and the weather was wonderful. They wandered north because the game happened to be more plentiful in that direction. On the way, Cletus turned Ellie into a passable shooter with the Henry, such that he was confident enough to leave her and Roland while he hunted.

They were riding in the general direction of Fort Laramie one day when they heard the sound of gun fire. For a moment, Cletus was undecided about what to do with Ellie and Roland. Then he decided, "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't." They cautiously rode toward the sound of the battle, not quite knowing what to expect. They eventually came upon a detachment of soldiers under attack by a band of Indians. Cletus directed Ellie to hide in a lava tube while he investigated.

Upon closer inspection, Cletus saw that the Indians were Utes, so that he had no compunction about helping the soldiers. The Utes were foolishly riding around a detachment of dismounted dragoons. They could easily have overcome the soldiers if they had simply mounted a full charge right at the defenders, but it was more fun fighting the way they were. The battle must have been going on for a while, because there were dead soldiers and Indians lying about. Cletus saw 8 soldiers, a sergeant, and an officer fighting 15 Utes.

Cletus found a convenient sink-hole to use for shelter and began shooting at the Utes. The Utes had Henrys and the soldiers had Spencers, so the armament was well enough balanced that the soldiers were holding their own in the battle, but Cletus' flanking maneuver tipped the balance in favor of the Army. By the time Cletus had dropped 4 Utes and the Army had accounted for 5 more, the Utes decided that "the game was not worth the candle" and broke off the fight. They picked up their dead and left.