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“Perhaps there were two deer, then,” Crazy Horse suggested.
    Curly shook his head. “No. There was just one.”
    “Are you sure?”
    Curly nodded. “Yes. I killed it. I saw it there on the ground. There was just one.”
    “And where is this deer now? Show me.” He stood up, extended his hand, and waited for Curly to get to his feet.
    Together, they walked back to the hill. “Up there,” Curly said, pointing.
    “Show me.”
    Curly tugged his father’s hand and pulled him up hill toward where the deer had fallen.
    When they got there, the rocky hillside was empty. The buck was gone. Curly looked at his father in bafflement. “It was here. I saw it. It looked at me when it fell. Then it died.”
    “There is no blood.”
    “But …”
    “Each man sees his own thing. The world is full of many strange things, Curly. Wakan Tanka has many faces. This deer had one for you and one for Hump. To him it was just a deer. A big one, butonly a deer. For you, it was something else. More than a deer.”
    “What, then?”
    Crazy Horse shrugged. “One day we will know.”
    “Hump is very angry.”
    “He will not stay angry long. Not at you. You and Hump are special friends. Like brothers. As close as brothers, but different. Hump is your
kola.
And you are Hump’s
kola.
The anger will pass.”
    Curly was quiet for a long time. Crazy Horse did not want to break the silence. When the boyfinally spoke again, he asked, “Do you think the deer was
wakan?”
    “I think so, yes.”
    “But for me only? I mean, Hump did nothing wrong, wanting to shoot it, did he?”
    “No. Hump did nothing wrong.”
    “And me …” he asked, his voice trembling, “… did I do something wrong?”
    Crazy Horse looked sternly at his older son. Then, with a broad grin, he bent over, snatchedhim around the waist, and hauled him into his arms. He began to tickle the boy and laughed, “You? Never!”

Chapter 5
August 1854
    I N THE SUMMER OF 1845, when Curly was four years old, white soldiers came to the Sioux lands for the first time. Led by Col. Stephen Kearny, they had been dispatched to provide reassurance to the increasing numbers of settlers who were heading across the plains for Oregon. Kearny’s mandate was simple—make certain the Sioux knew they would be punished if they continued to harass the wagon trains. He was to use friendly persuasion, if possible, but to make known the position of the U.S. government no matter what it took to do so.
    Kearny sent out runners to establish contact with the Oglalas, and advise them that he wanted to meet with them on the Laramie River. The designated rendezvous point was not far from a trading post established back in 1834 by William Sublette and christened Fort William. Since Sublette had chosen his site with an eye to trading, he had picked a place the Sioux and other plains Indians had been using for years for their trade meetings, not only with the whites, but with other Indians long before the first white man had ever seen the Laramie.
    Kearny had been unequivocal. The white settlers on the Oregon Trail were to be left alone. The Oglala chiefs agreed, but since individual warriors were free to do whatever they wanted, and since stealing horses was a way of life, Kearny’s warning had little real impact on the growing friction.
    At the time, Curly’s family was traveling with a band led by Old Smoke, an Oglala chief who had become enamored of the white man’s trading post, principally because he had come to savor the taste of coffee. Supplies could be taken from wagon trains at gunpoint, and often were, but it was easier, and far safer, to frequent Fort William, where it could be had for the asking, part of the price the white men were willing to pay for being unmolested.
    But the white men had brought other things, as well—smallpox, measles and, worst of all, cholera. In 1849, an epidemic of cholera took the lives of fully one-half of the Northern Cheyenne nation and hundreds of Sioux. A