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“Where’s the Dakota Territory?”
    “Up north a ways,” Turley said. “The Black Hills, Sioux country.” He had long, light-brown hair that he wore in braids, with leather thongs and single feathers hanging down each side of his face. The beard was full and darker than his hair. He wore a skunk skin hat and carried a long rifle, and his moccasins was knee-high. He had blue army trousers on and a checkered long-sleeved shirt. “We intend to protect folks in the country up that way,” he said. “There ain’t enough cavalry to do it without we help them some. You want war, I can give it to you.”
    “You don’t want no part of no kind of war,” I said.
    “I can fight Indians,” Treat said. “I heard they run away when you shoot at ’em half the time.”
    “Well, they have to be dressed for it,” Turley said. “They don’t like to fight if’n they don’t have the right garments and such.”
    “You know what a coupstick is?” Preston asked.
    “No,” Treat said.
    “It looks like a lance, but it’s usually decorated with feathers and the tip ain’t that sharp. Sometimes it’s curved like a shepherd’s stick.”
    “So?”
    “What them folks try to do is count coup. Every time a brave touches somebody with the tip of that lance, he scores coup for himself and makes good medicine for his people.” Preston turned to me. “That’s what that brave was doing in that skirmish we had a few weeks ago—until you shot him in the face.”
    “That good medicine got him killed,” I said.
    “It’s crazy,” Preston said. “But a lot of them do it. The Cheyenne especially.”
    “That fellow tapped me with that lance pretty damn hard,” I said. “They don’t tap easy.”
    “What I wanted to say to you,” Preston said to Treat, “is the Lakota Sioux don’t often just count coup. They’re more of the direct-attack variety. Some of ’em got rifles and they’re the best cavalrymen you ever saw.”
    “They sure run away the other night,” I said. “One volley and they turned tail.” I really was kind of unimpressed at the time.
    “You never heard of a retreat?” Preston said. “Ain’t none of them cowards. You don’t want to fight them if you can avoid it.”
    Treat was determined, though. He said he was going to join the militia even if it wasn’t really part of the army. The Ninth Cavalry manned Fort Riley and I think they pretty much disapproved of the militia. Roman Turley looked more like a renegade than a soldier. He was missing his front teeth but it didn’t matter much, because he didn’t smile so often. He spit tobacco juice through that hole in his teeth and set by the fire and talked about the trek north and what he was planning against the Northern Cheyenne and Sioux. And Treat got more and more excited about it. “I can shoot. I learned to shoot when I was just a kid.” His sister had come over to get him for supper, and she was standing right there in front of the fire. Treat looked up at her and said, “Ain’t that so?” She owned that he could. “I wish it wasn’t so,” she said, “but he’s sure good with a gun, I’ll give him that.”
    The next day I was sipping coffee with Preston, Joe Crane, and Treat when Roman Turley come by looking for Treat. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll swear you in with some others I recruited this morning.”
    Joe Crane and Preston went along just to watch, but when they come back they was both swore in too. We was sitting at the back of Theo’s wagon, watching his children play in the dirt, when they come prancing back. Preston wore a wide-brimmed hat with a long eagle feather in the band. The militia didn’t have uniforms or even guns or horses half the time. What they had was the freedom to go anywhere they wanted to. They didn’t have families, nor land, nor nothing to keep them.
    “Looks like we’re in the militia,” Preston said. He was kind of sheepish.
    “Why would you want to do that?” I asked. “I thought you