Read In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse for Free Online Page B

snow and ice could make the horse slip and fall, taking its rider with it. When he finished scraping that foot, he picked up the other front foot
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    Meanwhile, the Long Knives were still coming, andgunfire still blasted the frigid mountain air. The lead Long Knives saw that one of the warriors had dismounted and was attending to his horse. That made a very easy target. Much of the gunfire was aimed at Crazy Horse
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    Bullets whined through the air above Crazy Horse, like angry mosquitos. Those bullets were very high. The ones that hummed like yellow jackets were close, very close. Now and then, a bullet erupted in the snow and bounced off into the air. That kind of bullet made a very high-pitched whine, almost like a scream
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    Crazy Horse finished with his horse’s front hooves and next took up the back feet. The bullets were getting closer and closer. His tan-and-white mare did not flinch at the booming of rifles as her rider scraped the ice from her hooves
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    â€œWow!” exclaimed Jimmy. “He really did that?”
    â€œHe did,” affirmed his grandfather. “But he was smart, an experienced warrior. He watched the soldiers. As long as they were firing from moving horses, he knew they couldn’t aim very well. And the foot soldiers, who were still running,were too far back to be on the mark, especially since they were panting from the effort. So overall, the odds were in Crazy Horse’s favor. Still, one of them could have gotten off a lucky shot. But, as we know, that didn’t happen.”
    â€œDid the soldiers know it was Crazy Horse?”
    â€œNo. They hadn’t heard of him. No one among the whites had . . . yet. All they could see were ten warriors, a small force against eighty well-armed, well-supplied soldiers. Their commander, Captain William Fetterman, was confident. He was sure his soldiers could defeat any number of warriors. By all accounts he hated Indians. He didn’t think they were as good as soldiers.”
    â€œOh. So then what happened?”
    â€œWell, when the bullets were getting really, really close, Crazy Horse finally, calmly, mounted his horse and loped—not galloped—farther away. By then, the other nine decoy warriors were pretty much doing the same kinds of things.”
    â€œThey were?” Jimmy’s eyes were big.
    â€œOh, yeah,” said Grandpa Nyles. “They were doing everything they could to make the soldiers angry. To make them keep chasing them. Remember, the place where theother five hundred or so Lakota and Northern Cheyenne fighters were waiting was four miles away. Also, all of this was happening when it was thirty degrees below zero.”
    â€œThey did, didn’t they, Grandpa? I mean, they took the soldiers to the ambush place, right?”
    â€œYeah, they did. Over four miles of frozen and uneven ground, covered with snow and ice. When they came near the ambush place, the warriors went down a steep slope. It was hard for the horses and men not to slip and fall. It wasn’t easy for the foot soldiers, either. But they followed. They were angry—or too afraid not to follow their commander’s orders.
    â€œSo on they came, following Crazy Horse and his warriors. They followed until they came to a long flat hill. It was called Lodge Trail Ridge.”

    The northern side of Lodge Trail Ridge sloped down to a wide gully. There it led to the Bozeman Trail, used by white gold seekers heading farther north. It was a familiar trail to the Long Knives
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    From the bottom, Crazy Horse looked up and saw theLong Knives. Several of them were at the edge of the crest, looking down. They finally seemed to be hesitating. Perhaps they had spotted some of the warriors waiting in ambush. Crazy Horse and his men fired their pistols at the soldiers. Return rifle fire splattered bullets in the snow near the warriors. After another moment, the soldier in the lead rode toward the decoys. Others immediately followed