They didn't do it themselves.
They got us to do it.
They divided us.
My husband, the lieutenant of police, led the group to Sitting Bull, the hostile.
I had to be away.
My family called me to their camp on Cannonball River.
I saw the runner.
I knew it was about Bull Head.
I knew my husband was in trouble.
But shot?
But near death?
I started immediately.
The runner already was far ahead.
A coyote walked beside me saying nothing.
I followed an old trail.
Twenty miles a day, I suppose.
I slept once in the leaves in a ravine.
The clumps of grass rattled their stories.
I dug roots.
I ate dried buffalo meat my sister wrapped in a medicine pouch.
I heard my mother's voice.
She spoke my tiredness out of the way.
The coyote was my father's voice saying nothing I could hear.
I heard the birds. They said, go, go, go.
They were chirping.
The leaves were howling.
The wind was an uncle who said Bull Head would be dead soon.
I had to see him.
I had to tell him he'd been a good husband.
He had to know that for his trip through the stars.
We'd betrayed our own people.
He would know that soon.
It was something I didn't tell him.
We had our different ways to see.
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