LITMIR.BIZ

      Open Door

      This book is dedicated to all who know and live this truth:

      Good returns to those who do good.

      Characters

      The Arapaho

      Neiwoo “NAY-wah” (Grandmother)—An independent old woman and the hero of her family.

      Hiieeniibei “Hee-AN-ee-bay” (Sings in the Light)—Granddaughter of Neiwoo and teller of the story. Wise and fearless, she is ten or eleven years old.

      Nowoo3 “Nah-WATH” (Left Hand)—Hiieeniibei’s brother. He is a year or two older or younger than his sister.

      Jade Stone—A mysterious green-eyed girl who sacrifices herself to save little children.

      The Oglala Lakota

      Tasina Sa “Tah-SEE-nah Sah” (Red Blanket)—A tall, pretty Lakota woman warrior.

      Looking Glass—An Army scout and the partner of Tasina Sa.

      The Norwegians

      Arnulv Arentzen—Older of two bachelor brothers who emigrated from Norway.

      Gunnar Arentzen—Like his brother, Gunnar takes great risks to help his friends and the children they protect.

      A Full Circle

      One morning, when I was a little boy, I sat between my mother and grandmother and listened to a very old Arapaho Indian woman tell a story. She sat across the table from us, sipping black coffee with a heavy woolen blanket around her shoulders.

      The room was dark and smoky. She looked out the open door to a horse corral. There, my father stood talking with a very old man with long, white, braided hair. Between them stood a little gray horse named Flicka that would soon be mine.

      “My brother is the horse tamer. Since he was a boy, horses have listened to him,” she said. “When we were young, the Fort Bob soldiers saw this in him. That is why we two Arapahos live here today, in Oglala Lakota country.”

      She stood and refilled three coffee cups.

      “But the story truly begins with another old woman and a great adventure we had when I was still a child . . .”

      Chapter 1

      1878

      November

      (Moon When the Leaves Fall Heavily)

      My grandmother Neiwoo was sick the day that the Army’s horse soldiers herded us from the valley village into the place they called Fort Robinson. We were with nineteen other very young or very old—and all very hungry—Arapaho and Oglala Lakota people.

      Grandmother had fallen. Her head hurt. She was very weak and moved slowly. For two days, she had stumbled along between my brother—called Nowoo3, or Left Hand—and me. She had always been strong and spry. Now she seemed ancient. Everyone thought she would die. Everyone but I, Sings in the Light.

      We looked down from a ridge at Fort Robinson, the cavalry post about a mile away. Grandmother whispered hoarsely, “Niioo3o” (nee-AW-tha). Spider. The White Man’s place looked like a spider’s web. Streets were the silk web. Big houses, tents, and wagons were the spider and its visitors. I did not want to walk down into the spider’s web.

      At “Fort Bob,” as the soldiers called it, there were many other Indian people. Cheyenne and Lakota and Arapahos, like us. And like us, they were thin and shabby. But they were happy to see us. Neiwoo, brother, and I were given a small, awkward tent made of heavy, once-white Army canvas. It was hung on a frame of too few and too short wooden poles. Instead of bright story-paintings, only the big black letters U.S. were painted on its walls.

      The tent was empty, except for a crazy long-necked iron box on legs. Compared to our own tall, graceful tents, this one was low, sharp-edged, and unfriendly. But after two days in the open, we had no complaints. We were grateful for any shelter.

      Our people knew some of the Oglala Lakota women, who brought us things we needed from a big house on a low hill. The Oglala Lakota had lived at the old Red Cloud Indian Agency, near this “Fort Bob,” for a long time. But then their brave young leader, Crazy Horse, was murdered. After that, almost all their people, and the Agency, were moved north of here, to a place called Pine Ridge Reservation.

      The Oglala Lakota, along with the Northern Cheyenne tribe, were the Northern Arapaho tribe’s oldest friends. Their languages sounded like ours—when we tried hard, we could talk to each other. For making our beds, these women gave us blankets and robes left behind in the big Agency warehouses. Of course, the Arapaho women helped us, too. But, like us, they had just been brought to Fort Bob. They had little they could give.

      Over a fireplace outside, I boiled soup in a black iron kettle. That soup was mostly broth made from the boiled bones of White Man cattle. Then a tall young Oglala woman brought some stew meat and added it to the pot. It would make us warm and stronger and able to remember. Arapahos are famous for their strong memories.

      Now we were helpless and hungry. But only two summers before, before the big Greasy Grass fight with Yellowhair Custer’s Army, life had been good. True, for ten years before that, we’d had some fights with soldiers and Americans. But mostly our leaders stayed away from them. Our men and women warriors fought them bravely when fights could not be avoided. Some Arapahos had loved ones buried in secret places near Fort Bob. Loved ones including the parents of Left Hand and me.

      When more and more Whites came, Neiwoo said we should “keep away from these Americans.” So we had joined a little band of old people and young orphans and followed the young Warrior Woman and the young man Gentles Horses. They led us far into the empty ocean of grass.

      They were beautiful together. They found the warm, secret valley and the little buffalo herd. For a year, we lived well near a hidden spring below the first mountains.

      Then, one dark day, came the thunder of long rifles, and we found all the buffalo lying dead. Many Army horse soldiers came. Our two young leaders rode out to meet them. We saw them no

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