The day begins quietly. We feel happy and at peace. Yellow Dog flirts with Black Leg Doe. Shots ring out. In the early moments of the attack, Sitting Bull sends his nephew One Bull and the nephew’s friend Good Bear Boy out toward Reno’s men to broker a peace. Good Bear Boy is shot through both legs and One Bull heroically drags him back to camp, using a lariat. Sitting Bull’s horse is shot out from under him. Abandoning thoughts of peace, he orders a counterattack. Too old to fight, he helps the women and children flee north to safety.

One of those riding out to meet Reno is Crazy Horse. Craig, Lauren, and I, respectively, voice him as: a precociously athletic child; a brash young lover who courted the wife of another man and was shot in the face for it; a mystic atop a hillside, seeking a vision without first undergoing the necessary purification rituals.

Six of the Singers voice Crazy Horse as a transcendent holy man (instructed, in that vision, to eschew all possessions and always ride into battle unadorned; loved not just for his bravery but for his abundant charity to the poor), five as a hermit, slightly mad. (Known within the community as “Our Strange Man,” he continued to court Black Buffalo Woman, the wife of No Water, even after the birth of her third child, his version of courting being to linger near their lodge uninvited for days on end.)

Here he is now, thundering past, single feather in his hair, stone behind one ear, no paint on his body but for a few quick smears to represent lightning and snow, riding out to meet Reno.

Lauren becomes Red Deer Woman, whose son, Rabbit, was born with a withered leg; he is ten, too big to carry. Friends, aunties, mothers, toddlers flee past. Her mouth is dry with dust. Why have they come so far to kill us, to kill the likes of him, so gentle with everyone and everything, simple in that way (a protector of downed birds, a worrier over fallen buffalo)?

Her husband is Three Horn. He has gone with Crazy Horse to engage Reno. May he be safe. He is rash, proud, impulsive. One of the congenial rituals of their marriage is that, at night, she will drape her small, cold body over his large one and in this way warm herself. Must I always be your fire? he will say, a smile in his voice in the dark.

The boy is moving along well now. She must be patient.

For the moment, all is quiet. There is no need to rush him.

He looks up, smiles apologetically; she ruffles his hair, and they move on.