Chapter 23We did not ride straight for the Pine Ridge Agency. Instead, we remained well north of the roads and took a maze of gullies and ha-has as we neared the reservation until we were well within the agency’s boundaries. Indeed, we did not pause at the settlement around the Indian Agent’s headquarters. Matthew led me to a camp north of there, called Rivers Bend, although the logic of the name escaped me. There was neither a river nor a bend in sight. A cluster of tipis and wooden shelters sat on high ground semi-surrounded by the stumps of a growth of trees long ago chopped down for firewood. In fact, the butts had been hacked away as the need became more desperate. The remains of the forest were likely an indication that a waterway of some sort had once passed this way, although not o
