THE FIRST TIME I heard Crazy Horse's voice was late on a night in October -- 125 years, one month and 10 days after he died.

I had been working for hours on a digital sketch of Crazy Horse, Tasunka witko ("his horse is crazy"), the Oglala Sioux war chief who is probably best remembered for delivering the coup de grace to Gen. George A. Custer's 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Trying to portray Crazy Horse is a difficult proposition since he is the only great figure in American history who never allowed his soul to be captured, as the Sioux conceived it, meaning he never allowed his visage to be captured in life, either by photograph or artist's portrait.

Contemporary America felt his presence, though. During the decade between the Fetterman Massacre to the Battle of the Little Bighorn, his Sioux and Cheyenne warriors dealt the U.S. Army some of its worst defeats ever -- defeats as punishing and impossible to ignore as hail on the open prairie.

I knew nothing about the Fetterman Massacre then, however. In fact, I dreamed about Crazy Horse before I even knew who he was -- a strange and disturbing dream in which I was walking down a long office hallway in what felt like a large corporation or public institution.

I was in a dream hurry, as much to hurry away from something as to hurry toward it. Somehow I knew the layout of the building very well, and so I took all sorts of shortcuts as I moved from floor to floor. Finally, I saw my destination -- a low, metal-clad door down in the basement.

I remember feeling a swell of dream elation as I approached it. I reached out, but just as my hand closed on the knob, I felt someone suddenly clasp my wrist in an iron grip. Turning in sudden and total terror, I saw a face. And not just any face, a face unlike any I had ever seen before. It was painted half white and half black with a white lightning bolt flashing across the black cheek. The look in the eyes was the most striking thing about it, though...

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