“You do this a lot?” Glenn asked his teeth chattering.
“I have never done it in a lake before,” Snow on the Mountains said. “Always in a natural hot spring.”
Now I'm mad, Glenn thought. The idea of the soothing warmth of a Wyoming hot spring lit in his mind like a Technicolor movie. He could see the steam rising hot and enticing like a hearty bowl of soup. He pictured his sinuses clearing beneath the sulfurous assault and sweat bursting from his forehead like spring rain. Then his mind screamed the question, what are you doing here?
As if he'd heard, Snow on the Mountains answered, “This is where the trouble is, Ranger Merrill.”
Glenn stared, wondering if the old man could actually read his thoughts, but held his tongue. It made more sense to accept it than to question it. What did not make sense was the physical reactions of the Indians to the situation. Neither Snow on the Mountains nor Two Ravens looked the least bit cold or uncomfortable. Both sat, eyes closed, stroking the surface of the water with their outstretched arms. They looked to be in another world.
When Snow on the Mountains, eyes still closed, finally spoke, it was in a strange and resonant tone. “You must be responsible for your thoughts. You must still your minds. Do not question. Do not ramble. Do not dream. Empty your consciousness. Allow it to flow out and away from you. Pick an area of tranquility and nothingness in the distant reaches of eternity and focus your being there.”
The thought that the whole affair was a huge waste of time flashed in Glenn's mind. An instant later it was shoved away by a forceful screaming command: “Attend the purification!” He turned to the shaman. Snow on the Mountains looked to be nearly asleep, and the ranger realized he had not spoken. Glenn closed his eyes, feeling a strange and awful fear creeping over his soul. His skin was goose flesh, his body shaking. The notion entered his mind to stand and walk out of the water. An instant later, the thought was forced out of his head by the same command: “Attend the purification!”
Glenn tilted his head back and stared at the startling array of glistening stars in the night sky. He had never seen so many, never dreamed that many celestial bodies existed. He gazed up at a brilliant star above his head; then concentrated on the darkness surrounding it. Glenn's mind began to empty itself. The stinging cold of the lake disappeared. He kicked his feet gently, feeling a soothing sensation in the muscles of his legs. He stroked the surface; the tension vanishing from his tired arms as if someone had pulled a heavy canvas off of him. Unbelievably, Glenn felt the water beginning to warm.
The chief ranger forced himself not to think, concentrating instead on the spaces in the heavens between the stars. “Accept it,” he told himself, focusing again on the calm nothingness. He'd lost his sense of time. His sense of motion soon followed. The wild emotional feelings began to leave, draining from his body by his fingers and toes. His anger and fear, hopes and ambitions, dreams and doubts all vanished, washed away by the soothing waters of Apparition Lake.
Glenn continued to stroke the surface of the misty water unable to remember ever having felt so warm and relaxed. He looked to J.D. and saw only contentment on her face. She was feeling it too.
Snow on the Mountains stood and worked his way back to the shoreline, the water glistening in the moonlight as it dripped from his body. Two Ravens followed; then J.D. and Glenn. The chief's skin tingled as the cool night air painted him like a brush. Like the others, he dressed in silence ignoring the water dripping from his body. His senses seemed alive and raced to catch up with his rapid breathing, but the tensions, confusion, and worry he'd brought to Apparition Lake were gone.
He looked to J.D. and she returned his smile. Fully dressed, Snow on the Mountains left the group, heading down the bank into the shadowy darkness. Thirty yards away he came to a stop, no more than a dark outline to the three he'd left behind. They could not see his actions but they clearly heard his voice. Snow on the Mountains began loudly chanting with what seemed a much younger man's voice. His words, in a language with which Glenn was unfamiliar, rolled over the dark and misty lake as the shaman called upon the Great Spirit, Duma Appah. Nature replied with the sound of rolling thunder.
Glenn had no idea how long the shaman was gone. Time no longer mattered. But Snow on the Mountains soon reappeared. As he joined them from the darkness, it was immediately obvious a matter of great weight and sadness filled his thoughts; his brow was furrowed, his jaw set tight, and his eyes weary with some awful knowledge. He looked at the three of them and, for the first time, appeared at a loss for words. Searching, he finally said, “Apparition Lake has spoken to me.”
He turned to the chief ranger, as if they were there alone, and said, “Prepare your Death Song, white warrior. The time is near.”
Glenn stared at the holy man, stricken. Snow on the Mountains had said it, exactly word for word as the chief ranger had heard it before, in the presence of the attacking silver grizzly bear. But how was it possible? He had not told a soul. “Oh, my God,” Glenn said. “Oh, my God.”
Chapter 21
It was a forty-five minute drive from Apparition Lake to Norris Geyser Basin, but Glenn made it in less than thirty. J.D. made the trip with him, her knuckles white as chalk from burying her fingers into the dashboard. This was not the same chief ranger who had walked with trepidation into that freezing lake just an hour before. The last words Snow on the Mountains had spoken to Glenn, “Prepare your Death Song, white warrior. The time is near,” had an overwhelming effect on him. He'd thanked the shaman and Two Ravens and ushered her to his Suburban as if their lives were at stake. “We've got to get to the museum,” was all he would tell her.
On the way, she'd gotten a bit more out of him but not much. “I don't understand,” J.D. said. “What's at the museum that's so important, especially at this time of night?”
“I can't tell you exactly,” Glenn said. “It's something I should have remembered before but didn't. Something I should remember now but don't… for sure. Do you know what I mean?”
The biologist returned his helpless stare without a clue as to what Glenn was talking about.
“I know I sound confused,” he said, pouring gas to the roaring Suburban. “But I'm not. My mind has never been so clear. I've just got to get to the museum.”
Glenn felt like a salmon rushing upstream to its destiny.
*
The lights burned in the windows of the Museum of the National Park Ranger, a beacon, as Glenn approached and pulled to a stop in its lot. He had not returned to the Norris Geyser area since the investigation of Bart Houser's death. The chief ranger was grateful for his mission. This was not the time to mourn for Houser or any of the recent victims.
Glenn won the footrace to the museum's front door and then hit a roadblock. There were just too many keys to this park. A moment later, he had the right one and he and J.D. were inside. The race was over. “Now what?” she asked trying to catch her breath.
Glenn moved through the exhibit rooms, searching room to room, back and forth, like a feather carried on the wind. A golden eagle feather perhaps? J.D. followed after, wondering what he was after, watching him as closely as he did the displays.
“Photographs,” he finally said aloud. “We're looking for photographs. Something from the late eighteen hundreds.”
“Photographs of what? A quarter of the stuff in here must be from that time period.”
“They'll be pictures of a lake… or maybe a geyser basin, I don't remember. But look for Union soldiers.”
“Soldiers?”
“Yes,” Glenn said. “When the park was founded, and through the late eighteen hundreds, Yellowstone fell under the jurisdiction of the War Department. Look for pictures of Union cavalrymen, around either a lake or a geyser basin.”
“Why?”
Glenn turned to her in utter desperation. “I don't know, J.D. Just look and trust me.”
But it was no easy task. The bear biologist had been right. There were a lot of pictures in that small plac
e, many dating back to before the turn of the century. Nearly half an hour passed before the chief ranger heard her excited voice call out. “Glenn, I think I've found it.”
He backtracked and located J.D. in a tiny exhibit room off the main entrance. She was on her tiptoes, squinting at a group of photos on the wall in the far upper corner. “Are these…”
“Yes,” Glenn shouted like a child celebrating on Christmas morning. “Yes.” The chief found a chair, climbed up, and removed three photographs from the wall. He jumped down and laid them atop a display case. Faded and forgotten, the tintype images of Union pony soldiers smiled up at Glenn. They stood with their horses, in varying poses, on a grassy lake bank. Glenn looked ready to dive into the pictures beside them. “I knew it,” he said. “I knew it.”
“Glenn,” J.D. screamed. “I'm going to kill you if you don't tell me what's going on!”
“Apparition Lake,” he said. He turned the pictures toward her. “That is Apparition Lake.” He tapped the glass. “Their flag,” he said as a new light blinked on in his head. He started out of the room hollering back over his shoulder at the biologist. “Their company flag. Can you read it?”
She squinted at the worn photo. “It's a number. Forty-six, I think,” she said. Glenn was gone again into the museum. “Forty-six,” J.D. yelled. “Or forty-eight, I'm not sure.”
“Come here.”
J.D. rolled her eyes. “Where are you?”
“In here, come on.”
“Do you want the pictures?” she asked, trying to pinpoint his voice.
“No, we don't need them anymore. Just get in here.”
She found Glenn two rooms away and staring at a glass display case as if looking through the window of a candy store. Scattered artifacts lay atop its layered glass shelves inside; each marked with a small typed card. “It was forty-eight,” he said pointing.
Among the items was a worn brown leather book. Its card read: `The diary of Lieutenant J. Archer McBride. 48th Cavalry Unit. Fort Laramie.' Glenn pulled out his handkerchief and wrapped it around his hand.
“You're not going to…”
He smashed the front of the display case.
*
For over an hour, Glenn scoured the pages of the Lieutenant's diary with J.D. on his shoulder like a trained falcon. “Unbelievable,” he finally said, tapping a worn page of the book. “Absolutely beyond belief. I'm never going to doubt Two Ravens again.” He turned to J. D., smiled, and said, “It's all here.” Then he began to read aloud, gently turning the fragile pages as he went.
05 June 1879. Just when I feel there is nothing more that can surprise me regarding the treachery of mankind, I am brought roundabout to my senses with yet another example of the most despicable of our species. Yet again today, I can but shake my head and be thankful that I was brought into this world by a civilized parenthood with sound Christian beliefs; unlike so many of my brethren who seem deprived of even the slightest nuance of decency, kindness or servitude to their fellow man.
It was with much pride and personal satisfaction that Sergeant Mulhaney delivered to Fort Laramie this day a scoundrel who has avoided capture for nearly eighteen months since that time we were first made aware of his indiscretions and utter contempt for the laws which we are here to maintain. I am compelled to write of this dastardly character for his bearing and mannerisms are of such an unseemly nature as to make him the premiere example of our need for being stationed on this frontier. His name is Jessie Aaron. I am uncertain of his lineage, however, I can only assume from his manner that he was either born in these mountains or was cast out of the civilized world long before it had the opportunity to make any impact upon his process of learning as a child. He is the closest thing to a wild beast that may still hold the illustrious title of “man.”
*
Jessie Aaron spit over his filthy, graying beard, rubbed the moisture into his weathered hands and set to work. With a grunt, he rolled the dead bear onto its back. The bear's legs, already stiffening in the cold, jutted toward the heavens like the four corner spires of a Mormon Temple. Straddling the bear, he pinched the fur of its lower abdomen in his left hand and sliced into the pelt below with the gleaming Bowie knife in his right. Moving the blade upward in the direction of the bear's neck, he split the pelt wide, opening it as if it were already a fur coat for one of them dandy eastern ladies.
A heavy stink erupted from the carcass of the animal. It was a smell Aaron was long used to. He breathed through his mouth and kept working, slicing on the down stroke to separate the pelt from the fleshy white under layer. His skill showed in that he didn't scratch the inner cavity nor scar the hide. Save for a slight oozing of capillary blood he'd made no mess at all.
Jessie struggled as he rolled the bear to its side. He was a big man at two hundred-forty pounds; probably over a third of the bear's weight, but the years of mountain life had played tough on old Jessie. He'd ripped a nut trying to role a griz the year before and had just lived with it since. At times it pained him a might but thank God for a good, thick belt.
With the familiar itch-itching sound of the blade, he sliced up the inside length of each limb leaving the valuable pelt in one piece. He peeled the fur off the inner cavity wall from the pit to the wrist. Quickly, almost violently, he severed the paw from the rest of the limb without detaching it from the pelt. Jessie took great satisfaction in the crunch and snap that accompanied the action as bone, cartilage, tendons and ligaments gave way. He pulled both limbs free of the coat on the bear's right side and then rolled the heavy creature again to repeat the process on the left.
Sweat soaked despite the freezing spring mountain air, it dawned on Jessie the bear wasn't the only animal present that was giving off a stink.
That's all right, Jessie thought. This sweaty ol' mountain man would be a well to do ol' mountain man once these furs was traded off. Yesiree, it was gonna be one mighty fine Rendezvous down on the Green River. Jessie was going to get himself the hottest bath ever drawn in Wyoming. He planned to sit in it; all soapy, drinking from his very own bottle of whiskey `til he either went under and drowned or the water turned so cold he couldn't sit no longer. Then he had plans for one of them fine white dance hall girls.
In an hour's time Jessie had the coat fully separated from the body of the bear, save for where it met the neck. He knelt over the upper portion of the carcass, the dirty knees of his trousers browning the melting snow beneath. The wet felt good; reminding him he'd whipped the big, miserable bruin.
The bear lay dead and staring up through sightless eyes, growling silently and showing a set of vicious teeth that weren't ever going to bite anything again. Skinning an animal wasn't as good as getting paid for the pelt but it ran a real close second.
The bear's body, without its warm winter coat, looked remarkably like that of a human being. A torso of naked muscle with four sprawled limbs; bone white beneath the fading sun and only dotted here and there with pinkish-red splotches of blood. Aaron gave a laugh that turned, all by itself, into a throaty cough. He could think of several folks he wouldn't mind seeing stretched out in just such a condition. Yessiree, lots of `em.
He dug his hand axe from his satchel and ran his thumb the width of its curved blade. It was time for the money chop. With one blow he'd separate the ferocious looking head from the rest of its dead white body. Then he'd have himself a bear pelt and head, and the Yellowstone wolves would have themselves some dinner. That was the kind of generous fellow Jessie Aaron was.
Jessie raised the axe above his head for the final blow. But before he could deliver it something caught his eye at the edge of the clearing.
*
We had been told of this Aaron, as I indicated, over a year before. His crimes being those of pilfering the wild life in our newly designated national park called Yellowstone. Unfortunately, with the uprisings so evident among the Sioux and the Nez Perce tribes I had been unable to spend any of my sorely inadequate resources in the pursuit of this fellow. Patr
ols were made aware of his presence in the improbable event that their paths might cross. Such was the case with our fortunate Sergeant, who forthwith brought Aaron to this post for incarceration pending his trial and punishment.
I was quite overtaken by the appearance of this gentleman, and I use the distinction out of kindness rather than respect. His clothing, or what may have passed for such in his estimation, was but rags supplemented with the pelts of a variety of animals… no doubt some of the very creatures for which he now stands accused of killing outside the law. Upon his feet were the tattered remains of what once must surely have been a fine pair of boots, which are today but remnants of their former selves.
He had this irritating habit of picking at the sole of his foot through a cavernous hole in the left. Wholly disagreeable in his lack of manners, he also had the habit of chewing tobacco, which he spat upon the floor beside my spittoon on a number of occasions despite my admonishments against doing so. It has been necessary since his removal from my office to have the floors scrubbed, though the stains will surely remain indefinitely. It was to my utmost amazement that he freely admitted his guilt in the matter of pilfering the animals in the park, his candor being almost to the point of braggadocio. I was compelled to question him regarding the disappearance of a Shoshone medicine man named Silverbear who had been reported by his tribe as having disappeared mysteriously during Aaron's tenure in the mountains.
*
It was the evening of the third day now and Silverbear's vision quest was at an end. He'd crossed east from Undine Falls during the night and had spent the day in contemplation and in purification near Blacktail Deer Creek. The Great Spirit had relieved his concerns for his people and given him a great message of hope and freedom for the Shoshone Nation. He set out through the towering lodgepole pines of Blacktail Plateau headed home again.
Traveling through heavy trees, the medicine man stepped out into a clearing. The red sun was fading but the sight before him blemished the absolute beauty of the setting. A dirty white man dressed in filthy buckskin and wearing the long beard of the white hunter, knelt over the partially skinned remains of a grizzly bear. The man held an axe preparing to strike and remove the beast's head.
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