The Owl Hunt

by Richard S. Wheeler

  “It wasn’t their grass. The Indian agent is charged with protecting the reservation from outsiders. My father offered to lease reservation pasture to the ranchers up there, with the money going to the Shoshones, but that wasn’t in the cards. The ranchers preferred to steal it. And also steal agency cattle.”

  “Listen, boy. The Indians never got their own herd together; kept eating it. So all that grass was going to waste. It didn’t hurt the Shoshones none to get it eaten down and put to good use.”

  “Free grass. I don’t recollect that any rancher paid the Shoshones for it. I suppose those same ranchers would charge any Indian pasturing animals on their range.”

  “Well, that’s neither here nor there, laddy. We’re going to put a halt to the rustling, and if that means stringing up a few red rustlers, we’ll do it.”

  “Without a trial? Without the Indian Bureau having a say?”

  “Boy, what’s unseen is invisible. It’s a big, big land.”

  “Van Horne approves?”

  “You bet your red ass, boy.”

  North Star wanted only to get back to the teacherage. “Guess we’ll go,” he said.

  “Say, boy, where’s your weapon? You been hunting with sticks and rocks?”

  “My father’s Sharps was confiscated, sir.”

  “Confiscated, was it? Who?”

  “Dogwood.”

  “Where?”

  “Big Horn Basin.”

  “You were off the reservation!”

  “You have any objection?”

  “No one has permission, boy.”

  “I am a free United States citizen employed by the bureau. I will go where I choose and take my Crow mother if I choose.”

  Cinnabar digested that, but wouldn’t quit. “Confiscated?”

  “And hanged,” North Star said. “Hanged from a cottonwood.”

  “Confiscated and hanged. I’d say old Yardley Dogwood botched the job.”

  “Ask him. Good afternoon, Captain.”

  North Star hawed the weary dray into a walk, and drove past the staring troopers.

  “That’s sure a yarn, Skye,” the captain said, bawling at North Star’s back.

  He heard the captain stir the column into a trot, and then the sound faded away.

  North Star found some pleasure in the confrontation. Just let Dogwood try to explain how magpies ruined his necktie party. Let him talk about stringing up the old woman and the youth, only to be set upon by a thousand angry birds. He laughed. Victoria sat quietly, wheezing joy.

  “Goddamn, I want to be there when that bastard talks to that rancher,” she said. She tittered cheerfully. He laughed. They chuckled. They cackled all the way back to the agency.

  He dropped Victoria at the teacherage and headed for the barns, where he unharnessed the dray, brushed it, and led it into a pen where it would find water and a full manger. He started wearily for his house but Van Horne intercepted him.

  “Any luck, boy?”

  “An antelope.”

  “Where was that?”

  “Big Horn Basin.”

  “That was pretty cheeky, going there. Run into trouble?”

  “Dogwood. He took my father’s Sharps and tried to hang us.”

  “For rustling?”

  “There was an antelope carcass in the wagon. He said it was his antelope and we rustled it. He said he owns all the deer, elk, coyotes, wolves, and mosquitos on his range, too.”

  Van Horne stared, not knowing what to say. Then, “Glad you escaped. Dogwood must be getting soft.”

  “Maybe he saw an apparition,” North Star said. “Maybe he saw things that can’t be, that aren’t in this world, and maybe it was too much for him.”

  “The only apparition that Yardley Dogwood is religious about is the barrel of a gun.”

  “Well, we’re here. It was a hard trip, and we didn’t find the game we hoped for.”

  The agent stared, uneasily. “Dirk, there’s something about this I’m not understanding.”

  North Star shrugged. “Next time you see the man, ask him about it.”

  “I wouldn’t get an honest answer. Of all the people surrounding this reservation, he’s the most troublesome. He was cheating the Shoshones out of meat when he had the reservation contract. Your father’s daily logs are filled with efforts to drive Dogwood’s livestock out of the reservation, or at least charge him for pasturage. He’s a whiner. He’s sent his men over here to tell me our People are stealing his beef. Cinnabar’s looking into it. And he’s organized the ranchers into a loud voice in Washington. Truth of it is, this reservation has better grass than he’s got in the Big Horn Basin, and he wants it. He’s been pressuring Congress and the Indian Bureau to move all the Shoshones somewhere else—anywhere else. Anywhere that white people don’t care about.” Van Horne eyed North Star and Victoria. “And now you tell me you had some serious trouble. I need to know about it.”

  “We’re back and we’re safe.”

  Van Horne didn’t budge. “You were with the Dreamers, maybe?”

  “We were alone,” North Star said.

  “It would have taken a few dozen Dreamers, all armed, to drive off Dogwood and his crew.”

  “We were alone,” North Star insisted.

  Van Horne saw how it would go. “The Dreamers are all mixed into this. I’m sure of it. That Owl is stirring things up. I’m going to have Dogwood come in, and I’m going to get this story, the entire story, and we’ll see about this,” he said, shortly. But then he softened. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt.”

  “We didn’t see anyone, least of all any of the Dreamers. We were hunting on a wet morning in fog and next we knew, Dogwood’s men surrounded us and took us to the boss. We were tried and convicted in about two minutes of killing a Dogwood antelope.”

  “And they let you go?”

  “No, Major, they tried to hang us.”

  “Then what happened, boy?”

  “Ask Yardley Dogwood, sir. I’m sure he’ll be glad to tell you all about it.”

  “Dogwood’s not a man to retreat from anything, Skye.”

  “He didn’t retreat from hanging us, sir. He’ll tell you the story.”

  “You’re not talking. On second thought, I’m going to drive over there and talk to Dogwood and his crew myself. I won’t have him threatening my agency people. I’m going to listen to his side of it, and draw my own conclusions. I’m as tired of him as your father was.”

  North Star smiled. “He’s at the south end of his range, in a line camp there. And if you go, I want my father’s rifle back. They stole it.”

  North Star felt the agent staring at him as he headed for the teacherage. He found Victoria busy at the stove, nursing a newborn fire and stirring up some johnnycake batter.

  “The agent’s sniffing around. He knows he hasn’t got the story, and I’m not going to tell him,” he said.

  Grandmother Victoria smiled.

  “Even if Yardley Dogwood were to tell the agent exactly what happened, no one would believe him,” North Star said. “Magpies? A thousand magpies stopped a hanging?”

  “I don’t know what happened, either. Goddam magpies, what were they doing, eh?”

  “But Grandmother. Magpie’s your spirit helper.”

  “I ain’t seen a magpie in a long time. I’m too old, and them magpies, they don’t give a damn. Them magpies, they’re just waiting to pick my bones.” But then she smiled. “Goddamn, I’d like to be there.”

  She wheezed, chuckled, and poured the batter over the skillet.

  North Star was riven, as usual. The Indian in him was hiding a whole universe, an entire cosmology from the white men. The white man in him couldn’t begin to fathom what had happened in the southern reaches of the Big Horn Basin, and why that entire flock of magpies flew into a hole in the sky and disappeared.

  What could a two-blood man believe?

  twenty-four

  Beneath a golden moon, Owl trod toward an alpine ridge. The silence was as deep a
s his loneliness. The boy carried only an ancient robe, wanting nothing with him that was wrought by white men. A few streamers drifted past the moon, but the night was mostly clear and cold.

  He came to the ridgetop where he would seek the vision, unrolled the robe, and settled quietly upon it, cross-legged. He closed his eyes, letting the world drain away from his spirit, ignoring his chilled flesh, which puckered in air cold enough to turn water to ice. The suffering was good; his triumph over the suffering wrought by cold was even better. After a while his flesh seemed to fall away from him, and there was only his spirit, at one with the black bowl above him.

  The moon transfixed him, a pale orb with none of the sun’s warmth. But the moon was the lantern of the Gray Owl. It was full and mysterious and rich with promise this icy night.

  Owl lifted his arms toward the moon, but prayed to the Owl, dreaded specter of the Shoshones.

  “Owl, you came to me when Mother Moon drove Father Sun away. You told me to take you as my spirit guide. You told me never to cease crying for you. You told me to dream of yourself, the Owl, and to take the name most feared by all my people.

  “I have done these things. I have taken your name. I have told my story to the headmen of the villages, and to the warriors and boys. We all dream of you and dance to you. We are Dreamers, awaiting the time of newness, when the white men will leave our land forever.

  “I have waited for you. The Dreamers wait for you, and drum for you, and sing for you. We have let the world know that Owl is coming, and Owl will make all things new. When Owl comes, the soldiers will go away. When Owl comes, the ranchers will drive their herds away and the buffalo will return. When Owl comes, the trappers and farmers and white people who live in wooden houses will go away. The earth will shine, and the buffalo and bear and elk will return.

  “That is what you showed to me that hour when Mother Moon defeated Father Sun, and the world grew still and dark. I have done all things that came to me in my first vision. I have gathered the Dreamers in the mountains, where we celebrate your coming. I have sent messengers to other Peoples, Bannocks and Nez Perce and Paiutes and Arapaho, telling them of my vision, that all white men will go away where they make their camps, as well as where my People make their camps.

  “Now, Blessed Owl, my heart cries for a vision. My mind cries for a vision. I want to take back to the Dreamers what I receive from you this night. I want to tell them that the time has come. That the Dreamers will drum and sing as the white men go away. That the buffalo will return, great black herds grazing where the cattle grazed, our meat, our life, our shelter, even as we had known in the times of our fathers.

  “Blessed Owl, we are not far from winter, when the snows will fill the valleys that have been our refuges, when the Dreamers can no longer hide from the eyes of white soldiers. When the Dreamers can no longer find food or make lodges or stay warm, or escape through the snowdrifts to reach better places. The time is growing short. This is the moon of the frost. Any time now, the cold and snow will drive us out of our refuge.

  “Owl, please give the word, begin the times when the People will be as they were in the times of the fathers. Owl, I plead with you now. I have come to this place, far from the Dreamers, and await a sign from you. Hurry! Do not forsake your servant, the very one known as Waiting Wolf, to whom you imparted a message in the time of the black sun.”

  Owl’s prayer flooded out of him almost miraculously, drawn from something so deep inside of him that it didn’t need rehearsing. It simply rose to his lips, and he cast his words into the air, and stared at the moon as he pleaded for his vision.

  They were waiting for him, far below. He had told them he would seek a vision, and was sure that the Gray Owl would hear his pleading. He would return with news. They had watched him hike up an obscure trail, walking closer and closer to the bowl of heaven. They were cold. Food was hard to find. The army was prowling, pushing into places the soldiers had never gone, looking for the Dreamers.

  And soon there would be no meat, when snow lay on the earth recording every print of hoof and moccasin, making visible that which had been furtive and invisible all these moons. It was time to plead, and never stop pleading, because the Dreamers were on the brink of dissolving, filtering back to their villages to starve with the rest of the Shoshones, the people of hollow bellies and gaunt faces.

  He saw only the cruel moon glaring back at him, and knew he must have patience, though he was wildly impatient, the spirit in his young body aching for news from the Great Gray Owl that had promised him a new world.

  He settled back on the robe and stared at the moon, letting himself be transfixed by its relentless glare as it traversed the black sky. He ignored the cold creeping through his limbs, making his legs hurt and his hands numb. If the Gray Owl demanded that he suffer, then he would gladly suffer until the Owl saw that the boy had suffered and proved himself worthy. He would be worthy; he would ignore the ache, the killing numbness.

  So he sat on the cold robe and stared at the cold moon and the cold mountains and the cold valleys, and waited. This night the Owl would grant the thing that all the Dreamers waited for. He was sure of it.

  Time passed slowly. He stared at the moon and it stared back, and finally it passed zenith and started to slide away, and still the boy waited, so cold he could no longer feel his legs and his arms hurt as if someone were poking his flesh with porcupine quills. Once, when he could not endure longer, he stood, lifted his aching arms toward the black sky, and cried out. “I am your messenger. I am ready to carry the Word back to the People! I am ready to die! I am ready to do your bidding. I am ready and have waited, Gray Owl.”

  But there was only silence and cold and darkness.

  Later he stirred, for he could no longer ignore his body even though he tried, and he stood and paced and lifted his arms. He cried and sang his own songs, celebrating all owls and his new name and his mystical mission. And then he sat again on the frosty robe, and didn’t move until the eastern horizon began to blue, and the moon vanished from the heavens.

  The boy debated whether to leave. His pleading had gone unanswered. Some youths fasted and endured as many as four days, but he was numb and angry, too. The Gray Owl had not come with the promised word. He dreaded going back to the camps of the Dreamers with no word. He dreaded the things he would see in their faces, the sharp glances. They all followed their own roads. But somehow the boy knew this would be different, after months of dancing and pleading, and night music, and visions of the world they had lost and hoped to regain.

  He stood bitterly, seeing the eastern skies redden and turn gold. Finally Father Sun blazed over the edge of the world, and Owl’s bitterness turned to hurt. He picked up the ancient robe, wrapped it over his shoulders, and ignored the immediate warmth it gave him. He paused one last moment, doubtful, debating whether to stay on through another sun, or two suns, or three … and reluctantly started down the long trail to the valleys below. Owl felt the frost of the morning lace his legs. There would be warmth in camp where small hot fires would burn, their smoke dissipated to nothing amid the towering pine trees. His shame was fierce in him. He didn’t know how he would face the Dreamers, grown men, hard and strong.

  Then, even as he slid along the trail, a thought came to him as softly as the brush of an owl’s wing, a feathered thought that took flight in his mind, a thought that brimmed with power. Yes, the Gray Owl had come after all, the Owl had brought a redeeming message, the Owl was his spirit guide after all. The thought grew large in his heart, and bloomed in his mind, and Owl knew that he had been visited by the feathered one, who had brushed its wings over the face of the boy. His blood danced through his body, his pulse lifted, his eyes brightened, and he danced down the trail, more alive than he had ever been in his short life.

  He walked into his encampment, and instantly everything stopped, and the world was gazing his way. The Dreamers were still at breakfast and the smell of boiling beef rose from the black cookpots hanging over tin
y fires. They stared. The spring in Owl’s gait must have told them something, because they soon gathered at the center of the encampment, along with some runners from the other Dreamers, scattered through the misty mountains. They had all been waiting, and he would not disappoint them.

  Owl knew well how he appeared to them. The boy had vanished and the man had risen into his flesh, and that was good.

  “I greet you, my brothers,” he said.

  “Grandfather Owl, we greet you,” one replied.

  “You are waiting for word. Owl went off alone to plead for a vision, and now Owl has returned alone, and you are waiting for word. Have you eaten?”

  “Not yet, Owl.”

  “Then we will celebrate and I will eat with you.”

  Eat! That meant that his pleading had ended; he had word. He would take food with them all. They collected closer, wanting not to miss a word. He saw his friends, men with whom he had shared moons in the mountains, and now they watched him sharply, missing nothing, their glances boring into him.

  He raised an arm, welcoming them all to hear him, and soon every Dreamer in that remote camp crowded close.

  “The spirit guide brushed me with his feathers this very dawn, my friends. The Great Gray Owl, most fearsome of all the creatures on the earth, above the earth, below the earth, and in the waters, has spread his wings over his servant who is one of the People.”

  He paused. A deep silence ensued.

  “The time is coming when all the white men will go away, and the buffalo will run in great herds, and the earth shall abound in elk and deer and wolves and coyotes and sheep and hares. I know this to be true. And there will be a sign. And the sign will tell all the People that the moment has come, and the sign will be known to all the Shoshones, and known to all the tribes in this land, to the north and south, east and west. This sign will signal the end of the white man. He will drive his cattle away. He will leave his houses. The soldiers will march east to a distant place. The missionaries will be stricken, and their false words will vanish from this land. And soon Father Sun will shine for the People, and Mother Moon will glow for the People, and all will be as it once was.”