The Owl Hunt (20 page)

“How long ago did Magpie come to you, Grandmother?”

“I was a girl, maybe twelve winters. Who gives a damn?”

“When you had the vision, where were you?”

“Up in the hills at a sacred place. I didn't cry for four nights and days. I just spread a robe and waited, and if a vision would come, I would be pleased. That's all.”

“Did Magpie promise you something?”

“I'm too old to remember, North Star.”

“Did you foresee Magpie coming into your life?”

“Hell no. I went back to the village and told the shaman I'd had a vision. He honored it, but didn't think much of it. Boys had visions. Girls, well, hell, North Star. Who knows what a woman is?”

North Star didn't understand at all, but that was fine. Maybe no person of two bloods could understand any secrets. He slapped his lines over the dray, and it tugged the wagon westward and out of the bottoms where improbable things had happened, things he would try to forget because they made no sense.

“Lots of antelope where we are going, eh?” she said.

“I hope so. Maybe we can get more.” But then he realized, sadly, that his father's fine Sharps was no longer in the wagon.

“I don't have my father's rifle, Grandmother. The cowboy has it, and won't return it.”

“Well, hell, boy, we got some meat to give to the People, and that's good,” she said.

twenty-three

Death sat beside Dirk all the way back to the reservation. Death was there, coloring his every thought. He could think, see, feel, hear, but Death was smiling at him all the while. He felt very small.

They reached the crest of the Owl Creek Mountains, and dropped steadily into the reservation, the wagon bouncing over a nonexistent road. Victoria swayed beside him, her eyes shut, wrapped up in the old blanket that excluded him from her world.

When they reached the Wind River Valley, he thought what to do. He spotted an encampment of the People, and headed toward it. He saw a headman, old Giver, and drew up near his lodge even as others in the camp flooded his way. Victoria woke up and smiled.

“Greetings, Grandfather Giver. I've been hunting, and I've come to give you meat,” he said, nodding to the antelope in the wagon bed.

“Ah! It is a good meat, and the People will have a feast,” Giver said. “We thank you, North Star. And we greet the Crow woman.”

Dirk stepped down, lowered the tailgate, and slid the antelope off the wagon, while the silent crowd watched. They were dancing and drumming in their hearts with the thought of real food, not white men's flour.

Two younger men swiftly hung the animal to a limb and set to work with knives while the crowd watched. Everything would be eaten. And the hide put to good use.

“Where did you find this antelope, North Star?” the old headman asked.

“On the other side of the mountains, Grandfather.”

“Ah,” said the old one. “There would be meat there, is it not so?”

“A little, but hard to find, Grandfather.”

The old headman smiled. “It is a good day when we can have a feast,” he said.

Dirk saw about fifteen Shoshone adults and a few children. It wouldn't be much of a feast, he thought. But to them it would be.

“We must go now,” he said, and offered his farewells to the rest.

They watched silently as he hawed the dray toward the river. He found a crossing, made his way over gravel until he hit the channel, and water tumbled over the floorboards and the dray was swimming. Grandmother Victoria lifted her feet, and then they were driving up an incline and out. He wished he had his father's skill at crossing a river.

A mile farther he ran into a column from the fort. He halted his wagon and watched the trotting horses approach, by twos, and realized Captain Cinnabar himself was commanding. The column halted before the wagon, forming a wall of bluecoats on this chill day, men with elaborate mustachios surveying him eagerly.

“You, is it?” the captain asked. “With the agency wagon.”

North Star didn't feel much like talking. At the moment he'd had his fill of white men, especially those with guns.

“You remember my Crow mother, Victoria, Captain?”

“Skye's woman.”

“My father's wife.”

Cinnabar grinned. “As you wish, young feller. And what brings you here?”

“Hunting,” Dirk said.

“Looks like you had no luck.”

“And what brings you with a large patrol, Captain?”

“Rustling, boy. We've had complaints. Rancher up in the Big Horn Basin says he's lost a lot of beef, hundred or more. We're going to put a stop to it. It's those Dreamers hiding out in the hills, and if we catch any with beef hanging from a tree, we'll do some hanging of our own.”

“I see. My father devoted a lot of his time driving the ranch cattle off the reservation.”

“Yes, and that's caused bad blood with white settlers, boy. They have long memories.”

“Because my father tried hard to keep them from stealing grass from the People?”

Cinnabar grinned. “Let's just say your pa was not popular with Yardley Dogwood and some of the others up there.”

“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 as 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.