The Owl Hunt (25 page)

“But no rational person would believe that,” the lieutenant insisted. “That's propaganda, but what's real is the boy's little army, the Dreamers.”

“They are poorly armed, starving, and know they haven't a chance, Lieutenant,” Dirk said. “This is a spiritual matter. They walk a circle, beat a drum, and sing a song of hope.”

Keefer stared sourly, and smiled. “Well, I suppose you would know all about that,” he said.

Dirk felt their distrust and condescension again. “Yes, sir, I do,” he replied.

“This reservation's in a state of anarchy. There's a rebellion brewing. The boy's out there, calling the Dreamers to arms, and then this place will be knee-deep in blood,” the lieutenant said.

“I think not, sir. This is about belief.”

“I don't understand this rubbish and don't need to,” Keefer said. “This is a military matter. I've sent a dispatch to Captain Cinnabar, and he'll contact the other columns in the field, and we'll put a lid on this reservation. If the savages want a fight, we'll give them a fight. If they try sneaking up in the night, we'll be ready. If they try to flee, we'll box them in. They have no place to go. They'll be spotted and reported. They haven't any food, and if they try to take some, they'll find every militia man in the area armed and waiting.”

Dirk absorbed that bleakly. “He's a boy with a vision, sir. It'll all die away.”

“No, Skye, Owl is a public enemy, a menace to civilization, a murderer, an organizer of sedition and rebellion. And we're going to snare him one way or another, and we're going to make a public example of him before the entire Eastern Shoshone nation.”

“You'll find the people living quietly in their villages, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, for the moment. Until they get the word. And then they'll take up the weapons they've hidden from us, and burn and rape and kill until no white man is left alive.”

“That won't happen, sir.”

Keefer stared. “How would you know, eh? How would you know?”

“I understand their religion, sir. I learned it from my mother and my kin.”

“Yes, you would know, wouldn't you?” the lieutenant said. “Major Van Horne, we'll need to make some plans to prevent an insurrection. We'll need the utmost privacy. I'm thinking perhaps your teacher should return to his schoolhouse and teach his minions about the world of science and civilization.”

“Why, yes, of course. Thanks for coming over, Dirk. We'll take it from here.”

“Have you talked this over with Chief Washakie?” Dirk asked.

“No, this isn't his business, Skye,” the lieutenant said.

“Not his business? He has the authority to prevent armed conflict. He's their chief. His word is law. He's also one of the most persuasive men in the Shoshone nation. They'll hear him.”

“Well, young man, this is for the Indian Bureau and the army to deal with,” Keefer said.

Thaddeus Partridge looked relieved. “Dirk, my boy, you just teach them the religious fundamentals, the Sermon on the Mount, Ten Commandments, the ways of redemption, and you'll be worth your weight in gold. Once these Shoshones see the light, things will go a lot more smoothly. You can help us here.”

“I'll leave that instruction to you, sir. That's your mission, I believe?”

Partridge stared long. “It's my mission; I'd hoped it was yours, too, my young friend.”

They stood around Van Horne's desk, waiting.

Dirk saw something in their faces, something in the waiting, that excluded him.

“Good day,” he said.

They nodded silently. Whatever they were planning, they would not include Dirk Skye, the two-blood teacher, in on it.

twenty-nine

Owl scarcely noticed his hunger for a while. His spirit was detached from his body. He floated above the starving boy and didn't feel the faintness that stole through a body no longer his. He tumbled down the mountains, finding little to eat. The birds had devoured the last berries, and all the earth was brown and silent as it waited for the cold.

Still, he was one with his spirit guide, and didn't need his own flesh. So he walked down gulches toward the Big Horn River, where the white men had vast ranches and thousands of the four-foots they raised and slaughtered. He discovered knots of the four-foots in the groves along the river, where there was still an occasional patch of green grass.

All that day he walked along the river bottom, seeing the arid mountains to the west, and the misty Big Horns jutting high on the east. He passed cattle but had no weapon, not even a knife, nor the means of making a fire, so the meat meant nothing to him. Here in the bottoms he did find cattails, and borrowed the wisdom of his mother. He pulled the cattails from the swampy ground, collected a heap of roots, ground them to a pulp with rocks, and began masticating them. They were thick and white and starchy, and made an emergency food. They should be boiled, turned to a paste, but he had no fire and no pot and no knife. Still, the pulverized roots were ambrosia for his belly.

All that day he saw signs of the white men and their herds, but he saw no one, and slid quietly along the river, scarcely knowing where he was going. Twilight found him far north of the reservation, in country he had never seen. Then, just before dusk, he spotted light, and discovered a log building with men inside, sometimes visible through windows. And in the pen nearby were half a dozen horses, and several saddles perched on the top rail of the pen over their blankets, along with some tack, including bridles and one saddlebag.

Ah! He settled in a copse of cottonwoods to watch. He would be patient. Sometimes the men moved about. Sometimes they came out to piss near the river. One came out and went to a bin, opened the lid, and took a bucket of grain, oats perhaps, to the mangers and fed the grain to the horses.

Ah! This was all just fine. Dusk came slowly, but it came, and then darkness, and the tired men blew out their lamp and fell into silence. Still Owl waited. It would take them a good while to slip into a deep sleep. He studied the sky, anxious that no bright moon appear, but none rose, and he remembered that Grandfather Moon would be only a sliver this night.

He studied the horses. One had spotted him, and stared at the copse where he sat in blackness. That would be tricky. He decided to move about, let them see him and smell him for a while, so he padded near the corral until they all saw him, their ears pricked forward. But they did nothing. He slipped closer, walked around the corral while they eyed him, taking time to examine the saddles. Most of them were empty, without so much as a bedroll, but one had a sheath for a weapon, and he saw the butt of a gun poking from it.

Ah! He didn't disturb the horses at all, though he was choosing which one he would take, and settled on a buckskin mule that seemed almost friendly. Mules were his brothers, and he had always wanted one. He slipped over to the bin and opened it, discovering half a burlap bag of oats. Ah! Food for man and animal. He could grind the oats between smooth rocks, let it soak, and eat the oats. He filled the saddlebags with oats, and decided he wanted the scoop, too. So he took it and gently lowered the lid.

The horses were used to him now, but still they watched intently. He eyed the silent cabin, not knowing whether one of the men was peering out of the black window. He couldn't help that, and slowly opened the gate to the pen, letting himself in. He plucked the bridle off the rail and headed for the mule, which stood quietly and let itself be bridled. He led the mule a little to see if it was an obedient one, and then stopped where the saddle was, the one with the weapon, and soon he was yanking up the cinch and buckling it.

Then he opened the gate and left it open. It would be good to let the horses out. He led his mule into the deep shade of the cottonwoods, away from the pale moonglow that had begun to brighten the land. There was more moon than he had expected, and it gave the men in the cabin good vision.

The mule tried to return to the herd, but Owl swiftly tugged it away, and somehow kept the mule moving. He let the buckskin poke its nose into his chest and sniff, making acquaintance. He checked the stirrups, which were a little long for him, he thought, but he would not do anything about that for now. Changing their length involved a lot of work, lacing and unlacing the straps.

He was ready. He mounted easily, and settled himself in the white man's saddle, and felt the mule accept him and await commands. He glanced back, and saw the horses drifting out of the pen, but not going anywhere in particular.

The odd thing was he didn't know where to go. But he thought to go to dry ground, where the hoofprints would vanish in the hard clay, so he headed west until the land rose and the bottoms gave way to sagebrush-dotted slopes. No one followed. When he was well above the bottoms, he looked down on the cabin and saw no movement. The horses had drifted toward the river and were grazing.

Now at last he drew the weapon from its sheath, and found he had a repeating carbine. It was loaded with fifteen bullets. He thought he knew how to lever another shell into the chamber, but wasn't sure. He would find out how it worked once he put some distance between the men and himself. Ah! He was a warrior, for the moment. Owl felt a flood of kinship to his spirit protector, the Gray Owl that glided silently through the darkness.

He drifted aimlessly, not knowing or caring where the mule took him. He passed some cattle, and thought to shoot one, but he didn't. He had no knife to butcher with, and no flint and steel or match to ignite a fire to cook it. And perhaps the loaded carbine was intended for better things. It could kill every government official at the agency, and an army officer or two as well.

But when he reached a hogback he paused, confused. He had no plan. He didn't know where he was going. He hadn't given it a thought. The mule stood restlessly under him while he pondered. But there was nothing to weigh. His life was not in his hands. His spirit creature would take him wherever he was destined to go.

He surrendered to fate, wondering what would become of him. He eased the reins and felt the buckskin move slowly, and he turned the mule south, back toward the reservation.

He rode easily toward the Owl Creek Mountains, and found his way up the same gulch that he had descended, and found the sacred spring where the ancients had filled the cliffs with owl images. Here he dismounted and fed the mule some oats. He wasn't very hungry, but he hammered some oats between two rocks, and then left them to soak in the can, and in the morning he might have something to sustain him.

Now, though, he climbed the cliff to a high place and knelt under a sliver moon, letting the frosty air cool his body.

“Spirit guide, now I must do what I must do,” he prayed.

There was no response.

“Now I must free my people,” he said.

Silence greeted him.

“Now I must accept my fate,” he said. “The Dreamers are dreaming, and every Dreamer is pleading with you to set my people free.”

He felt numb, and it was time to descend into the hollow, where the wind would not seek him. He had a saddle blanket now for warmth.

He didn't sleep, and knew he wouldn't sleep again. But he watched the stars slide across the canyon and disappear, like mortals who slid so briefly into the vision of many eyes, and soon were forgotten.

In the morning he tried his oat mush, and it was edible but full of grit. It didn't matter, for it needed only to sustain him for a while. He shook himself free of the frost, wiped it off the back of the mule, and saddled the animal once again. By day, the mule was the color of gold.

He saw no one as he topped the arid mountains and began his descent to the reservation. He was on the loneliest road of all. He dropped into a gulch that showed signs of passage. Shod hooves had peppered the clay with prints. The soldiers had been there, but not recently. The manure was brown and dry.

Late that day he entered the valley of the Wind River, and saw many more prints of shod hooves. The soldiers had been everywhere, in thick columns, patrolling for rustlers or Dreamers or whatever it was they were hunting. But now they were not here.

He reached the upper end of the reservation, snugged against the mighty mountains, and there he found the farthest of the camps, a dozen lodges where the People struggled to survive by hunting when there was nothing to hunt. He knew there were some Dreamers living among them, and he was eager to see them.

As soon as he rode close, the Shoshone people swept out to him and greeted him with great joy, and smiled up at him. They studied his golden mule, and the fine saddle, and knew where these had come from, and laughed softly. The People were gaunt from hunger, and so ill-clad he scarcely knew how they would survive the winter. There were no more buffalo to turn into robes and greatcoats and moccasins and hats and gloves.

He discovered Mare in the camp, and greeted his old friend, one of the first of the Dreamers, and one of the most respected. He stepped off the golden mule to greet his friend with a clasp.

“Ah, Mare! It is good you are here,” he said, even as the Shoshones gathered. He saw other Dreamers, too, boys and men, standing quietly, perhaps quizzically.

“I have a gift for you, Mare,” he said, and untied the rifle sheath. He handed the sheath and carbine to Mare.

“Use it well, Mare. There are fifteen cartridges in it.”

“You would give this to me?”

“Use it well, and dream. The time is coming now.”

This evoked a deep silence, for all the People heard him say the time was at hand.

He unbuckled the saddlebags and handed them to the village elder, a man he knew who wore his hair unbraided, under a headband.

“Tindooh, here are oats. Make a meal for your people,” he said. “Make tea and eat the oats.”

“You have blessed us, Owl.”

“Do that to remember me, Tindooh.”

“We will eat and remember, Owl.”