The Search for Soaring Hawk

by Terry O'Reilly

  Two stalls from the filly was the horse Sam had brought from his village, the horse that had carried him across the continent. He brought him into the aisle way. Finding his saddle and bridle in the tack area, he put them on and led the horse outside. Wolf looked at him expectantly.

  “Let’s go,” Sam said to the dog and mounted his horse.

  Together they turned and walked out of the courtyard. Once beyond the arch, they broke into a run down the main road. Sam raced through the open iron gates, suddenly feeling free. Wolf, however, stopped at the entry.

  Sam reined his horse to a stop. “Come, Wolf. We don’t have any business here now.”

  Evidently, Wolf felt they did. He very purposefully walked back to the gatepost and lifted his leg.

  “Well done,” said Sam, laughing.

  Wolf trotted back to Sam with a wolf smile on his face. The two of them rode off into the twilight.

  CHAPTER 12

  FOUR TOTEMS

  Sam’s first inclination had been to head east from Sacramento to try to meet Garrett, who would be on his way back to California with another train. But he knew in his heart that part of his life was over, just as was his life with Ramón. Once he made that decision, he left his horse at the livery. He had given the smith instructions to give the animal to Carlos in thanks for his friendship. Now he and Wolf would continue their journey on foot.

  He recalled the words of Ancient Fire. “Look to S’unktokeca ,” the old shaman had said. “When the time is right, he will show you the way.”

  So now, he followed Wolf. And the dog seemed to know where he was to lead as he maintained a steady course northward. The mountains loomed ahead of them. The same feeling he’d had that they were calling him when he first saw them returned.

  On the fourth day after leaving the hacienda, Sam stopped for the night in a grove of spruce trees. He built a fire and cooked a rabbit he had shot that afternoon. After eating, sharing the meal with Wolf, he stared into the fire. He did not know where he was, but it didn’t upset him. He didn’t know where he was going, but he was not disturbed by this either. He was content, for the moment, to be wherever he was, to be with Wolf, and to let the future and memories of the previous two years sort themselves out.

  Staring at the fire, images of Lean Bear, Nils, Garrett, Gus, Todd and finally Ramón shimmered in the dancing flames. He sighed and pulled Wolf, who was lying beside him, closer.

  “Tell me what you have learned?” Startled, Sam looked across the fire. There lay the black bear, forepaws crossed in front of him. Wolf did not stir at the sound of the bear’s words.

  “Bear,” said Sam, “it’s good to see you again.” The bear ignored his greeting. “Are you going to answer my question? Tell me what you have learned.”

  Sam took another deep breath and redirected his gaze to the flames. “Life for a man who prefers men to women is difficult in all worlds.”

  “Mmm,” said the bear. “Now you have discovered this, what have you decided?”

  Sam thought again. “Though I look like a white man and have lived with them, I have the heart of an Indian.”

  “Then do what you must do,” the bear said. “You will see me no longer.”

  Sam watched him rise and lumber off into the darkness.

  Resolutely, with no regret, Sam got up, removed his white man’s clothing and threw it on the fire. Wolf rose and watched him intently. Sam then went to his pack and removed its contents. He burned all things connecting him to the white man’s world. At the bottom of the pack were his elkskin breeches, shirt, breechclout, moccasins, knife, flints, and the buffalo robe gifted him by the old shaman at Fort Laramie. These he lay on the ground before he threw the pack into the fire. He put on the native garments and watched the flames consume the remnants of his life as Samuel Hawkins. Wolf looked up at him and whined.

  The two lay down side by side on the buffalo robe and were soon asleep.

  * * * The cry of a raptor roused Soaring Hawk. He sat up and stretched. Wolf got up and stretched also, bowing with his front legs extended. He then rolled over on his back and squirmed on the ground. The Indian laughed. The dog came to him and licked his face.

  “Good morning to you, too, my friend,” he said in his native tongue.

  Wolf yipped and licked him again.

  “You seem happy to hear words in a language new to you.”

  Wolf play bowed again and barked.

  “It is the language of my people. It feels good to speak it again.”

  “I would imagine hearing you speak in your own tongue means you have made a decision?” It was the hawk. He was perched in the low bows of a tree near the clearing.

  Soaring Hawk was not surprised to see him.

  “Yes,” said Soaring Hawk. “The bear is gone.”

  “So, you have decided to live your life as the son of your father, River Runs Deep?”

  At the hawk’s words, the young Indian smiled.

  “Good,” said the hawk. “And have you found the love you set out to search for—the love of one man for another, living together as one?”

  Soaring Hawk paused before answering. “I have found that love has many faces. Though I once came close to finding the love I desire above all others”—he looked at Wolf as memories of Nils flitted across his mind—“I have not found it.”

  “Are you still looking for it?” the hawk asked.

  Again, Soaring Hawk did not respond at once. He went back to the business of rolling up his buffalo robe and putting out the last of the embers in the fire pit.

  After a time, he looked at the hawk and said thoughtfully, “Although I still desire to find one with whom I can both fall in love and love in a way that binds two souls together, I will no longer strive to find that love. I will let it come to me when it will.”

  “Wisdom such as this often has a mysterious power,” said the hawk. “Remember to look to the wolf.”

  Soaring Hawk looked at Wolf, who was sitting near the tree in which the Hawk perched. Wolf cocked his head to one side. He seemed to be trying to determine to whom his master was speaking.

  “Does that mean I will soon find the one—” Soaring Hawk looked up as he spoke. The hawk was gone.

  Soaring Hawk shrugged his shoulders and turned to Wolf. “He would not have answered me anyway. A spirit guide cannot predict the future, only reveal what is inside.”

  The Indian dropped to one knee and pulled the dog close. “You seem to know where we are to go, so I will trust you, S’unka,” he said, using the diminutive form of his name.

  Wolf placed one large paw on Soaring Hawk’s leg and nuzzled against him. The man ruffled the thick fur on the animal’s neck.

  “Come,” he said. “Show me the way.”

  Wolf barked and bounded off into the forest. Soaring Hawk picked up the rolled robe and trotted after him.

  * * * For several weeks, the two meandered, aimlessly it seemed to Soaring Hawk, amid the towering conifers. It did not matter to him. He continued to trust that Wolf was somehow leading him to his destination. During this time he was reacquainting himself with his roots, going back to a life, which, he realized now, suited him far more than life in the white man’s world. For the time being, he was content to wander.

  His skill in hunting and trapping without the use of firearms returned quickly. He fashioned himself a spear and was able to keep himself and Wolf well fed on the plentiful small game of the region. It wasn’t that Wolf would not have been able to fend for himself, for just as Soaring Hawk’s native heritage was in resurgence, so, too, Wolf’s wild nature was asserting itself. The man and dog usually worked together, as Wolf would have as a member of a pack, to corner and capture their prey. Often, however, Wolf provided the meal without the man’s assistance.

  Although Soaring Hawk was satisfied with his life and in awe at the beauty of the land in which he found himself, two things were of concern to him. First, the more practical of the two, were the rains and mists that occurred almost dail
y. He had never lived in a place where the rain gods held so much sway. He was more appreciative of the robe than he ever imagined he would be. It frequently provided the two sojourners protection against the elements without which, Soaring Hawk felt, his appreciation of this region would be greatly diminished. He offered many prayers of thanks to the old shaman as he and Wolf huddled together under the robe’s safekeeping.

  The second matter of concern, which seemed to be growing as the days passed by, was that he had not met another human since leaving the Sacramento area. There seemed to be no sign of habitation, by either white man or Indian. He was happy with his life with Wolf, but his desire for human companionship and his need for an emotional connection with another man were beginning to weigh on him. He held these feelings in check, however, and continued to trust in the words of the old shaman: Wolf was the key to fulfillment.

  * * * By early fall, the wanderers were far from Hacienda dela Vega, far from the vestiges of Soaring Hawk’s life as Samuel Hawkins. As he looked back on those days, they seemed almost as a dream. The only realities now were the vastness of the forest in which they now lived and the loneliness growing in his heart.

  On a rare bright sunny morning as the two were making their way through the trees, a strange sound came to Soaring Hawk’s ears. Wolf heard it, too, as he stopped and inclined his head in the direction from which it came. It was a constant roar, swelling, receding, then swelling again. Not the roar of an animal, but of something else. They walked forward in the direction of the sound.

  As he broke through the trees, Soaring Hawk found himself on a high bluff, a gasp escaping his lips. There, below him, was an endless expanse of water.

  “The ocean!” he exclaimed aloud. Garrett and Gus had told him of this marvel, but seeing it with his own eyes left him breathless. It seemed to go on forever, a limitless sweep of deep blue reaching to the curved horizon. At the base of the cliff on which he and Wolf stood, the waves crashed on a rocky shore. He had seen lakes and rivers, but they were nothing compared to this. For a long time he just stood, enthralled at the spectacle of it.

  After a while, Soaring Hawk and Wolf began to walk along the top of the bluff. Some distance from where they had first witnessed the ocean’s majesty, they found a steep, but manageable, trail down to the shore, which, in this place, was a sand beach. Carefully, but still slipping several times, the man and dog made their way down. When he stood on the sand, Soaring Hawk was even more impressed with the power of the water. The waves, nearly half as tall as the man himself, raced toward him, thundered onto the shore, dwindled, and then retreated to meet and mingle with the next whitecapped breaker. The roar was deafening. Wolf ran back and forth, barking as the waves broke and receded over and over.

  Soaring Hawk squatted down and dipped a handful of water from a wave that reached his feet. He brought it to his lips. Salt. Garrett had warned him of this. He had told him tales of men who, lost at sea, in desperation drank of the water, only to die an agonizing death.

  Soaring Hawk rose once more and gazed at the vast panorama before him. A sense of insignificance in the face of this phenomenon filled him. Yet, at the same time, he also felt a feeling of well being, a feeling that he was connected somehow to this body of water in a way he could not explain. Here, miles from the village in which he was born, he sensed he had returned to the source of his being, the place from which he had come.

  He looked up. Overhead, floating on the wind current that ricocheted off the face of the bluff, were birds. Birds of varieties he had never seen before. He watched as they dove into the waves, returning to the surface carrying fish. He marveled at their skills.

  He was unwilling to leave this place. He walked along the beach until he found a hollow in the side of the bluff. Here he laid his robe and built a small fire. Here he and Wolf spent the night as the endless rhythm of the ocean lulled them to sleep.

  * * * For several days, the pair traveled north along the shore. When the beach gave way to rocks, they retreated into the forest, or climbed the bluffs. But always, as the opportunity arose, they returned to walk at the edge of the sea. Soaring Hawk felt something drawing him here, something he could not explain. At night, when he could find dry fuel, Soaring Hawk would build a fire on the sand. With Wolf by his side, he would sit and listen to the eternal song of the waves as he stared into the flames. He no longer saw the faces of the men from his past, but, occasionally, he thought he could see a face wavering in the firelight, a face he could not clearly make out. When this happened, his heart would quicken. It gave him reason to hope.

  * * *

  One morning they came upon a delta where a river flowed into the sea. Several times in their travels along the shore, they had encountered smaller streams ending their journeys to the ocean, but they had been fordable. This time, they had to make their way inland along the course of the estuary, in an attempt to find a place to cross. What they found, as they did so, amazed Soaring Hawk.

  The river became a rapid, and there the Indian witnessed many brown bears standing on the rocks, or sitting in the shallow pools. They were grabbing the large fish that seemed intent on dashing themselves to pieces in frenzied attempts to make their way upstream.

  He and Wolf stood a safe distance away and watched as the mammals caught and feasted on the bounty of the river.

  “They have a good idea,” Soaring Hawk said to Wolf over the din of the cascade. He laid down his pack and extracted his hunting spear. He waded out into the rushing water, staying well away from his fellow fishers. As he stood with his spear poised, he recalled the days of fishing with his father and the lessons he had learned about patience from brother heron. Today, though, patience was hardly necessary. The fish of this place almost begged to be caught. They swam all around him, paying no mind to his presence in their domain. He had merely to raise and strike, and the prize was his. Within minutes, he had more than enough for him and Wolf to feast on.

  Soaring Hawk waded out of the water onto the shore where he had tossed his catch. Wolf stood looking at the bounty of the river. He raised his head to his master and gave his wolf smile.

  “Ah, yes, S’unka, we will eat well tonight.”

  He gave thanks to the fish for giving their lives for him. As he was gathering them up, he heard a low growl behind him. He turned to find a huge brown bear making its way slowly in their direction. Wolf’s hackles raised and he returned the beast’s growl with one of his own. The animal came at them more quickly. Wolf began barking furiously. He charged at the bear. Soaring Hawk stood and started to back away. He tripped on the rocky bank and sprawled out on his back. The huge ursine roared and raised itself up on its hind legs, towering over the man and dog. Dropping down on his forelegs, it lumbered toward the supine figure, lying helpless on the rocks.

  Wolf interjected himself between the man and the beast. He was growling more fiercely than Soaring Hawk had ever heard him before. He launched himself at the attacking animal, sinking his teeth into its flesh just above the shoulder. The bear bellowed in pain, and once more rose up to its full height. In doing so, he dislodged Wolf, flinging him some distance, where he landed with a dull thud on the rocky river bank. Wolf did not move. The bear dropped again to all fours and ran toward the motionless dog.

  Soaring Hawk got up. He ran at the invader, yelling as loudly as he could, snatching up and throwing rocks as he did so. Another voice joined his. Turning his head in surprise, he saw a young man running nimbly over the stony ground. He was also shouting and throwing rocks at the bear. The beast raised himself, roaring defiantly, but then, seeming to sense danger, turned and ran off.

  Soaring Hawk rushed to the fallen dog. “S’unka, S’unka!”

  Wolf did not move. Dropping to his knees, Soaring Hawk saw Wolf was barely breathing. His tongue lolled out of his mouth and a trickle of blood ran from his nose.

  Turning to the man who stood beside them, “What can I do?” Soaring Hawk asked hopelessly.

  The man said nothing
at first, but knelt beside him. He looked deeply into Soaring Hawk’s eyes. Placing his hand on his shoulder, he said something in an unfamiliar language. Then he placed his hands on Wolf. He closed his eyes. His lips moved, but Soaring Hawk could not hear anything spoken aloud.

  For a time, nothing seemed to be happening. Then Wolf shuddered, took a deep breath and whined. The dog opened his eyes and raised his head slightly. His tail thumped weakly on the ground.

  Soaring Hawk buried his face in Wolf’s thick fur. “S’unktokeca!”

  Wolf licked his hand.

  Soaring Hawk turned to the man who was now squatting next to him, smiling. “Thank you, thank you,” he said in his native tongue.

  The man shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

  “You do not understand me, do you?” Soaring Hawk said.

  The man smiled again and shook his head, gesturing with his hands outstretched.

  “Well, I thank you just the same, “said Soaring Hawk, placing his hand on the man’s shoulder and pointing to the dog.

  “Ah,” The man nodded. “Kamooks,” he said, pointing at Wolf.

  “Yes,” said Soaring Hawk, still speaking the language of his people. “S’untokeca.” He placed his hand on the dog’s shoulder. Then he added in English, “Wolf.”

  “Ah,” said the man excitedly. “White man’s word.”

  “You speak the white man’s language?” Soaring Hawk asked in English.

  “Yes, some,” Wolf’s savior said, holding up his thumb and index finger about an inch apart. “Learn from white man come for fur.”

  Soaring Hawk sighed. “Good. We can talk to one another.”

  “Yes, talk,” the man said. “Name, Spirit of the Big Water.” He pointed to himself.

  “Thank you, Spirit of the Big Water, for saving Wolf. He means a lot to me. My name is Soaring Hawk.”