“I don’t know what to do with her,” Captain Cinnabar said. “She’s never had the slightest interest in domestic life. She’s never had a swain. In all the years I’ve introduced her to society, she’s not snared anything resembling a suitable husband, and in fact scares the hell out of ‘em. Sometimes she scares the hell out of me. Good sandwich, eh?”
“She reminds me of my Crow mother,” Dirk said. “In her own way, she was the strongest in our family. And still is.”
Captain Cinnabar demolished his sandwich, ate the last scrap of salad, wiped his shark-tooth facial hair with a napkin, and eyed his guest.
“The Shoshones are simply in a funk,” he said. “The Arapaho are being settled downriver, and the Shoshones don’t like it. It’s their land, but Uncle Sam doesn’t seem to care. The two tribes are enemies, but that never bothered the Indian Bureau. It certainly makes life difficult for the army. Frankly, Skye, I’m surprised there hasn’t been more trouble. Washakie’s kept the lid on or there’d likely be some bloody battles just outside of our parlor windows. That’s all this is. And things will settle down soon enough.”
Dirk wanted to believe it, but he couldn’t. And he couldn’t very well explain why he didn’t. It was Indian knowledge.
“It’s not that, sir. It’s the vision. It’s what Waiting Wolf saw in a single moment, saw things that lie beyond this world. Once he saw Owl—the feared totem of these people—across the face of the dying sun, everything changed, and now he’s picking up followers day by day. Believers, sir, believers, like the apostles.”
Captain Cinnabar merely smiled wryly. “Heard a lot of that sort of thing, but it doesn’t beat a Springfield trapdoor carbine.”
At the exact moment that Dirk finished his sandwich, Aphrodite materialized and collected the Tiffany plate.
“A saint in rags will defeat an army with swords every time,” she said.
“Well, the Shoshones aren’t saints, my dear, and what I have in mind will bloody well keep the peace. I’m going to march my whole command across the entire reservation, two companies of mounted infantry, each with a carbine and a revolver, riding on fat horses, with a Gatling gun behind. I think that’ll quiet the Dreamers. Just watch!”
seven
Captain Cinnabar was sure putting on a show. He assembled his column on the parade while most everyone for miles around watched. A hundred men would march this morning, with a handful left to man the post.
These mounted infantry were carrying carbines and revolvers, with spare ammunition in their saddle packs. They wore blue blouses, yellow scarves, visored campaign hats. Their horses had been groomed until they glowed. A pack train would carry three days’ worth of rations, and a pair of big mules would drag the Gatling gun and its caisson. This was more than a patrol. Cinnabar meant to show the flag, and that meant a color guard in the van, with Old Glory and the regimentals curling softly in the morning zephyrs.
The juniormost lieutenant, Gregorovich, would command the post and its skeleton crew, mostly stablemen and clerks, but the rest of the officers who weren’t on leave—two or so were usually away—were shaping up their companies. The enlisted men were mostly immigrants from Ireland and Germany. Some had barely fired a weapon, but that didn’t matter. The show was the thing, and show was what Captain Cinnabar wanted. Show that blue column to every Shoshone on the reservation, and to the Arapahos being settled over on its eastern reaches.
Dirk watched intently. This was the same army that had gotten licked at the Little Big Horn, along with Washakie’s scouts who had gone along for the fun of licking their enemies the Sioux. The same army, but if anything even weaker, with few experienced enlisted men in its ranks. Most of these men had never been in a fight.
The chief stood silently, with space around him even though he had twenty or thirty Shoshones for company. He wore his white-man clothing this morning. Dirk wondered whether he had been consulted and what he thought of it. The rest of the Eastern Shoshones watched impassively, their gazes taking in everything, their stance straight, their bodies lean. Deep silence pervaded the clot of natives.
It seemed half the morning was consumed by all the prepping, but at last the captain took his position at the van, lifted an arm, and shouted an order. There was no band here, no bugler, either, but no doubt Cinnabar was wishing he might have a musical send-off. One could almost hear the bugles and snare drums.
The agent, Major Van Horne, watched intently, flanked by clerks. The two officers’ wives, Jane Wigglesworth and Glory Merchant, stood to one side, waving their parasols. They were jointed by Amy Partridge, wife of the Episcopal vicar, the Reverend Thaddeus Partridge, and their little boy Robert, who they called Bobolink.
The Indian reservations had been divided up among the denominations, and the Episcopalians had gotten Wind River. Off a way was their mission, St. Michael’s, and a vicarage. A gaggle of soldiers watched from the edge of the parade. And not least, Aphrodite Olive Cinnabar was studying the sea of blue-bloused soldiers with obvious amusement.
“Miss Cinnabar, something has tickled your fancy,” Dirk said.
“Men are such idiots,” she replied.
“I take it you’re not impressed.”
“The Shoshones won’t be.”
“What would impress them?”
“A government that keeps its promises to them.”
Her logic could not be faulted. He smiled at her.
The column circled the parade and then clattered down the creek toward the Wind River, flag flapping, guidons snapping. In a while it diminished to a blue worm, and then disappeared. The agency and post were suddenly quiet. Oddly, no one drifted away. Van Horne stood there, as if contemplating the meaning of life. The vicar and his wife simply gazed blandly. The Shoshones stood in deepest silence, no doubt pondering this show of friendly force by the friendly whites.
Aphrodite was grinning.
“Gunboat diplomacy. You want to guess what’s going on inside the heads of those gentlefolk?” she said, gesturing toward Washakie’s people.
Dirk glanced uncomfortably toward them. Even Washakie, faithful to his Yank friends to the last, seemed pensive. The rest stood like rocks. Then, suddenly, Washakie wheeled away and the rest of the Shoshones broke into knots of two or three, and drifted toward their lodges and cabins, their lives entirely in the hands of the Great Father in the city of Washington far away.
“You appear to be at odds with your father, Aphrodite.”
“Olive. Never call me that other name, which I will not speak. Of course I’m at odds. I was born at odds with him. I’m an army brat. Army brats and ministers’ children are born to rebel.”
“Olive, then.”
“Olive isn’t much of a name, either, but we’re stuck with what we get. The captain interprets his orders, namely to keep the peace, very liberally. I’m looser. I reject all orders, especially his.”
Dirk scarcely knew what to say to that, but was rescued by his Crow mother, Victoria.
“Goddamn,” Victoria said.
“Ah, Olive, this is my Crow mother Victoria, one of my father’s wives.”
“This is an entertaining day,” Olive said. “Was your father a Mormon?”
“No, he was in the fur trade and then a guide. He met my Crow mother at a trappers’ rendezvous, and later met my mother, Blue Dawn, at a summertime visit of the Shoshones and Crows.”
“I have no intention of adhering to any faith,” Olive said. “I’m leaning toward free love and feminism.”
“Well, dammit, that’s me,” said Victoria.
Olive looked a little flustered, but was rescued by the Partridges, she petite and demure, he with a noble Roman profile, with an especially fine nose, which caused him to stand slightly sideways of his auditors so it might be admired.
“Why it’s Madam Skye, and I do believe you’re the captain’s daughter Aphrodite,” Amy Partridge said.
“Olive. Aphrodite’s the name of a lewd goddess.”
“I see,”
Amy said. “Virtue is its own reward.”
Thaddeus rescued the moment. “What a sight! Oh, when I beheld that blue column, the flags flying, the horses and men marching toward their destiny, words failed me and my heart fairly burst with pride,” he said. “Never was I so proud to be an American.”
“Goddamn,” Victoria said.
The Partridges were familiar with Victoria, and simply treated her as if she didn’t exist, which she didn’t in their minds. She was a relic.
“We all put our pants on one leg at a time,” Olive said.
No one had anything to add.
“Has your attendance dropped off?” Dirk asked the missionary.
“Now that’s a funny thing. They’ve all run off. Ever since the eclipse. It’s as if they all reverted to their old ways. I was catechizing a class of six, and now there’s no one. I fear we’ll have to start all over again. I hear the school’s empty, too.”
“I have no way to board them,” Dirk said. “There’s not much I can do until there’s a way to board all the children. I rarely have ten.”
“Oh, it’s coming, Mr. Skye, but far more slowly than we might wish. It’s so hard to get the attention of anyone Back East.”
“I’m on the side of the Shoshones,” Olive said.
“Why, miss, aren’t we all?” the vicar asked.
“No, I mean I think they should just be themselves.”
“Surely you don’t mean that. Why, with some enlightenment they could accept our faith, cease polygamous marriages, support themselves by farming, start up businesses, have Fourth of July celebrations.”
“They may prefer to celebrate their own Independence Day, July twenty-ninth, to be specific,” Olive said.
“The day of the eclipse? Independence?”
“That’s how it’s shaping up. They have their minutemen, and one of these hours they’ll collect at some local Concord Bridge and fire the shot heard ‘round the world.”
Thaddeus Partridge stared.
“Sonofabitch,” said Victoria.
“What does your father think of that?” Amy Partridge said.
“I’m too busy serving him hand and foot to utter subversions,” Olive replied.
Dirk laughed, but no one else did.
The conversation ended on that note. Dirk intuited that he would enjoy a lot more of Miss Cinnabar’s company.
Olive headed forcefully for her quarters, her gait willful, while the Partridges gathered up their tow-haired Bobolink, who was prowling the stables, and they drifted toward the distant white Episcopalian compound: a small clapboard church, a Montgomery Ward prefabricated vicarage, and a prefabricated sexton’s cottage, occupied by God, or at least an imitation—an old man with a flowing beard, sandals, and a gray monk’s habit. His name was Alfred, but Dirk didn’t know anything else about him. He either lived in his own island of the mind, or else was mentally slow. He swept, dusted the plain pews, tended a garden, served as handyman, and squinted at the Shoshones from watery blue eyes. Some of the Shoshones were sure he was Jesus come to earth and the Partridges either didn’t know that, or didn’t discourage the idea.
If anything, that afternoon was sleepier than usual, and Dirk scarcely knew how to occupy his time. He was obliged to keep the school doors open, which meant being there, which meant that he occasionally spent hours reading whatever came to hand, which wasn’t much, considering the remoteness of the agency. On some days he was reduced to reading tea leaves.
“Tonight Owl visits,” Victoria said at the supper hour.
“What do you mean?”
“Owl will come. You’ll see.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m a goddamn medicine woman.”
“What will happen?”
“Scare the hell out of white men.”
“Should I alert the post?”
She started cackling. She’d lost a couple of teeth, and now her wheezing whistled through the gaps. “Hell, boy, I like Owl,” she said.
The drumming began sometime around midnight, when the whole world was fast asleep. Dirk awakened with a start, something within him responding to the muffled thump of drums. He found himself fully awake instantly. Outside his window, the sky was dotted with stars, and a gibbous moon glowed—and yet it didn’t. A curious cloud obscured it, darkening this place but not blocking its bold light on nearby fields and slopes. That was an odd cloud, and then Dirk was chilled by it. He swore it was an owl cloud, an owl with spread wings, glowing eyes, curved beak, its claws tucked under. And it hid the moon.
Dirk dressed swiftly, plunged into the parlor only to discover Victoria grinning, and then hastened into the night. The drumming rose to the east, beyond the military compound, somewhere near the Episcopal mission. He hurried that way alone. The drumming hadn’t disturbed the post, or awakened the agent or his minions. The drumming hadn’t even stirred Chief Washakie’s house. But it was drumming nonetheless, and every little while the drums climaxed into a brief violence and then returned to the soft heartbeat that somehow choked the night.
The Dreamers.
Dirk hurried there, wherever they were, but could not see them, and began to question his senses. Surely the Dreamers were somewhere, collected together to drum, their urgent chanting soft and knife-edged in the peaceful night.
The Dreamers had collected here after the soldiers had marched. The Dreamers would disturb, maybe even terrify, this small collection of houses and buildings. The Dreamers would sing their dark message until they awakened this whole scattered community known as the Wind River Agency.
A part of Dirk responded to this night-song, which followed the rhythms of his heart and set his own Shoshone blood to singing. He felt an odd empathy toward Waiting Wolf, whose prophesies and visions had inspired this. This was a song of defiance, a song that cried out to all listeners. You are not welcome here. Leave our homeland. Give us our lives and ways and visions. Go away, white man, go away, with all your armies and churches and condescension.
He reached the mission and found the Partridges in their nightclothes on the porch, staring into the moonlit night. He didn’t see the sexton. The drumming was clearer here but lay somewhere beyond this place, perhaps in a copse of cottonwoods down the slopes. The Partridges stared at Dirk but said nothing, and Dirk acknowledged them with a wave. He saw that Thaddeus had a fowling piece in hand. Dirk had nothing, wanted nothing, for he would not need to defend himself.
He pushed toward the cottonwoods, passed the first trees, which rose like sentries, and then into a small park where the brown grasses had been trampled. There was no one, no swift shadows. And the owl cloud had passed away.
eight
The moon cast a sickly light over the slumbering slopes, a lantern for Dirk Skye. He made his way back to the vicarage, where the Partridges huddled on the porch, she wrapped in a vast angora shawl, he in a greatcoat over his nightshirt, and Bobolink barefoot in a nightshirt.
“They’re gone,” Dirk said.
“How do you know they won’t come back?” Partridge asked.
“I don’t. But they made their point.”
“It was awful, just awful,” Amy said.
“It rose up from the bottom layers of hell. It was savagery, the howling of demons. This was the devil’s own work,” Partridge said.
Dirk scarcely knew how to respond. “The Shoshone people have their own traditions, sir.”
“I tell you, Skye, this was something out of the bowels of the earth. That fiendish drumming, rising to some sort of crest and then fading away, only to rise again, sulphurous and sinister, unloosing all the demons of the netherworld.”
“They would not see it that way, sir.”
“Well, you’re one of them, Skye. It was an assault, that’s what. They’ll come closer next time, and closer, until they do this under our windows. Deliberately terrorizing us. If we become martyrs, like the Whitmans in Oregon, then that’s our fate. We’re Americans, sir. We’re bringing truth and goodness to these
savages. We’re offering them the hand of reason, and the keys to everlasting life. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll talk to Van Horne in the morning. These ghouls must be punished.”
“I’ll want the army here every night,” Amy Partridge said. “I’ll insist on it.”
These people were plainly distraught.
“They’re probably the Dreamers,” Dirk said. “They’ve received a vision of life as it was for them, life without the presence of white men. Life following the buffalo herds. Life honoring their traditions and mysteries.”
“Exactly, and it must be stamped out! Exterminated!”
Dirk tried another tack. “Have you heard of the Jesuit Father De Smet? For years, he wandered the West, befriending the tribes most hostile to white men, teaching them his faith, inviting them to masses. He helped them deal with settlers. He was their friend and they trusted him, and he was never harmed, and was much loved. He walked freely among the Blackfeet and the Sioux.”
“Yes, and all he did was delay the inevitable. We all saw the result at the Little Big Horn two years ago.”
Dirk found no opening in that closed mind. “Well, you’re safe now. You can go back to bed.”
“I won’t sleep a wink,” said Amy Partridge.
But they drifted into the rectory, and Dirk heard the door shut behind them.
Dirk drifted through the pale light. He saw a single lamp burning at the army post, and no light at all at the agency. No light burned at Chief Washakie’s residence but Dirk was pretty sure the chief hadn’t missed a thing. The Dreamers had announced their presence, choosing a moment when the army was miles away. This was probably the work of Owl, Waiting Wolf, and Dirk didn’t doubt that the youth could run circles around the blue-shirts. The army probably would never catch the boy, not on a reserve with so many hidden refuges and mysteries tucked into its vast size.
As he passed the chief’s residence, a quiet voice caught him.
“North Star, come sit with me.”
The Owl Hunt Page 5
