The Owl Hunt

by Richard S. Wheeler

  That did create a stir, mostly among the post’s loafers and native workers.

  “Of course we hope it will not come to that. Waiting Wolf is just a youth, and as a youth he is entitled to clemency, so long as he surrenders and disavows his scandalous religion. And if he fails … he will face a military court of justice as an enemy combatant, and will suffer whatever punishment the officers of that tribunal should choose to impose on him.”

  Dirk somehow had trouble translating all that, and when he did, the three old chieftains weren’t smiling.

  “Are there any questions?” the agent asked abruptly.

  Of course not. He wasn’t there to take questions; he was there to make demands.

  The gray overcast seemed even lower by the time all this had passed.

  “Now then, we have a special treat for you gentlemen,” Van Horne said. “We have at Fort Washakie two troops of the Third Cavalry from Fort Laramie as well as our own mounted rifles, and these fine men will be patrolling the entire reservation and the country nearby during the next weeks. On this fine day we will witness a dress parade, and then something very special, which not even I have seen before: a demonstration of the army’s powerful Gatling gun, which can fire three hundred and fifty rounds a minute.”

  Somehow, Dirk didn’t need to translate that.

  At a signal, the columns waiting at Fort Washakie formed up and began their march toward the agency and the commons before it. Bugles sounded, snare drums rolled, shining horses settled into a fast walk, and arms clattered. By fours, the infantry column, rifles shouldered, plunged toward the waiting spectators, while just behind, the cavalry clattered toward the meeting ground, its own flags and guidons flapping. The clatter of all those shod hooves made a fine racket as the column smartly rounded the rim of the agency field, and negotiated the perimeter of the entire agency. Everything shone, even on that dullest of days, and Dirk found himself transfixed, even as disgust seeped through his every pore.

  Bringing up the rear was a team of draft mules dragging a caisson and a Gatling gun on its limbers, its six shining barrels describing a cylinder. It rolled easily over the turf, accompanied by a crew of four gunners.

  That was what caught the eyes and transfixed the multitudes. For here was something new and terrible. The weapon had been around since the Civil War, but only recently had it been perfected and deployed by the army. And now it rolled behind the column, a black instrument of doom, and Captain Cinnabar on a white steed led the two hundred men twice around the agency grounds and then stopped.

  The gunners unhooked the Gatling gun and swung its snout around so that the six shining barrels pointed toward the uplands above the agency, mostly grazing ground and empty of life. The red men stared at it, and stared at the pasture above, and a terrible silence settled over the agency.

  One of the gunners led the draft mules away and held their harness, while the others aimed the piece, choosing a lonely jack pine halfway up the slope. They attached a magazine to the piece. Its genius was that fresh rounds dropped automatically into each barrel as it revolved by, thus enabling rapid fire.

  Captain Cinnabar stood next to the gunners and when all was ready, he lifted his saber and let it fall. At once the burly gunner yanked the crank around and the Gatling chattered to life, spilling bullets at a pace never before seen by anyone at the agency, a stream of bullets faster than anyone could count, a white streak of bullets that caught the lone pine and severed it from its roots until the hapless tree tumbled to the ground. Powder smoke drifted away. Dirk’s ears rang. The heated barrels sometimes crackled and protested. The sight mesmerized everyone present, and the silence that followed was very like a sob.

  sixteen

  Aphrodite Cinnabar watched pensively as the elderly chieftains departed on bony horses, with wives beside them. They had lingered on the commons a while after Major Van Horne’s tirade, conferring with Chief Washakie. But then they ambled away, returning to their camps, while the chief walked back to his house.

  It was an odd moment. Only a while before, a column of foot soldiers and mounted cavalry had ridden the perimeter of the agency, making a great show of blue and gold, trumpet and snare drum, the rattle of shod hooves and the clatter of arms. But now the two troops of cavalry and two companies of infantry had vanished. The Gatling had been wheeled away by its mule team, and the acrid smoke of its firing had dissipated in the chill wind blowing over the grounds.

  Her father had staged his show, all right, and his message was now burned into the brains of the Shoshones. Don’t mess with the United States government. There seemed to be a vast amount of energy expended in all this, she thought. Even if all the headmen had been on hand, it would still have seemed … she hunted for a word. Excessive. Too much. What had gotten into her father? What had gotten into that shifty Indian agent, Van Horne?

  Maybe they were right. Maybe there was a crisis here, a threat to the sovereign authority of the United States. Maybe they would all live in dread of a shower of arrows sailing out of the night. Maybe they would all be tomahawked in their beds. Maybe she should defer to her father, who, after all, was a career officer and a good one by all accounts. Maybe she shouldn’t meddle in men’s business.

  Only something deep within her resisted everything she had heard and seen this afternoon.

  She wanted the viewpoint of Dirk Skye, and thought to get it before he and his ancient mother Victoria vanished into the teacherage. She was curious about what he made of all this. That was as good a reason as any to drift his way, across the dusty commons where only a while before armies had marched.

  He looked worn, but smiled as she approached, carrying a parasol she never had opened that gloomy day.

  “Miss Cinnabar,” he said. “You remember my mother, Victoria?”

  “Goddamn good army show,” the old woman said. “Your father, he looked like a real boy.”

  “He loves the command,” she said.

  “It impressed our Shoshone guests,” Dirk Skye said.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “You don’t sound enthused, Miss Cinnabar.”

  “It just leaves me, I don’t know, uneasy.”

  “It was all for nothing. The Dreamers are dreaming a religion, not a war.”

  That intrigued her. “Why do you say that?”

  “Heard it from Owl, himself.”

  “A religion?”

  Dirk smiled. “He’s a missionary. If white people can send missionaries to red men, why can’t red men send missionaries to white men?”

  Victoria Skye cackled softly.

  “The Dreamers dream of a world without white men. A world in which everything wrought by white men is washed away.”

  “I suppose that includes us, then,” Aphrodite said. “We’re to be sent packing.”

  “I don’t know,” Dirk said. “I don’t know how it works, or what the vision is that seems to be galvanizing them now. But it seems to restore the world they knew before, a world without white men and their ideas. It’s the cleansing, the washing away of white men’s ideas, beliefs, religion, that seems to excite these people.”

  “So why did two troops of cavalry arrive here on the double?” she asked.

  “Armageddon,” he said. “The war of the worlds.”

  “I don’t understand nothing, dammit,” Victoria said.

  “The Dreamers prefer the wisdom of Owl to the wisdom of the missionaries, Grandmother.”

  “Well, ain’t that a toot!”

  “I should like to invite you to a picnic, Mr. Skye,” Aphrodite said. “I’ll prepare a little basket for us. Meet me at four, and we’ll hike up the slope and picnic beneath that poor old pine tree that got shot to death.”

  “Picnic? Pine tree? Why, yes, I’ll be at your door at four.”

  She smiled. “I want to see that poor tree.”

  “Yes, a sight to see. Mr. Gatling’s revenge on all pine trees,” he said, a tight smile on his face.

  “I want to pick up the
splinters. I want to dig the bullets out of the tree,” she said.

  “I’m sure your father would be most interested,” he said.

  “Yes, but not the way I’d be interested. I would like to see how the tree was murdered.”

  “Murdered?”

  “Yes, executed by command. My father raised his sword, whisked it downward, and the pine tree was murdered.”

  Dirk Skye was staring at her.

  She smiled. “See you at four,” she said, whirling her unopened parasol.

  That’s when Major Van Horne boiled out of the agency, waving something small. He started toward the encampment, his whole person in disarray, maybe even alarm.

  “Trouble, Major?” Dirk asked.

  “This! This!” The Indian agent was waving a feather. When his hand finally slowed down, Aphrodite discovered it was soft and gray.

  “Is that the feather of a Gray Owl?” she asked.

  “It is the feather of rebellion! Of war! Of disobedience! Insurrection!”

  “What about it, sir?” Dirk asked.

  “What about it! It was lying on my desk. I returned to my office after our little meeting, and there it was. Put there insidiously, put there to threaten me. This is war, and I’m going to direct Captain Cinnabar to take appropriate measures.”

  “War, sir?” Dirk asked.

  “War, war, war. Can’t you grasp that, Skye?”

  “Has a shot been fired? Has anyone died? Has property been destroyed?”

  “War, sir. Disobedience. The perpetrator will be tried and punished. It’s Owl himself. He slid in here and did this while we were on the commons. I’ll put a price on his head.”

  “You have proof of this, I presume.”

  “This is my proof!” The agent waved the feather, which did indeed seem almost sinister to Aphrodite, a sinister feather exuding menace and threat and arrows and tomahawks. “Look, Skye, it doesn’t matter who put it there. Maybe he sent some skinny little pup of a Snake. But it’s Owl’s doing. This came out of that boy’s head, and I’m going to round up that boy.”

  “On what charges, sir?”

  “Insurrection. He’s stirred up the Snakes and the Bannocks and God knows what else. We’re on the brink of a major uprising that could drive civilization out of the whole area. And I intend to nip it before it happens.”

  “How will the Dreamers drive out civilization, Major?”

  The agent glared and subsided. “If you don’t know, Mr. Schoolmaster, you’d better study history. Enough of this.”

  He stormed toward the post, where he would swiftly be in touch with Aphrodite’s father, and a few more officers newly arrived from Fort Laramie.

  Aphrodite smiled. “They may not let me out for a picnic.”

  “I’ll come anyway.”

  “I won’t tell them where we’re going.”

  He grinned, and they parted.

  When she reached the grounds of the post, she found the place seething with activity. Over at the stables, troopers were unsaddling their mounts, brushing them, or turning them over to the stable detail. The mounted rifles were stacking their weapons. And a knot of officers had collected around her father, who was listening intently to the Indian agent.

  Why not? She headed that way, delighting to poke her nose into the middle of it. She knew at once that Van Horne was waving the owl feather about, and talking war.

  The post brass scarcely noticed her. Maybe it was the amusement in her face.

  “Now, Major,” her father was saying. “It’s one feather, and it looks a little bit like a joke to me. I don’t suppose you want to put the whole post on a combat basis for that—do you?”

  “It’s no joke!” Van Horne bellowed.

  But the officers were having no part of that. They stared skeptically at the incensed agent, and at the soft gray feather.

  “Tell me again what an owl feather means,” asked a lieutenant from Fort Laramie.

  “It is the sign of the Dreamers, a cult of Shoshone warriors hiding high in the mountains, preparing to descend on us all,” Van Horne said.

  “I think it’s a religion, Lieutenant,” Aphrodite said.

  They suddenly realized she was there, in the middle of men’s business.

  “Well, now Miss, that’s nice, but we need intelligence,” the lieutenant said.

  She refused to give ground. “It’s been explained to me. The Dreamers believe the day is coming when the ways of white men will vanish. The world will then be the one they knew.”

  “Well, that’s conjecture, dear,” her father said.

  “It’s so far removed from what really is happening on my reservation that I trust you gentlemen will dismiss it,” Van Horne said.

  Her father turned to her. “Yes, you’ll want to see what needs doing in the kitchen, and help out. We’re entertaining these gentlemen at dinner.”

  Dismissed.

  “The big feather war!” she said, mocking.

  Oddly, that seemed to have its effect. They stared at her, and at Van Horne.

  She poked her parasol into the sky and sauntered away, with an unladylike sway.

  She wished she might know what would transpire. It was the fate of army wives and children to be kept in the dark. An entire fort could prepare for war, for a sally into enemy ground, and army families would be the last to know.

  She walked briskly, enjoying the admiring gazes of the enlisted men. They weren’t supposed to gaze at the commander’s daughter; they weren’t even supposed to acknowledge her presence, but most of them hadn’t seen a girl in many months, and they furtively feasted on the sight of officers’ wives in crinoline and lace and taffeta and gingham. She didn’t mind.

  She didn’t see her mother anywhere, so she simply set to work on her picnic supper. She wiped the wicker basket clean, added a small dining cloth and two napkins, and rummaged in the root cellar for a few things to nourish them beneath the shattered jack pine. Her mother had several covered bowls of things ready for dinner, so Aphrodite left those alone, found a loaf of uncut bread, several slabs of cheese, some fresh apples from somewhere far away, and some sarsaparilla. To these she added some tin messware and cups. A simple meal beside a mortally wounded pine tree that had lived its life in all innocence until the army arrived. She truly felt sorry for the tree, and wanted to apologize to it for its demise one chilly afternoon when the tree was least expecting to depart from life on earth.

  That done, she examined herself in the looking glass, and discovered a flush of color on her cheeks, and eyes that seemed to open on a secret world inside of herself. She didn’t know whether Dirk Skye would think much of her company, because she was always on the edge of getting into trouble, but she thought he might. He was never far from trouble himself, so maybe they could make some trouble together.

  She discovered that her mother was lying down in her room with a sick headache; that was nothing new. Her mother had a sick headache before almost every dinner party, perhaps because Captain Cinnabar sprang those parties on her, announcing only hours beforehand that he would be entertaining Lieutenants Smith and Jones, Captains Murphy and Peterson, or Lieutenant Colonel Digby and his second wife, Lettie. So her mother did what army officers’ wives do, and prepared a dinner, and if the company was all male, she would retreat to the kitchen while the gentlemen ate and enjoyed brandy and good Havanas.

  Aphrodite knew that was the life she could expect; indeed, her father was steadily introducing her to young gentlemen under arms, all suitable of course. But it wasn’t a life she planned for herself if she could help it. She had an eye for someone else.

  seventeen

  Dirk discovered Aphrodite on the veranda, a wicker basket in hand, awaiting him. She hastened down the steps, smiling, and steered him away from the commander’s residence. It seemed almost as if she wished to escape something, or wished not to introduce Dirk to anyone there.

  He knew all about that. A man with Indian blood in him dealt with that most every day. But that didn’
t make it easier.

  “I’ll take that basket, Aphrodite,” he said.

  He collected it even as she smiled. “I need to get away from the post,” she said. “And you’re my rescuer.”

  He hadn’t thought of himself as a rescuer. He steered her along a grassy grade and up the flank of the foothill that stretched past the post. Fort Washakie was quiet now in the late afternoon.

  Unlike the agency, a deep serenity pervaded the grassy slope. Breezes toyed with the tan grass. The white agency buildings grew smaller, and so did the tensions and alarms radiating from them. The sky was cloudless and anonymous.

  Ahead of them loomed the shattered jack pine, which sagged like a broken crucifix, its limbs jagged against a blue heaven.

  Something about the broken tree seemed sinister. Its green boughs flailed out from the shattered trunk. Dirk and Aphrodite approached warily, not knowing why. It was nothing but a shattered tree. The trunk had splintered perhaps four feet up, the yellow wood reduced to toothpick shards. Apparently three shells, grouped close, had severed the trunk. A breeze or maybe just deadweight had toppled the top, scattering green and brown needles. None of the shells were buried in wood; all had passed through, and some disturbed earth upslope hinted at where the Gatling shells had buried themselves.

  “I guess it’s not a place for a picnic,” Dirk said.

  She eyed him somberly. “We shouldn’t have come here.”

  “I was curious. I wanted to see why an innocent jack pine died this morning.”

  “I don’t like this place.”

  “Bad medicine. That’s what my mother’s people would say. But there’s no meaning in it. There’s nothing here but some shattered wood and a dead tree. It may not even be dead. The roots may throw up new shoots.”

  “I agree with the Shoshones,” she said. “There’s something awful about this.”

  He disagreed. Some shells had shattered a tree. That was all. But he chose not to talk about it. “There’s some trees up a little, over there. We can picnic and look down on Fort Washakie.”