The Owl Hunt

by Richard S. Wheeler

  Dirk did, and the People stared back sullenly.

  He watched the chief, dressed in a black frock coat, steer the mule away from the silent line and westward, up the Wind River Valley, where the old woman and her man scratched out a living in a riverside woodland, where firewood was plentiful and held the promise of winter warmth for the very old.

  The queue began to move again, each person receiving the allotment due him. Even small children stood in the line, awaiting the moment when their parent would scratch a mark next to their name. It was oddly quiet. The usual jubilation of allotment day was tempered by the new rules, and the presence of grinning soldiers, who enjoyed the sight of Indians collecting white men’s flour and cornmeal. The Shoshones stood grimly, enduring the smirky cheer of the soldiers and clerks, the smug satisfaction of the agent Van Horne. Some of them made their mark, collected their sacks of goods, and then stood apart, waiting to see what would happen.

  The stacks of goods on the platform didn’t diminish much, and the warehousemen scarcely stayed busy. Dirk watched, seeing not charity or benevolence in it, but the subjugation of his Shoshone people by the white men and their army. Was there anyone among those white people who cared whether the Shoshone people lived or died? Prospered or vanished from the earth?

  It was Willow’s turn, and she put her mark next to her name. Willow was tall, spare, handsome, and the mother of three sons, all of them Dreamers. She was not known to smile much, and seemed to lack the innate humor of the Shoshone people, but her seriousness drove her to take great pride in the People. There was no more beautiful—and remote—woman among the People.

  She watched as the warehousemen set the small sacks and a pasteboard box before her, a miserable dole for a large family. She stared first at the offending little pile, and at Van Horne, and the smiling clerks, and then lifted each miserable pouch and smashed it to the clay, bursting the cheap cotton and scattering yellow meal and brown beans at her feet. Then she proudly walked away, bearing nothing of the dole, her gait strong, her chin high.

  “That’ll be one hungry family,” Van Horne said, amused.

  But what Willow started, the remaining people in the food line continued. Next was Hairy Head, an old headman with a proud eye and a lustful way. He was more dramatic. He lifted his little sack of flour high above him, and then smacked it to the ground. It thumped, spraying white flour over the clay, powdering his bare feet, and dusting everyone close.

  “Hey!” yelled a clerk.

  But Hairy Head was not done. He sprayed beans, scattered meal, and shook the burlap and cotton sacks until the earth had received every last ounce.

  The soldiers chuckled. This was sport. Goddamn redskins didn’t know enough to feed themselves!

  Van Horne, far from being alarmed, was enjoying it. He stood close by, an odd cheer spreading across his face.

  “I’ll put the agency mules to the feedbag,” he said.

  The mules would have a lot of chow.

  One by one the Shoshone people made their mark on the ledger, received their dole, and slapped the entire month’s supply of staples into the stained earth, where the heap of beans and meal and edible food grew minute by minute.

  And not one of the Shoshones left. After they had destroyed their entire dole, they stood apart, waiting and watching. Not until the entire nation, at least those who had come to the agency on allotment day, had destroyed their allotment, did they silently drift away.

  Dirk watched them go, watched them wearily drag their ponies and travois away.

  “What will you say to the people in Washington?” Dirk asked the agent.

  “We distributed the goods to all, as usual,” Van Horne said.

  nineteen

  By the time Chief Washakie had returned to the agency, he had heard the story a dozen times from people straggling away. He had sat quietly in his wagon while his suffering Shoshones told him about the flour rebellion. He was not surprised.

  “Go find food wherever you can,” he had told them.

  “Beyond the white men’s lines?”

  “Yes. I have said it.”

  And so he gave all his people permission. He would tell the agent.

  He drove back, a solitary Indian in a white shirt and black coat, his graying hair loose and held with a headband. His mind was heavy with all that had happened. He felt the whole weight of the People on his shoulders.

  The closer he drove toward the bleak structures of the Wind River Agency, the more resolute he became. The time had come to draw a line across the earth. For as long as he had been the principal chief of the Eastern Shoshones, he had seen the white men as assets. His People were not numerous, and they lacked the horses and power of the great plains tribes such as the Sioux and Cheyenne and Arapaho, which waged constant warfare against his People. His alliance with the white men evened the struggle somewhat, and his friendship with these newcomers brought guns and food and peace. They called him a friend, and perhaps he was, or at least he was not their enemy. His contact with them taught him much about the future: his People were doomed to fade away unless they changed. He didn’t care much for the change, but there was no other way for his People but to become stock growers and farmers and live on pieces of land, like the newcomers. There could be a good life for his People in ranching and farming. So he had decreed it. But always with his eyes open. The white men came with their own darkness and ignorance and foolishness. Their friendship was as firm as a butterfly’s wing. But he saw no real choice. Unlike so many of his People, he had seen how white men lived. And what the future had to be.

  He let the weary dray pick its own pace back to the agency. There was no hurry. There never was any hurry. But in time the distant white dots of the agency became small buildings, and then larger ones which caught the late sun of the day, and cast long shadows. And then he was back, his own white house not far distant. But he did not go there, for he had business first, that must be opened and not avoided.

  He drew up his wagon before the somber agency building and stepped into the commons, where soldiers had paraded in recent days. Now there were only a few, and he saw they were at the warehouse herding hogs brought in to devour the spilled flour and beans. The soldiers kept a few hogs at the post to eat garbage and supply some bacon now and then. The grunting hogs were busy rooting out every last bit of the white men’s food intended to feed his hungry people. He watched for a moment. At least the hogs were getting fat. The soldiers eyed him placidly. The unclaimed food had been returned to the warehouse, and now there were only hogs and blue-shirts.

  He entered the silent agency, found no one on hand, and turned to leave. But a voice stayed him, and he found Van Horne at his desk, his feet propped up. A small flask of amber fluid, probably hastily removed from the desk, rested near the office safe.

  “Ah! It’s the esteemed chief of the Eastern Shoshones!” the agent said, sliding his feet off the desk and planting them firmly before him.

  Washakie removed his hat, as was the white men’s custom when indoors, and waited for Major Van Horne to compose himself.

  “And to what do I ascribe the honor of your company, Chief?”

  “My people will starve, Major.”

  “Now, esteemed Chief, let me see here. I do believe they were handed the staples the government provided for them. I do believe they pitched these wantonly to the earth, and walked away. If they suffer, they can only blame themselves.”

  “That is what they told me as I rode back, sir.”

  “Then why are you complaining?”

  “They are going to be hungry.”

  “And is that not their fault?”

  The chief thought to drop this line of reasoning. He could do some blaming of his own. The distribution had been altered for certain political reasons connected with the Dreamers. And it would all end in accusations and counteraccusations. They would end up blaming one another and no food would end up in the bellies of his people.

  He stood a little straighter
, dark and stocky and massive and gray at the temples. “I told them to seek food wherever they could find it, beyond your medicine lines.”

  The agent, who had been primed for more blaming, took a moment to register that.

  “Beyond the reservation? But I did not give permission.”

  “I gave them permission.”

  “But you lack the authority.”

  “I am the chief of the Eastern Shoshones.”

  Van Horne laughed softly. “That’s almighty right, my esteemed friend. But no one leaves the reservation without permission, and I don’t give it. Not to anyone.”

  “I have told them. They will go.”

  “You could rescind the command, my honorable friend.” The agent smiled. “It would halt the trouble.”

  “I have told them. They will go. They will hunt.”

  The agent stood abruptly. “Then I’ll take measures. Captain Cinnabar will enjoy rounding people up.”

  “Then let it happen.”

  Washakie stood, solid and unmoving, determined. “I made the treaty myself. We were given a homeland to possess and enjoy, safe from your people, safe from other tribes. We were not put there by force. Nothing in the treaty says we must stay inside the reservation. We are not a conquered people defeated by your army and put in a prison with invisible lines around it. We are friends. It is our land. These are our ways. I have sent my people to look for meat. They will do it. They will hunt buffalo and deer and elk. They will bring back meat for those who are poor and hungry. They will keep the People alive for one more moon.”

  “Sorry, my esteemed friend, it’s the fathers in Washington who’ve got the power, and they handed it to me, and I’m telling you now: tell your people to stay at home. Tell them!”

  “No.”

  Washakie stood quietly, waiting for whatever came next.

  “Are you defying me?”

  “I am the chief of the Eastern Shoshones.”

  “And I’m the agent of the government. I could call the guard, you know.”

  “Here are my arms. Here are my legs. Put irons on them and throw me into the cage at the fort named in my honor.”

  The Indian agent subsided, stared into the late-hour skies, and came to a conclusion. “I’ll deal with you tomorrow,” he said. “Don’t think this is over.”

  Washakie nodded. He walked quietly from the office, standing high, making his back large against the white man, and drove his wagon to his small frame house, which sat in bleak subjectivity near the agency. He pulled the harness off his horse, hung the harness on pegs, scooped some shelled corn and poured it into the manger, and closed the gate.

  He did not enter his darkened home, but walked the quarter mile to the house of the teacher, and knocked.

  The old Crow woman answered, and stepped back at once. “We are pleased to welcome the chief of the People,” she said. “Our house is blessed by your presence.”

  Dirk Skye appeared, surprised by the presence of the chief, and waved him in. “Grandfather, we are honored to open this house to you.”

  Washakie settled easily in a kitchen chair, and withdrew his tobacco pouch and a small clay pipe, which he filled carefully and then lit with a match he scratched on the underside of the table. He sucked slowly, until the charge glowed orange in his pipe, and then exhaled. North Star joined him at the table, and then, hesitantly, the old Crow woman, too.

  “On this day I have told my people to hunt where they will,” he said, choosing English as the right tongue here. “When the sun rises I expect to be taken to the soldier camp and held there. Please make sure my will is known to the People. They must go where there might be meat.”

  “Is there a problem with it?” North Star asked.

  “I told the agent that it is my will and command. He said I had no authority. I told him I am the chief.” Washakie smiled suddenly. “And he told me that he is.”

  “He threatened you?”

  “I will not undo what I have done.”

  “What will happen, Grandfather?”

  “I believe that when the sun comes up I will be put in the cage at the fort.”

  Skye looked stricken.

  “Sonofabitch,” said the old Crow woman.

  “Then the blue-shirts will ride out and catch the People and bring them back so that they can starve on our land rather than starve on the land of others.”

  “The Dreamers,” North Star said.

  “You speak true words. The white men fear the Dreamers. They turn our home into our prison and send more soldiers to keep us inside of it. Tell me, North Star. Why is this?”

  “Grandfather, I wish I knew. They fear Owl and his Dream more than any army. They think that Owl and a few Shoshones are worse than any army.”

  “I do not see clearly what is happening,” Washakie said.

  North Star hesitated, and then plunged ahead. “Grandfather, Owl was here. He watched the soldiers parade. He watched them fire the Gatling gun. He watched the pine tree shatter. Later, he made himself known to me. He was amused by the white men. Owl’s vision is not about war, not about armies, not about blood. It is about that which has no name.”

  “Here, was he?”

  “Watching from the hills.”

  “They hunt him as if he was a rabid wolf.”

  “They won’t catch him, Grandfather. He is invisible to them. He walks among them and they don’t know it.”

  “And you did not tell the agent.”

  “No, Grandfather. I would not betray Owl.”

  Washakie grunted. “His days are numbered, North Star. I have said it.”

  “Why do you say so, Grandfather?”

  “They think he is the spark that will start the forest fire.”

  He knocked the dottle from his pipe and stowed it in a breast pocket. “I am tired and my women await me. When the sun comes, I may be taken to the fort. Tell the People Washakie says to hunt wherever they wish; the whole world is their home. Find meat and eat.”

  “I may join them, Grandfather.”

  “No, teach the school, North Star. The old ways are doomed. Teach them the new.”

  With that, he stood, pressed his hand firmly upon the shoulder of the old Crow woman, whom he admired, and slipped into the deepening abyss of night.

  twenty

  North Star would hunt. He awoke one chill and overcast morning and knew it. This was the right time, when the cottonwood leaves were turning bronze and the aspen made yellow patches on distant slopes. He would make meat for the hungry People.

  He had dutifully remained at his schoolhouse post but the students had fled. The girls boarding with Washakie had been returned to their parents. The Shoshone people were shunning the agency and keeping their children away. It had been a dreary autumn, sitting in his empty schoolroom reading.

  The Wind River Reservation was slipping into the fall, its starvation scarcely noticed at the agency. If the People were going hungry, the starvation was screened by silence. Dirk knew that the Dreamers, still gathering in the mysterious chasms of the mountains, were supplying a little meat to the People, but where they got it remained a mystery. He suspected it was not the meat of game taken on the hunted-out reservation.

  He came to his decision suddenly, put away the geography text, and closed the schoolhouse door behind him.

  At the teacherage his Crow mother rocked quietly and watched the clouds lower.

  “Absaroka Grandmother, I am going hunting,” he said. That was the most formal way to address her. But he might properly call her Victoria, his father’s name for her, or Many Quill Woman, her Crow name, or Crow Mother, for she had helped raise him.

  She absorbed that cheerfully. “I will go with you,” she said.

  “But Grandmother—it will be cold and hard.”

  “You saying I ain’t worth anything?” she said. “I’m going, dammit.”

  “But you—but, Grandmother.”

  “So, maybe I die. It is good to die being useful. I want to be useful.
I can still do a lot of stuff, eh?”

  Actually, she could. But this would be hard, and old people had few reserves. But she was determined.

  “Good!” he said.

  She erupted from the rocker with amazing force, and began gathering what they would take with them. He headed for the barn, harnessed a dray he liked, and drove the agency spring wagon to his house. By the time he returned, she had collected a heap of outdoor gear: two bedrolls, a canvas tarp for a shelter, a block and tackle, Barnaby Skye’s converted Sharps, with cartridges, assorted skinning knives, ropes, mess gear, and a few pounds of cornmeal.

  She had shed about ten years in the space of an hour, he thought as she clambered onto the bench seat beside him. He stopped at the agency, couldn’t find Van Horne, and left a note saying he was going hunting. He was glad the agent wasn’t around to heap sarcasm or worse on his plans. And that might include being fired for being away from his post. But somehow Dirk didn’t care. If there was no one to teach, then his service as a teacher was meaningless.

  But as they drove away, Van Horne waylaid him from the agency garden.

  “Hunting, eh? Not a bad idea, Skye. Bring back some bear steaks, eh?”

  “More likely a few pronghorns if we’re lucky, Major.”

  “And Skye, keep an eye out. If there’s a revolt brewing, I want to know about it.”

  “The reservation’s peaceful, sir.”

  “Hell it is,” Van Horne said. “You’ll be my eyes and ears.”

  “Goddamn Dreamers all over,” Victoria said.

  “Not so funny, madam,” the major said.

  Dirk wasn’t sure where to go, but decided to ford the Wind River and head into the Owl Creek Mountains, and then the Big Horn Basin. The nights were cold: he could bring fresh meat to the People even if he had to carry it a couple of days.

  The wagon was serviceable enough: it would carry two or three deer, maybe two butchered elk. With the block and tackle and some luck, he could load meat without help. A northwest wind snaked the heat out of them as they forded the river and headed into dry foothills, stained red this time of year except for bursts of green in spring-fed gulches.