The Owl Hunt

by Richard S. Wheeler

  He stopped, letting them digest all this good news, and he would not be rushed.

  But then it was time to reveal the great secret, to let them bury it in their hearts and live with it ever more.

  “I have the word, and it is good. This time will come at the very moment that Owl dies. When Owl dies, and begins the Long Walk, the People will be freed.”

  The silence lay so heavily on this group that not even a bird sang in the morning light.

  “I do not know when this will be, when life will be taken from me so that the People may be given a new life. But soon. Soon.”

  This met with even more silence. “The white missionaries have their Jesus. The People have Owl,” he said, pointing at his chest.

  He stood patiently, letting their gazes probe him. He wished to be probed by all their gazes, so that they might see Owl in his moment of glory.

  “Go to your clans, your people now. The Dreamers will disband for now. Return, and wait. Filter back to your wives and grandparents and children, and be among them, and wait. Dance the Dreamer Dance now and then, in the quiet of the night, but wait. Wait for the sign. Wait for the time when Owl is sacrificed for the People. Wait!”

  twenty-five

  Prescott Cinnabar was determined to put an end to it. He would stop the Dreamers cold, and stop the cattle rustling that neighboring ranchers were howling about. If there was lawlessness on the reservation, he’d mete out whatever punishment was necessary.

  Toward this end he had assembled a formidable force, which included cavalry from Fort Laramie, and had divided them into flying columns, one of which he would command. The ranchers were angry. The Dreamers threatened to start an uprising. That brat of a boy, Waiting Wolf, was stirring up an evil stew.

  This time, by God, the United States Army would chase every Dreamer out of the mountains. And in the process, stop at every camp and village and settlement and put the fear of the army into the redskins.

  It was, he thought, an enjoyable enterprise, and it delighted him to be in the field while the weather held and his encampments were pleasant.

  “Whenever you reach a village, look for beef. If you find hide or bone or beef, we’ll have the culprits,” he told his subalterns. “Catch the devils red-handed.” He laughed at his own joke.

  He had formed them into three columns, two south of the Wind River, one north, and when they reached the mountains, they were to probe every glade and glen and hanging valley, and if possible drive the reprobate Dreamers toward the other columns, and then they’d herd the Dreamers like cattle back to the agency for some sharp disciplining.

  But so far, there was no sign of anything illicit at all. The starving villagers had no meat and were subsisting on snakes and frogs. In a few lodges there was a little jerky, old and dried, the traditional emergency food of these people. Elsewhere, the soldiers discovered a little pemmican in parfleches. His men hunted vainly for cowhides, hanging meat, fresh leather clothing, new moccasins, cattle skulls or horns, hooves—any evidence at all of recent rustling. But there wasn’t any of that.

  The rancher who’d complained the loudest of all, Yardley Dogwood, kept escalating the accusation. At first he was missing a few cattle; then thirty or forty. Then a hundred. The last time he sent word to Major Van Horne, he alleged he had lost several hundred.

  But that was the way the game was played. Cinnabar didn’t doubt that the rancher had lost a few animals, but the inflated numbers were nothing more than a way to lodge a claim against the Wind River Agency for a lot of beef. Still … the army must act. And if the Dreamers were eating a cow now and then, the Dreamers must be brought to heel.

  But the Shoshone villages seemed innocent. The columns marched into one after another, finding no meat or bones or hides. The one thing they did discover was that many of the young Shoshone males who were supposedly up in the mountains dancing through the nights, were living quietly in their villages. It was a puzzle.

  The column rode into one camp on the Wind River and at once the Shoshones stood to watch the soldiers in smart blue coats and forage caps, clank and clatter into the quietness of the camp. This camp, perhaps a dozen lodges and wickiups, was somber. The ancient lodges sagged; even the newer canvas lodges looked worn and soiled. The people looked no better, most of them virtually in rags. They were mostly barefoot. They were gaunt, too, their cheeks hollow, their legs spindled, and their arms like twigs. Slowly, almost fearfully, they collected as the column rode in and stopped smartly. For an odd moment, there was only silence, except for the whispers of the chill breeze.

  No headman appeared, and Cinnabar wondered whether the chieftain was sick. But there were a few younger men, their copper chests unadorned, perhaps because they had little to wear. The captain studied the surrounding trees, looking for hanging meat, and he checked each lodge, looking for a cowhide staked to the barren clay. He saw nothing from astride his chestnut mount. Maybe a search of the surrounding bottomlands would yield more. He would think about it.

  But the younger men interested him. They stood quietly, their faces masked. They were not welcoming but neither did they seem hostile. Cinnabar studied them; they looked so much alike it was hard to separate one redskin from another. But there was one who interested him.

  “Walks at Night, it is good to see you,” he said.

  Walks at Night nodded.

  “And I do believe your friend there is Mare. It is good to see you both,” the captain said.

  Mare, who spoke no English, seemed to comprehend.

  “I see many of the younger men are here in the villages,” Cinnabar said. “That is good.”

  Walks at Night simply nodded slightly.

  “I believe that the Dreamers have returned,” the captain said.

  Walks at Night simply stared. The subchief was known to be among Owl’s inner coterie.

  “We’re here peacefully, my friend, just checking to make sure everything on the Wind River Reservation is lawful. I’m glad it seems to be,” Cinnabar said.

  “The People are hungry, Captain.”

  “Of course they are. They threw their flour and beans to the earth and left their rations for the hogs at the post to clean up.”

  “Bad food, Captain. There is no meat.”

  “Well, that’s what we’re here about. The ranchers are saying they are losing cattle and that the meat’s vanishing into the bellies of your people. I’m here to stop it.”

  Walks at Night simply stared.

  “We are going to search here for evidence,” Cinnabar said.

  “The People get only a mouthful each moon,” Walks at Night replied.

  Cinnabar was growing impatient. “You could be raising your own herd. The Shoshones were given enough to start. You could be growing crops, growing hay, growing grains, growing vegetables, plowing and planting. You could be raising poultry. But where are the planted fields, my friend? Where is the herd? Where are the sheep and cattle and pigs and chickens and geese and melons and wheat and oats and barley? It’s harvest time, but what have you planted or grown, eh? Why do your men sit before their lodges and gamble or stare at the sky, or talk about hunting when there is no game?”

  The Indian simply stared, not wanting further conversation.

  “Where are the Dreamers? Where is Owl, eh?”

  “They are gone, sir.”

  “Gone? What do you mean?”

  “Owl pleaded for a sign, and word came to him to wait. He returned from the mountaintops and told us that he had no sign. Go back to your people and wait. That is what he said. Wait for the sign.”

  “And you did? There are no Dreamers hiding from us?”

  Walks at Night drew himself up. “We did not hide. We pleaded for a sign, and we heard none. So we left the mountains. That is what Owl told us to do, and we have done it with a heavy heart.”

  Well, this was news after all, Cinnabar thought. “One last question, Walks at Night. Where is Owl?”

  “I do not know, Captain. No one knows. H
e is alone.”

  “Ask your friend Mare, please.”

  Mare listened, and shrugged and shook his head.

  “We will find Owl, no doubt about it.”

  “Maybe he will find you,” the Indian said.

  Enough talk. Captain Cinnabar turned to his column, which seemed to glow. Light shattered off of metal, sun glinted on steel. The sleek horses glowed from the brushing and grooming they received daily. Their hooves were freshly shod.

  “All right, we’ll search these lodges and the bottoms. Look for hanging meat, cowhides, bones, and report to me. Sergeants, divide by fours. Parsons and Bailey check the lodges. The rest scour these bottoms. We’ll collect upstream a mile.”

  Cinnabar sat easily as his sergeants took over, directing groups of dismounted blue-dressed soldiers into the bottoms. The Shoshones stared bitterly, but were helpless to do a thing about it. The grinning soldiers probed every lodge and wickiup, taking their time, but found no food.

  “Nothing, sir,” one reported.

  There was no meat here. It probably would be found in other camps. The captain, with his adjutant, rode briskly west, while the Indians watched silently. They were a wretched lot, and it was all their fault. Well, mostly their fault, he thought. He liked to judge matters fairly.

  “Just because one camp’s clean doesn’t mean others are,” Cinnabar said to Sergeant Wolfe.

  “They et it all, sah. It’s in and out of their bellies. Looks to me like they’re living on snakes and birds.”

  “Revolting,” Cinnabar said. “Meadowlark stew.”

  The column reassembled upstream, and rode west, a blue snake coiling through the river valley. They pounced on three more camps, and found no evidence of rustling. In one shabby lodge they did find a parfleche filled with jerky, but there was no evidence it came from rustled cattle. It could have been jerked from the agency meat ration.

  Behind them, they left Shoshones of all ages and estates staring bleakly as they rode away.

  When they were skirting a long root of a mountain, a sergeant pointed to distant horsemen far up the long grassy slope. Not even a spyglass helped Cinnabar identify this group, but there seemed to be about a dozen, and they were heading obliquely away.

  “Sergeant, divide the command and we’ll flank those riders. I’ll work forward; you keep them from turning tail,” he said.

  In a moment the command had stretched into two arms working at a fast trot on the soft grade. By then the two columns had been spotted, and the distant horsemen milled, argued, and finally stood their ground on a naked hogback.

  Cinnabar felt his mount gather its muscle for the uphill dash, and saw that his men were crouched low over their McClellan saddles, plainly making themselves a small target. But there was no evidence that the horsemen above were arming themselves. One in particular seemed to be mounted on a draft horse of formidable size, and the captain began to fathom who was up there—and maybe why. As he got closer, he saw there were half a dozen unmounted horses in that cluster of horsemen.

  The two arms of cavalry and mounted infantry swiftly engulfed the horsemen. They were cowboys, sitting nervously on cow ponies, their hands carefully on the pommels of their saddles. And on that dun draft horse sat Yardley Dogwood, massive, still in a black outfit, with a formidable hat shading his red face.

  “Good mawnin’,” he said.

  “You, Dogwood,” Cinnabar said.

  The cowboys were being very careful with their hands, which was good. In the middle of this group were half a dozen gaunt Indian ponies, one or two of them with a US brand on the flank, horses given the Shoshones by the government. The rancher and his men had no business on the reservation and were violating law.

  “It’s not like it looks,” Dogwood said.

  “Then explain,” Cinnabar said.

  “We’re looking for strays, and thought maybe a few of our missin’ cows sort of drifted this way.”

  Dogwood smiled. Cinnabar laughed.

  Encouraged, Dogwood continued. “Ah reckon three to four hundred of mah mighty fine beeves sorta drifted over heah, and we’re of a mind to fetch them back to the home range.”

  “A few days ago, it was a hundred or so.”

  “Well tempus does fugit, don’t it? Every passin’ hour, a few more of them beeves of mine seem to hanker for this good grass heah, and it is my bounden duty to round ’em up and take ’em home.”

  “And before that, it was thirty or forty, Dogwood.”

  “Well, upon my honor, Captain, I’m suffering a hemorrhage of beef of late, and it’s threatening to strip me clean.”

  “And so you’ve got a rope around half a dozen beeves there,” Cinnabar said. “And a rope around a few necks up in the Big Horn Valley.”

  “Well, they sure look like beeves to us, Captain. They got hooves and four feet and we think it’s a proper trade for four, five hundred cows.”

  Cinnabar eyed a gold-colored stallion that was wild-eyed and restless surrounded by a hundred horses and men in blue. The stallion yanked back on the rope about its neck, and trembled.

  “That cow there, the gold one, looks like it needs some milking, Dogwood. Now here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to get off that plow horse and you’re going to grab that gold cow by the handles and milk her.”

  “She ain’t likely broke to the milk-pail, Captain.”

  “Well, you Texans don’t lack for trying, Dogwood. Now you fetch yourself to the ground and you milk that gold cow.”

  “That one there?”

  “That one.”

  Dogwood looked sorrowful. “I gotta fess up, Captain. That there stallion looked like a good enough trade for some of the beeves that got took.”

  “You’re taking Shoshone horses. You’re illegally on the reservation. You’re in trouble.”

  “I never did like you blue-bellies none,” Dogwood said, “but I smile alot.”

  “Free those Indian ponies,” Cinnabar said.

  Dogwood motioned, and two cowboys released the ponies, which whirled free and soon vanished upslope.

  “Dogwood, get this straight. You’re going to get off the reservation and stay off. If there’s been rustling—and so far we haven’t got any evidence—we’ll deal with it. It’s the business of the Indian Bureau and the army, and we’ll take care of it our way. If we catch you or any of your men, or any other rancher, on the Wind River Reservation without permission, you’ll spend more time in the post lockup than you care to think about.”

  “Wrong side won the damned war,” Dogwood said.

  “We’re taking you to the boundary line, and you can count yourself lucky,” Cinnabar said. “Don’t push your luck. And next time you try hanging a government employee, consider your own neck.”

  twenty-six

  Owl huddled in a blanket, but the bitter wind cut through it and chilled him. He waited where he always waited for food, at the shattered pine tree on the slope above the agency. His friend Tai pe, Sun, brought him vegetables and sometimes meat culled from the agency’s kitchens or root cellars whenever she could. But it was always hit-or-miss, and many was the time when Owl simply went hungry because Sun could not come. She was one of the serving women who found employment from Major Van Horne to cook and clean and launder.

  Now as the sun faded on a wintry autumn day, it appeared that Owl would miss another meal. He was a man; he would endure. But it angered him. He only wanted food. He stared bitterly upon the agency below. A lamp glowed in the agency window. Another glowed at Chief Washakie’s clapboard home. Another glowed in the window of the teacher’s house. And off in the hazy distance, a few lamps glowed at the soldiers’ fort.

  They would be warm and safe in their buildings. He would endure another freezing night, a lost youth who could not go home, who had no lodge, who was hunted by the white men. He didn’t know what they would do with him if they caught him, but many of the People had warned him that the white soldiers were looking for him, wanted him badly, and would take
him away.

  So he dug deeper into his miserable blanket and waited for Sun to bring him something, and watched the smoke curl from the chimneys and light glow from the windows of glass. Someday soon it would snow, and he didn’t know what he would do then. He would not let them catch him. He felt safe. The bluecoats were all marching across the reservation, and hardly any were at the fort. The settlement below him was as peaceful and quiet and empty as if no one were there.

  For a moment he closed his eyes and dreamed the settlement away, dreamed of empty fields below, with nothing but grass on them, just as they always had been before the white men came. He wanted the buildings to go away, and the soldiers to go away, and the agent to go away, and nothing but wandering buffalo there on that flat, buffalo and quietness. He did not want a bugle to sound, or a flag to flap in the wind, or a wagon to rattle, or the metal of the soldiers to clink. He wanted only the silence that was a true sign of peace and freedom.

  He did not know what to do. He was alone, cut off from his people, unable to see his friends, except for Sun, who shyly slid a little food to him. No one on the reservation had any food to give him. All the game was gone and even the snakes and prairie dogs were hunted out and eaten. Only a few fish remained, but that was unclean food. And dogs. He might yet eat a dog if he were dying of an empty belly or an empty heart.

  So he waited bitterly. The Great Gray Owl had betrayed him. The Owl had come to him the day the moon stole the sun, and gave him a mission and a new name. But when? An icy gust whipped his blanket open and numbed his leg. He would have to walk to restore his warmth. The nights grew longer now, and the days shrank, and with each day Owl grew more bitter and desperate. He stared at the house of the agent, wanting to kill the agent. He stared at the house of Chief Washakie, who betrayed the People and led them to starvation. He stared at the little house of Skye, North Star, filled with loathing for all the white men’s ideas that the young teacher was teaching the People. Maybe he hated North Star most of all, because he was teaching them foreign ways, and burying Shoshone ways deep into the hard clay of the past.