The Owl Hunt

by Richard S. Wheeler

  He waited a while more, and it became clear that Tai pe, Sun, was not going to walk up the slope to the shattered pine tree. He choked back his hurt. Why didn’t she come? Where else could he find food? Bitterness wormed through him as he sat resolutely yet a while more, while twilight faded into harsh blackness.

  He was fifteen winters, and maybe that was all the time allotted to him. He told himself he was not afraid of death. A prophet could not be afraid of the Long Walk that would come to him. He had seen many of his age die; some as children with diseases. Some of accidents. Some of carelessness. He had seen Shoshones die for nothing at all, as if they knew their race was doomed and so they sat down and died because it was the time of the white man, and the People would be no more.

  Sun was not coming. He stood, feeling the hurt of his muscles, not knowing what to do. There were caves far away where he might shelter alone and forgotten; but he would need to eat. He stood, arms upraised, and pleaded once again to the Great Gray Owl who had given him a vision.

  “I do not know what to do. I do not have your wisdom, and I am not far from going away forever on the Long Walk.”

  He listened to the silence.

  “You have abandoned me. Where is your wisdom? Why have you gone away? You made me your brother. Am I your brother? I took your name. I am Owl! Now it is dark, the hour of the owl. Whisper to me.”

  But Owl heard no word, saw nothing in the cold sky, glittering with icy stars.

  “I want to help the People!”

  This time he received an answer. “I am the creature the People fear most.” Yes, the thought leaped into him, and he wondered at it. The People feared the Owl. The Owl was evil, tricky, and a harbinger of doom.

  And then the silence returned, cold and dark and cruel.

  Owl wished he were still Waiting Wolf. He stood on the ridge, high above the agency, but there was nothing more. The Owl had glided off into his nether world, and Owl stood alone and cold.

  He saw the light in Chief Washakie’s window. The restless air made it glimmer, brighter, softer, unsteady. Owl wrapped his blanket tight and started down the long slope into the darkness. He reached the flats and trudged across them, alone on a lonely night, unnoticed by those sheltered in the clapboard houses. He passed the agency buildings, the school and the teacher’s house, and continued to the house of the chief. There he stood, bitterly, until cold and raw hunger drove him up the three wooden steps to the porch. He saw the lamplight within.

  He knocked softly, as one would scratch on a lodge cover to announce one’s presence, but no one opened. So he rapped harder, and heard footsteps within, and the door opened, spilling light and warmth over the boy.

  “It is you, my son,” said the chief. He stood in the lamplight, huge and stocky, his hair loose about his shoulders, his gaze gentle.

  “I seek your wisdom, Grandfather.”

  “Come. We are eating. I will have Leeta bring some.”

  Warmth struck Owl. He found the women in the kitchen, along with the chief’s son, who was older than Owl. Owl could scarcely remember the names of the chief’s women. He could not remember if Leeta was the older wife or not. But it was an older woman who rose at once and filled a bowl with steaming stew and found a white man’s spoon for the boy.

  They were not at table, as white men might be, but were sitting on wooden chairs, their bowls nestled in their laps. Owl felt the heat of the stew through the bowl, warming his numb hands. He stared bitterly at the stew, feeling defeat if he sipped one spoonful. He was Owl, and he would not eat. But he did, angry with himself as he wolfed down the savory stew, with its beef, potatoes, and some vegetables he could not identify. He ate and then Leeta filled his bowl and he ate more, bitter at himself, bitter at the kindness. Bitter at the man who called Owl a son.

  When at last Owl had consumed the two bowls, he sat quietly. No one spoke. Then, with a slight nod, Washakie set things in motion. The women collected the bowls. Owl watched a thin girl, rather pretty, younger than himself, and he watched the older boy, who looked ashamed, and he watched the older women, their hair braided and shining, in their blousy dresses, drop the bowls into a pail of water.

  Washakie nodded, and headed for the parlor. Owl followed, and settled on the soft couch. He preferred to squat. No one true to the ways of the People would sit in a chair. But now he sat in the couch, even more bitter because he was being robbed of his own nature.

  The chief reached for his pouch and a clay pipe, and tamped the cut tobacco into it.

  “A smoke, son?”

  Owl had barely smoked in his life, but he nodded. All this was ancient ritual, and was a mark of peace. For now, he would smoke the pipe, even if the Owl’s beak was clawing out his heart. And there was the chief calling Owl son. It tore the boy apart.

  Placidly, the chief lit the pipe with a lucifer, drew on it a few times, and handed it to the boy.

  It was a peace offering. Bitterly, Owl drew on the pipe and coughed the pungent smoke away. Hastily he handed it to the chief, who drew again.

  And the pipe passed back and forth until the charge was burned, and Owl was nauseous from the fumes. But a great tranquility was passing through him even as the chief tapped the dottle out and set the pipe aside.

  There was peace. Off in the other part of the house, Owl heard the women busying themselves, but here there was peace. He hated the peace. He wasn’t here for peace.

  “You cried for a vision,” Washakie said.

  The boy remembered his lonely night on the high ridge beneath a cold moon, and chose his answer carefully. “The Owl came and told me to wait. I sent the Dreamers away.”

  “The Dreamers are in their camps?” Washakie said.

  The chief knows that, so why does he ask? Owl thought.

  “I sent them away. They will wait.”

  “They honor your vision. They would follow you.”

  “Yes. Whatever I said, it was done.”

  “And they dreamed and danced the dream that the Owl gave them, but now the Owl has said the time is not ready. When will it be ready, son?”

  Owl had a sense that the chief knew exactly what had been prophesied; that Owl would need to be the Christ of the People before the white men would leave, and that his death would be the sign.

  “I think Grandfather knows.”

  “It would be good to set me straight so that it is not a whisper in my ear.”

  A rage boiled through Owl. Was he a child to be ordered about? And by a chief who had betrayed his people and was now destroying them?

  Still, Washakie was the chief of all the People. “The Dreamers watch and wait for the sign, and the sign will be when I begin the Long Walk, and then the People will be free, and the white men will go away forever, and there will not be so much as one wooden building standing; and buffalo will graze the grass where this post is.”

  “This is what the Great Owl gave you, then,” Washakie said, but it wasn’t so much a statement as a question.

  “Yes!” The young man simmered. “Yes, the Owl gave this vision to me.”

  Washakie stared into the gloom outside of the windows. There was nothing to be seen. The post was wrapped in darkness, and only one lamp remained, in the house of the missionaries.

  “Then it is so. You have received the gift of vision from the one creature the People fear most of all, the harbinger of bad news, and the one trickier than the coyote.”

  “He was true! He came when the moon hid the sun!”

  Owl was seething again. No longer did he use the polite term of respect, Grandfather.

  “He will save the People from the white men!”

  “Is there anything else, son? You received word on the ridge, and the word is good, and you took the word of the Owl and gave it to the Dreamers. And do they still dream?”

  “They wait, and sometimes they dance, in the quiet of the night when all sleep, and they wait for the time when I will go upon the Long Walk, and all the white men will fall away from here.”
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  Owl was angry. Was the chief questioning his vision? Was the chief wondering whether Owl had received a true vision from his spirit helper? Never had Owl received such an insult. And this from a leader who was working every sun and moon to destroy the ways of the People and bury their heart. He was a friend of those white men. A friend!

  The boy stood abruptly. “I will go,” he said.

  “Go in peace, then, son.”

  “Don’t call me that which I would not be!”

  “You are treasured by the chief of the People.”

  It was too much. Owl whirled away, glancing only once to see the chief standing quietly, a great sadness caught in the lamplight.

  Then the boy bolted into the cold night, where silence and peace pressed him from all sides. There was only one lamp lit, in the cottage next to the mission.

  twenty-seven

  An ill wind was blowing. It cut cruelly through Owl’s blanket, reminding him that he was poor, that he had nothing, that he was a castoff, an outcast, a waiting wolf. The agency slumbered in gloom. No moon shone.

  The only lit window was in the cottage of the missionaries, the Partridges, across the empty fields, aglow in thick darkness. Beside the cottage loomed the chapel, an oblong structure painted tan, with a steeple and a cross. But the night was so black Owl could not see the steeple.

  Wind whipped through his blanket. It would not cover him this night. Icy air eddied around his neck and back, and sawed at his legs. He walked toward the mission chapel, the wooden box that held all of the secrets of white men. Out of the black book of the white men sprang all their mysteries. Gunpowder and iron and glass and cloth. Out of their black book came all the laws, all the things that robbed the Shoshone people of themselves, of their own beliefs. The church was a robber, stealing his heart, pecking at his soul like an eagle pecked at carrion, tearing his flesh with its rules.

  “Not true, your things,” said the missionaries. “Try our way. Try the real God, not those animals or superstitions. Do not do this. Do not do that. Live in peace!”

  The missionaries had robbed him of his self. Robbed his parents and his kin and brothers and sisters of their selves. Told them they could not be Shoshones anymore, but must be just like white men. Told him … when did they ever stop telling the People to be different?

  And those missionaries never stopped telling the white men the same things. They told the soldiers what to do and think. They told the agent what to think. They told the teacher, Dirk Skye, what to think. They told the big chiefs in Washington what to think.

  Almost without knowing why or how, Owl headed that way, tried the door of the mission and found it unlocked. He stepped into darkness, a faint candle scent catching him. It seemed even blacker there than outside, if that was possible. He had to feel his way around. At least the wind didn’t cut through his blanket, even if it was no warmer there.

  This was their holy place and he should respect it. But all he could feel was rage, because they had stolen everything from him, and from all the People. Stolen it, and no one could have it back. It was whispered that even Chief Washakie was one of theirs now, that they had come into him and cut out his spirit and taken it here, to this church, and now the chief was nothing more than a white man in dark skin.

  The wind hummed, robbing Owl of silence.

  Now his eyes were used to the gloom. A little starlight filtered through the windows on either side. He groped toward the altar, found a heavy brass candelabra and coiled his hand over the cold metal. The brass felt good in his hand. He carried the candelabra with him, out of the sanctuary and out of the mission church. He carefully closed the door behind him to keep the spirits locked up within. He did not want the spirits following him into the night.

  He felt cold. The Great Gray Owl was watching him from some distant limb. The Owl, with its big unblinking eyes, could see through the night and see into the hearts of all Shoshones, and was peering into Owl’s own heart.

  Owl filtered silently across the sward, and peered into the lamplit window. The man, the Reverend Thaddeus Partridge, sat quietly reading. An oil lamp burned on a side table. On the other side of the lamp sat his woman, Amy Partridge. Their boy was nowhere to be seen. Owl stared at the pair, knowing they were absorbing more of their dark knowledge from those books. Owl could read a little, and knew some alphabet, because North Star had taught him these things. But reading was hard, and in his heart he didn’t want to learn those things in the books, and he knew that reading those things would eat the heart out of the People and put them in their graves, so he didn’t. He had become a Dreamer so that he wouldn’t ever have to learn the secrets of the books.

  Owl hefted the cold brass candelabra, and it felt good. It was heavy and that was good. The woman, Amy, paused and stared out the window directly at him, but he knew she didn’t see him in the dark. And that was good.

  He slipped around to the door of the cottage and opened it and stepped in, with a rush of cold air. A parlor stove was heating the room where the two Partridges read.

  They both looked up at once, and saw him standing there, beholding them.

  Owl knew what to do. He didn’t wait. He raced toward the white shaman, the candelabra high in his hands.

  “Oh!” said the woman.

  The shaman didn’t wait, either. He bolted upward from his chair, his blue stare fixed on Owl, and then slammed into Owl even as Owl’s arms swung downward with the massive brass war club. The shaman was inside the swing, bowling Owl backward even as the brass club glanced off his back and tumbled to the floor.

  Owl careened backward as the white shaman bulled into him, and then toppled to the plank floor, writhing against the shaman’s thick arms.

  The woman rose suddenly, knocking the lamp off the table. It fell to the floor, shattered, spreading lamp oil in a pool. Blue flame lit the pool, a circle of blue flame, growing outward. She cried out, clapped her hands, and retreated.

  Owl fought but the shaman weighed more and fought harder.

  “Thad, fire!”

  The shaman paused briefly, saw the ring of flame, clawed his way to his feet, even as Owl rolled aside, sprang up, and raced for the door. He escaped into the night and as he passed the window, he saw the shaman and woman smothering the flame with a thick rug. Owl’s arms hurt. His shoulder was torn. His ribs ached from the blows the shaman had landed. His neck was twisted. He limped, but ignored the limp.

  He dared not stop. He had lost his blanket. It was cold. The Great Gray Owl had betrayed him. Owl was only doing what he knew he must do, but it had gone bad.

  Owl ran past the darkened agency, hulking black in the night, passed the agent’s residence, ran into a clothesline, found himself in a tangle of clothing, he couldn’t say what, and grabbed some of it. One was a union suit, thick and white. Another was a shirt. He collected these and continued, his heart thumping, into the coldness of exile. He had to go away from the People, leave the reservation behind forever, run forever, never stop running, run until he starved, until he fell into a heap of bones somewhere, someplace.

  He glanced behind him. The house of the white shaman was not aflame. Everything had gone wrong. Now they would laugh at his vision, the Dreamers would scorn him, the white men would chase him. The cold nipped at the tears on his cheeks.

  In the safety of the dark, he paused to let his heart slow. He felt out the union suit, until he mastered the legs and arms and buttons. He stripped swiftly, got into the suit, which was too large, and buttoned it up. Maybe Major Van Horne was contributing to his comfort. That would be good. He put on his own shirt and pants, and then Van Horne’s shirt over these, and he felt warm at last. He had layers of white men’s clothing to warm him.

  He was disgusted with himself. Why had he waited too long in that room? He should not have paused even for a moment. He knew exactly what he would find; he had seen them through the glass. But he had paused, blinked at the lamplight, and that had been his undoing, and now all the Dreamers would heckle h
im and tell him he was no warrior, no hunter, no chief, no shaman, nothing but a foolish boy who received a false vision he should have ignored, and from the Owl, too, most tricky and treacherous of all creatures on earth and in the sky.

  He would go back and do what he must. He would drive the missionaries away forever. He would redden the earth with their blood. He would be Owl, feared by all. But it would do no good now. The white shaman was stronger and quicker than Owl imagined, and now the shaman would be spreading the alarm, getting the soldiers. Owl knew he had failed, and that rubbed his heart raw, and he bounded through the black night scarcely knowing where he would go. He must leave the reservation. He would never see his people again.

  He hurried north toward the Wind River, cloaked by night, and no one pursued him. He trotted alone, ignoring his hurt leg, trotted steadily until he reached the river, and trotted along the bank until he came to a gravelly ford. There he stripped, bundled his clothing, and waded across the icy stream, quaking with cold. On the far side he felt safer, though he didn’t know where the soldiers were. He dressed and continued north, a plan gradually forming in his head.

  At dawn he was in a gulch of the arid Owl Creek Mountains, a gulch that took him straight north, through sagebrush and naked rock and juniper, until he began a serious ascent up tan and red rock, climbing toward the sky. He was hungry but never paused, and somehow his body did not fail him. He was energized by the rising sun, as if its pale warmth was bathing him with new life and heart.

  Beyond these mountains was the basin where the white cattlemen had their herds. There would be meat, horses to steal, saddles, maybe a weapon. What more could he ask than a horse and saddle, meat everywhere, and a gun? These things would be available at any camp, where the herders picketed their horses and left their saddles and guns lying about. Then he would have what he needed, the means to ride straight to the worst of them, the one named Yardley Dogwood, and pay him back for all the times he cheated the people, stole their pasture, delivered cattle that were sick and gaunt and had no meat on their bones. Yes, Owl would settle that score, and Owl would show the white man what justice was.