The Owl Hunt

by Richard S. Wheeler

  “I’m afraid, Chief, it’s not that simple, but I will forward it up the command.”

  “I will do this. If you do not take away my name, I will choose a new name, and the old name will lie in the dust, gone from me.”

  Cinnabar eyed the paper as if it were a lit firecracker. “I’m going to give this some time, Chief. I think you might come to reconsider.”

  “You will not send it to your commanders?”

  “I think you’ll want time to rethink this, Chief.”

  Washakie turned to Dirk. “I will send the duplicate, then.”

  Cinnabar recovered whatever aplomb he’d lost. “Well, sir, I’ll mention it to Colonel Brackett, at Laramie, and leave the matter in his hands. Meanwhile, we’re honored to be at a post named for a great chief, and great friend of the American people.”

  “An hour ago you were on the brink of slaughtering your friends the Shoshones.”

  “Stopping a redskin revolt, yes. But we’re all grateful it didn’t happen.”

  “Are you?” asked Dirk.

  Cinnabar stared, and in the stare were manacles and leg irons and jail bars. “I gather you’ll be off the reserve tomorrow. Let us say, away from here before sundown. After sundown, you will be subject to whatever discipline I wish to impose, in order to preserve the peace, and for as long as I choose to impose it.”

  Dirk smiled suddenly. “You just keep on preserving, Captain.”

  Washakie took his time departing, and stood in innate splendor, his steely gaze resting on Cinnabar, the adjutant, the headquarters, and at last at the letter withdrawing his name from the post. It was not a petition.

  He nodded to Dirk, who followed, and soon they stepped into biting wind, and the flags rattled like a rifle volley.

  The sleepy post and agency of Fort Washakie slumbered. Dirk doubted that the chief’s message would achieve anything. It would be handed up the command in a plain “for your eyes only” envelope, and then quietly die. Not one officer would understand Washakie’s reasons, and it would all be dismissed as Indian hoodoo. Not one would question what had been done to the Shoshones, starved and virtually imprisoned on a barren land, as a reward for their allegiance and friendship with the government in Washington City. They would shake their heads, smile, gossip about this bizarre frontier episode, and talk of it over drams at the officers’ clubs. And Chief Washakie would see his people die away, powerless, hopeless, and lost.

  “It was Owl who caused this trouble. His vision was false, and his boy-heart was too eager,” the chief said. “He brought death on his wings. He shot black arrows at me, at you, at the People. He did not hear what he said he heard. His tongue was not true.”

  “Grandfather, somehow I reached out to him. He only wanted to give the People what they once had.”

  “No, North Star! He was a bad one, and bad ones make themselves important. He took us to the cliff and we looked over the edge.”

  “You stopped a disaster, Grandfather,” Dirk said, hoping to lift the heavy heart of the old man striding beside him.

  “I stopped a quick trouble, but not the slow trouble. And you joined me; two Shoshone men against a hundred guns. You have a great heart, North Star. You will be the leader of the People.”

  Dirk felt uncomfortable with the praise. “We will go to my Crow mother’s home in Montana Territory,” he said.

  “The Absaroka are good people. Go with my blessing, North Star. And think kindly on an old man who spent all his years trying to keep his people safe and well and at peace.”

  They had come to the true parting point, where trails divided. Washakie embraced the younger man, his worn hands pressed upon Dirk’s shoulders. “I will not see you again. But someday you will return to the Wind River, and you will lead our people toward a better place. Remember me.”

  Dirk fought back the tears welling in his eyes. “You are my grandfather, the grandfather of blood and bone,” he said.

  The chief took his solitary path toward his cottage while Dirk stood in the wind, watching the man who had devoted much of his life to preserving his people.

  Dirk hurried to his teacherage, even as the flag snapped at him. Old Victoria would be waiting, ready to help pack, ready to laugh at the whole world, ready to slip her ancient hand into his and hold it tight.

  thirty-seven

  Then came the hard moment. The wagon was loaded. The dray in its harness. The teacherage emptied of Dirk’s few possessions. Clothing, books, bedding, utensils, and some beans for travel. The horse stood placidly, head low. No one else stirred. The windows in the dim white buildings were black holes.

  He helped his Crow mother to the wagon, but she pointed, and led him in another direction, toward a grove of cottonwoods and a fenced graveyard nearby. Barnaby Skye’s son and widow walked over frosted grass, when the air was still cruel with night. They entered the silent grounds, finding it coated with silver. There was a crystal coating over the stones and wooden markers, and the brown clay shone with ice.

  Barnaby Skye and Blue Dawn, or Mary, lay side by side, with mounds of earth over them. The sacred ground on Skye’s other side lay flat and undisturbed and was intended for Victoria when her hour came. It was quiet. The morning birds had not yet greeted the sun.

  Victoria stood a moment, and then slid to her knees at Skye’s grave, and then lay down in the frost beside him, her old arm outstretched over Skye, her cheek in the frosty grass. Dirk watched her, saw love, and sat down beside his mother, Mary, of the Shoshones, and remembered his birth mother when her eyes were bright and that sweet smile caught her lips. He felt a strange attraction to the very earth there, felt it draw him toward it, felt that if he should abandon that place he would be torn inside, shredded, an alien wandering an alien land. This would always be where his spirit lived.

  Time stalled, and he sat quietly while Victoria whispered things known only to herself. She struggled to her feet and approached Mary’s grave, and stretched herself beside Skye’s younger wife, her arm caressing the frosted grass, making patterns in the crystal ice. Victoria’s spirit was wherever Skye was, wherever Mary was.

  The eastern sky lightened a little, a layer of salmon along the edge of the world. Dirk helped his Crow mother to her feet. She wiped her hands on the woolen skirts she chose to wear this bitter day, and nodded. He offered his arm to her, and she took it, and together they padded back to the teacherage and the wagon waiting there.

  He looked at the load; all he possessed and not much at that. Much of his salary had gone to feeding lunches to his students. He had a few double eagles hidden there, and a few greenbacks, but that was all he had to show for his years in the classroom. His reward had been the few who learned a little, who might be better equipped to prosper in the new world of the white men. But those were half a dozen, and as he stood at the wagon, he was engulfed with a sense of failure. It had all come to nothing.

  He helped his Crow mother to the seat in the wagon, and drew a robe around her. He was about to climb up beside her when he heard his name, softly and sweetly.

  It was Aphrodite, hurrying toward them, a shawl over her shoulders against the bitterness.

  “Dirk! I’m so glad I caught you. I’ve come … I’ve come to wish you Godspeed … Godspeed to you both.”

  She was lovely standing beside the wagon in the salmon light. Her face was gentle and her lips soft and he discovered sadness in her eyes.

  “Aphrodite. Thank you. I’ve enjoyed knowing you,” he said, staying away from more dangerous ground. There had been the blossom of love.

  “I’ve enjoyed you, too, Dirk.”

  “I guess you’re going east soon,” he said.

  She nodded. “It’s been arranged.”

  “I guess we won’t be seeing you again,” he said. It was safer to include Victoria.

  A fleeting sorrow crossed her face. “I wish it could be otherwise, Dirk—and Mrs. Skye.”

  He wanted to hug her. He knew she was forbidden to see him. But there she was.
r />   “We had good times together,” he said.

  “Yes! And we accomplished things together. We taught. We helped these people. And you stopped a slaughter. That’s where it was heading. You are one of the blessed.”

  That must have been hard for her to say. She was talking of her father’s blue line of soldiers.

  Reveille sounded at the distant post, mournful in the frost.

  “I must go!” she said.

  She slipped close, folded her hands upon his cheeks, and kissed him. He started to hug her, but she slipped away.

  “Good-bye Dirk!”

  And then she fled. He watched her hurry back to Fort Washakie.

  Then he climbed aboard the wagon and settled himself next to Victoria. She eyed him sharply, and then reached across to kiss his cheek.

  Twice this dawn, he had been kissed.

  “I want to visit my people,” she said. “Take me to the Absaroka.”

  He pulled on gloves, lifted the lines, and slapped them over the croup of the dray, which jerked into motion. He drove toward the Wind River, not turning back, not permitting himself a last look at the cluster of quiet white buildings, their eastern walls pink in the long light. The iron wheels ground over clay, leaving twin streaks through the frost as he drove away from his only home.

  He didn’t know where he would end up. First to his Crow mother’s country, but then what? He was a two-blood, and there was little room in the world for people of two bloods. He wasn’t a white man; he wasn’t a Shoshone. Even less was he a Crow. He was not welcome at the Wind River Reservation. He might not be welcome other places. He was not welcome at Aphrodite Cinnabar’s home. He remembered her farewell with a sigh. He remembered the few quick hugs and tender kisses that had comprised their starved intimacy. He remembered the sound of her voice, and the tug of her hands. Now she was gone.

  He felt low. He had failed to school the Shoshone children. He had failed to stop Owl, or prevent his hanging. He had left nothing behind him, no improvement among the People, no skills that would help them ranch or farm or enter business—or deal with the new world imposed by distant people in Washington.

  “You’ll show those bastards a thing or two,” Victoria said. Her seamed face was wreathed in smiles.

  He wasn’t so sure, but he liked her approach.

  All that long day the wagon creaked and pounded over frost-hardened ground. The going was easy because the earth was firm, and there were no mud holes or heavy grasses to slow their passage. He rested the dray now and then, not wanting to lame or weary their only source of transportation. The draft horse was old, but sturdy, and seemed tireless as long as it could move at its own slow pace. So Dirk let it.

  They forded the river and Dirk steered the dray toward the Owl Creek Mountains, the route that would drop them into the Big Horn Valley once again, and past the ranches there, filled with men who had no use for people of any color.

  Victoria must have attuned herself to his thoughts.

  “I got Skye’s revolver right here,” she said, “and I’ll put a hole in anyone gets in our way, especially that Yardley Dogwood.”

  “You read my mind.”

  “I have medicine. And I have many years.”

  That night they camped in a wind-sheltered hollow. The weather held, and the camp seemed pleasant enough. The next day they descended through red rock country into the Big Horn Basin, which stretched into the northern haze. And not far beyond that would be Absaroka country, Yellowstone country, the other home of the Skye family.

  Those rocky slopes had some mystical quality that resonated in Dirk. They passed ancient picture drawings, brimming with strange images, sometimes painted over the images underneath. What was there about being a mixed-blood that tugged him in two directions?

  They reached the arid basin of the Big Horn the next day, and Dirk immediately headed for Owl Creek. The iron tire on the left front wheel was dangerously loose. They made camp among naked cottonwoods. As soon as Victoria was comfortable, Dirk blocked up the wagon, pulled the wheel, and rolled it to a sandy bank and settled it in the cold water. By morning the felloes would swell and pinion the tire.

  “You want to soak in the hot springs tomorrow, Grandmother?” he asked.

  “If I get in there, I’ll never get out,” she said. “Skye and me, we went there a few times. It sure started his juices flowing.” She wheezed her delight at the memory. “But I was young and damned good looking.”

  “You still are, Grandmother.”

  “I remember all the boys who wanted me. Who played the flute. Who threw their blankets over us. Ah, North Star, I remember the Absarokas. To see them again—that is my dream.”

  They faced a long drive through Dogwood’s range, or at least what he claimed was his, enforced mostly by six-gun and threats.

  “Grandmother, we have some choices to make. We can drive straight up the river or we can go far around.”

  “We’re Skyes, North Star.”

  That was answer enough. The next dawn Dirk pulled the wheel out of the creek and slid it onto the axle. The tire was tight. They started in a silence so profound that not even the wind whispered. There were streamers across the sky. For miles, the only sound was the clop of the dray’s hooves and the grate of wagon wheels over clay and rock. Victoria seemed uncommonly bright, and Dirk wondered at it until he realized she was going home. Her Absaroka people were her home, wherever they might be. Now, at great age, she would be reunited with them, and that was as much as her heart could ever want. He glanced at her now and then, marveling at the transformation. It was as if she had shed thirty years and buried all her sorrows.

  They struck the brushy valley of the Big Horn at midday and turned north, following a well-worn trail furrowed with wagon ruts. But they saw not a cow or steer or calf, and no game, either. The world seemed uncommonly lonely. He saw a few ravens, but no magpies, and wondered at it.

  Toward the end of the day they found cattle sign, none of it green, but much of it recent. They were approaching the holdings of Yardley Dogwood, the fat Texan who staked a claim to the whole area, and would have snatched pasture from the Shoshones if he could get away with it. It took an army to seize and hold so much of the good earth, and Dirk knew that this rancher’s army could be deadly. And yet he drove straight downriver, passing occasional pens and line shacks.

  It was well nigh dusk when they raised the cottonwood log ranch house off on the horizon, which already had buttery light slipping from its windows.

  “You sure?” Dirk asked Victoria.

  “This’ll be goddamn fun,” she said.

  There still were times when the old woman startled him. He hadn’t seen her so gleeful in years.

  The ranch yard was as large as Texas, it seemed. There was a log bunkhouse spilling light, a whitewashed board and batten foreman’s cottage, and the main building, with massive cottonwood logs notched with gun ports and bulletproof window shutters. Off a way were pens and a barn and some rude outbuildings.

  “Wasn’t long ago he tried to hang us,” Victoria said. “Goddamn, that was funny.”

  Dirk couldn’t quite fathom where some of her notions came from. He remembered only the terror and the strange sick sensation of his imminent strangling.

  No one stayed them as he drove the wagon into a loop that would take them to the ranch house. Maybe they were all eating, he thought.

  At last the rattle of the wagon drew notice, and several rough-dressed men spilled through the massive door to see what was causing the commotion. Dirk circled his wagon around and parked it at the front door, while assorted Texans gazed first at him, then at the wagon, and the old dray, and finally at the brand, which was US. Dirk’s horse was a condemned army dray he had purchased.

  All of this sufficed to draw the rotund master of this empire to the door, where he was silhouetted by lamplight. Yardley now sported a goatee, a sure sign of status, at least in Texas. He peered into the gloom, registered Dirk and Victoria, and approached.
r />   “Ah do believe it’s young Skye off the reservation, and the old woman who commands all the magpies west of the Mississippi. Well, ah say, welcome. You defeated the Confederacy. You’re just in time for dinner, but we haven’t decided which of you to cook first.”

  thirty-eight

  “Gents,” said Dogwood to his cohorts, “these heah guests are my nemesis, my embarrassment, and my betters. This lady commands an army of magpies, and these miserable pests halted a good hanging and drove my entire command to disgrace. This heah gent, Dirk Skye, is the progeny of Barnaby Skye, the Indian agent who made me deliver prime beef to the reservation, and to watch my tally, because if I was one beeve short, he’d string me up by the privates. These heah are my archenemies and conquerors who have come to sup at my table and enjoy my misery.”

  The gents were smiling. They wore trimmed beards of all descriptions, especially elaborate mustachios, and were well manicured even if their clothing was rough. Dogwood introduced them all, saying they were his Texas cohorts during the late unpleasantness, and now ran the ranch. There were another thirty in the bunkhouses and camps round about, and a few “yellow dogs”—which Dirk took to mean non-Texans.

  Dirk couldn’t remember all their names, but there was a Pickens and Smithers and Bannister and McGinnis and Peck. In turn he introduced Victoria. “She was born Many Quill Woman of the Absarokas, and was captivated by my father soon after he quit the Royal Navy and entered the fur trade in the twenties. I owe my life to her, because my father was a one-woman man and only her insistence that he take another wife resulted in his finding the Shoshone who became my mother.”

  “Goddamn, I was stuck with all the work until he got another woman, and then I had someone to boss around,” Victoria said. “I wish he’d gotten half a dozen more, so I could be lazy, but Mr. Skye had all the women he wanted.”

  “Well, sah and madam, you’ll see none around heah,” Dogwood said. “I don’t much care for ’em. Now, come set. We’ve a slab of beef out of the stove, ready to slice—prime rib, medium to rare, sprinkled with salt, to be specific, that being all we’ve got to eat around here, which is a bore. So grab a plate, slice off what’ll fill you, and hit the grub.”