The people bathed at Sunrise and moved up from the stream into the hills with their poles, knocking the fruit from groves of Piñon Trees. The husbands came first with their leathertipped knocking sticks dropping the ripe fruit to the ground. The wives gathered the food into baskets and built up great mounds of nutheavy cones in grasslined pits going longer than the body lengths of three men. Dried pineneedles were scattered into the growing heaps of nuts to keep the food from going damp and turning soft. The gathering went on through the hills, each family taking the fruit within the narrow stonelined strips their Ancestors laid out. The people stored their want against the long white days ahead. The Rabbit Chief stood before the people, a gray stone growing from solid Earth, he held his palms outstretched to the Sun, the blades of two Eagle feathers, dangling at his elbows, “It is Gumsaba. Fill your bellies. It is the Big Time.”
When the Robin still held the brilliant red Sun to his breast Gayabuc would awake. He could smell the long white days ahead coming in the air. It was the Season of the Hunt. He had not spoken among the people of his dreams. Dreams had come to live in him again, pushing up through his sleep in fingered slender stalks, bursting open in flared red bells. His dreams were the color of the Honowah, the snowplant growing up through the yellow-pine. Cloven hooves moved black through the trees. Wind caressed short fur. He dreamed of Antelopes. He could smell the Antelope in the Sky. At first he scented only one, its sharp eye wary in the forest as it moved through the trees. Always the trees. Then he saw two, and three, moving over the silent mat of pineneedles, nibbling the tender shoots of milkweed along the banks of quiet streams. In the dawn he looked to the Sky where he thought he saw their brown bodies pass in the night before. He placed his hand over the lump of his heart and tried to find the way in his blood to where they roamed. He waited until he saw an entire herd of them moving in his dreams. He went slowly to them so not to frighten their quick ears, “Don’t be afraid. I am among you easily. Don’t scatter before me Antelope. Your short fur stands stiff. I do not want you to rot in the Sky. I want to bring you into the circle of my people. If you are careful and still I can slip a knife into your Spirits and cut tongues of meat from your sides. Allow me to bring the people to feast on you. I will not take you in excess and let your meat spoil, leaving it on a moist meadow to grow rancid and stiff and soft with worms. I come as a Brother. I do not wish to capture your Spirit, it is too swift. I do not wish to capture your Ghost, it is too sly. You are a powerful magician, Antelope. I come to ask you for your flesh. The people need it to stay alive, Grow. It is the Season of the Hunt. I walk with you in dreams. I am the Antelope Walker. I cannot eat of your flesh, I cannot eat of myself. To do so is to die. Your Musege is stronger than all my medicine. The meat of your power can give me cunning to survive the long white days of winter. Your flesh will make me crazy strong. Your blood in mine will make me crazy brave. We will cut up your flesh and hang it. We will not let you rot. You will live in the belly of our Spirit. You are going to another land. You will like that land. You will not stay here. I am through talking to you now. I will see you in the Mountain House. I will wear my Deer-muscle belt so you will recognize me.” Gayabuc went out into the dawn and sat around the fires. He placed necklaces of pinenut beads around his neck and tied two Red-Hawk feathers under his leather headband. The people watched him as they ate Fish cooked with smoke and spooned acorn mush to their lips. He began to talk to them. He talked to them in a low voice, as if they themselves were the Antelope, pointing to the Sky, “My people, there, that is where I smelled them, tasted their scent, heard hooves beating beneath my eyes. That is the place they moved through my dreams the nights before this one. Now it is time, we must go. You will follow me. Who will follow them. These things I have dreamed. I walked alongside of them, they do not run away. They did not scent me. I am their Brother. I am the Antelope Dreamer.” The Man of Medicine rose, he had the thick warmth of Bearskin wrapped about his hips, “The women must go away from us, it is the Season of the Hunt, to look upon our weapons is to break our magic.” The Man of Medicine placed his hands on his fur covered hips and turned his back with the rest of the men until the women passed from them. “We will see whether you speak falsely or truly Antelope Dreamer. If you dream truly the Antelope will be banded together on this morning. We will send out two boys to see if your dream is truth.” The two boys came forward. Gayabuc said his dream to them, he sent them east to north. They went out over the mountains and did not appear until after three days running; the Man of Medicine rose, “What did you see?” The boys spoke together, their high voices a chorus of Birds, “It is the Season. Gayabuc speaks truly. The people will have meat.” The Man of Medicine nodded to the north, “We will all have something to eat. We will try tomorrow to hunt after them.”
When darkness came Antelope banded together and moved through Gayabuc’s dream. He saw how they grazed through the tall grasses on a hill slope. Over the slope and below opened a dry meadow where sagebrush could be piled high to form a corral without the sweat of work going into the noses of feeding Antelope. Dawn came up and Robin still held its fierce light to his breast while the men went out from the camp, heading east to north, to the mountains already ringed with snow. For two days they followed in the tracks of the Antelope Dreamer until he stopped in a dry meadow. There beneath the white peaks they cut the rough brush and stacked it high and thorny in a corral taller than two men. The Man of Medicine stood at the opening to the corral and made a fist over the single blade of a Bear claw hung from his neck, “Antelope Charmer, if you dreamed right we will all have something to kill and something to eat.” Gayabuc moved into the corral and stood within its middle, “I am the Antelope Charmer, what I dream is true. My power is not false. My dreams are my power. Divide and form your bodies into two long feathers, fan your feathers out over the slope rising above you. Hide in the trees. Watch from the trees. I will charm our Brother into this corral. When he comes, rise up behind him so he knows he is welcome.” The men split into two groups and disappeared into the trees up along the slope. The Antelope Charmer moved to the back of the corral, watching. He filled the stone bowl of his pipe with the tobacco of sage and puffed smoke into the clear Sky, “Brother, I can hear you feeding in the wildgrass. Are you standing still now? The wind caresses the shortness of your fur. Your thin legs are held straight to Earth. I do not mean you any harm. Do not become afraid. Do not let the fear scatter in your blood. Come and use tobacco with me. You are a great magician. Listen to me. Don’t be afraid. Don’t tremble in your hide. I have made a home here. Come into it. Come easily now, come creeping.” He saw their bodies. Their longskulled heads silhouetted against the Sky at the top of the slope. “Come right into your home. I have dreamed you.” The brown bodies moved with sharp eyes down the slope. “Come to this spot where hunger ends.” They stopped. Quiet. Damp eyes looking down to the man using tobacco, their Brother. Quick ears flinched in the Sunlight. “Come home sweet Brother.” They moved again. The proud swirl of antlers pressing ahead cautiously before them. “Come to me. I am sly. I am swift.” Their Brother puffed a wide blue cloud of smoke over the corral and they entered gentle to greet him, the air moved off their back. They were charmed. All behind the Antelope men came up from hiding, hollering and whooping down the slope to run the brown bodies around in a circle within the corral. The sharp black hooves cut up the Earth as trapped beasts beat around in a circle spraying dust over their bodies until they collapsed panting with bruised tongues. The Antelope Charmer stood over them still sucking his tobacco, “Listen to me. Allow us passage. We will slip a knife into your Spirit and cut meat from your sides. Give us a feast.” The brown bodies panted in the dust around him. “This I have dreamed.” He turned to the men waiting with taut bows carved from strong cedar. “My people, look at Antelope. I dreamed him up for you. My power is not false. My dreams are my power. I cannot eat of my Brother, he is my flesh, we are one. To eat of your own flesh is to die. But that big one there, with the sp
reading antlers like a crown of bone, you will kill that biggest buck for me to take into the woman of my children.” The Man of Medicine stepped forward, drew his bow and let the arrow fly into the heart of the buck. The Antelope Charmer puffed clouds of smoke into the dust choked sky, “All this I have dreamed. Now you may kill for yourselves. Go forward to your Brother and begin cutting him up. Feed your Spirit. Skin the flesh and cut it into strips. Wash off the guts. Do not throw anything away. What is not used for power becomes waste. Do not leave any flesh to rot. Do not offend your Brother. Do not abuse his power. All this I have dreamed. If I were dead, all this would not have been dreamed. There is no other to speak these words among you today. If I were dead, there would be no one else here to tell you this. If I were dead.”
2
THE INDIAN led his sister on the horse behind him. He saw the yellow spark of a sudden running body spring from the coiled sagebrush and whirl with a kick in the air. The wood butt of the rifle rammed to his shoulder, his eye sighted along the barrel where the bullet would meet the muscle heart of the fleeing animal. The exploding of lead jumped in his ears as the body fell, the flight of its flesh stopped through the heart, its dead weight carried forward with a jolt into spinning earth. The Indian went out into the clumps of sage and whipped the rabbit up by its soft ears, the long hindlegs cocked for another leap, the fire of blood streaming from its nose.
The woman came quickly behind the man and cinched the body into one of the belts of carcasses slung over the horse’s rump, she hitched the dead weight of the heavy belts higher up toward the saddle to keep from slipping, “Why do you shoot them in the heart? That just ruins them.”
The Indian took the reins and went farther into the sage. He saw the flick of yellowed brown fur moving quick in a grassedover rainrip in the earth, he jammed the riflebutt to his shoulder.
“Joe! Hey Joe!”
His finger flinched on the trigger, cutting the bullet through the air and thudding into the distant brown movement.
“Joe! Wait up Joe!”
The woman spurred the horse off to get the rabbit.
The Indian spun around and saluted a hand over his eyes to block the full force of the morning light. He could see the boy was coming fast, the thud of his breath beating over the sage before him.
“Joe! Joe, you shouldn’t be out here!” The boy ran panting up to the Indian, banging a fist against his binning chest to drive the wind back in, “My Dad he got back from Mexico last night and I told him you was going to still rabbit shoot out here and he says no you aint. He says he’s got machines set out here to get all the rabbits now and you might trigger a machine.”
“Why aint you in school?”
“My Dad says those machines are from Reno and costs alot of money and he don’t care how long you been shootin rabbits in this valley you aint hired to shoot for him no more. You aint hired no more Joe.”
“Why aint you in school Sam?”
The boy hung his head and kicked up at the sod, “I wanted to hunt with you.”
“You go on to school now Sam. You can still get in on time. We’ve been here since sunup and we’re about done. You git now.”
“My Dad says you can’t shoot here no more Joe, but you are. You tell me to get to school, but I aint. I’m going to do just like you, I’m going to do the only opposite thing people tell me to do.”
“Sammy,” the woman on the horse rode up, keeping a tight hand behind her over the flapping belts of rabbits. “What are you doing away out here when it’s school time?”
“I came to hunt with you and Joe, Sarah Dick.”
“No you don’t. You’re going to school if I have to ride you back myself.”
“Why can’t I stay. Nobody says nothing if the Indian kids don’t show up for school. Why am I any different?”
The woman looked over at her brother. He slung the gun up on his shoulder and started back into the sage coming up sparse and only head high.
“All right then Sammy,” the woman leaned over and took the boy’s hand. “You get on up here so Joe doesn’t have to worry where you are. He shoots in any direction. And you hold onto the rabbit belts behind us. One of those goes slipping off and we lose it we’ll never find it again out here.”
The boy pulled up behind her and got a good grip on the dead weight of the belts. “How many rabbits you got here Sarah Dick? There are so many they’re almost dragging on the ground.”
“52.”
“Fifty-two! Joe usually gets only thirty this early spring time of year. What are you going to do with them? My Dad, he won’t pay two-bits apiece for them anymore, he’s got machines to do his work.”
“We’re going to make a Rabbit blanket. The fur is good because the winter was short, when cold days are not many Rabbit is heavy in his pelt. When cold days are long he goes hungry, his pelt dries out and shrinks on his starving body. This time Rabbit had enough to eat. This time even these skinny jackrabbits have had enough to eat in the early thaw. Git up you horse, git up here!”
“My Dad says he’s going to run cattle in this field soon, he says it’ll carry eighty head, but only in early spring. In summertime the sage won’t even grow out here, and it’s full of snakes. He had six snakebites in this field alone last summertime. He calls this his snake field.”
The Indian’s rifle was against his shoulder, the flash of the barrel whipping around as it tracked the running brown body, its ears tucked back along the thick fur, the toes barely hitting the earth as the arc of the bounding body sailed through the sage, meeting the blunt bullet.
Rabbit Boss Page 49
