The Owl Hunt (2 page)

There was more: Waiting Wolf's kin were simmering, waiting for a chance to visit ruin on the reservation. The youth had been sent to learn what he could at the schoolhouse, so his family might know what darkness lay within it. Still, Waiting Wolf had been the brightest light, the fiercest learner. He had learned some English, learned American history and geography, learned to spell, and was mastering writing. He was quick with numbers, too.

Now Dirk watched the boy walk down the trail that would lead to the bottoms of the Wind River. His family roamed, refusing to surrender their lodge. But now they occupied a good woodlot perhaps three miles distant, a place of abundant firewood and some small game in the brush.

There was something stiff and unyielding in the boy's gait, a defiance so profound that it radiated from his shoulders, his back, as the youth grew smaller and smaller and finally vanished far below.

Two boys headed for Chief Washakie's frame house half a mile away. He was boarding them. Some headed for the rude cabins that had sprung up around the agency. Others trudged to an old buffalo-hide lodge which had housed them all summer. It was as close as they could get to a boardinghouse. One day it might house half a dozen boys; the next day, all of them might disappear. And when the frosts came and the lodge required firewood, the boys slipped away and Dirk never saw them again.

He wondered whether he had taught them anything. He divided his days into various courses: English, writing, math, history, geography, civics, as well as various pursuits that might turn the young people into artisans, farmers, cattlemen, carpenters, mechanics, and clerks. But some days, few of them came.

He had never gotten used to it, and had never stopped trying.

The government had built a schoolhouse, as its treaty with the Snake People required it do to, and paid Dirk to teach there, as it was required to do. But Congress had balked at building a dormitory where students could board. The reservation stretched a hundred miles and the People were scattered across it, much too far from the clapboard school for their sons to attend. There was an occasional winter day when Dirk had only one student, Waiting Wolf, who came faithfully and devoured everything that Dirk could teach him—until this hour.

two

A little before the hour, Dirk tolled the schoolhouse bell and then waited for his charges to appear. None did. The minutes ticked by. He knew they had fled, just as others had fled for whatever reason over the years. He stared at the empty desks, the blank slates they used to form letters into words. He stared at the windows that let July breezes eddy through the room, vanquishing the lingering smells of wood smoke, sweat, varnish, and the bodies of boys.

He stared out the window into the sunlit pastures that descended to the Wind River, far away. He stared out the other windows, toward the whitewashed Wind River Indian Agency buildings, toward the military post that started as Camp Brown and would soon be renamed. And just below stood the shiplap house of the legendary Shoshone chief, Washakie, who had sealed a peace with the white men years before and kept that peace with a firm hand.

The schoolhouse was very quiet, and whatever was to be learned within it remained unlearned.

Dirk abandoned the silent structure and hiked toward the agency buildings, which included the Indian agent's house, reservation headquarters, staff housing, and a carriage barn and pens. He saw no one about. The greensward, brown now, was as empty as the world around the complex. He would have it out with Sirius Van Horne, the current agent. He rather liked Sirius, named after the brightest star in the night sky, while Dirk's Shoshone mother had given him the name of the unmoving North Star. So they shared something. But not much, he thought.

Indian agents rarely got rich, even those who robbed the tribes and government, and the real appeal of the position was that there was little to do. It was the perfect position for a lazy man, and Dirk knew that Sirius filled the bill.

He clambered up wooden steps, plunged into a cool antechamber, and then into Van Horne's sanctum, where his arrival highjacked the agent's morning siesta.

“You could knock,” Van Horne said, lowering his boots to the floor.

“No students again. That eclipse scared them off. How am I supposed to teach an empty classroom?” Dirk said.

Van Horne eyed him lazily, from hooded eyes. “Angry again, are you? There's no purpose in it.”

“Of course I'm angry. Am I supposed to not be angry?”

Van Horne sighed, rubbed a freckled paw across his red muttonchops, and sat upright. “No point in it,” he said. “It's all useless. The Indians can't be educated. And don't want to.”

“I don't believe that.”

Van Horne smiled. “Then don't work for the Indian Bureau.”

That only made Dirk madder. “Every year the bureau wants a report. How many students attending. How many have completed courses. How many have mastered English. How many can read. How many can do sums. How many have learned a trade. And my answer is the same year after year. None. And then they tell me I'm on probation.”

“It's a nice summer day, Dirk. Go for a walk.”

“That eclipse set them off.”

Van Horne eyed him from under bushy red brows. “Anything sets them off. An eclipse would do it, all right.”

“The only bright student I have is Waiting Wolf, and he's the one who's stirring things up.”

“Stirring up?” The agent pulled himself upright.

“What do you know of Shoshone mysteries? Creation stories?”

“The less the better.”

The agent had meant to be humorous, but the answer annoyed Dirk. “A darkened sun means the end of their people. The return of the sun means that the People will triumph; it is the end of time for white men.”

“Well, they have lots of stories, Dirk. Lots of owl stories, moon stories, all sorts of stories. That's how they explain mysteries.”

“The boy went home to his people. They're a family of shamans and agitators. The rest of my class took Waiting Wolf's words very seriously. I haven't a student left.”

“My oh my,” said Van Horne, and he smiled.

“I thought you should know.”

“Thank you, Mister Skye. I think you should go fishing.”

“These people have been waiting for a sign.”

“Sign? Good lord, Dirk, my boy, all of the world waits for a sign.”

“The boy said the darkened sun signified the death of his people—and the returning sun signified the triumph of his people. Over others.”

Van Horne sighed. “It'll pass. Superstition, my boy.”

“Belief, Major,” he said. Major was the honorary rank of Indian agents.

“And tomorrow it will just be another legend, the day the sun hid and then whipped the moon.”

“Dreaming, Major. They dream. I dream.”

“Ah, yes, your mixed blood.” He smiled cheerfully. “Which are you?”

“The eclipse was the passage of the moon in front of the sun,” Dirk said.

“There you go. Teach ‘em that and there'll be no more dreaming.”

Outside, in the quietness of a summer's morning, Dirk wondered if the agent had fathomed anything Dirk had offered him, including the warning. The Wind River Reservation seethed with dreaming, and visions, and the glistening hope that the People would soon be free forever.

This day there was no one to teach. But maybe he had nothing to teach the Shoshone boys. Maybe those boys should be teaching him.

His father, Barnaby Skye, lay nearby in the Wind River Agency cemetery, his mother Mary, or Blue Dawn, beside him. Only Victoria lived on, and he was glad to have her with him. Dirk had been schooled by the Jesuits, who ignored nothing that would help him master their European world and view and faith. That was the world he brought to the Shoshone boys at the Wind River Agency. He was schooled in St. Louis until age fifteen, but after that he schooled himself, with books brought horrendous distances. And then he had tried to school the reservation boys and girls and any adult who wished to learn, too, but little had come of it. And worse, he could not see that it had done any of his young people any good.

He stood in the sun, absorbing his aloneness. He had few friends, mostly because he didn't fit. He was too white for the Shoshones, too Indian for the whites. His mother and father lay in their graves. His anger hung about him, and wouldn't leave, and soured his life. He had no woman. Once he had eyes for Chief Washakie's daughter Mona, but his sourness drove her off, and now she was married to a full-blood Lemhi, Tissidimit.

The sun burned its peace upon the day, but that peace didn't quiet Dirk's heart. He hiked the half-mile to Chief Washakie's frame house. The old chief of the Shoshones had led his people into reservation life, saying they had little choice but to accept the new world and the ways of the white man. Dirk wondered whether the chief regretted that now the reservation starved and its people lived in despair. He had seen his people sink into misery and slow death within the prison of the reservation.

Dirk paused for a moment on the veranda of the chief's house, enjoying the shade, and then knocked softly.

The chief materialized, and motioned toward the porch chairs.

“I've been expecting you,” he said.

“The boys left you?”

“They are filled with dreams, Dirk. And so are all of your students. I have heard all about Waiting Wolf.”

“There was no one to teach today.”

“It was the message from the sky,” Washakie said. “It was a big message. I was very frightened, and then when Sun returned, very heartened.”

“The seers are making something of it,” Dirk said.

“Yes, and you should take heed.”

“But there is nothing there. No magic. No sign. The moon passed between the earth and the sun. There's no more to it.”

“You don't know your mother's people, Dirk.” Washakie eyed him gravely. “And you don't know what is happening in hidden valleys, in moonlit fields. You don't know how many Dreamers there are and what they are saying. You hear the voice of the agent—a good man but blind, and eager to pass through his life without boldness—but not the voices, a hundred voices, singing ancient stories, winning new hearts every night. And now this. The great sign, signifying that all the songs are heard. Heed me, young man. The Dreamers are like a flood that washes away all things.”

“But it's only dreams,” Dirk said.

“Ah, the white man talks. No, Dirk, dreams are true. Believe a dream, and the rest is false or blind.” He had a way of staring, unblinking. “Do you see? Have you vision?”

Dirk felt the old loneliness flood him. Why was he so different from others?

The chief eyed the young man and subsided. “You are made from red clay and white clay,” he said. “It goes hard for you.”

The chief's gentleness had its effect on Dirk. “Grandfather,” he said. “If the People weren't so hungry, they wouldn't be dreaming. The Dreamers meeting in the shadows want the old life to return, want buffalo to eat, want to roam wherever they want, with no invisible lines around them, want hides for their clothing and lodges. But those things are gone.”

“There are no fat Shoshones,” the chief said. “No buffalo. The deer and elk and bear are shot away. And when we go hunting away from our land, the Territory of Wyoming tells us we must not. The white men tell us to plow the fields and plant grains, but we are so hungry we eat the horses and mules. They white men tell us to keep a herd of their cattle, but we are so hungry we have eaten the herd. And when we have a few cows, the white herders from other places slip in and take them from us. The white men tell us to build cabins and farm the land, so our bellies will be full. But that is death for boys and men who live to hunt, whose dream is to be a great warrior, just as our men and boys have always dreamed. Now there is nothing to eat, and nothing to dream. What can a Shoshone man dream now? Will he spend his days scraping the earth with a hoe? Chopping wood for the stove? Digging potatoes? It is not a life for a Shoshone man. There is no dream in it. When the man of our people kills his horse to eat it, he dreams of hunting buffalo.”

“So they dream of other times,” Dirk said.

“I have chosen the way of peace,” Washakie said. “We have clasped hands with the white men, and now we live with the bluecoats beside us, keeping us from going where we will. Sometimes they protect us. Sometimes they drive away white people who want our land or our grass or our water. I do not regret that decision, mostly because we had no choice, and what was coming to the People was going to fall upon us, no matter what.”

“And now the Dreamers dream,” Dirk added.

“And the People are hungry. They eat turtles and fish and badgers and eggs and lizards and snakes and weasels and gophers. They eat anything that crawls.”

Some of it was Indian Bureau policy. The rations doled out to enrolled Shoshones fed them only two days a week, and much of the meat or flour was bad. There was intent in this: force the Indians to start farming and ranching. Make them take up agriculture and become less and less dependent on white men for their survival. But the idea ran into walls and barriers, for there was no honor in stoop labor. That was for women. A man fought wars and hunted, and took care of his people, and won honor with his skills. Now the white men were turning Shoshone men into drunks and bums, and sometimes Shoshone women sold themselves to the soldiers to get enough food for their lodges.

Both Dirk and the chief knew all that.

“You have lost Waiting Wolf,” the chief said in a voice so quiet that Dirk strained to hear. “And his kin, too. They own the dreams. My voice is no longer heard. There was a time when I could say no and they would honor me. Now they will not hear me. They will not hear the words of our Indian agent. Once they listened to your father and honored him. The People listen only to dreams. There is no way you or Major Van Horne or the bluecoats can stop what is coming, or keep the sacred ground beneath our feet from soaking up our tears.”