Spirit Wolf (10 page)

“There was a man coming toward me from the trail below. I could not see or hear him, but I knew he was there. I heard him in the protest of the grass as he passed over it. And then I saw him. He was a strong man, graceful and handsome, with eyes as black and deep as a mountain lake in the moonlight. He motioned for me to follow him, and I did so without question. After we walked for a while, we began to run, gliding through the trees and across meadows ever faster, until I could see only a blur of green and blue and brown—and his back. I was running faster than I had ever run before or since. I felt I could fly, and perhaps I was flying. Had he willed it, I would have followed him into the heart of the sun, and perhaps I did.

“He slowed, and we came to a stop on a meadow that stretched to the end of the world. We were higher in the mountains than the trees grow, and every step we took was on thousands of tiny flowers, but so light was our tread that we did not crush even one. It was then that I saw the lodge. It stretched nearly to the clouds and painted on its walls was the Cheyenne circle of life. The ancient one nodded, gazing deeply into the embers of his fire.

“He held the flap and I stepped inside. In the middle of the lodge was a huge bonfire, built not of logs but whole trees, and still flames from that fire lit only the center of the lodge. The walls lay hidden in shadow. Had I not seen the lodge from the outside, had I not known it was day, I would have thought that I was sitting outside on a mountain meadow in darkest night.

“Surrounding the fire were more men than there were in all of our band. They were dressed so finely, they would have put any of my people to shame. And then, as I watched, these men turned into animals. It was then that I knew I was in the lodge of the spirit people. Buffalo was there, and Bear, and Coyote … all the spirit animals. I turned to look at the man who had brought me there. He was gone. Standing in his place was a wolf, but a wolf unlike any other. Wolf Spirit was handsome as a man, but as a wolf, he was beautiful. He was mostly white with dark hair around the eyes and back toward his tail. He looked almost as though he were wearing a mask. His eyes, black as a moonlit mountain lake when he was a man, had turned green, like the lake at dawn when the light from the sun strikes the water and lights its depths. I couldn't help looking into his eyes. They were as deep as forever. I could see all things that had been and all things that were yet to be.

“Then all the animals turned back into men, and Wolf Spirit said that he was to be my spirit helper, and he told me that I was to go hunting when I returned to the village and walk two days west from the camp until I came to a stream, and climb into the crook of a tree there. I was to wait there until a wolf came to me, and I was to kill it, thanking it for the gift of its life. I was to take the wolf's claws and fangs and carry them in my medicine bag. I was to skin the wolf and tan the hide myself. It was not to be touched by the hand of any other person. And when I went into battle, I was to wear the skin of that wolf over my head and down my back. Wolf Spirit told me that as long as I wore the wolfskin and carried my medicine bag I could never be killed in battle.

“Then the lodge and everything in it began spinning like eddies along the Yellowstone. Everything disappeared. I awoke to find myselflying on the ground outside the brush lodge where my father had left me.

“I was tired and weak, but I drank from a nearby stream and walked back to the village. My father had been watching, and he met me before I reached the lodges. He walked ahead of me into camp, singing, ‘Behold my son, he has had a great vision.'

“I told my vision to the men of the camp, and they agreed that it was strong, and that I should do as the wolf told me. So I rode two days on my best horse to a stream with a forked cottonwood on the bank. I waited there until a wolf came, and I killed it.

“From the time of the vision, my name among the Cheyenne has been Running Wolf, and from that time, I have never been afraid.”

Nash had listened quietly while the old man spoke. He rose and threw another stick on the fire, promising himself that he would bring the old man more wood.

“But I don't understand why you came here,” Nash said. “You have no horse, no gun, and no food. What do you want?”

The old Indian didn't answer.

Nash hesitated a long moment, not knowing how to say what must be said next, and then the words came in a rush. “It's not your fault, but you are causing trouble. I don't know why, but you are. You could be hurt, or maybe someone in camp will do something he shouldn't do. Maybe it would be better if you just went away.”

“I know about the trouble in this camp,” the old man said. “I can smell it, but that smell does not come from me. I am not afraid.

“I would like to smoke. Will you ask the man Flynn if he has tobacco for me? Come back tomorrow night, and I will tell you why I am here.”

Nash walked away from the old man's fire, an empty feeling in his gut, as though he had not eaten for days.

Uriah was already in his bedroll, and the little lean-to felt almost warm compared to the breeze kicking up outside. Nash climbed between his blankets, and for the second night, he lay awake, watching shadows play across the canvas roof until the fire died to ash.

6

Uriah had already left the lean-to when Nash awoke the next morning. The boy slipped into his clothes, pulled on his coat, and stepped out into the middle of the night. The stars were still bright, and Nash knew it couldn't be more than three thirty or four o'clock in the morning. That was early, even for Uriah.

Nash waited a few moments and then decided that his father intended to leave early. He began gathering kindling to strike a fire, but before he finished, he heard the creak of saddle leather as Uriah rode up to the lean-to, leading old Nell. Uriah didn't bother dismounting.

“No reason to wait for breakfast. Let's go.”

Nash climbed on Nell, kicking her a little to catch up with his father, who was already little more than a shadow on the snow ahead. When he pulled abreast, Nash asked, “Why so early?”

“I couldn't sleep.”

They rode a while further before Uriah asked, so offhandedly he gave his concern away, “What were you and that old Indian talking about?”

“He did most of the talking,” Nash said, trying to be as offhanded as his father and failing just as abysmally. “He was telling me about a vision he had when he—When he was about the same age I am. He called it a spirit wolf, and he was the same color and had the same green eyes as the wolf Flynn was telling us about.

“He said his father took him into the hills, and he waited three days and nights without food or water, and he had a vision about this wolf. He said you could look into that wolf's eyes and see what the world had been and what it was going to be.”

There was a question hiding in Nash's answer, and Uriah heard it. He pulled the roan to a stop and turned sideways in the saddle, his weight on the offside stirrup. His voice was low, and he seemed to be making a special effort to articulate each word. “Visions,” Uriah said, “make no more sense than goblins or ghosts or witches. That boy—the old man now—was so tired and hungry and thirsty that his mind played tricks on him. If you were to stand in the sun for three days and nights without food or water, you'd have a vision, too. Only you'd dream about your classmates, or the county fair, or something like that. Our minds paint strange pictures for us to wonder at, but those pictures have no more substance than shadows on a cabin wall.”

“But, Dad, there was more,” Nash said. “He was told to ride two days west from the Cheyenne camp to a stream where there was a forked cottonwood and wait there for a wolf to come. He found the stream and the tree, and a wolf did come, and he killed it.”

Uriah straightened a little in the saddle before speaking. “There are dozens of streams around here,” he said. “Ride two days in any direction, and you'll likely stumble across one. Where there's water, there's cottonwoods, and I have yet to see a stand of cottonwood without forked trees in it.

“That old man must be close to eighty. When he was your age, these plains were thick with buffalo. Their bones are scattered from hell to breakfast around here. And wherever there were buffalo, there were wolves. Seeing that wolf he killed was just pure coincidence. Nothing more.

“Now it's different with us. We aren't going to run across that killer wolf by coincidence. We're going to have to work for that bounty money.”

The two rode on. Nash was tired enough to go to sleep, but it was just too cold. He could feel his cheeks stiffen as the cold cut off circulation. He wrapped his bandana around his face, breathing through a double layer of cotton, and that helped, but it wasn't long before the moisture in his breath rimed the cloth with frost. The cold had dulled Nash's senses. It wasn't until the bandana took the sting from his face that Nash noticed the North Star hanging like a shard of the sun. They were traveling almost directly west. They rode another hour. Then Uriah stopped to relieve himself, steam rising from the hole he burned into the frost-lined snow. Nash got off and stretched, waiting for his father.

“We're going to drop down onto a big flat in another couple miles,” Uriah said. “There's a little creek that follows a shallow coulee back and forth across the bottom. Sometimes it almost loops back on itself. We're going to use that to hunt this fast. We will be heading northwest, so we'll have the sun at our backs. I'll be on one side of the coulee and you on the other. Just remember, if there's a coulee in front of you, follow it around until you see me. If the coulee is behind you, cut across the flat on the top and set up an ambush on the other side, waiting for me. Leave Nell back from the edge. Don't silhouette yourself. Take your time, slip down into a bush or behind some rocks and wait. Got that?”

Nash nodded, but he wasn't sure what Uriah was talking about. He understood better when they started down a long ridge to the valley floor below. It was light enough to see the general lay of the land, and Nash could mark the course of the creek from the occasional cottonwood that poked its crown over the center.

When they came to the creek, Uriah pushed the roan off a relatively steep bank, leaning back against the stirrups until his mount came to a stop on the coulee floor. He followed a little cut that meandered up the other wall until he popped out on top. Uriah waved good-bye in the growing light, and set across the valley floor on the other side at a lope. Nash kicked Nell into a walk, riding back a little from the edge of the coulee, his complete attention focused on the scene below. The coulee, marked as it was by steep walls that shaded the creek, was a world unique in itself. With adequate water, and without the baking sun, plants flourished in summer, their dried skeletons now poking out of the snow.

It was a perfect place for the wolf to hide. Casual observers from the ridges overlooking the valley would never guess the extent of the creek that lay below. The heavy brush lining the banks provided excellent cover by day, water, and the promise of game as it moved down from the ridges toward the water in the evening.

The creek bed below was crisscrossed with tracks, and whenever those tracks wove their way in and around a copse of juniper or willow, Nash would stop, shotgun at the ready, and wait to see if an animal would bolt from the cover. Most times they did, and Nash would swing the heavy double-barrel toward the movement until it proved to be a cottontail or jackrabbit or sometimes a bird. Once Nash watched as a huge white owl lifted out of a thicket with great strokes of its silent wings.

The coulee was angling generally south and it nearly touched the valley wall there before swinging back north by northeast toward the other side of the valley. Nash's mind was beginning to drift, lulled into inattention by Nell's rocking gait and his lack of sleep the night before. He would have some tales to tell when he got back to school. His teacher would probably call him up before the class and announce, “Children (emphasizing that she wasn't referring to Nash), our own Nashua is going to tell us about his adventures hunting the last wolf in the Pryor Mountains.”

And then he would look around the room at all those wondering eyes and settle on Ettie, and …

“Nash.”

His father's voice jerked him back to reality just in time to see Uriah climbing out of a juniper under the lip of the coulee rim beyond him.

“You have to stay awake, boy. I said that wolf wasn't as dangerous as Flynn made him out to be. I didn't say he would come up to you and lick your hand. You head across and set up. I'll swing around. If you see the wolf, you'll only see him for a second or two, so be ready.”

Nash put the sun to his back and pointed Nell across the broad expanse of valley floor. His shadow stretched off ahead of him like a surrealist painting of a man on a horse, a long-legged, long-necked creature carrying a long-necked, long-bodied man-boy on its back.

Nash tried to pull back into himself, into the warmth of the coat and cap and gloves and boots. But even the gentle wave created by Nell as she cut through the sea of frozen air overlaying the valley floor stung Nash's cheeks and sapped his energy. He held off shivering, because he knew once he started, he would never stop—at least, not short of a fire built somewhere in the coulee ahead, its smoke signaling the end of hunting that day.

Nash guided Nell toward a cottonwood he saw poking above the coulee wall ahead. As he drew within two hundred yards of the tree, he pulled Nell up in a patch of grass scoured clean of snow at the whim of one northerly wind or another and tied her to a patch of sagebrush. She would graze there until Nash returned.

The shotgun felt heavy as he walked toward the coulee. Most times when he picked up the old double-barrel, he felt the power latent in the weapon and not the weight. But now it was weight. The weapon had become a tool to Nash, nothing more romantic than a hammer for pounding nails. He was coming of age.