The Owl Hunt (28 page)

The People drifted in, old couples walking, families dragging a mule or horse that would soon be burdened with sacks of flour and sugar, beans and coffee, a ration of beef and some tobacco. It was never enough. Single men stood silently, ignoring the cruel air, their gazes on the noose. No one spoke. It was not a time for speaking.

From his cottage in the distance, Chief Washakie emerged, wearing his tribal clothing, a thick blanket protecting his body, beaded moccasins, a fringed buckskin tunic, and a red band over his forehead, pinning his gray hair against the gale. He carried an insignia of office, which he handled like a bishop's staff. His face was seamed and flinty. He looked at no one, his eyes never resting on his People, but gazing intently at Indian Agent Sirius Van Horne, who stood at the stoop of the agency, as if ready to duck inside at any moment.

Dirk watched intently. Often, these times, Washakie wore a black suit and a white shirt. But not now. Was the chief saying something? The chief walked steadily toward the gallows, all alone, a wall of space surrounding him. He was a proud and powerful man, and his gait reflected what was in his mind. Washakie glanced at Dirk but didn't acknowledge anyone's presence.

Then, around noon, a commotion rose from the distant post, and a double line of bluecoats began a march toward the gallows, their pace measured by the rattle of a snare drum. At the forefront was Captain Cinnabar. Barely visible between the two lines of soldiers was a thin, short Shoshone boy, in the rags he was wearing when he surrendered himself.

Dirk could hardly bear the sight. Owl was like a rabbit caught between walls of wolves. The boy walked of his own free will, without quaking. When the ever-growing crowd of Shoshones saw the youth, they stared silently. Dirk heard scarcely a murmur among them. But he knew that these people were finding all this strange and disturbing, and wondering why they were invited to a public murder.

Even as the column approached, Dirk fought the impulse to walk away. He didn't want to see this thing. He didn't have to endure it. He hated his own helplessness. His most ardent appeals had been shrugged off. Why were they killing this boy? What had he done but tell his people of a vision?

The column marched into the whipping wind, the force of it flapping their coats and threatening to lift their forage caps off their heads. And yet they came, smartly in step, the snarl of the snare drum disciplining them all, except for the boy, who walked lithely without the slightest obeisance to the rhythm of the drumsticks.

Then at last the column reached the gallows, and Cinnabar found himself blocked by the presence of Chief Washakie, who stood like a mountain of granite in his path to the rude ladder that would carry the boy up to the platform.

“Chief, may I have the honor of passage?” he said.

“I will stand here all of this day, and all of this night, and all of tomorrow, forever.”

Dirk sensed suddenly that the chief had reached some new understanding.

Cinnabar had the good sense to halt the column. The boy stared at the chief disdainfully, almost as if the chief were interfering with destiny. But Washakie ignored him, and began talking in measured tones.

“Grandfathers,” he said, with a nod toward the agency stoop where Major Van Horne stood idly by. “Grandfathers, I have words for you. Some winters ago, your nation offered a forever homeland to my Shoshone people, from that day forward to the end of the world. Your nation offered this valley to us, and the hills beyond, to the very ridges of the mountains, for us to enjoy. And you told us that we would govern ourselves. My people would continue as before, protected from our enemies, protected from white men, too. And your agency would help my people become herders of cattle and growers of grain.

“I was made the chief of my people by their common consent, and so I am now, and so do I govern my people, and all things on this land of my people are subject to my rule. This was guaranteed in the treaty with us, my Fathers, and so I come to you with powers guaranteed by the treaty between the Shoshone people and your chiefs and fathers, to which I made my mark and you all signed.

“Now, Fathers, it is my will, in the exercise of my power as chief of the People, that you release this boy at once and let him go. That is my will, and I command it, and I have the right to insist on it according to your words on paper. I have weighed this matter in my mind, and I have decided that this boy, Owl, Waiting Wolf, has done absolutely nothing to merit taking his life away from him. This boy has seen a vision given him by his spirit helper, and he has shared his vision with the People, and his vision is that someday the white men will walk away and the People will be free.

“He shared his vision, and urged us to dream his vision, and there is no crime in it, no evil in it, no hurt in it.” He loomed over Captain Cinnabar. “Release this boy at once into my custody. It is my command.”

“Oh, now, Chief, this is none of your business,” the captain said. “Your powers are confined to matters among your people, but this boy's committed a crime against the United States of America. So, no, I have no thought of releasing him.”

The chief rose to his own massive height, and seemed to tower over the captain. “This young man will be freed. He has committed no crime. Where is his army? Where are his weapons? Who has he killed? What has he desecrated? Eh? Eh?”

“He attempted murder against white people, and that suffices.”

“It is the custom of Shoshones to let the victims seek their own justice. I have commanded it. Let the Partridges seek what they will of Owl. That is the way of my people, and I require it now.”

For a moment, it seemed almost as though Washakie would have his way. The captain paused, glanced at his two lieutenants, at the column, at Owl, and the gallows.

“The answer is no. You will now step aside, Washakie.”

But the chief didn't budge. He folded his arms and stood resolutely in front of the fatal steps.

“Grandfather, what will be, will be,” said Owl.

But Washakie stood stonily in the path.

Dirk found himself riveted. Would Cinnabar ride roughshod over the most powerful and most friendly and most far-seeing chief they had ever known?

The captain hesitated. Dirk could virtually read the man's mind. Manhandling a chief, any chief, and especially Washakie, would reverberate through the military, through the Indian Bureau, through Congress and the bureaus and the newspapers. It could cost the captain a rank or two or three.

Cinnabar bowed elaborately, hat in hand.

“Have it your way, Chief Washakie. Stand there forever if you will.”

He turned to his lieutenants. “Move the ladder.”

Swiftly, the command was passed along to two sergeants, who broke formation and lifted the ladder to the rear of the scaffold.

“Column, left and around,” Cinnabar snapped. The bluecoats wheeled left and around, pausing at the undefended ladder.

The people stared bleakly. Now some Shoshones turned their faces away. They had come for food, and instead would feast on death.

Dirk wanted to turn his face away, too, to blot out the next minutes, to flee. But he stood, engulfed in his own helplessness, filled less with anger than despair at a world turned so bleak that life made no sense.

The boy didn't hesitate. Owl climbed almost eagerly, as if the Long Walk were something he ached to begin, something that would free him from all the desolation he had known since childhood.

But then, from that wall of silent Shoshones, a man and woman hurried forth, the woman wailing softly, the man stern and intense. Owl's parents. Dirk barely knew them, but saw at once that they sought clemency for their son.

They reached Cinnabar, who whirled defensively to stay them.

“Why, why must you do this?” the woman asked in Shoshone. “He has done no wrong. He is good. He was given the gift of seeing.”

Cinnabar, who understood not a word, said, “No, I won't.”

“Let me die in his place,” Owl's father said. “I will stand in the noose.”

But Cinnabar had had enough. “Remove these people, arrest them. I won't have a riot here.”

He did not even grasp that these were the boy's parents.

On the platform, Owl addressed them. “Blessed Father and Mother, what will be will be, for it is foreseen.”

The woman, Dirk thought her name was Bitterroot Flower, groaned softly. Soldiers collected around them and led them away.

“Secure a perimeter,” Cinnabar said.

At once, the soldiers posted themselves into a square at some remove from the gallows, and kept their carbines in hand. But the Shoshones stood silently, and the threat of riot was nowhere but in the minds of the white officers.

“Get on with this,” the captain said.

The executioner, a certain master sergeant who plainly was enjoying his task, tied Owl's hands behind his back, lavishing a lot of cord for a small task. Owl stepped out upon the fatal trap and waited. The sergeant lowered the noose, thick and snaky, over Owl's head, turned it slightly so the knot was off center, and drew it tight. The rope was too long, so the sergeant unwrapped it from the crossbeam, drew it tighter, and anchored it.

Now there was fear in Owl's face.

“Boy, you are sentenced to die for insurrection and attempted murder of United States citizens,” Cinnabar said. “Let the world witness your punishment.”

He nodded to the sergeant, who peered about in triumph, and then pulled a chock. The trap swung down. Owl dropped hard, and when his feet were still a yard over ground, the rope snapped his neck, and his head jerked crazily to one side. His body flailed once, again, and then slowly sagged into resignation. The body swung gently, to and fro, twisting slightly as the rope oscillated. Dirk was sure Owl's last glance was directly at himself, and it sickened him. A youth filled with a vision had perished.

Not a sound rose from the spectators. They stared, transfixed, at this strange example of white men's justice. This was beyond fathoming. Death for no reason. Was it a crime to receive a vision from a spirit helper? Owl's parents, surrounded by troopers, slumped into each other's arms, and Owl's mother lost tears in her husband's shirt.

“Get your food now,” Cinnabar said. “The clerks are ready.”

But no Shoshone moved toward the warehouse. They simply stood and stared at the body gyrating on its rope, whipped by the wind.

thirty-three

Dirk found Aphrodite Cinnabar in the shadow of the schoolhouse. There were tears on her cheeks.

“I shouldn't have watched. Father told me not to, which is why I did.”

“It's not something to watch.”

“Now I can't take my eyes off of it.”

The wind-whipped body careening on its rope had a mesmerizing effect. Owl's parents, sitting in the clay below the gallows, drew the eye also. It was plain that Captain Cinnabar had no intention of lowering the body or giving it to Owl's parents. And so they sat and waited even as the Shoshones slowly worked through the distribution line at the warehouse.

“It will be with you a long time,” Dirk said.

“Yes! And I prayed it would never happen!”

Dirk wanted only to return to his teacherage and be alone. “Maybe it would be best if you went back to the post,” he said.

She stood bitterly. “No, I am in the middle of this.” She eyed the swinging body. “The middle!”

She eyed him bleakly, grief and stubbornness in her oval face. “Come with me,” she said. “I'm going to the tree.”

She meant the shattered pine tree, massacred by the Gatling gun, the place where she and Dirk had talked with Owl; the place where Owl's spirit might be.

“Aphrodite, it's cold. The wind…”

“I want it to be cold. I want the cold to numb my bones!”

Reluctantly he followed her away from the agency, into a gulch that rose toward the foothills. In moments they were alone, as if the agency and its grief didn't exist there. He watched her walk, her young body encased in gray gabardine, a severe skirt and severe jacket over a blouse.

She didn't speak, but hiked fiercely upward, braving the bluster of November winds that reached even into the gulch that hid them from the eyes of the world. The cold numbed him; he was poorly prepared for this.

He glanced behind, and saw the small white agency buildings, and something light as a feather waving from the gallows. The boy's body seemed to weigh nothing at all, now that his soul had left it. The food line was moving swiftly. The people were gathering up their sacks and fleeing this place where the earth had been violated. He could see them fanning out, racing away to their miserable wickiups and lodges and cabins. The agency was cursed ground, a bleak scar upon their world.

They reached the pine tree, the needles brown, the wood shattered and gray, and she found a pocket that hid them from the wind and settled into it. He joined her, marveling at the strength of her, the firmness of her jawline, the tightness of her hair coiled into a bun at the base of her head.

The dead pine shivered in the gale, the cruel wind peeling away needles and debris and bits of bark.

She didn't talk, but stared there at the place where she and Dirk and Owl had talked to one another. He knew she was thinking of that, of Owl's fierce visions and temperament.

He thought to comfort her. “Owl is free now,” he said.

“I don't want to talk,” she said, but she thrust her hand into his and pressed.

He had never held her hand or touched her. A half-blood couldn't do that. A breed could only stand apart, acknowledge nothing, and pretend.

Her clasp was warm, and she eyed him now, not talking but with a flood of meaning even so.

“I know,” she said.

The wind seemed to ignore this hollow, or was the warmth rising from something else? He could not say.

“He didn't deserve to be hanged,” she said. “He just didn't.”

“He was an Indian,” he said.