The Owl Hunt (16 page)

The Shoshones huddled and gossiped and watched the soldiers watch them, and whispered to one another about the blue-bellies. The soldiers were unusual, but there was no cause for alarm; no one was at war, and no friendships had shattered. And the soldiers themselves had gathered in knots to gossip, or just watch.

Then, when a goodly crowd had at last collected, Van Horne emerged from the agency, flanked by the clerks and warehousemen who would hand out the annuity goods as provided by treaty. The agent looked uncommonly important this day, in a black frock coat and bow tie. The man's sideburns seemed almost to bristle.

The Shoshones quieted, and watched as Major Van Horne mounted the warehouse platform and turned to face the goodly crowd.

“Skye, come translate,” he said.

Dirk, uneasy this time, joined the agent.

“We will begin our distribution as usual,” the agent said. “Each enrolled member will make his mark. My clerks will see to it.”

That was simple to translate, but Dirk knew what a shock it would be to the Shoshones. Up until now, heads of families could collect the allotments for the whole family, and the clerks would record the transaction.

“People, Mothers and Fathers, the white father will give the food to each person who makes the mark,” he said in Shoshone.

That was all. In the silence that followed, Dirk sensed the despair that snaked through these people. Only about a third of the enrolled members of the tribe were on hand, and they had planned to collect the distribution for the whole people.

“We'll begin now,” Van Horne said.

No one moved.

Dirk turned to the agent. “What of the old and sick? The ones who can't travel?”

“Sorry, Skye, no exceptions. That's policy from Washington.”

“That's what they've told you now?”

“No, it's always been policy. Enrolled members must make their mark to receive annuities and distributions.”

“Why now?”

Van Horne chuckled. “It's mighty inconvenient, isn't it?”

The clerks settled on chairs at a table and spread the ledger before them, along with a nib pen and ink bottle, and waited officiously.

The soldiers watched idly. This didn't concern them, or did it?

And still no Shoshone moved. There was an odd anticipation among them, as if they were all expecting something. Or maybe they were simply waiting.

Would two-thirds of the People starve the next thirty days?

“If the missing show up in the next few days, can they collect their food?”

“Oh, as a concession I'll permit it tomorrow. You may tell them that.”

Dirk turned to the anxious people whose gaze fixed on him. “The father says he will give food to those who come when the sun rises again.”

That meant most of those still scattered over the vast reserve would not collect. It would be impossible for them to get to the agency in time.

“A lot of Shoshones will starve, sir.”

“A pity. They know they're all supposed to show up and be counted. If they're off in the mountains, that means they'll have to feed themselves.”

The Dreamers. This was Van Horne's ploy to reel in the Dreamers, force them to show up at the agency if they wanted their allotments. No doubt Captain Cinnabar and the army were involved. Collect the Dreamers, who might number a hundred or so. Dirk wondered whether those unarmed blue-shirts had plenty of arms just out of sight.

Dirk simmered, but kept his peace. A translator was only that. A schoolteacher was only that. The Dreamers were the prey this time, and when this distribution was done, Van Horne would have a good idea who the Dreamers were, just from looking at the ledger and seeing names with no checkmarks beside them.

Dirk discovered Chief Washakie before him, and many of the Shoshones were eyeing him, not knowing which side he was on or why he had come to the warehouse.

“I am glad you are here, Grandfather,” Dirk said to him in Shoshone.

The chief nodded curtly, and turned to the People. “Come. Collect what is owed to you,” he said to the silent crowd.

Slowly the gaunt People formed a line that stretched back from the clerks at the table. As each person reached the table, Dirk sang a name in English, and the clerks found it on the ledger and handed the pen to the Shoshone, who drew a careful X where it was required. Many an old woman eyed the clerks fearfully, or studied the chief, or Dirk, or Van Horne, or the warehousemen distributing the foodstuffs from heaps they had built on the platform. A sickening silence enfolded this place, some bleak sadness, the desolation of hunger perhaps, as the People collected sacks of flour and beans, rice and cornmeal.

The women loaded flour and beans onto travois, or heaped the sacks onto the backs of scrawny mules, glancing furtively at the record keepers, who made the magic marks in their books. A few older men received their cornmeal or beans bitterly, their proud stare telling all who watched them far more than words.

An old woman, the elder wife of Walks Along, received her ration and set it on the ground.

“Where is the meal for my man?” she asked Dirk.

“Where is the meal for her man?” he asked Collins, the clerk. “Her man's too feeble to come here.”

The clerk shrugged. “You heard the agent,” he said.

“Grandmother, they will not give his food to you. He must come for it himself.”

She stared at the two clerks, at the orderly script on the pages, and then picked up her sack of cornmeal and smashed into onto the ledger. The cotton sack burst, showering the clerks and the table with meal.

“It is better to die than to eat bad food,” she said.

“Take her name down, Collins,” Van Horne said. “She'll be docked next month.”

The grandmother, her worn skirt dusted with yellow meal, stared at the agent and at the others and turned away.

“Grandmother, stay,” Chief Washakie said. He turned to the clerks. “I will give them my ration.”

“Very well, sign for it here, my friend,” Collins said. The chief slowly scratched a large X on the page, collected his meal and beans, and a sack of flour the old woman had not burst, and carried it away from the line. “Wait here, Grandmother,” he said.

She waited, a small stack of cornmeal, beans, and flour at her feet. Others stared, but the line moved slowly forward, each enrolled member carting away his or her own allotment and no more. The pile of food on the planks of the warehouse did not diminish much.

Chief Washakie returned with a wagon drawn by a scrawny mule. He and Dirk swiftly loaded it. To the meager supply of food allotted to the old woman, he had added gourds and melons and squash gotten from his gardens.

“Come sit beside me, Grandmother,” he said. “We will drive.”

“It is good to sit, Grandfather. It becomes very hard for me to carry these things on my shoulder.”

“Well, now, that's a mighty fine gesture, Chief Washakie,” Van Horne said to the leader of the Eastern Shoshones. “Let those who receive share with those who don't. Let those who have share with those who don't.”

Dirk chose not to translate, but the agent prodded him. “Tell them that.”

Dirk did, and the People stared back sullenly.

He watched the chief, dressed in a black frock coat, steer the mule away from the silent line and westward, up the Wind River Valley, where the old woman and her man scratched out a living in a riverside woodland, where firewood was plentiful and held the promise of winter warmth for the very old.

The queue began to move again, each person receiving the allotment due him. Even small children stood in the line, awaiting the moment when their parent would scratch a mark next to their name. It was oddly quiet. The usual jubilation of allotment day was tempered by the new rules, and the presence of grinning soldiers, who enjoyed the sight of Indians collecting white men's flour and cornmeal. The Shoshones stood grimly, enduring the smirky cheer of the soldiers and clerks, the smug satisfaction of the agent Van Horne. Some of them made their mark, collected their sacks of goods, and then stood apart, waiting to see what would happen.

The stacks of goods on the platform didn't diminish much, and the warehousemen scarcely stayed busy. Dirk watched, seeing not charity or benevolence in it, but the subjugation of his Shoshone people by the white men and their army. Was there anyone among those white people who cared whether the Shoshone people lived or died? Prospered or vanished from the earth?

It was Willow's turn, and she put her mark next to her name. Willow was tall, spare, handsome, and the mother of three sons, all of them Dreamers. She was not known to smile much, and seemed to lack the innate humor of the Shoshone people, but her seriousness drove her to take great pride in the People. There was no more beautiful—and remote—woman among the People.

She watched as the warehousemen set the small sacks and a pasteboard box before her, a miserable dole for a large family. She stared first at the offending little pile, and at Van Horne, and the smiling clerks, and then lifted each miserable pouch and smashed it to the clay, bursting the cheap cotton and scattering yellow meal and brown beans at her feet. Then she proudly walked away, bearing nothing of the dole, her gait strong, her chin high.

“That'll be one hungry family,” Van Horne said, amused.

But what Willow started, the remaining people in the food line continued. Next was Hairy Head, an old headman with a proud eye and a lustful way. He was more dramatic. He lifted his little sack of flour high above him, and then smacked it to the ground. It thumped, spraying white flour over the clay, powdering his bare feet, and dusting everyone close.

“Hey!” yelled a clerk.

But Hairy Head was not done. He sprayed beans, scattered meal, and shook the burlap and cotton sacks until the earth had received every last ounce.

The soldiers chuckled. This was sport. Goddamn redskins didn't know enough to feed themselves!

Van Horne, far from being alarmed, was enjoying it. He stood close by, an odd cheer spreading across his face.

“I'll put the agency mules to the feedbag,” he said.

The mules would have a lot of chow.

One by one the Shoshone people made their mark on the ledger, received their dole, and slapped the entire month's supply of staples into the stained earth, where the heap of beans and meal and edible food grew minute by minute.

And not one of the Shoshones left. After they had destroyed their entire dole, they stood apart, waiting and watching. Not until the entire nation, at least those who had come to the agency on allotment day, had destroyed their allotment, did they silently drift away.

Dirk watched them go, watched them wearily drag their ponies and travois away.

“What will you say to the people in Washington?” Dirk asked the agent.

“We distributed the goods to all, as usual,” Van Horne said.

nineteen

By the time Chief Washakie had returned to the agency, he had heard the story a dozen times from people straggling away. He had sat quietly in his wagon while his suffering Shoshones told him about the flour rebellion. He was not surprised.

“Go find food wherever you can,” he had told them.

“Beyond the white men's lines?”

“Yes. I have said it.”

And so he gave all his people permission. He would tell the agent.

He drove back, a solitary Indian in a white shirt and black coat, his graying hair loose and held with a headband. His mind was heavy with all that had happened. He felt the whole weight of the People on his shoulders.

The closer he drove toward the bleak structures of the Wind River Agency, the more resolute he became. The time had come to draw a line across the earth. For as long as he had been the principal chief of the Eastern Shoshones, he had seen the white men as assets. His People were not numerous, and they lacked the horses and power of the great plains tribes such as the Sioux and Cheyenne and Arapaho, which waged constant warfare against his People. His alliance with the white men evened the struggle somewhat, and his friendship with these newcomers brought guns and food and peace. They called him a friend, and perhaps he was, or at least he was not their enemy. His contact with them taught him much about the future: his People were doomed to fade away unless they changed. He didn't care much for the change, but there was no other way for his People but to become stock growers and farmers and live on pieces of land, like the newcomers. There could be a good life for his People in ranching and farming. So he had decreed it. But always with his eyes open. The white men came with their own darkness and ignorance and foolishness. Their friendship was as firm as a butterfly's wing. But he saw no real choice. Unlike so many of his People, he had seen how white men lived. And what the future had to be.

He let the weary dray pick its own pace back to the agency. There was no hurry. There never was any hurry. But in time the distant white dots of the agency became small buildings, and then larger ones which caught the late sun of the day, and cast long shadows. And then he was back, his own white house not far distant. But he did not go there, for he had business first, that must be opened and not avoided.

He drew up his wagon before the somber agency building and stepped into the commons, where soldiers had paraded in recent days. Now there were only a few, and he saw they were at the warehouse herding hogs brought in to devour the spilled flour and beans. The soldiers kept a few hogs at the post to eat garbage and supply some bacon now and then. The grunting hogs were busy rooting out every last bit of the white men's food intended to feed his hungry people. He watched for a moment. At least the hogs were getting fat. The soldiers eyed him placidly. The unclaimed food had been returned to the warehouse, and now there were only hogs and blue-shirts.

He entered the silent agency, found no one on hand, and turned to leave. But a voice stayed him, and he found Van Horne at his desk, his feet propped up. A small flask of amber fluid, probably hastily removed from the desk, rested near the office safe.