The Owl Hunt (35 page)

He thought of her request to come here, to be among her People at the last. She had received her wish and now her life was fulfilled. She had come back to the people of her girlhood, to the relatives and friends and tongue and wisdom and ways she had known. She had returned to that which had stamped her, made her an Absaroka, given her a name, given her those medicine powers, given her those skills with a bow and arrows. He thought she was somewhere in her upper seventies, but those details, the family history, were confusing, and he simply wasn't sure. There would be no white men's records: birth, parents, marriage, death, place. The Crows had no parish records.

He sat next to her, feeling a tug for this Crow mother, the older wife of Mister Skye, this woman who had no child of her own, and loved him as much as his Shoshone mother, who brought him into the world.

“Her wish was to come here, and I brought her, and now all that she asked has happened,” he said to the chief.

“I count it a blessing to have met her, talked with her, and offered her my hospitality,” he replied. “It was like opening the door to a magical person.”

“I should have expected it,” Dirk said. “But I didn't.”

“It is good that you didn't,” Plenty Coups said. “Have you any thoughts about what to do next?”

“Grandfather, she is one of yours. I don't know what to do.”

“You are her son,” the chief said, firmly returning the decisions to Dirk.

“She would want to be given to the sun,” Dirk said.

“Yes! That is good!” said Strikes the Iron.

“I will do that,” Dirk said. “But I would like for you, Grandfather and Grandmother, to choose a place and direct me in the ways of the People.”

“It will be done.”

“Should I go find the Indian agent?”

“Major Armstrong? He does keep a book of births and deaths, and all who are enrolled at this agency. But Many Quill Woman was not enrolled. And he did start a cemetery, and wants us to bury our own as white men do, but the People don't like it, and the earth is not a good place.”

Dirk knelt next to his Crow mother, who lay so still. He wanted to memorize her face, but there was nothing to memorize, and no photographs or tintypes or drawings that he knew of, so he would remember her only in small fragments: laughter, wit, a tender hand upon his father's face, a rowdy story.

He stood, slowly.

“Grandfather, is there a ritual, a way of mourning? I am not of your blood.”

Plenty Coups gazed through the real-glass window upon an autumnal scene, and shook his head. “We have no crier now. There once was one who would go through the village, from lodge to lodge, with the news. And then the women would gather and mourn, and prepare the body to be given to the sun. Now … those ways are gone.”

There were no lodges visible; no village or winter camp, the lodges pitched in half-circles and facing east. There was only a scatter of rude cabins, most leaking smoke, scattered willy-nilly without heeding the old ways, or the old disciplines.

Dirk peered out into the emptiness of the settlement, and realized that Absaroka life had been shattered in many ways with the advent of the reservation.

“Grandfather, I will bury her as she would have wanted. To do that, I will need your wisdom.”

“We will do this as she would want,” the chief said. “Go harness your horse; bring the wagon. We will cover Many Quill Woman in the old way.”

Dirk clambered into his coat and stuffed his hat down, and plunged into a bitter morning. No one stirred. The scatter of cabins and the earthen walls of the post gave him the sense of being in a white men's frontier settlement rather than at the center of Crow Indian life. He threw an icy harness over the dray, and slipped an icy bit into the dray's mouth, which it tried to spit out, and eventually hooked the wagon to the tugs and steered the dray to the chief's small cabin. In all that while, he saw no other person braving the wind.

He parked there, and went indoors, and found that Strikes the Iron had wrapped Victoria in a blanket, and then a beautiful robe, and had tied the entire bundle with thong, so that no part of his Crow mother peeked out at him, and there was only the tightly bound bundle. The chief's wife slipped into a capote, the chief chose only a blanket, and then he collected two axes and a ball of thong.

He nodded to Dirk, who knew what to do. He lifted his Crow mother, who weighed nothing, and carried her into the bitter air, and settled her carefully in the wagon bed. And then the three of them climbed to the seat, and Dirk looked expectantly at the chief.

Plenty Coups pointed, and his finger directed Dirk to a lengthy trail stretching south and west, away from the mountains and toward long, naked ridges stretching into the Yellowstone valley.

They rode quietly, the horse settling into the task, and the wagon creaked through icy-skimmed puddles and over frosted grass. At a point where one majestic ridge declined toward the distant valley, he pointed again, and Dirk steered the wagon off the trail, toward a promontory with a grove of naked cottonwoods nearby.

It would be a good and fitting place for Many Quill Woman, first wife of Barnaby Skye.

A signal from the chief, and Dirk halted. It was quiet and cold and lonely, perhaps two miles from the agency. Far to the north lay the Yellowstone valley, the living heart of the country the Absarokas claimed as their own.

Dirk walked slowly to the promontory, and then to the nearby stand of cottonwoods, and finally to a great willow standing among the cottonwoods. A limb split into a narrow vee, facing north. It would do.

The chief handed Dirk an axe and took the other, and between them they cut crosspieces that would span the vee, and as swiftly as they completed a crosspiece, Strikes the Iron anchored it to the willow tree with thong, carefully tying each piece. They worked patiently, ignoring the cold, and in a while they had completed the platform that would become Victoria's final home.

Now, at last, giving Victoria to the sun, the wind, the night skies, the rain, the snow, the spring zephyrs, the heat of summer, proved to be hard and hurtful. He didn't want to let go of her. And yet it was necessary to do what had to be done. The chief and his wife waited, for this was a task for Dirk alone. He peered at that bundle lying in the wagon bed, and then gently lifted it, feeling the softness of the richly tanned buffalo robe, feeling the tight cords that bound it together. He carried his Crow mother to the scaffold and lifted as high as he could, higher than his head, and then rolled her onto the platform. And then he straightened her until she lay exactly in its center, facing upward toward the skies.

Plenty Coups sang a song, long and mournful, the tongue strange to Dirk's ear, even if its message was not. He saw tears forming under the eyes of the chief's woman.

A magpie alighted in a willow branch, dark and saucy white, up there in the latticework of naked limbs. Then another, and another, and then still more, whirring down into the willow, settling silently on the limbs. And then there were a dozen, and twenty, and fifty, and a hundred alighting silently at this place in the heart of Absaroka country.

And then, when it seemed that every magpie for miles around had settled in the willow tree, the entire flock lifted off, flapping upward, and then around, in a giant circle, a great spiral that grew larger and larger in the bright blue, with the willow tree at the vortex. At last the great congregation of black-and-white birds vanished quietly into the morning sky, and there was not so much as a crow or a hawk or a sparrow in the endless heavens.

For some reason, Dirk found himself smiling.

They rode quietly back to the agency, their backs to the wind, and Dirk welcomed the warmth of Plenty Coups' log house.

It was not a time for speaking. He settled himself on the bed shelf where his Crow mother had slept, dreamed, and died. Something of her lingered there. He felt alone, even though this good leader of a good people welcomed him and his wife slipped to his side, sometimes with tea, and other times just to offer company.

He didn't belong among the people of the large-beaked bird. All gone: his father Barnaby Skye, his mother Mary of the Shoshones, his Crow mother Victoria. All that remained were the stories, things he learned through childhood and manhood about this man and his women and his amazing horse Jawbone, who carved a joyous life for themselves in a wild world. All his life he had heard stories about his parents, all his life he had heard not just of their prowess and courage, but also their goodness. Barnaby Skye was a memorable man; Victoria and Mary were just as memorable.

Chief Many Coups left Dirk to his silences and busied themselves with other things. They sent word out to the People that Many Quill Woman had begun the journey among the stars, and others could find her on the promontory if they wished. A few came to the house, and quietly laid their hands upon Dirk, who accepted their blessings with a smile and a nod and thanksgiving.

Then, later that chill day, the chief approached Dirk.

“Do not leave us,” he said.

“Thank you, but I must.”

“You could teach us. You know the tongue. You taught the Shoshones.”

“The Indian Bureau would not permit it, Grandfather. They discharged me.”

“The Methodist missionaries are going to start a school here in a while.”

“I am not one of them and I have too many things inside of me.”

In truth, Dirk felt close to all things. He was more than Crow and Shoshone. He was more than Indian and white. He didn't want to build a cabin here or on the Wind River Reservation, where he would wait for his monthly allotments and loaf through the days, being only half of himself. He was more than a believer and more than a disbeliever. The Jesuits had educated him, but his own religion was larger than theirs. He had learned the Shoshone mysteries, the very mysteries that brought the boy, Owl, to his doom, but his vision of life was larger than that. He was more than a white man, able to move easily among white people, like his father, and more than a Shoshone, too. He had no family and yet he belonged to a larger family. He did not know his grandparents. He had no history like his father or his mothers. No English relatives, no Crow ones, and only some distant Shoshone cousins. But he was rich in family and friends because he had two bloods.

“Thank you, Grandfather and Grandmother. Tomorrow, if you will permit it, I will take leave of you. I brought her here, and her wish was fulfilled, and now it is time for me to go.”

They did not object.

In the morning he would hitch up the dray and go away, to somewhere as high as the heavens.

BY  RICHARD S.  WHEELER
FROM  TOM  DOHERTY  ASSOCIATES

S
KYE
'
S
W
EST

Sun River

Bannack

The Far Tribes

Yellowstone

Bitterroot

Sundance

Wind River

Santa Fe

Rendezvous

Dark Passage

Going Home

Downriver

The Deliverance

The Fire Arrow

The Canyon of Bones

Virgin River

North Star

The Owl Hunt

Aftershocks

Badlands

The Buffalo Commons

Cashbox

Eclipse

The Fields of Eden

Fool's Coach

Goldfield

Masterson

Montana Hitch

An Obituary for Major Reno

Second Lives

Sierra

Snowbound

Sun Mountain: A Comstock Novel

Where the River Runs

S
AM
F
LINT

Flint's Gift

Flint's Truth

Flint's Honor

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE OWL HUNT

Copyright © 2010 by Richard S. Wheeler

All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wheeler, Richard S.

       The owl hunt : a Barnaby Skye novel / Richard S. Wheeler.—1st ed.

           p.   cm.

       “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

       ISBN 978-0-7653-2201-2

       1. Skye, Barnaby (Fictitious character)—Fiction.   2. Indians of North America—Fiction.   3. Fathers and sons—Fiction.   4. Shoshoni Indians— Fiction.   5. Wind River Indian Reservation (Wyo.)—Fiction.   I. Title.

PS3573.H4345O95 2010

813'.54—dc22

2010035888

First Edition: December 2010

eISBN 978-1-4299-2821-2

First Forge eBook Edition: December 2010