The Owl Hunt (6 page)

“Ever since the eclipse, yes. It set them to howling like timber wolves in January.”

“Then you know about it.”

“My staff tells me. Is there something else I should know? Battalions marching in the night?”

“Yes, sir, that's a good way to put it.”

“With howitzers and Gatlings and repeating carbines?”

“No, sir, with dreams that they believe lead them into what is to come.”

“Ah, bloody superstition.”

“No, sir. Fate.”

Captain Cinnabar munched steadily, but he was listening.

“My student, Waiting Wolf, comes from a clan of seers and medicine men. He's bright but not focused, and tends to vanish now and then. At the moment of the eclipse, he claims to have received a vision, the Owl spreading its wings over the dead sun, followed by the return of the sun, which he took to mean the end of the subjection of the Shoshones by white men. He took the name of Owl, and made his vision known, and now he commands most of the Shoshone males, though he is only in his mid-teens. They are Dreamers, Captain. And they dream they will see white men leave here. And maybe Chief Washakie, too.”

Cinnabar stopped munching long enough to absorb that. “I've heard some of it. What does Major Van Horne think of it?”

“You'd have to ask him, sir.”

Cinnabar grunted and nipped off a huge chunk of sliced beef encased in bread.

“Bloody nonsense, but it might be best to stamp it out fast,” he said. “Where's that boy?”

“Owl? He's vanished and you won't find him easily,” Dirk said. “It's a large reservation, with a thousand secrets.”

“Well, we'll round up a few of these Dreamers and make them dance.”

“When a vision grips the soul of an Indian, sir, you won't make him dance.”

“Hmm. Bloody saints. You ever wonder about saints, what's in ‘em, Skye?”

“All the time, sir.”

“You're an emperor in Rome, running a bloody model of an empire, and off in the hinterlands somewhere a bloody visionary gets himself born in a stable, and the next thing you know, he's conquering the world, not with swords but with belief, vision, whatever it is. It's unstoppable, and pretty soon the visionary's conquered the empire. Get the drift, boy?”

“I do, sir.”

“What would you do, eh? You can't behead soothsayers, even if it'd improve the world.”

“Go to the things that trouble them, sir. The government's welshing. It's not feeding them as promised, or giving the annuities as promised. The government's not letting them off the reservation to hunt up enough food to keep from starving.”

“Well, they don't have to starve, you know. Find me one bloody Snake who'd plow up a garden patch or raise some beef.”

Olive swept in, carrying a black-enameled tray which she set down in Dirk's lap. She stepped back to admire her handiwork, and Dirk caught the glint of her glossy brown hair, which framed her face.

The service was exquisite. There before Dirk was a finely wrought sandwich of sliced beef, on Tiffany china, a snowy napkin in a silver ring, a cut-glass decanter of water, a salad of greens with walnuts and diced apples, nestled beside the sandwich.

“This is a handsome lunch, Miss Cinnabar,” he said.

“If you're going to be in service, you may as well do it up proud,” she said.

“Tasty, my dear, tasty,” the captain said.

“I do what I'm required, and then some,” she said. “I will serve the world.”

Dirk watched her retreat from this man-to-man, as she had put it. He saw force and grace in her movement, as if she viewed all of life as something to be assaulted. He wondered what her station was, her true object in life; certainly it wasn't spending her years in her father's service. She assaulted everything before her, and she did it to please herself.

Dirk bit into an elegant sandwich, the beef sliced so fine it melted in his mouth, but his thoughts weren't upon the food, remarkable as it was, but upon the sad and probably lonely woman who transformed herself into sheer elegance by force of will.

“I don't know what to do with her,” Captain Cinnabar said. “She's never had the slightest interest in domestic life. She's never had a swain. In all the years I've introduced her to society, she's not snared anything resembling a suitable husband, and in fact scares the hell out of ‘em. Sometimes she scares the hell out of me. Good sandwich, eh?”

“She reminds me of my Crow mother,” Dirk said. “In her own way, she was the strongest in our family. And still is.”

Captain Cinnabar demolished his sandwich, ate the last scrap of salad, wiped his shark-tooth facial hair with a napkin, and eyed his guest.

“The Shoshones are simply in a funk,” he said. “The Arapaho are being settled downriver, and the Shoshones don't like it. It's their land, but Uncle Sam doesn't seem to care. The two tribes are enemies, but that never bothered the Indian Bureau. It certainly makes life difficult for the army. Frankly, Skye, I'm surprised there hasn't been more trouble. Washakie's kept the lid on or there'd likely be some bloody battles just outside of our parlor windows. That's all this is. And things will settle down soon enough.”

Dirk wanted to believe it, but he couldn't. And he couldn't very well explain why he didn't. It was Indian knowledge.

“It's not that, sir. It's the vision. It's what Waiting Wolf saw in a single moment, saw things that lie beyond this world. Once he saw Owl—the feared totem of these people—across the face of the dying sun, everything changed, and now he's picking up followers day by day. Believers, sir, believers, like the apostles.”

Captain Cinnabar merely smiled wryly. “Heard a lot of that sort of thing, but it doesn't beat a Springfield trapdoor carbine.”

At the exact moment that Dirk finished his sandwich, Aphrodite materialized and collected the Tiffany plate.

“A saint in rags will defeat an army with swords every time,” she said.

“Well, the Shoshones aren't saints, my dear, and what I have in mind will bloody well keep the peace. I'm going to march my whole command across the entire reservation, two companies of mounted infantry, each with a carbine and a revolver, riding on fat horses, with a Gatling gun behind. I think that'll quiet the Dreamers. Just watch!”

seven

Captain Cinnabar was sure putting on a show. He assembled his column on the parade while most everyone for miles around watched. A hundred men would march this morning, with a handful left to man the post.

These mounted infantry were carrying carbines and revolvers, with spare ammunition in their saddle packs. They wore blue blouses, yellow scarves, visored campaign hats. Their horses had been groomed until they glowed. A pack train would carry three days' worth of rations, and a pair of big mules would drag the Gatling gun and its caisson. This was more than a patrol. Cinnabar meant to show the flag, and that meant a color guard in the van, with Old Glory and the regimentals curling softly in the morning zephyrs.

The juniormost lieutenant, Gregorovich, would command the post and its skeleton crew, mostly stablemen and clerks, but the rest of the officers who weren't on leave—two or so were usually away—were shaping up their companies. The enlisted men were mostly immigrants from Ireland and Germany. Some had barely fired a weapon, but that didn't matter. The show was the thing, and show was what Captain Cinnabar wanted. Show that blue column to every Shoshone on the reservation, and to the Arapahos being settled over on its eastern reaches.

Dirk watched intently. This was the same army that had gotten licked at the Little Big Horn, along with Washakie's scouts who had gone along for the fun of licking their enemies the Sioux. The same army, but if anything even weaker, with few experienced enlisted men in its ranks. Most of these men had never been in a fight.

The chief stood silently, with space around him even though he had twenty or thirty Shoshones for company. He wore his white-man clothing this morning. Dirk wondered whether he had been consulted and what he thought of it. The rest of the Eastern Shoshones watched impassively, their gazes taking in everything, their stance straight, their bodies lean. Deep silence pervaded the clot of natives.

It seemed half the morning was consumed by all the prepping, but at last the captain took his position at the van, lifted an arm, and shouted an order. There was no band here, no bugler, either, but no doubt Cinnabar was wishing he might have a musical send-off. One could almost hear the bugles and snare drums.

The agent, Major Van Horne, watched intently, flanked by clerks. The two officers' wives, Jane Wigglesworth and Glory Merchant, stood to one side, waving their parasols. They were jointed by Amy Partridge, wife of the Episcopal vicar, the Reverend Thaddeus Partridge, and their little boy Robert, who they called Bobolink.

The Indian reservations had been divided up among the denominations, and the Episcopalians had gotten Wind River. Off a way was their mission, St. Michael's, and a vicarage. A gaggle of soldiers watched from the edge of the parade. And not least, Aphrodite Olive Cinnabar was studying the sea of blue-bloused soldiers with obvious amusement.

“Miss Cinnabar, something has tickled your fancy,” Dirk said.

“Men are such idiots,” she replied.

“I take it you're not impressed.”

“The Shoshones won't be.”

“What would impress them?”

“A government that keeps its promises to them.”

Her logic could not be faulted. He smiled at her.

The column circled the parade and then clattered down the creek toward the Wind River, flag flapping, guidons snapping. In a while it diminished to a blue worm, and then disappeared. The agency and post were suddenly quiet. Oddly, no one drifted away. Van Horne stood there, as if contemplating the meaning of life. The vicar and his wife simply gazed blandly. The Shoshones stood in deepest silence, no doubt pondering this show of friendly force by the friendly whites.

Aphrodite was grinning.

“Gunboat diplomacy. You want to guess what's going on inside the heads of those gentlefolk?” she said, gesturing toward Washakie's people.

Dirk glanced uncomfortably toward them. Even Washakie, faithful to his Yank friends to the last, seemed pensive. The rest stood like rocks. Then, suddenly, Washakie wheeled away and the rest of the Shoshones broke into knots of two or three, and drifted toward their lodges and cabins, their lives entirely in the hands of the Great Father in the city of Washington far away.

“You appear to be at odds with your father, Aphrodite.”

“Olive. Never call me that other name, which I will not speak. Of course I'm at odds. I was born at odds with him. I'm an army brat. Army brats and ministers' children are born to rebel.”

“Olive, then.”

“Olive isn't much of a name, either, but we're stuck with what we get. The captain interprets his orders, namely to keep the peace, very liberally. I'm looser. I reject all orders, especially his.”

Dirk scarcely knew what to say to that, but was rescued by his Crow mother, Victoria.

“Goddamn,” Victoria said.

“Ah, Olive, this is my Crow mother Victoria, one of my father's wives.”

“This is an entertaining day,” Olive said. “Was your father a Mormon?”

“No, he was in the fur trade and then a guide. He met my Crow mother at a trappers' rendezvous, and later met my mother, Blue Dawn, at a summertime visit of the Shoshones and Crows.”

“I have no intention of adhering to any faith,” Olive said. “I'm leaning toward free love and feminism.”

“Well, dammit, that's me,” said Victoria.

Olive looked a little flustered, but was rescued by the Partridges, she petite and demure, he with a noble Roman profile, with an especially fine nose, which caused him to stand slightly sideways of his auditors so it might be admired.

“Why it's Madam Skye, and I do believe you're the captain's daughter Aphrodite,” Amy Partridge said.

“Olive. Aphrodite's the name of a lewd goddess.”

“I see,” Amy said. “Virtue is its own reward.”

Thaddeus rescued the moment. “What a sight! Oh, when I beheld that blue column, the flags flying, the horses and men marching toward their destiny, words failed me and my heart fairly burst with pride,” he said. “Never was I so proud to be an American.”

“Goddamn,” Victoria said.

The Partridges were familiar with Victoria, and simply treated her as if she didn't exist, which she didn't in their minds. She was a relic.

“We all put our pants on one leg at a time,” Olive said.

No one had anything to add.

“Has your attendance dropped off?” Dirk asked the missionary.

“Now that's a funny thing. They've all run off. Ever since the eclipse. It's as if they all reverted to their old ways. I was catechizing a class of six, and now there's no one. I fear we'll have to start all over again. I hear the school's empty, too.”

“I have no way to board them,” Dirk said. “There's not much I can do until there's a way to board all the children. I rarely have ten.”

“Oh, it's coming, Mr. Skye, but far more slowly than we might wish. It's so hard to get the attention of anyone Back East.”

“I'm on the side of the Shoshones,” Olive said.

“Why, miss, aren't we all?” the vicar asked.

“No, I mean I think they should just be themselves.”

“Surely you don't mean that. Why, with some enlightenment they could accept our faith, cease polygamous marriages, support themselves by farming, start up businesses, have Fourth of July celebrations.”

“They may prefer to celebrate their own Independence Day, July twenty-ninth, to be specific,” Olive said.

“The day of the eclipse? Independence?”

“That's how it's shaping up. They have their minutemen, and one of these hours they'll collect at some local Concord Bridge and fire the shot heard ‘round the world.”