THE INDIAN led his sister on the horse behind him. He saw the yellow spark of a sudden running body spring from the coiled sagebrush and whirl with a kick in the air. The wood butt of the rifle rammed to his shoulder, his eye sighted along the barrel where the bullet would meet the muscle heart of the fleeing animal. The exploding of lead jumped in his ears as the body fell, the flight of its flesh stopped through the heart, its dead weight carried forward with a jolt into spinning earth. The Indian went out into the clumps of sage and whipped the rabbit up by its soft ears, the long hindlegs cocked for another leap, the fire of blood streaming from its nose.
The woman came quickly behind the man and cinched the body into one of the belts of carcasses slung over the horse’s rump, she hitched the dead weight of the heavy belts higher up toward the saddle to keep from slipping, “Why do you shoot them in the heart? That just ruins them.”
The Indian took the reins and went farther into the sage. He saw the flick of yellowed brown fur moving quick in a grassedover rainrip in the earth, he jammed the riflebutt to his shoulder.
“Joe! Hey Joe!”
His finger flinched on the trigger, cutting the bullet through the air and thudding into the distant brown movement.
“Joe! Wait up Joe!”
The woman spurred the horse off to get the rabbit.
The Indian spun around and saluted a hand over his eyes to block the full force of the morning light. He could see the boy was coming fast, the thud of his breath beating over the sage before him.
“Joe! Joe, you shouldn’t be out here!” The boy ran panting up to the Indian, banging a fist against his binning chest to drive the wind back in, “My Dad he got back from Mexico last night and I told him you was going to still rabbit shoot out here and he says no you aint. He says he’s got machines set out here to get all the rabbits now and you might trigger a machine.”
“Why aint you in school?”
“My Dad says those machines are from Reno and costs alot of money and he don’t care how long you been shootin rabbits in this valley you aint hired to shoot for him no more. You aint hired no more Joe.”
“Why aint you in school Sam?”
The boy hung his head and kicked up at the sod, “I wanted to hunt with you.”
“You go on to school now Sam. You can still get in on time. We’ve been here since sunup and we’re about done. You git now.”
“My Dad says you can’t shoot here no more Joe, but you are. You tell me to get to school, but I aint. I’m going to do just like you, I’m going to do the only opposite thing people tell me to do.”
“Sammy,” the woman on the horse rode up, keeping a tight hand behind her over the flapping belts of rabbits. “What are you doing away out here when it’s school time?”
“I came to hunt with you and Joe, Sarah Dick.”
“No you don’t. You’re going to school if I have to ride you back myself.”
“Why can’t I stay. Nobody says nothing if the Indian kids don’t show up for school. Why am I any different?”
The woman looked over at her brother. He slung the gun up on his shoulder and started back into the sage coming up sparse and only head high.
“All right then Sammy,” the woman leaned over and took the boy’s hand. “You get on up here so Joe doesn’t have to worry where you are. He shoots in any direction. And you hold onto the rabbit belts behind us. One of those goes slipping off and we lose it we’ll never find it again out here.”
The boy pulled up behind her and got a good grip on the dead weight of the belts. “How many rabbits you got here Sarah Dick? There are so many they’re almost dragging on the ground.”
“52.”
“Fifty-two! Joe usually gets only thirty this early spring time of year. What are you going to do with them? My Dad, he won’t pay two-bits apiece for them anymore, he’s got machines to do his work.”
“We’re going to make a Rabbit blanket. The fur is good because the winter was short, when cold days are not many Rabbit is heavy in his pelt. When cold days are long he goes hungry, his pelt dries out and shrinks on his starving body. This time Rabbit had enough to eat. This time even these skinny jackrabbits have had enough to eat in the early thaw. Git up you horse, git up here!”
“My Dad says he’s going to run cattle in this field soon, he says it’ll carry eighty head, but only in early spring. In summertime the sage won’t even grow out here, and it’s full of snakes. He had six snakebites in this field alone last summertime. He calls this his snake field.”
The Indian’s rifle was against his shoulder, the flash of the barrel whipping around as it tracked the running brown body, its ears tucked back along the thick fur, the toes barely hitting the earth as the arc of the bounding body sailed through the sage, meeting the blunt bullet.
The boy slid off the horse and ran forward to yank the still kicking body up by the ears, waving it around in a circle over his head until the neck was broken. The sting of a bullet flicked by his head and he turned to see another body dropping behind him. He ran through the sage and flung the longeared body in the air, but there was no need to wring the neck, the bullet had caved through the ribbed bone, blowing a hunk of flesh out the other side. “Here they are Joe!” The boy held a dangling rabbit from each hand high over his head.
The Indian came through the sage to him. “What sex are they?” He spread apart the white feet of the limp legs, “Two males. The males are jumping early, they usually stay down and let the females jump first. There are still four or five females right off through that rough wash, they’re getting down in there and laying low. You go give these rabbits to Sarah Dick, and stay behind me, don’t go runnin out like that.”
“Why aren’t you leaving your rabbit belt around your waist to hitch the bodies in Joe?”
“I can only tote seventeen rabbits on the belt, all that dead weight starts to swaying whenever I try to squeeze off a new shot and I miss as many times as I don’t That’s why I have Sarah Dick trailing behind with the belts, now you do like I told you and get these two over to her.”
The boy ran with the rabbits and gave them up to the woman. She clamped the bodies to a belt and pressed her heels into the horse’s belly and ran him up behind the Indian, “Why don’t you stop shooting them in the heart. You’re wasting half the fur on them by shooting them there. It’s such a waste of good fur, why don’t you aim at the head?”
The Indian slipped the brass shell of another bullet into the rifle and looked across the valley to where the white cut of snowcovered peaks in the distant east rose higher than the fumbling clouds beginning to build up enough courage to block the morning sun. “These two males just killed are skinny, but the females are all fat with fur. We’ll have enough for the Rabbit blanket. Don’t you worry about …” The rifle jumped to his shoulder as he cocked the steel in his hand and took aim.
“Don’t shoot!” The woman reined the horse up so it knocked against his shoulder throwing him from balance. “It’s a cat! Don’t shoot!” The arrow of her arm pointed to the bare opening in the sage, a cat moved from the head-high clumps of sage branches on three legs. “It is bad luck to shoot a tough cat. He walks with only three legs. He is one of those who prowls the alfalfa fields for the wild mice. He was tough enough to survive the many blades of the mower machines that cut through the alfalfa fields. He walks on only three legs. The blades took part of his flesh, but he is no cripple. Let him pass.”
The Indian lowered his gun to the woman’s words, she was right. He let the cat who could survive the blades in the fields of razor-turning steel pass on his own hunt He raised his rifle up again and went into the sage until another brown body got up and he shot it down.
The Indian led the horse onto the road, walking down the hard black shell between the two straight lines of barbwire fence. The woman and the boy rode up behind him in the saddle with the swaying dead weight of the morning’s kill at their backs. The Indian pulled the horse down into the ditch when he heard the sounds of the morning give way to the high whine of a truck stirring up the distant air along the road. He kept leading the horse in the ditch as his eyes sought the precise color of the metal humped machine speeding toward him. The sharp steel clacking of a horse’s hooves came at his back, he spun around as if his own horse had broken loose and was galloping by.
“It’s Ben Dora!” The boy swung and shouted at the Appaloosa galloping the full muscle of its flesh down the center of the road, its bloated chest pumped with air and blazing hot wind, the sharp sting of steel from the bottom of pounding hooves ringing out against the pavement. The horse swelled by them, churning and blasting the air, leaving its own current sucking behind as the man on its back stood high and bent in the stirrups, whipping the strong horseflesh beneath him. He reined the horse, jamming the cut of the bit into the soft bleeding mouth and swinging the stamping horse to its side in a blockade across the center of the road in front of the pickup riding the squeal of its brakes to a jerking stop before the horse. The woman leaned her head out of the truck, “Ben!” He spurred the horse over to her, his thick stoneflat thighs pressing against the leather of the saddle came up to the open window. He bent his head down to talk to her, the bulged muscle of his neck exposed red to the sun, the blunt instrument of his head jerked back and forth as he shouted at the woman through the window. The close cut of his hair slashing at the air like a burr as the woman shouted back. He slammed up in the saddle, throwing the wide strength of his back straight and driving his fist into the metal roof of the cab. He reined the horse and speared the heel of his boots deep into its flesh, galloping it straight up the road. The woman jammed the truck backwards, spinning the two rear wheels off into the ditch, tearing up dirt and kicking it behind her as she wheeled around and drove after the man.
The Indian brought his slow horse back up onto the side of the road. His sister turned in the saddle and looked at the boy, “That was your Mama, Sammy, and is she going to give it to you for not being in school.”
“She won’t care, she and my Dad and Ben are all having a big fight. She won’t care.”
The Indian did not stop leading the horse until he came in the gate before his house, “Sam, you take Shasta around back and let her have a little drink, watch she don’t bloat herself, water brings out the pig in her.” He unhooked the dead weight of the belts from the horse and let them slide to the ground. “Go on Sam, do what I say.”
The boy led the horse away as the Indian freed the stiffening bodies from the belts, tossing them in a high brown heap.
“I’m going home to get Felix his lunch. Felix always comes home for lunch from the gas-station, that’s his slow time,” Sarah Dick rubbed the morning’s dirt from her hands on her long dress. “I’ll come back later and help you do the skinning.” She started walking for the road, then she turned and came back, watching her brother pile high the brown bodies, “Joe, I told Felix to tell you to come to Church services on Sunday but you weren’t there. I look every Sunday but I never see you. Don’t you like Jesus?”
The Indian kept throwing the legstiffened bodies onto the brown mound, “You don’t have to say what you’re going to say, you have said it all before.”
“You do not believe, Joe Birdsong. You do not believe in the Gospels, you do not believe in the Sun. You believe in the dead smell of Rabbits.”
“I have been taught.”
“I too have been taught, but I do not refuse to believe in Jesus. I do not refuse my own.”
“You have been used. You have not been taught.”
“Yes, I have been used. They used me as they wished. But I have taught myself how to believe.”
“They teach everything. It is only what they allow you to teach yourself.”
“You have become like them when you speak so. You are their voice. What is true to me is that beneath your skin, not your voice.”
“You can’t expect me to believe?”
“I can’t expect you as a woman. Only Jesus can teach what they cannot.”
He threw the last brown body on the heap and looked into the earth colored reflection of her eyes within the heavy dark folds of her face. He remembered to the day when the honey Bee put a sting in her breast and swelled out a red welt with a prick of white pus at the tip. She was a very young sister then and her crying from the sting brought all the old people running. His father looked at the sting and called, “Joe! I want you to come and look at this!” His father fingered the swelled breast so the Sun exposed the red rising welt, “You see this Joe, Jesus did this.”
His sister turned away and walked out on the road. He sat down on his crossed legs and slipped the knife from the leather sheath on his belt, then pulled one of the stiffened bodies from the pile and raised the blade to skin it.
“Can I do it too, Joe?” The boy sat before the pile watching the quick blade cut around the long hips and slice up under the thick belly fur.
“I think you’ve got enough to do already, Sam. Look at this coming,” he pointed the blade up the road at the pickup forcing its way through the morning, the rubber of its tires skidding to a stop on the loose gravel in front of the house. “Sarah Dick told you she was going to be awful mad Sam. You better watch out for your Mama.”
The woman was already out of the truck, leaving the door swinging open behind her as she ran over to the point of the knife still held in the air. “Sam, you get in the truck, now! Joe Birdsong, I want to talk to you. In the house.”
The Indian led her into the house, she slammed the door shut behind her and let her body sag against the solid wood.
“What did I do wrong Missus Dixel?”
Her eyes sprang open, “My husband is dead!”
“I’m sorry to hear Mam.”
“He was shot early this morning.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Did you hear a horse galloping by here early this morning? Before sunup?”
“Yes Mam, I heard it.”
“Did you see who was on it?”
“No Mam, I’m sorry.”
She pushed her back off the door, “Quit saying you’re sorry, I’m not sorry, every winter he’s off to Mexico to find his Dream Ranch, leaving me alone up here in this godawful valley. I’m sick to my belly with feeding his brats and trudging through four feet of snow to cater to a bunch of sniveling horses while he sits in Acapulco looking at pictures of ranches with a whore on each knee. Him and his Dream Ranch, him and his building up his herd of ghost horses, building up his great Arabian Ranch. He’s always wanted balls, he never gets tired of telling that stupid story about our honeymoon in Mexico when his father bought the biggest bull-balls for our dinner. When he saw me at the Cow Palace Grand Exposition he wanted the horse I was on so he bought me too. He said he was coming up here to cow country to raise the world’s greatest Appaloosa, and he says he did it. Well he didn’t do it, I did it. When he married me he said I couldn’t be anything but his ‘little gal.’ All he ever did was get me pregnant and run off to Mexico for the winter. I’m the one who raised all those Appies up, and if it wasn’t for Ben Dora helping me those horses would have died the first winter he left five years ago.”
“Who shot him?”
She let her body slump back against the door, “Ben would kill me if he knew I was here.”
“Who shot your husband?”
“Ben would just kill me.”
“Has the Sheriff been up to the ranch?”
“Deputy Sheriff Davies just got up there now with alot of other folks.”
“What does Davies say?”
“He says it was you shot my husband. He says it was you that had the motive because you weren’t hired to shoot rabbits anymore. They all say you had the motive. Ben would just kill me if he knew I was here.” She shoved herself up to him, “Listen, I know it wasn’t you. Those people are just saying that because they want you off this property so the whole valley can be sold and developed. They want you out anyway they can get you out. I know you didn’t do it, but Sheriff Davies says he is going to get you for it, he says he’s the law in this County and he’s been waiting for you to step over the line to get you, now he’s going to do it.”
The Indian walked to his bed and grabbed an envelope, “What do they want to do this for, they’ve already got me out. Listen to this letter, ‘… said Property is in violation of the above mentioned County ordinances and is forthwith condemned as unfit for human occupation.’ ” He looked up at the woman, her slim shoulders caved in around her face. He had never seen her straight on before, holding still, not bending over a baby. Her face was beautiful and broken.
“Please go.”
He ran to her and shoved her shoulders back against the door, “They say my father didn’t exist!”
She turned her head away from him so the tears streamed off the side of her face, “Please GO!”
He released her. Her body slumped down on the door. She turned her face back up to him.
He grabbed the accordion off the chair, “I’m going to take this. They say my father didn’t exist, this music says he did.” He strapped the accordion over his back.
She moved across the room and grabbed his arm, “Please GO! They’re coming! Ben would kill me if he knew I was here!”
He ran to the door and threw it open.
“GO!”
He broke into the yard, running around to the horse.
The boy saw him from the truck and jumped down, “Joe! Where you going!”
The Indian swung up on the horse and the boy grabbed his boot, “Take me with you! Take me with you!”
The woman threw her arms around the boy and tried to pull him back, the tears from her face flying into his hair, “Let him go Sam! Let go!”
The boy had one hand locked in the stirrup and the other biting into the flesh of the kicking leg, “Take me! Take me! I want to go and live like an Indian!”
The Indian twisted around in the saddle and pointed at the brown heap of bodies, “You see that! That’s what we are! Rabbits! We’re worth nothing alive and five nickels dead!” He swung and spurred the horse, galloping across the field into the trees. Always the trees.
The accordion slapped on his back, banging against his flesh and bruising his bone. He rode along the line of pines breaking into the valley floor, the ground beneath him beginning to go soft with water. He had to leave the trees and expose himself in the valley to come upon the place where the thick water came up in hot pools and spread the heavy scent of sulfur in the air. He rode for the hotsprings at the headwaters of the Feather River where Birds from all places gathered to drop their feathers. He crossed the blacktop highway onto the dirt road and let the horse run full out. He could see the silver dome rising before him, the sun glinting off the stretched metalskin in quick sparks. He rode straight for the glowing dome of Jandy’s trailer standing alongside the steaming sulfur pools. He reined the horse up and tied it to the trailer hitch, “Jandy!” He set the accordion down. “Jandy! I have come to the sacred waters to heal my wounds. I have come to wash away all my old hurts. I have been wounded many times. I come to the waters to immerse myself in their powerful medicine before battle.” He heard no sound from the trailer, he banged on its metal door, there was a rattling inside but no one came. He looked out at the barren land shooting its steam off from hard little mouth holes running hot streams of water over the earth. Long wooden planks were laid out into the field over the scalding flows of water, he ran out on them to a sulfur pool, the sweat of the earth rose in his nostrils, bearing its rank odor in the air. He saw the body before him, fallen across the narrow plank. “Jandy.” The body was still, the arms thrown back in the warm black mud. “Jandy? Hey Jandy!” The white handle of a pistol flashed on the barren earth. He knelt next to the slight body, the face staring up at him had half its side blown off, a straight line of steam puffed up from a mouth hole in the earth next to the head. He slid his arms under the light body to lift it, his hand coming around on the chest, popping the buttons of the shirt as he lifted, the cloth pulling away from two hard fists of breasts. He lowered the body and unbuttoned the shirt all the way down, the breasts swelled out from their points, the stomach was hairless. He looked up at the sky stacked with clouds of sulfur and laughed, “Jandy, the softhandedest little castrator in the whole of the valley.” He lifted the body in his arms and ran down the wooden plank to the waiting silver dome that said: AIRSTREAM. He kicked the door of the trailer open and the eyes of cats from everywhere stared back at him. Cats sat hunched and huddled on the bed, in the narrow sink, on the floor, from cupboards, empty boxes, rusted coffee cans. He dropped the body on the bed among the scattering cats. He slammed the door and ran back out along the planks until he came to the steaming pool, he pulled the cclothes from his body and slid down between the mudslick sides. The leg twisted and pained when he had blasted the Snakes was stuck straight out in the sulfur sweet medicine of water, the healing stink rising in a cloud around him.
At the headwaters of the Feather River where the Birds from all places drop their feathers he traveled north to west, leaving the Sierra Valley behind. He knew they were after him. They were always after him, and now he was being hunted. He kept always in the trees, searching the high trails where they had never been. But everywhere the forest blazed their mark axed into the flesh of a tree:
This was the mark of the White. When he saw it he knew he drew close to one of their cabins, and he sought another trail where they had not been, where their mark was not upon the land and the Earth not worn clean by the passing of their animals. His rifle was without bullets, but he held it like a club as he hid in the trees, waiting for a Porcupine to leave its den in the rocks and waddle with the needle weapon of its skin into the Sun. He came at it from the trees with the club of the gun bashing in the head. He pounded the carcass with the rifle woodstock and threw the bloodied pulp onto a fire, the needled glove of skin spitting and flaming as the fat sizzled. He threw the head away and ate the charred body. He took the fire to light his tobacco. He had done well, to eat the head of his kill would make him fat and heavy, slow and quick to die. He was the hunted. He sat beneath a tree and smoked. The tobacco rose around him in a blue ring and threw back the Spirits hunting him. He was in the Mountain House, he used the power of tobacco to make him safe. He smoked the grass of the Earth. He watched the dying on the western rim of the mountains. the Sun was leaving him, it was sinking down into the Ocean. He had never seen the Ocean but he knew that to be true. Before his battle was over he was going down to San Francisco and watch the gold ball sink in the great water. His father traveled once to where the Earth ended and the Sun died into the Big Water. There at the edge of the water too bitter for drinking his father saw the Spirit of the Whites captured behind ironbars. Now the Sun dazzled in the gold of its own reflection. A Badger came out from his hole but smelled the tobacco air and hurried back into the Earth. The Crickets began to sing, and down the dark aisles of trees the Owls hollered at one another. When the Indian hears the Owl there will be a white death.
The wind goes along the river. Wind river blows water through the Sky. Moving far north to west the Indian traveled away from the Sunrise, dragging the Horse up the rock slope. “Come on Shasta! You can girl! Just one peak after this!” The Horse banged to its knees and struggled in the rocks, the worn steel of its hooves slipping on stone. The roar of the river blew in the air. The swirling current tore through the canyon below. The Snake came up rattling, the coiled muscle of its body striking at the Horse, the odd balance of its flailing body falling back into the stones then striking again before the rock hurled by the Indian splattered its cold blood on stone. He got the Horse moving again, back down the rockslide, but it went down on its side by the running water of the river, bellowing hollow breaths from its bloated ribs. The Indian searched the steep banks for parsnip. Mosquitoes came up from the bottom of water and bit him. He could hear the Horse sobbing along the bank and brought to it the leaves of parsnip, their roots dripping with Earth. He dried the leaves over the smoke of a fire then stirred them with water and rubbed the flaking medicine in the horse’s poisoned body. He was in the highest of mountains, the surrounding peaks gathered in black clouds over his head. He took out his tobacco and used it, the smoke whirling off the redembered tip at the threatening Sky beating thunder over rock mountains. He waved his fist at the Sky, “You better stop all this noise! You better stop! If not I’ll be dead!” The rain did not come but the Horse grew weaker. All around him the wind whirled and danced the purpletopped spruce trees that grew alone in the distance. He went up to the spruce trees. The gray Squirrels were cutting the green cones from tops, dropping them to the ground and eating off the tips of the scales. The green cones littered the Earth and he talked to the Squirrels. He asked his Brother to stop stripping the trees. But Squirrel could not hear him, the Sky shook the Earth with the sonic boom from a silver dart jetting in a pure white trail beyond reach of the mountans. He went back down to the Horse and it was alive, but the bones poked through its thin hide. He took the Horse’s lead and again made his way up the rock slope, the weight of the accordion strapped across his back bent the muscles of his shoulders as he dragged the Horse up to the mountaintop. Down the other side below them the timber bloomed in an unbroken line of forest. He took the Horse down into the trees and sought tender grass that raised its green arms to the Sun. The Horse stood bellowing the hollow life from its ribs as it ate the grass and vomited up, then ate the vomit. He was in the highest of mountains, at night the Sky swelled up black and the stars blinked like baby fists beating the darkness. He ate the soft flower plant of deerweed and the manzanita berries. At night he had the dream. He dreamed of Lizard. The dream of Lizard in the rocks means there will be a Hunt. He was Lizard. He lived alone with himself and petted the hide of the Horse rubbed raw on rocks in high places. The sharp mountains had worn holes and tears in his clothes, the wind came in and blew against his skin. His heart began to get tired, but it is bad luck to feel your heart. He wanted the longlegged Spiders to stretch over all the rivers so he could pass. He was always kind to Spiders, he did not know when he might need them. Crow wings sucked in the air over his head. The Animals have their own language and he put his ear against the trunks of trees to hear them talk. He ate berry soup and thickened it with Rabbit droppings. He let a handful of loose dirt shake from his palm to see which direction the wind was blowing. It was time to travel west to south, the Deer were fat. He went into lower mountains where there were no trees where there should be. He traveled through the ghost trunks of trees. He traveled where trees were scarred with fire wounds, the hard white pus of sugar sap beaded down their blackened sides. He traveled where there were trees that lived off fire, the heat exploding the seeds from their cones across the Earth. He traveled where flocks of Sheep have fed off the mountains, preying on all green things. He saw them bleating through the canyons, slicing every wild plant beneath the blades of their passing hooves. He watched this Musege, the beast of the whiteman turned loose to break all green arms to the Sun, swill every root, tear the hide off every stalk. From where he stood he could see the tamed power of Sheep swirling through the valleys. He could see the white flocks driven down the mountains to the railheads where they fouled the water, got into boxcars and rolled off to be slaughtered.
Memdewi was fat. Deer was fat His father had told him all the old bucks who lived in the mountains were smarter than people. Now he was the hunted who was hunting. He left the Horse by water and went into a high place where the wind carried his Indian scent off the Earth. He had no bullets for the rifle. He made the stoneblade of a knife and lashed it to a cedar pole. He waited with this spear where the signs of Deer were everywhere on the ground. He prepared himself to kill, and waited. He watched over the rocks through the trees where a full-grown mule Deer approached. The buck came young and light on his feet, the four points of his antlers tilted against the Sun, his body strange in the air, as if he was running from the scent of man, but the Indian knew he was in a higher place than the buck, there could not be the smell of a man to strange the animal. He waited for the buck to draw to a closer moment. The buck skittered over the rocks, then froze, the disturbed air of the pulsating lungs beating beneath the bright redbrown hide. The Indian jumped from the rocks, the balance of the spear gripped in both hands. He hurled the stone point at the pounding chest. The strict ears of the buck flicked back and he was gone, the force of the spear slicing through emptiness, clattering on the rocks as the echoed sound of a high powered rifle slammed in the air. The Indian spun around and looked down the mountain at the men aiming the scope of their rifle barrels straight up at him. The rocks at his feet flew up and scattered in splintered points as lead slammed into them, the distant thud of rifle shots broke out all over the mountainside. His instinct carried him up the steep slope on his hands and knees, the jagged rocks cutting through the holes of his boots to flesh. The lead pumping into stone around him ricocheted and tore through his leg, the sudden jolt throwing him to the rocks. He dug into stone, his hands carving out a place for his body. He clung like a Lizard to the rocks, hearing only the blood jumping from his heart to his head. He waited to die. The sonic boom of a jet broke the air over his head. Then there was silence on the mountain. He could feel the sparks going off in his leg as air hit blood. He heard the sobbing of his own breath beating on stone. He pushed himself up from his hole and looked down the mountain. It was deserted. But through the bottom break in the beginning treeline he saw one of the riflemen still running, the flash of his red hat blazing brilliant before it disappeared into the trees. The Indian ripped his pant leg open, the lead had passed through his flesh, missing the bone. He bound the bleeding with a cloth around his leg, it was the same leg he had wounded when he was hired to kill the Snakes where they slept. He stood up, the leg was sound under him, he scrambled back down over the rocks to find his spear. It was lying in the stones where the Deer had fled, its blade broken, the rocks around stained with blood. It was not his blood. It was the blood of his Brother. The buck had been wounded by the riflemen. He heard his laughter going over the sharp rocks and down the mountain. The riflemen were not shooting at him. They were shooting at the buck. He remembered the flash of the red hat blazing brilliant before it disappeared into the trees. Deerhunters. The laughter came back up the mountain at him. Then stopped. He searched the red stains for a sign, there was not much. The Deer could run for miles. He started a fire with the deadened windblown needles of scrubpine, then mixed his saliva with the Deer blood splattered on a stone. He set the stone on the smoking pineneedles and waited patiently for the heat to burn the stone free of stains. It was time. He rose to go to his Brother. His Brother did not know he was coming. A wounded Deer that does not have its life hunted will forget his fear and stop his running quickly. After a short distance his stiffening muscles will lock his body and drop him to the ground, his heart stunned from loss of blood. The Indian came up to Memdewi leaning on the crutch of his spear, he looked down at his Brother who was dead or dying, bright blood bubbles of air frothing from his mouth and nose. “I will treat your Spirit with respect, Brother.” He took the broken blade of the spear and cut into the body. “I will honor your flesh. I will not take you in excess. To do so is to die, your Spirit will come back and break my medicine.” He skinned the hide from the downed beast and hefted the life of the flesh onto his shoulders. “I will not take you in excess. I will leave that which my stomach cannot hold for Coyote. He will come soon. I go my Brother.” He made his way on the crutch back to the Horse in the trees of the high riverland. The Horse had strengthened his Spirit on the long grasses. He filled the bags of Deer intestines with water, strapped the burden of the accordion to his back and rode away from the river.
He was in the Mountain House with his Brothers. They were all being hunted. He traveled to Blue Lake where the mountain Quail flew into the clear blue surface of the water thinking it was endless Sky, breaking their necks on the bone hard surface. He made camp on the shore and waited for the afternoon winds to blow the fresh kill of a dead floating Bird over the waters to him. He rubbed the grease drippings of the Quails mixed with ashes into the wound of his leg to keep the white swelling down. He leaned back in the trees and played the accordion out over clear waters. He played the songs his father had sung long ago. He leaned back in the trees and used tobacco as he squeezed music over the lake. His father had the dream of the Antelope and died. The Antelope was a great magician. The man his father was like Ayas the sharp footed Antelope. His Brother the Antelope had long ago been hunted out of the high Sierra, he too was long ago dead. His father had met the Jesus. He had used tobacco with the Messiah who walked among the Fisheaters on the shores of Pyramid Lake. His father stood at the Messiah’s side when the people came around him from all over the land and paid one dollar just to shake his hand. All this he knew was in the music he squeezed out over the lake, his hands playing over the rainbows of mother-of-pearl keys, the yellow stonebacked ring glowing up in his eye like a Sun. Sometimes when a man died and his Spirit went away south the people would throw all his goods of the Earth into his house and burn it down. When the Spirit of his father had gone south he moved into his shack so the people couldn’t burn it. He inherited the Earthly goods of his father: the yellow stonebacked ring, the accordion, and outside the shack, the battered metal of a FORD. In his last days his father would go into the FORD at dusk, he would roll up all the windows and drive out across the valley one mile east, the FORD spluttering down the road at only four miles an hour, then he would turn one mile north, one mile west, and come home the last mile south. Every night at dusk he would make the slow trip and in the valley the people in the ranch houses he passed would shake their heads, some would say, ‘There goes crazy Indian Bob,’ others, just by seeing him drive by, would know what time it was and set their clocks to him. After his father’s Spirit went south he sold the FORD to buy a Horse to hunt down the Rabbit. He had to drive the FORD into Truckee to get enough dollars for it to buy the Horse. He rose along through the trees, the FORD steaming up the Truckee Summit and headed down toward Stampede Reservoir, the dusk out the rolled up windows was beginning to settle down through the points of the pines and he heard the man on the radio tell him, “Welcome to the Bach Hour. For the next solid hour on radio ΚΕΝΟ of RENO you will hear only the beautiful sounds of the world’s greatest composer, Johann Sebastian Bach.” As the shrill notes of a fugue punched up from Earth the point of every pinetree outside the car window he understood the medicine of his father’s nightly drive to the four sacred directions. It took his father exactly the one hour of the music to travel to all points of the Earth. He remembered back to his father traveling out in the dusk of the valley with all the windows rolled up, he now knew that locked within the moving metal of the FORD his father traveled with the power of a music stronger than most Birds. The windows rolled up on the FORD protected his power from the ears of others, sheltered him from the shame of being caught listening to the uncommon. His father had never taught him how to squeeze the power of this music from the accordion, he kept its medicine hidden to the last.
The mountains shouted rain. With the first storm he headed down from the high mountains with all the Deer. The storm washed over his skin, coming in the holes of his clothes, but it healed his body, easing the hard joints, cooling the white swelling in his leg and firming his loose teeth. He went down from the lake, he needed a spring that didn’t freeze over by which to make his camp for the long white days. He crossed the red dirt of logging roads that were broken with chuckholes bigger than a man’s head and studded with the furred carcasses of gray Squirrels run into Earth under truckloads of slaughtered trees. He traveled in forests of ghost trees cut through the heart. The Whiteman had come with the power of his chainsaw, he could tear the hide off a tree as old as the rivers and slice through its flesh in minutes. He stood on the spur of a mesa and looked down to where the Whiteman had cut the river. A band of concrete across the full current robbed the power of great waters. Everywhere now he saw the mark of the White beast on the mountain heart of the land. The White beast came with his Musege to the Mountain House. He tore the scalps off the high mountans, blasting with stolen water for gold metal. He was blind to the Earth and blasted great peaks to stone rubble, he choked the life from breathing streams with mud and silt. He moved mountains for bags of gold dust. He left his mark everywhere. Now the mountains shouted rain. He was struck through with beauty. The howling Dogstar in the Sky sang the Indian’s voice as he ran after it.
When the gold water of his body peed into the Earth he watched the fall of its brilliant yellow pebbles. A smell had grown up between his legs. Whenever he touched himself the smell came up strong on his hand, he could not wipe it off. At first the smell offended him, but then he longed to have it always in his nostrils, it was a sweet yellow smell of dark Earth. He traveled with this smell growing on his body from west to south, the wind blowing through all the holes in his clothes as the rocks cut the leather of the boots from his feet. With the buckskin of the Deer he made a leather apron slit down the sides and strapped around the waist with a Deermuscle belt. He pounded strips of dampened bark into strings and wove himself sandals. He heard the call of one Duck over a pond and the snow began to fall. The timbered forests slept by day and he traveled through them searching a place where water always flows. The Crickets stopped singing in the cold night and he didn’t know the warm places to sleep. The white burden settled on the mountains and buried the scarred Earth. The white burden came down so heavy on the pines it bowed their giant tops over almost to the hidden ground. If it was a strong tree it would survive the burden until it melted from its branches. When released it will never stand straight again. If the white burden uses all its power it will break a tree in two. There were no shadows in the mountains, only the dull white light. His black hair grew down his back, he tied it in two braids and hung a Hawk feather from the tip to protect him against the white cold. The Horse could not go far in the deep snow, its body had grown empty of food. He followed the First Star of the night, the lone light going across the Sky. The sign of the Rabbit Hunter. The Chief of all Rabbits moved across the hard crust of the white burden pulling the staggering Horse behind him, the Rabbit Boss traveled to where water always flowed with the burden of the accordion crossed on his back. He heard the sound of machines. He came high on the white skin of the ice and looked down on the heart of the mountain split open, the blade of a concrete freeway laid through it. He led the Horse down onto the freeway and pulled its exhausted body along behind him on the black pavement half covered by snow. He walked in darkness, with only the distant Star of the Rabbit Hunter to guide him. He heard the labor of a truck grinding up the summit, its huge rubber tires bound in chains. He ran the Horse into the high snowbank, hiding behind its white hide. The ice blast of wind passed over him. The light of the truck illuminating the vast billboards hung out on both side of the freeway:
USE ELECTRIC |
IN RENO ITS HARRAH’S |
SUPPORT CALIFORNIA BEEF |
50 MILES TO HARRAH’S CLUB |
EAT GAS EAT GAS EAT GAS |
HARRAH’S CLUB OR BUST!!! |
He pulled the Horse back out onto the freeway. The Horse staggered behind him and fell across the pavement. He tried to pull it up from the iced pavement. If it was going to die he was going to eat it. There was still some flesh left on the white bones. He tugged on the rope. The Horse was shaking. He kicked it in the stomach. It did not move, the white body was shaking all over. He could hear the distant engine of another truck coming up through the ice bound air. He jerked on the rope, trying to tug the shaking body off the road, it wouldn’t move. The sound of the truck pounded the air behind him. He lifted the spear over his head and drove the broken blade through the Horse’s neck. He flung the spear into the Horse’s side and tore out hunks of flesh. The truck roared up behind him, throwing the white light from its strong headbeams across his body as he tossed the living flesh over his shoulders and scrambled up the ice bank, dragging the accordion through the snow behind him. He heard the honking horn of the truck as the momentum of its weight carried it over the carcass of the Horse.
The white swelling of his leg grew and the cold wind cracked the skin of his face. The blood in his hands and feet was blinded with cold. He huddled in the trees, pressing his face into the cutting bark to feel the warm sting of blood. He huddled and wept as the cold wind blew across the white burden. The flesh of the Horse had loosened in his bowels and run down his legs. He watched from the trees until he saw the thick white furred Rabbits pad across the snow on broad feet. He ran out and clubbed the Rabbits, then ripped the white fur from them and ate of their flesh. He feasted on Rabbit. He found a hole a small Bear had given up to sleep in and there he dreamed of Honowah. He dreamed of the fiery snowplant. He dreamed of the snowplant growing straight from the white burden that stopped the blood of all other living things, sprouting up in a blaze of color, a survivor, its roots in black Earth, growing. The Rabbit was killing him, its lean flesh loosened his gut and he spit blood. The lean flesh of Rabbit was robbing the strength of his body. To eat only the flesh of Rabbit is to die. It is the way of the people. It is what the Hunters know. Rabbit meat alone will strangle the belly and choke the heart. He was dying of Rabbit starvation. The skin of his face cracked from the cold, it split like bark and rutted with scars. He roasted the lean carcasses of six Rabbits over his fire to get enough grease drippings to mix with black soot and paint his face against the ice of the air. He drew bold black streaks down his face and went out on the snow to club more Rabbits. He pissed a pale yellow stream into the snow crust, it pricked a fingerhole in the ice, he watched helplessly as the steam of his own body rose from the hole and disappeared in the air. A clap of thunder broke through the trees and slapped the heart of the mountains. He turned his savage painted face to the Sky and watched the jet streaking a white line beyond the reach of mountaintops. He felt the pain in his leg, the swelling was spreading, shooting off sparks then putting the whole side of his body to sleep. He rubbed himself with ashes, but the white pus kept growing. He sat in the cave and tried to make his cold fingers work on the accordion and he remembered what his mother, Medicine Maggie, had taught him. Sitting him in the lap of her big steaming brown body when he was a small boy she taught him woman was cloud, man was thunder. She told him of how Weasel created the Earth and Coyote created the Indians. She told him of the two sisters living at the Big Waters of Lake Tahoe who had all the wildgrass seeds and pinemush they could want, they had a Fish House stuffed with Trout and Frogs. Every night they would go to sleep gorged with Fish. There was an old man who lived on the otherside of Tahoe who had nothing. He would come to the sisters and beg for a skin to keep him warm, not even something to eat, just a skin to keep warm. The sisters had so many skins piled around their house their feet never touched the ground, but they gave the old man nothing. They sent him away laughing at his back, then one cooked up a bunch of Fish and the other wove a willow basket with a beautiful design in it. That night they lay down to sleep under a great pine and looked up and saw many stars. “I like that one up there,” the old sister said. “I think I’ll catch him, he looks so good. See him? That bigeyed one over there.” “Of course I see him,” the other sister cried. “I saw him first. That bigeyed one is mine. Oh how I would like to go up there right now and suck the Sun from his mouth and blow all his light across the Sky!” “No you can’t! No you can’t! I won’t let you! He’s mine! How would you like it if I got him between my legs and never let him go! I would if I could. I would eat his thunder!” They laughed and went to sleep with the stars twinkling overhead. That night the bigeyed Starman cut a hole in the Sky and came down to Earth and took the two sleeping sisters back up with him. When the sisters awoke the bigeyed Starman took off the bands of fragrant herbs hanging around their heads and washed the good smell of Earth from their faces. He called his uncle the Moon over and had him put the single blanket of a Rabbit Robe over all their shoulders so they were married. Then the two sisters fought over who should sleep under the Rabbit Robe with the Starman. They were very angry. But he took them both under the Rabbit Robe and when they awoke they both had Starbabies and the old man who had nothing down on the lake was lying between them. “Where is the bigeyed Starman?” they yelled. The old man laughed and said he had become the Starman to get himself two young wives who had everything. The women were so angry they had been tricked they refused to cook their new husband any Antelope meat. They packed up some dry Fish for themselves and went out for a week digging up wild potatoes with sharp sticks. They came back home and boiled up all their potatoes in baskets and ate them. They did not give any to their new husband and the Starbabies. The Starbabies cried and ran off to their uncle the Moon, old Moon got very angry, he took up his big knife and went running across the clouds. The whole Sky trembled, the people on Earth said it was thundering, old Moon came tramping up and grabbed the two sisters by the long hair, shaking them until they were almost dead, then he cut a hole in the Sky with his big knife and hurled them through it. Down Down Down they went, banging into the Earth with so much force their bodies made a deep hole. That hole is over by Gardnerville. In that hole Indians can always find plenty of wildgrub, wildwheat, wildpotatoes, wildcorn, there is always plenty. Even when the snow is on the ground there is always plenty in this hole. All this happened before White people came. But it is true.
All these things Medicine Maggie taught to him. He remembered the hole, plenty of wildgrub even when snow is high. He strapped the accordion to his back and propped the blunt end of the spear under his arm for a crutch. Gardnerville was over the eastern wall of the Sierra Nevada, he had to go through the high mountans of California, but there were many Washo where he was going, and a hole full of wildgrub. He could travel through the snowsheds that covered the curving railroad tracks cut through the high mountains. The lean meat of the Rabbit was starving his body. He traveled west to east until he reached the railroad track in high places covered by snowsheds hanging along the cliffs of the mountain. He went out of the day into the narrow dark tunnel sinking before him. The air turned from cold to ice, strangling the blood of his body, but he went on in the tunnel, hobbling always forward on his crutch to the light shafting through a distant chink in the snowburied sheds. He walked into silence. The light before him faded and he walked in total darkness, he was in the heart of the mountain. He could hear the ice flow of water running in the mountain’s vein. There was no light at the front or the back of him. He no longer knew if he was walking the right way or if he had turned in the darkness. There was no way in and no way out. He didn’t know if he was coming or going. The only real thing was the weight of the accordion bending his shoulders and the white swelling growing and filling his body like a flower. He stopped. The juices of the mountain flowed. How loud they were. Like an engine. How their stillness roared. He saw the prick of a light beam shoot through a chink in the distance. He hobbled toward the white light. But it was moving. The light was coming to him. The juices of the mountain he heard flowing and ticking with a roar was the machine pumping of a train. He was in the snow tunnel with a train. The pinprick of light began to waver as it became defined, the sound of a thousand iron wheels speeding their tonnage along the narrow track vibrated the wood of the tunnel, shaking the Earth beneath his feet, its deafening fury dominating everything right to the mountain’s heart. He felt to see if there was enough room for the train to pass between him and the wall. He didn’t know if the wind current of speeding steel would suck him into its path. He banged with the spear at the boarded wall, he couldn’t tell if he was banging on the open side of the tunnel or banging into the sheer rock of the mountain. The eye of the train bore down on him, the thousand wheels beating and clattering against the iron track. He kicked at the wall and threw his body into it, the boards wrenching away from their nails, splintering open before his body. He broke into light and tumbled out onto snow. The weight of the accordion strapped to his back carrying him helplessly down the slope, tumbling and kicking him over before his body wedged against a tree. Always the trees. He was alive. In the distance the blue of a lake swelled up at him. He was on the shore of yonder lake, the lake they call Donner. He felt beneath him. It was Earth. The shelter of the tree had warmed out around the trunk, melting the snow back. He watched through the trees growing down to the lake, isolated splotches of black Earth showed through the white burden. The white days were ending. Before the green plants came up he would cut tender boughs from the trees and scatter their green food along the receding snowline for the Deer to feed on, then he would again Hunt. He went down to the lake, the white swelling filled his body, he did not know if he was alive or dreaming. He dragged the accordion behind him over the white burden. He did not know if he was alive or dreaming. The straps slipped down from his hand and he walked away from the accordion on the white snow. He twisted and fell, rolling to the shore of the lake. The water was warmer than the Earth, the sluggish ice floes breaking apart their weight that during the meanest white days had pressed down on the small Fish, squeezing them to the bottom and breaking their backs. He watched the broken bodies of small Fish floating to the icy surface. He did not know if he was alive or dreaming. He was on the shore of Dormer Lake. He watched at the place where his Ancestors had first watched the White Ghost eat of his own flesh. His Ancestors from that day thought the Whiteman a flesheater. And he was. The Musege of the Whiteman was the meanest power of all, stronger than all the Bears of the Mountain Home. Stronger than all the hearts of all the running Animals. The Whiteman was a cannibal. A flesheater. He ate the Spirit flesh of the Indian. He ate the Spirit flesh of his Brother. He ate the Spirit flesh of the Earth. He led the wild beasts who devoured the Earth. Of all the Hunters his medicine was strongest. He killed all the Birds out of the Sky and fished up all the Fish out of the waters. He tore the hide from the mountains and stole the power from the rivers. The White beast was a flesheater. The Ghost of the Fox was released from the Earth. The Ancestors had spoken true. The flesheater always devours his own children. The flesheater eats himself.
The Indian sank to his knees on the shore of Donner Lake. He did not know if he was alive or dreaming. The white swelling filled his body and bruised his heart. Woman was cloud. Man was thunder. He grasped the timbered flesh between his legs in the roots of his fingers. He dreamed of Animals running, Birds flying, Fish swimming, Women loving, he dreamed of all Earth going green. He bent over and tried to connect his stiffened flesh to Earth, but the hot timber in the root of his hand jammed into the ice of the white burden. The singing power of Birds ripped through trees, flames of flapping feathers in branchtops, the wind of their wings becomes air and is gone.