Eye of the Wolf Read Free Page B

into the distance, as if he might see the old man who had passed on the story of how he’d come to the tribe. “Could be one of them battles.”
    â€œMaybe,” Father John said. He didn’t think so. The Platte was a good hundred miles away.
    Ethan pushed himself to his feet and stood over the table a moment, grasping the edges to steady himself, his breath coming in quick, sharp jabs. “Either you boys want some hot coffee?” he said.
    â€œNo, thanks,” Father John said. Max was shaking his head, a wide hand still wrapped around the Styrofoam cup.
    The other elder went over to the table, listing sideways a little as he planted one boot after the other. He refilled his cup and walked back. When he’d sat down, he said, “Soldiers weren’t the people’s only enemies in the Old Time. All them wagon trains heading across the hunting grounds, white men picking off the buffalo with their Winchesters and chasing the herds so far off the warriors had to ride for days to find ’em—some of them other tribes would’ve just as soon seen us dead, so they’d get whatever buffalo was left after the white people got done. There’s battlefields around here where Indians was fighting Indians.”
    Max was nodding, his chin dipping into his chest. “Arapahos was always having to fight the Utes to keep ’em from making off with our ponies and our women. Then there was the battles we had with . . .” The old man stopped, his gaze fastened on the man across from him.
    â€œShoshones,” Ethan said. Stillness settled over the room, like the stillness of night creeping over the plains, when not even the wind makes a sound. “Last fight our people had was out in the badlands by Bates Creek. You know where it is, northeast of the reservation?” He lifted a hand in the direction.
    Father John nodded. Three or four years ago, one of the other elders had taken him out to the site of the Bates Battle—a deep canyon boxed in by steep, rock-strewn bluffs.
    â€œMassacre is what it was.” Max closed his eyes, as if he were watching the images in his head. “The first light of day was just starting in the sky when the Shoshones come riding into the village. They wasn’t alone. They brought troops with Captain Bates, and they was all firing rifles. They kept firing ’til lots of Arapahos was dead and lots more was wounded. Burned out the lodges, stole the food the people had stored up for winter, stampeded the ponies so the warriors couldn’t hunt. Come close to destroying us. People said the sky turned the color of blood. Wolves was howling something terrible.”
    The old man paused. He opened his eyes and squinted at some point across the room. “We been here on the rez with the Shoshones for a long time now. We was a pitiful bunch when we come straggling in here.Most of the people was more dead than alive, half starved, still mourning over all the relatives killed in the massacre. We been trying to get along with Shoshones ever since and forget about what happened. It’s not good to talk about Bates. It might bring the evil back.”
    Father John picked up the folded sheet of paper and slipped it back inside his shirt pocket, part of the message burning in his mind. The dead lie in the gorge. He looked at Max, then at Ethan. “The Bates Battlefield,” he said, his voice soft with certainty.
    The elders were nodding in unison, as if they had already reached the same conclusion and had been waiting for him to catch up. Neither spoke, and for a long moment, the quiet running through the hall was as chilling as the howl of a wolf.
    Finally Ethan said, “More bloodshed at that terrible place is just gonna bring back all the old evil we been trying to put behind us.”
    Father John got to his feet and leaned over the table, shaking the knobby hands, thanking the old men. Then he grabbed his coat and hat and