Louise Erdrich - The Plague of Doves

“Put that thing down, you idiot,” he said.

Vogeli herded Hotchkiss away from Sheriff Fells.

“Sorry, boys,” said Wildstrand. “We got to do what must be done.”

He leaned across the space between them and shot Fells’s horse between the eyes. The sheriff threw up his hands as he went down with the horse. There was the bullwhip crack of bone. The report made everybody jump. The men all looked at one another, and in the wagon Asiginak started toward the sheriff. He was thrown back by one of the Buckendorfs.

“We are done for,” said Cuthbert. He began to gag on the blood soaking down his throat from his nose.

Emil Buckendorf slapped the reins and the wagon rolled smoothly ahead.

“We still ain’t figured out a place to hang these Indians,” said William Hotchkiss. “Maybe we could use Oric’s beef windlass.”

“I ain’t in this!” cried Oric, who’d just caught up. He jumped off his horse to help Quintus Fells. The sheriff was breathing fast and saying, “Whoa, whoa, whoa…” He was still under the dead horse. His eyes rolled up to the whites and he passed out. Lungsford said “damn” and a few other words and got off his horse to help Oric free the sheriff, letting the wagon go by.

Jabez Woods, Henric Gostlin, Enery Mantle, and all the others stood quietly alongside the road watching the men who had guns and horses. Now they began to walk alongside the wagon, down the two-track grass road.

“Maybe over that swell,” said Mantle. “Those trees this side of it are scrawny.”

“All the good trees is back of us, over the reservation line,” said a Buckendorf.

“We just need one tree branch,” said Wildstrand. He looked into the wagon and his face was white around the eyes, like all the blood was gone underneath the field tan.

“We found those people already dead,” cried Cuthbert, stirring Holy Track from a drowsy stupor. Mooshum was listening to everything. “We found them, but we did not kill them. We milked their cows for them and we fed the baby. I, Cuthbert, fed the baby! We are not your bad kind of Indians! Those are south of here!”

“Don’t talk bad of the Bwaanag,” said Asiginak. “They adopted me.”

Cuthbert ignored him and badgered the white men. “Us, we are just like you!”

“Just like us!” Hotchkiss leaned over and slammed the butt of his rifle against Cuthbert’s head. “Not hardly.”

“You are right,” said Asiginak in Ojibwe. “You are a madness on this earth.”

Cuthbert’s head was all blood now. His eyes were hidden in his bloody hair, his neck awash with blood, his dirty shirt was blood all up and down. He spoke Ojibwe from inside the bloody mask and said to Holy Track, “Don’t worry. There is another boy among them. Pretty soon one of them will notice and remember the sheriff ’s words. They’ll let you go. When you speak of my death to others, tell them of my courage. I am going to sing my death song.”

“I hope you can remember it before you shit your pants,” said Asiginak.

“Aiii! I am trying to think how it goes.”

Both men began to hum very softly.

“To tell you the truth,” said Cuthbert, after a little while, “I was never given a death song. I was not considered worth it.”

“Make one up,” said Asiginak. “I will help you.”

They began to tap their knees and mumble a whine of melody beneath their breaths again. They did not address a single word to Mooshum. He gazed out over the fields, which were newly plowed and planted, the furrows straight and just sprouting a faint green fuzz. The sky was the sweetest color of blue. The horizon was dusty with a hint of green, just like the egg of a robin, and the clouds were delicate, no more than tiny white breast feathers way up high.

They came to a tree that looked all right, but the white men thought the limbs were too slanted and thin. They came to another tree and the men argued underneath it and measured with their arms and hands. Apparently, that tree wasn’t good, either.

“They are giving us time to practice our song, anyway,” said Cuthbert. He wiped his face. It looked as though his nose-lump had been shorn away smoothly.

“Now that I look at you closely,” said Asiginak, “I think you would have been handsome, my friend.”

“Thank you,” Cuthbert said.

“That tree over there will do,” said Emil Buckendorf.

Mooshum heard someone begin to sob and he thought at first it was himself — it sounded just like himself — but then he realized that it was Johann Vogeli. The boy was riding next to him, his hands clutching the mane of his horse. His tears rushed down and wet the leather of the saddle. Frederic Vogeli rode up beside his son and swung his arm back, then smashed his knuckles and forearm across his son’s face. Johann nearly fell off the back of his horse, but he caught himself. As he gained his balance, he changed, grew broader, bigger, and something in him could be seen to light. This thing took fire, and blew him right up. It propelled him off his horse: he lunged into an embrace with his father, who flew sideways out of his saddle and was still underneath his son when the two men landed and skidded — Frederic’s back the sled. Johann sat on his father’s chest and began to hit his face with the side of his fist like he was pounding on a table. He pounded with all his arm’s strength, like he would strike through the wood, or the flesh. His other hand had closed around his father’s throat. The wagon lurched on and the other men traveled with it, leaving the two rolling and kicking, then standing, then swinging and punching. Down again, then up, their battle looked more comical as they receded into the distance. Finally they were two black toy figures popping up and down against an endless horizon and beneath a boundless sky.

“The boy’s heart was good, anyway,” said Cuthbert.

“I hope he doesn’t kill his father, yet,” said Asiginak. “He could carry that hard.”

Cuthbert agreed.

“So you talked to Cuthbert, too,” said Joseph, his voice strained. “And Holy Track? Asiginak? They lived to be old men, right?”

“No,” said Mooshum. “Oh,” said Joseph.

The Clatter of Wings

THE OAK TREE had a generous spread. It had probably grown there quietly for a hundred years.

“I can show you that tree to this day, on the edge of Wolde’s land,” said Mooshum. “There’s tobacco put down there. Prayer flags in its branches.”

The men rode up to it and got down and walked around the base, peering up into the branches and pointing at one particular limb that ran straight on both sides of the tree and then bent upward, as if in a gesture of praise. They decided that it was the tree they had been looking for and drew the wagon up beneath it. Five or six ropes were neatly coiled underneath the straw on the wagon bed. Enery Mantle and the Buckendorfs took the ropes out and argued over which ones to use. Then they tried and repaired the knots, clumsily, several times, still arguing, and threw the ropes over the limb. They tested the slip of the rope and discussed who would hit the horses, and when.

“They don’t know how to snare a rabbit,” said Cuthbert, “or drop a man. This will not go easy.”

Holy Track was sick and wild. Asiginak did not answer. Mooshum was staring into space and pretending to be already dead.

“The Michif will do all right,” said Cuthbert, meaning Mooshum. “He knows how to jig.”

Asiginak roused himself from deep thought and touched his nephew’s shoulder.

“I regard you as my son,” he said to Holy Track. “We will walk to the spirit world together. I would not have liked to walk that road alone. Howah! You made my old heart proud when you showed yourself in that church door!”