Chapter 22

Morning comes, as it always did, much too early. Looking out the window toward the pasture, I could see Hunter still sitting on the fence post. Did he ever need to eat? Get some shuteye? Oh well.

I checked in on the Spirit of the Hunter office, and found Marylou going through some catalogs. “Morning, sleepyhead. It’s almost lunch time. I was wondering if you were going to sleep all day.” I looked at the clock she’d installed on the wall: 9:35. “Now I can make some calls without bothering Sleeping Beauty.” She turned the yellow pad back to page one, and dialed the phone. “Hello, Nate? This is Marylou Deer Horn.”

I slipped out of the room.

Dark Wolf wasn’t there and neither was Toni. It was a weekday. They were probably at the Powwow.

I went outside and fired up my trusty steed. I decided to call him Silver, after the Lone Ranger’s trusty steed. He was kinda silvery-blue. That was my story and I was sticking to it.

Silver had no trouble following the route that Red mapped in my brain to the Shoshone-Arapaho Bank. They were more than happy to see me. Apparently showing up with $5,000 in my name made an initial impression. At least, once I showed them my birth certificate. Then they called Chief Bent Nose to confirm that ‘Alexis White’ was the same as ‘Lexi White Owl.’ Once they were satisfied, THEN they were truly impressed. I took $50 in cash (to repay Dark Wolf) and got a Visa card, backed by the account.

Red? You had them open an account in my WRONG name?

[It’s umseemly for an AE to make a mistake like that. I must have opened your original file when I sent it. Sorry.]

Positively human!

I didn’t ask about the SDCF (Shoshone Development Charitable Foundation), since it wasn’t any of my business. And I’m sure, even with their great initial impression of me, they’d have told me so ... albeit oh so politely.

.

Back at Dark Wolf’s place, I picked up the phone to call the Chief, but Marylou was on the line with her suppliers. So I thought, why not just go see the Chief? What could be simpler? I could travel!

I pointed Silver south, and off we went. We got to Ethete Road, which I was on before. It was a direct route from Ethete to Fort Washakie, but it wasn’t much more than a two-lane dirt road. But, it was the shortest way to get to where I wanted to go. There was no traffic. I passed two guys fishing off a bridge over Trout Creek; their pickup was parked just before the bridge. They were drinking beer, and looked like they were in their twenties, at most. They were pretty scruffy looking and I didn’t stop.

About a thousand feet down the road, there was a giant eagle flapping his wings, hovering just off the ground. I didn’t think I could knock Hunter aside. Besides, why would I want to? Something was going on, and I stopped Silver and looked around. I could hear something coming in my direction from Trout Creek. It might have been the two fishermen, who knew?

Hunter wanted me to stop, that much was clear. So I stopped, and parked Silver along the side of the road. Hunter stopped hovering and flew to the north side of the road, into some heavy bush. I followed, and hunkered down, hiding. He sat on a branch of a tree that didn’t look like it’d take his weight.

It was the fishermen’s truck and they stopped alongside Silver. They weren’t too far away and I could hear them clearly.

“Well sheet, Jacob. Looks like the bitch got off the putt-putt and headed off into the bush.” They weren’t Indians.

“We might could have some fun wit’ her, if we move it!” said the other one, presumably Jacob.

“Prob’ly in the bushes. Mebbe she had to pee. She cain’t have gone far. There ain’t no place to git he’p around here. You go that way and I’ll go ‘round the backside. We’ll get her.”

Well sheet, boys! This looked like a redo of the ‘Deliverance’ movie, but not with a river this time. I needed to get outta Dodge, and fast.

I slowly backed further into the scrub, trying not to make any noise. I checked the mental map that Red had provided. There wasn’t much heading north. The only thing was the ‘Chief Washakie Plunge’ about a half mile to the west-southwest. It was a rocky and wooded half mile. So I kept on through the brush for a while.

Obviously, I needed to avoid getting caught on one of the fishermen’s ‘hooks’. I certainly didn’t want to ‘have fun’ with these boys. I paused a moment to catch my breath, and was glad that Dark Wolf’s tape-job gave me a little more breathing room. I could hear somebody rustling through the bushes to the right. “C’mon Missy! We jes’ saw yer bike. We wanna he’p you,” he called. Right. I was gonna believe that, even without my previous life’s experiences.

I looked around for Hunter and didn’t see him to the north. He was off to the west sitting on another branch that looked scrawny compared to his size.

Out of habit, I reached for my back pocket. It was empty. Damn. No cell phones in 1977. Should I go back after Silver? Certainly not. Too much chance of ‘having fun’ with the scruffy boys. So I looked for a path to the west that wouldn’t leave a trace of my passing. If the scruffy boys were good trackers, they’d find me quickly. I could hope that they were as hapless as they looked.

The farther west I went, the higher the elevation. It wasn’t much of a rise, considering that we were heading generally toward the Rocky Mountains, miles and miles away. But this wasn’t Lewis and Clark’s expedition and I sure wasn’t Sacajawea. It was just a little hill, I kept telling myself. The trees got thicker. They were some sort of pine, I guessed. The underbrush cleared out some, and it was easier to walk.