An Encounter

A half dozen years ago, Red and I ran up the Mormon Trail alongside the Platte River on our Goldwing, and then across the Nebraska Sandhills to Fort Robinson, a frontier military post frozen in time, and the place where the Sioux warrior Crazy Horse was bayoneted to death by the U.S. Army a hundred twenty years ago.

We camped 50 meters from a memorial marking the exact spot. The officer’s quarters of the old fort, the sutler’s store, and the guardhouse were still standing, just east of the silent, ghost-filled parade ground surrounded by the great cottonwood trees that had been planted as saplings when Crazy Horse yet lived.

We ate supper heated on a camp stove while towering thunderclouds warned of rain, and the cottonwood leaves shivered violently in an uneasy evening wind. Later, the sky cleared and the night was shot through with stars and meteors. I lay in the hot silence and thought of the conflict of civilizations unevenly powerful, and the pathos and tragedy of those men caught between them.

In the morning, we packed up and rolled out of the fort, back on smooth, two-laned macadam to the small town of Chadron, Nebraska, where many of the descendants of Crazy Horse’s people yet live. We filled our tank at a convenience store/ service station, and, while Red used the facilities, I checked the pressure in the tires and polished the windscreen with aerosol furniture wax..

Hearing footsteps I turned and smiled, but instead of Red, before me stood a tall young American Indian in a straw cowboy hat and faded jeans with a half case of beer under his arm. He stared at me, his eyes red and on fire, spittle on his lips, his breath reeking of alcohol.

“Howya doin,” I said.

“Fuck,” he replied.
.
He stared at me a moment more, worked his lower jaw, bent his head, and spat exactly between
my boots. Again, he stared into my eyes.

I said nothing.

After a moment, he turned and walked to a battered pickup. He opened the door, threw in his beer, got in... and drove away without another glance.

Red came up, concerned. “Are you okay,” she asked. “Is anything wrong?”

“Nothing that I can do anything about,” I replied.

We mounted the Wing, and swung away from the store heading west again.