The Last Buffalo Hunter Who Saw the Thing in the Wyoming Snow — What He Told the Priest Before Dying

There is an account out of the Powder River country that was never printed in any newspaper.
It was never in the county books.
The man it happened to did not tell it for 56 years.

He told it only once.
He told it to a priest on the night he was dying – in a boarding house at the edge of a small Wyoming town in the winter of 1934.

The priest wrote it down.
This is what he wrote.

Absalom Rutledge died on a Thursday night in a boarding house in the town of Bellefonte Springs, Wyoming – in the second week of December of the year 1934.
He was 82 years old.

The lady who kept the boarding house – a widow by the name of Vera Holston – had rented him a back room on the ground floor when he arrived by rail in the summer of that year.
He had signed the register in a slow, careful hand.
Occupation – he had written – retired.
Purpose of stay – he had written – to die here.

Vera had thought at the time that he was joking.
By December – she understood that he had not been.

Absalom Rutledge had come to Bellefonte Springs to die – because Bellefonte Springs was – as near as he could figure it – the closest town to a place he had left in the winter of 1878.
And he had made up his mind that he was not going to be buried east of the Missouri.

That’s what he told Vera when she asked.
He said: “I have a debt to the ground out here. I do not intend to be buried away from it.”

Vera did not ask him to explain.

By the first week of December – he was coughing blood.
By the second week of December – he could no longer stand on his own.

On the Thursday afternoon – when the light was going gray – he called Vera to his bedside and asked her to fetch a priest.

Vera said: “Mr. Rutledge – I did not know you were a Catholic.”

Absalom said: “I am not.”

Vera said: “Then what do you want a priest for?”

Absalom said: “Because a priest is a man who will listen to what a dying man has to say – and not laugh – and not ask questions – and not run out of the room when it gets bad. If you can find me any other kind of man like that in this town – I will take him instead – but I do not think you will.”

Vera went to fetch the priest.

The nearest priest was a man by the name of Father Ignatius Volk – whose parish was over in the next county – and who had been born in the state of Wisconsin to a family of German farmers.

Father Volk was 38 years old that winter.
He had been a priest for 11 years.
He had heard many confessions in that time.

He would tell his own bishop three years later that nothing he had ever heard in a confessional had prepared him for what he heard from Absalom Rutledge that Thursday night.

Father Volk arrived at the boarding house at 9 in the evening.
Vera showed him to the back room.

Absalom was propped up on three pillows.
His face had the color of old paper.
His breathing was thin and slow – and when he coughed – which he did every few minutes – it took him a long time to come back to himself.

Father Volk sat down in a chair beside the bed.
He said: “I am told you asked for me.”

Absalom said: “I did.”

Father Volk said: “I am also told you are not a Catholic.”

Absalom said: “I am not – and I do not intend to become one at this hour, Father. That would be a cheap thing to do – and I have never done a cheap thing in my life.”

Father Volk said: “Then what do you want of me?”

Absalom took a long breath.
He turned his head on the pillow and looked at Father Volk with eyes that had gone milk-pale around the edges.

He said: “Father – I want to tell you a thing – and I don’t care if you write it down or if you burn it or if you forget it before the sun comes up – so long as one Christian man has heard it before I go. That is all I want. That – and for you to sit here until it’s done. Will you do that?”

Father Volk said: “I will.”

Absalom said: “Then don’t interrupt me – because if I stop – I do not know if I have the wind to start again.”

Father Volk did not interrupt him.
He sat there for 4 hours and 20 minutes.

This is what Absalom Rutledge told him.

In the fall of the year 1878 or so – I was 26 years old – and I was hunting buffalo out of a camp near Deadwood.

I had been at it three years then.
I was good at it.
I had a Sharps rifle a man had sold me in Yankton for $42 – and I had learned to lie in the tall grass upwind of a herd and pick off the outside cows one at a time – so the herd would not run.

A good stand – we called it.
On a good stand – you might take 20 animals before the herd figured out what was happening.
On a very good stand – you might take 50.

By the summer of that year – the herds were already thinning.
The big animals – the bulls we used to shoot in the ’70s – were mostly gone.
What was left were smaller – and moved in smaller groups.
A man who wanted to make money at it had to go further out to find them.

I was running with a party of five that year – six – counting me.

The party leader was a man by the name of Merritt Yaws – 51 years old – Kentucky born.
He had fought in the war on the side that lost – and he had been at Chickamauga – and he did not speak of it.

Merritt had a long face and a long jaw – and a way of standing very still when he was thinking.
He had lost the tip of his left thumb to a mule kick before I ever knew him.
He was the calmest man I had ever met in my life.
I want you to remember that, Father – because of what he did later.

There was a tracker with us named Cathcart Neighbors. We called him Cath.
He was a Missouri man – 30-some years old – thin as a rail – with a nose that had been broken twice – and set poor both times.
Cath could look at a patch of grass and tell you what had walked over it two days back – and whether it had been in a hurry.
I have known trackers before – and I have known trackers since.
None of them could touch him.

There was a skinner with us named Dorsey Kilmartin.
Dorsey was a big man – 6’4″ – maybe more.
He had come out of the California mines in the ’60s – and he did not like to sleep indoors – no matter the weather.
Dorsey talked a great deal – mostly to himself – and he sang hymns under his breath while he worked.
He had a bad scar on his neck from a knife fight in Sacramento that he would not tell anyone the truth of.

There was a young man with us named Oo Brazwell – Kansas boy – 22 years old.
He could shoot a Sharps as well as any man I have ever seen.
On his worst day – he could put a ball through a buffalo’s lung at 400 yards – and the animal would not know it had been hit for three of its own heartbeats.
Oo was quiet.
He read a book of Psalms most evenings by the firelight – and would not let anyone see which ones.

And the sixth of us was a Dutchman named Kesler Vandergrift – who was the wagon driver and the cook – and who kept the animals.
Kesler was a fat man with a red face – who spoke English badly and swore at his mules in his own tongue.
He was maybe 40.
He had been out on the plains since ’69.

That fall – we followed sign of a small herd west out of the Black Hills and into Wyoming – up along the Powder River – and past the country where the Sioux had been driven off the year before.

We meant to hunt through the first snows and be home before Christmas.

None of us made it home.

—

Absalom coughed for a long time after that sentence.
Father Volk waited.

When Absalom could speak again – he said: “Do you know that country, Father? The Powder River country?”

Father Volk said: “I have driven through it in summer.”

Absalom said: “In summer – it looks like nothing – just rolling grass and a river that is mostly sand. In winter – it is another thing entirely. In winter – the ground gets flat and white – and the sky gets flat and white – and there is no line between them. So you can walk for a whole day and feel that you have not moved at all.”

“That country was empty in 1878. The Sioux had been pushed off it. The soldiers had come and gone. The homesteaders had not come in yet. There was no living soul between us and the Bighorn Mountains – except a trapper here and there – and the trappers stayed close to their cabins after October.”

“It was – in short – the emptiest place I had ever been.”

—

“We made our second camp on the 4th of November of that year – in a low draw between two ridges – about 30 miles north and west of where the town of Buffalo stands now. There was buffalo sign in the draw. Not much – but Cath thought there might be a small herd bedded down in the flats on the far side of the western ridge.”

“That was the first night.”

“The first strange thing was the quiet.”

“I want you to understand what I mean by that, Father. On the plains in November at night – you should hear the wind. Always the wind. And you should hear the crack of the ice in the river when the temperature drops – and the wolves at some distance – and the little scurrying things in the grass. You should hear a country breathing.”

“That night – at some point after we bedded down – the wind died – and it did not come back.”

“I noticed it at first. I sat up in my bedroll and I listened – and I could hear my own heart. I could hear Dorsey snoring across the fire. I could hear Kesler’s mules shifting in their picket. But beyond the camp – nothing. No wind. No creak of the trees along the ridge. No animals. Nothing.”

“I got up and I walked to the edge of camp and I stood there. And it seemed to me that the whole country had gone as still as a room with the door shut.”

—

“Merritt came up behind me. I did not hear him coming. He had been sleeping – and now he was standing at my shoulder in his stocking feet – holding his coat around him. He listened for a long time. Then he said quietly: ‘I have not heard a plains night this still since I was a boy in Kentucky – and I only heard it that once – and I did not much like it either.'”

“I said: ‘What was it that time?’ He said: ‘It was the night before my father died.'”

“He went back to his bedroll. He did not sleep the rest of that night. I know because I did not sleep either – and every time I looked at him – he was lying on his back with his eyes open – watching the top of his tent.”

—

“In the morning – Cath went out to scout. He left at first light. He was gone for 4 hours.”

“When he came back at midday – he did not eat – and he did not speak until Merritt asked him what he had seen. And even then – he took a long time to answer.”

“He said: ‘I saw 12 buffalo.'”

“Merritt said: ‘Where?'”

“Cath said: ‘About 2 miles west – in a shallow bowl below the ridge.'”

“Merritt said: ‘What were they doing?'”

“Cath said: ‘They were standing in a circle – facing outward.'”

“Merritt looked at him.”

“Cath said: ‘I got within a hundred yards. Not one of them moved. I could see their breath in the cold. I could see they were alive – but not one of them moved. And then – when I came a little closer – one of them turned its head – just one – and it looked at me. And the others did not look at me. And the one that looked at me did not have the look of a buffalo in its eye, Merritt. It had a different look.'”

“Merritt said: ‘What kind of look?'”

“Cath said: ‘The kind of look a man gives you when he knows your name.'”

—

“Merritt was quiet for a while. Then he said: ‘Maybe they’ve been sick.'”

“Cath said: ‘Sick buffalo lie down, Merritt.'”

“Merritt did not have an answer to that.”

“After a while – he said: ‘We’ll move camp 2 miles east. We’ll come back in the morning and look again. Maybe they’ll have moved on by then.'”

—

“We moved camp that afternoon. It was hard work in the cold. Kesler was in a poor humor about it and swore at the mules in Dutch the whole way.”

“When we got to the new place – which was another draw – less deep than the first – Cath went out alone and walked a wide circle around the camp for an hour before he would let anyone unpack the wagons. He did not tell us what he was looking for. He came back and he said: ‘It’s clean.'”

“And we made camp.”

—

“That night – we set a watch. We had not set a watch on the plains in years. There was no reason to. The Sioux were gone. The wolves would not come in on six armed men and a fire. But Merritt said we would set a watch that night – and no one argued with him.”

“Oo took the first watch. Cath took the second. Dorsey took the third. I took the fourth – which was the hour before dawn.”

“But it was during Oo’s watch that it happened.”

—

“Around 3:00 in the morning – Oo came into my tent quietly and shook me awake. He put his finger to his lips. He whispered: ‘Come see this.’ And I got up and pulled my boots on and followed him out.”

“He led me to the edge of camp. He pointed.”

“There was something at the treeline.”

“You have to understand, Father, that the treeline on the ridge above our camp was maybe 200 yards away – and the moon was up and the snow was reflecting the moon – and you could see quite well.”

“There was a thing standing there. It was standing upright. It was taller than a man. It did not move.”

“We watched it for a long time – maybe a minute – maybe two. It stood exactly still. It was not looking around or shifting its weight or doing any of the things a living thing does when it stands somewhere for a while. It was standing there the way a fence post stands – only it was not a fence post.”

“After a while – it took a step. And here’s the thing, Father – it took a step in the snow – and there was no sound of it. There should have been. The snow on that ridge was crusted over. It should have crunched. It didn’t.”

“It took one more step – and then it was gone. I do not mean that it walked out of sight. I mean that between one moment and the next – it was there – and then it was not there. And the treeline where it had been was empty.”

—

“Oo stood next to me with his rifle in his hands – and he was shaking. Not from cold. Oo did not shake from cold. He said in a whisper: ‘Did you see its head?'”

“I said: ‘I couldn’t tell.'”

“Oo said: ‘I couldn’t neither. That’s what I mean. I couldn’t tell. Not that it was too dark. That I couldn’t tell.'”

“I did not know what to say to that.”

—

“We stayed awake together until my watch. When Cath came out to relieve Oo – Oo told him what we had seen. Cath went and looked at the treeline for a long time. He did not say anything. He walked back to the fire – and he sat down – and he cleaned his rifle three times over before dawn.”

—

“In the morning – we went up to look at the treeline. We found tracks.”

“But here is where it gets to be a bad thing, Father – and I have thought about it for 56 years – and I still cannot make it come out right in my head.”

“We found tracks – but they were not where the thing had stood. The thing had stood right at the treeline in the open – where we had seen it. There were no tracks where it had stood. The tracks were about 50 feet out from where it had stood. They were in a straight line. They came in from the east. They stopped 50 feet out from the treeline. And then they went back in the same straight line – on the same footprints.”

“Do you understand what I am telling you, Father? Whatever it was – it had walked in on those tracks and walked out on those tracks – and where it had been at the end of them was not on the ground.”

“And the tracks themselves – they were long. They were longer than a man’s boot by half – and they had too many toes. I will not tell you the number. I do not want to say it out loud, Father. Not even now. But there were too many.”

—

“Cath knelt down in the snow – and he looked at those tracks for a long time. He did not touch them. When he stood up – he said: ‘Merritt – we need to go.'”

“Merritt said: ‘We came a long way for this hunt.'”

“Cath said: ‘I know we did.'”

“Merritt said: ‘We spent Kesler’s whole wage on the wagons.'”

“Cath said: ‘I know that too.'”

“Merritt said: ‘Give me a reason.'”

“Cath said: ‘I don’t have a reason, Merritt. I’ve got a feeling. That’s all. But I have had it before. I had it in ’63 at Vicksburg. I had it in ’69 on the Republican River when the Cheyenne caught my brother. Both times I did not act on it – and both times I lived to wish I had. So I am asking you.'”

“Merritt looked at him for a long time. Then he said: ‘One more day. If nothing happens today – we stay. If something happens today – we leave.'”

“Cath said: ‘That is a fool’s bargain, Merritt. Because if something happens today – it may be too late to leave.'”

“Merritt said: ‘One more day.'”

“Cath did not argue further.”

—

Absalom stopped there and drank some water from a glass on the table beside the bed.
Father Volk waited.

When Absalom set the glass down – his hand was shaking so badly that the water spilled a little onto the blanket.
He did not seem to notice.

He said: “You still with me, Father?”

Father Volk said: “I am.”

Absalom said: “It gets worse from here.”

Father Volk said: “I understand.”

Absalom nodded slowly and closed his eyes for a moment and gathered himself.
And then he went on.

—

“That day we hunted. Cath found a small herd about 3 miles south of the camp. Real buffalo – not the standing ones. Nine head. We took seven of them. It was a clean stand. Oo did most of the shooting the way he always did – and I spotted for him – and Cath and Merritt worked the flanks in case the herd broke. The herd did not break. When the seven were down – the last two just wandered off – still not understanding what had happened.”

“Buffalo were like that, Father. They were the trustingest animals on earth – which is why we killed so many of them. May God forgive us.”

“Dorsey and Kesler came up with the wagon – and Dorsey started in on the skinning. He was fast. On a good day – Dorsey could skin a full-grown bull in 11 minutes. He hummed while he worked. That afternoon he was humming a hymn I did not recognize. When I asked him what it was – he said his mother had taught it to him – and that he did not remember the words anymore – only the tune.”

“We were done and back in camp by 4:00 in the afternoon. Merritt was in a better mood. He said: ‘You see, Cath – a day’s work. A clean day.'”

“Cath said: ‘The sun goes down in an hour.'”

“Merritt said: ‘And?'”

“Cath said: ‘You said one more day, Merritt. It’s not over yet.'”

“Merritt did not answer him.”

—

“Oo took the first watch that night. He was not going to sleep anyway. He had been quiet since the night before – and I had noticed that he had not been reading his book of Psalms that evening. He sat by the fire with his rifle across his knees and his eyes on the treeline – and he did not blink for a long time.”

“I bedded down around 10:00. I woke up at midnight because the wind had come back. It had not come back the way wind comes back. It had come back from all directions at once – and it was moving inward toward the camp. Do you understand, Father? The wind was blowing from the east and the west and the north and the south – all at the same time – all into the middle of us – as if something big was breathing in.”

“And on that wind was a smell. I have hunted every kind of animal that lives on the North American continent, Father. I have smelled a wolfpack in mating. I have smelled a bear that had been in a carcass for a week. I have smelled the pile of buffalo hides we made outside Cheyenne in ’76 – 5,000 hides drying in July – a smell you could smell from three miles off. None of those smells was like this one. What was on that wind was old snow and burnt hair – and underneath those – something older – something that did not belong on any range I had ever hunted – something that I do not think has been on the earth in the time of men.”

—

Absalom coughed again – hard.
Father Volk got up and refilled the glass of water and held it to Absalom’s lips.
Absalom drank.

He said thickly: “Thank you, Father.”

Father Volk sat back down.

Absalom said: “I want to stop here for a moment – because what I have to say next is the part I have never said. I have said everything up to this in my own head. I have gone through it every winter for 56 years. Every winter – when the snow gets to a certain kind of depth – I go through it – and I always get to the next part – and I stop – and I turn around – and I go back – and I start again – because the next part – I have never said out loud – not to anyone.”

“So I am going to sit here for a moment and gather myself – and then I am going to say it – and I would ask you, Father, to sit quiet while I do – because I do not think I can say it twice.”

Father Volk sat quiet.
He waited maybe 2 minutes.

Absalom took a long, slow breath – and he began again.

—

“When morning came – Oo was gone. His post was empty. The fire had burned down to a red glow. His rifle was in the snow beside the fire – standing upright – buttstock down – as if he had planted it there like a fence post – and it was still standing that way when Merritt found it.”

“His footprints led out of camp in a northerly direction. We followed them. They went about 30 yards – and then they stopped. They did not stop at a stream. They did not stop at a rock. They did not stop at anything. They just stopped. The last print was of both feet side by side – as if he had come to a halt – and had stood there for a moment – and then there were no more prints.”

“Cath walked out beyond that point and made a wide circle around it twice – and then a third time. He said there was no other track anywhere. Not going any direction. Not in the air, Merritt, he said.”

“And Merritt said: ‘Don’t joke, Cath.'”

“And Cath said: ‘I ain’t joking. I said not in the air. I meant it – because I do not know how else to say what happened.'”

“Merritt sat down in the snow next to the last footprints. He sat there for a long time. Then he stood up and he said quietly: ‘We are leaving now.'”

“Cath said: ‘I told you, Merritt.'”

“Merritt said: ‘You did – and I am sorry.'”

“We turned to go back to camp – and that was when we heard Oo call.”

—

Before the next part – let me stop for one breath here.

If this is the kind of case you would want to sit with in the dark – not just tonight – but to keep – there’s a longer thing I put together with the people at Forbidden & Unresolved Stories: What the Mountain Keeps.

Ten complete cases – eight hours of them.
62 years of records that nobody wanted to finish – from Appalachian counties nobody was ever going to look at twice.
Each one placed and dated and signed off with a tidy word that never once fit what had happened.

The link is in the description below.
It’s at the top of the comments.

Now – let’s go back to it.

—

“Oo called from the west first. His voice came across the draw as clear as if he had been standing at the edge of camp. He said: ‘I’m over here.’ Just those three words. ‘I’m over here.'”

“Merritt turned toward the voice. He took a step – and then he stopped. He said: ‘Oo!’ – he shouted it. He said: ‘Oo – are you hurt?'”

“There was no answer.”

“Then the voice came again – from the east this time – from behind us. Oo’s voice saying: ‘I’m over here.'”

“And then a third time – from a low place in the draw we had passed four days back – from behind a ridge you could not see over – his voice: ‘I’m over here.'”

“Cath drew his pistol. He did not aim it at anything. He fired it straight up into the sky. Three shots. The sound rolled out across the plains and came back to us thin and small. The calling stopped. We did not hear his voice again.”

—

“We went back to the camp. We did not speak on the way back.”

“Kesler was standing beside the wagon with his shotgun in his hands and his eyes very wide. He said something in Dutch I did not understand. Cath said in English that we were going home. Kesler crossed himself three times and did not put down the shotgun.”

—

“We tried to leave that afternoon. The horses would not be saddled. I want you to understand what I mean by that, Father. We had six horses and Kesler’s four mules. Every one of them – when we came near – rolled its eyes back and put its ears down – and would not stand still. One of the horses tried to bite Dorsey when he put a hand on its neck. It broke the skin. Blood came through his coat sleeve.”

“Kesler’s lead mule – an animal I had known for 2 years – an animal so patient in ordinary weather that Kesler used to hang his coffee pot from the harness while it walked – kicked at me when I came near. I had to jump backwards to keep from being killed by it.”

“It took us 3 hours to get them saddled and hitched. By that time it was after dark. Merritt said we would leave at first light. He said no one would sleep. He said everyone would sit up by the fire – back to back – weapons out – until morning.”

“That was what we did.”

—

“That was the night Cath went.”

“I did not see it happen. Nobody did. He was there at midnight. He was on my left. His back was to my back. I could feel him breathing. He was holding a rifle across his knees. At some point after midnight – I closed my eyes for a moment. I do not think I slept, Father. I think it was a moment – maybe two. But when I opened my eyes and I turned my head – my back was against nothing. Cath was not there.”

“His rifle was there – laid across the log where he had been sitting. His bedroll was 10 feet away – untouched. His boots were sitting next to the bedroll side by side – laces neatly tied – as if he had gotten up out of them – as if he had stepped out of his own boots and walked away in his stocking feet into the snow.”

“But there were no prints, Father. There were no prints at all. Not around the log – not around the boots – not going any direction at all.”

—

“Merritt said: ‘Wake everyone. Wake them now.'”

“I woke Dorsey. Kesler was already awake. He had seen it. He had seen Cath one moment – and then not seen him the next. He had been looking, Father. He had been looking right at him. And Cath had not stood up – and Cath had not walked away. He had simply not been there anymore. From one blink of Kesler’s eyes to the next.”

“Kesler was praying under his breath in Dutch. His face was wet with tears. He was a stout man, Father. He was not a man who cried. He was crying that night.”

“Merritt said: ‘We ride now in the dark. We ride now.'”

—

“We rode. We rode east. All that night. The stars did not move. I do not know how else to tell you it. The stars should have wheeled overhead the way stars do. They did not. They stayed where they were all night – from the time we broke camp until the sun came up. And when the sun came up – it came up in the wrong place. Not the east – not exactly. Somewhere between the east and the north.”

“I want you to understand, Father, that I am not a fanciful man. I have never in my life claimed to see something that I did not see. I do not believe in ghosts – and I did not believe in them then. I am telling you what I saw. The stars did not move that night – and the sun came up in the wrong place. And when I said as much to Merritt in the morning – he said: ‘I know. Don’t say it again.’ Because he had seen it, too.”

—

“We rode all day. The land did not change. We passed the same rock formation three times. It was a formation of red sandstone that had a shape like a fist if you looked at it a certain way. We passed it once in the middle of the morning. We passed it again around noon. We passed it again in the middle of the afternoon – and we had not turned – not once.”

“Merritt was leading. Cath was gone – but Merritt knew that country as well as any man alive. He was leading us straight east by the sun – and we passed the same rock three times. By the third time – Merritt reined up his horse. He sat there in the saddle for a long time. Then he said quietly: ‘We are being turned.'”

“Dorsey said: ‘By what?'”

“Merritt said: ‘I do not know. Do not ask me again.'”

“Kesler had stopped speaking altogether by then. He was sitting in the wagon seat with the reins in his hands and his mouth moving without sound. Every so often he would touch the crucifix at his neck.”

—

“Around evening – we came up on a rise – and below us – in a shallow bowl of snow – we saw the buffalo.”

Absalom’s voice had gone very thin by this point.
He was breathing shallow.

Father Volk asked him quietly if he wanted to rest.

Absalom shook his head.
He said: “No, Father. If I rest – I will not start again. Let me finish.”

Father Volk nodded.

Absalom went on.

—

“The 12 buffalo Cath had described – standing in a circle – facing outward – not moving. Their breath did not steam in the cold air. Their eyes did not blink. Their ears did not flick at us as we came up on the ridge. And in the center of the circle – standing upright – was the shape.”

“Father – I said before that I would not describe what I saw. I said that on the plains that night – and I say it now – because there are no words for it in the English language – and there are no words for it – I believe – in any language that men have made.”

“But I will tell you three things, Father – and only three – because that is what I told myself I could bear to say.”

“It was tall.”

“It was wearing something that was not skin – and was not cloth – and was not fur.”

“And it was looking at me – not at Merritt – not at Dorsey – not at Kesler – at me. It was looking at me from across all that distance. And it knew my name.”

“I do not know how I knew that, Father. I did not hear my name. I did not hear anything. But I knew – the way you know when someone is calling for you in a crowd even before you can hear them properly. That was how I knew it was calling me. It knew my name.”

—

“Merritt said very quietly at my elbow: ‘Absalom – do not look at it.'”

“Dorsey said: ‘I already have.'”

“Merritt turned his horse. He said: ‘Ride.'”

“We rode.”

—

“I do not remember much of the next hours, Father. Not clearly. I remember Merritt praying out loud in a Kentucky country voice I had not heard him use before. He was reciting the Psalms – the 23rd Psalm and the 91st Psalm – and one that I did not recognize. He said them over and over. His voice was steady. His voice was the only steady thing.”

“I remember Dorsey humming. He was humming the hymn his mother had taught him. He hummed it steadily all through the night. He did not stop – not for water – not for anything. When I looked at him – he was staring straight ahead – and his eyes were wet – and his mouth was moving in the shape of the tune.”

“I remember Kesler in the wagon behind us – calling out to his mules in Dutch. The wagon could not keep up on the ground we were riding – and it fell behind. I remember looking back once and seeing the lantern on the wagon growing small in the distance. Merritt would not let us stop for it. He said: ‘Kesler will follow – or he will not. But we do not stop.'”

“I remember my mother. I remember that I began at some point in the night to hear my mother’s voice ahead of me calling me. My mother was named Prudence Rutledge. She had died when I was 15 years old of a fever in the state of Indiana. She had been dead 11 years by that night. I heard her voice calling me from a little way ahead of my horse – off to the north side of the trail. She was calling my name the way she had called me in for supper when I was young. She was saying: ‘Absalom. Absalom. Come home now. Supper’s on.'”

“I would have gone to her, Father. I would have gotten off my horse and gone to her. But Merritt was riding beside me – and Merritt reached over without looking – and he took hold of my bridle – and he did not let go of my bridle for the next four hours. He rode with one hand on his own reins – and one hand on mine – and every so often my mother would call me from a different place – and my horse would try to turn toward her – and Merritt would pull my horse back to the line.”

“Merritt saved my life that night, Father. I do not know what he heard calling him. He never told me – but he did not turn toward it – and he did not let me turn toward mine.”

—

“By dawn of the second day – Dorsey was gone. He did not scream. He did not cry out. He did not fall behind. I turned in my saddle to look at him once – and he was there – riding with his mouth still shaping the tune of that hymn. I turned back to the trail. I do not think a full minute passed. Then I turned to look at him again. His horse was still there – walking on. But the reins were hanging loose – and Dorsey’s coat was folded neatly and laid across the saddle – as if someone had taken the time to place it there just so. Dorsey was not on the horse.”

“I said: ‘Merritt.'”

“Merritt looked back. He saw. He said: ‘Do not turn around.'”

“I said: ‘Merritt – we have to go back for him.'”

“Merritt said: ‘He is already where he is going. And so are we. Ride.'”

“I rode.”

—

“My ears started ringing then, Father. A high, thin sound – like a bell ringing. It did not stop for three days.”

“Kesler was gone too by then. His wagon had fallen back in the night. We did not see the wagon again. I do not know what happened to him. I have thought about that for 56 years, Father – because Kesler had a wife back in Nebraska – and I have wondered what she thought when he did not come home. I hope she found another man in time. I hope she did not wait too long.”

—

“We rode all that day. Only me and Merritt then – and the horses. Dorsey’s horse with the folded coat followed us for a while – and then wandered off to the north. We did not go after it.”

“By evening – we saw the light of a cabin. It was a trapper’s cabin on a bend of the Powder River – where the ice was slow to close.”

“The trapper was a man I had never met before. His name was Elias Prickett. He was maybe 60 years old. He had a face like tanned leather – and he was missing three fingers on his right hand from an old animal trap. He took one look at us – and he did not ask questions. He brought us inside. He put us by the fire. He put a jar of whiskey in front of Merritt and another one in front of me.”

“Merritt sat down at Elias’s table. He put his hands flat on the wood. He looked at the wall in front of him – and he did not stand up again.”

“He died there, Father. Sitting at that trapper’s table. Three hours later. He had not been shot. He had not been bitten. He had no fever. He had no wound on him anywhere. Elias examined him – and Elias said the same thing I have thought about it ever since. He said: ‘This man has just stopped.’ That was what he said, Father. Stopped.”

“Elias covered him with a blanket where he sat. He did not move him from the chair until morning. He said moving a dead man in the dark was bad luck. He may have been right about that.”

—

“He made me drink the whiskey. He said: ‘Drink it, boy. All of it. It’s the only thing that will let you sleep tonight. And if you do not sleep tonight – you will lose your mind before sunrise – and I do not need to be burying two of you.'”

“I drank the whiskey. I drank the whole jar. I did not remember lying down. I woke up in the corner of that cabin near noon of the next day – with a headache like an anvil – and Merritt’s blanket-covered shape still sitting in the chair across the room – and Elias sitting on the floor beside the door with his shotgun across his lap.”

“Elias said: ‘I have been sitting up all night. Nothing came to the door. I want you to know that.'”

“I said: ‘Thank you.'”

“He said: ‘Boy – I do not know what you rode out of – and I am not going to ask you – but when you leave here – you ride east – and you keep riding east – and you do not come back into this country. Do you hear me?'”

“I said: ‘I hear you.'”

“He said: ‘Say it back.'”

“I said: ‘I will not come back into this country.'”

“Elias said: ‘Good.'”

—

“We buried Merritt on the third day – when the ground was soft enough by the fire to break with a mattock. Elias helped me dig the grave. It was in a little clearing behind his cabin. There was no priest for hundreds of miles – so I said the Lord’s Prayer over him myself. It was the only prayer I knew all the way through. Elias made a cross out of two pieces of pine and drove it into the ground. He carved Merritt’s name into the crossbeam with a hunting knife: Merritt Yaws – and under it the year 1878.”

“I left the next morning. I rode east on Merritt’s horse. I led my own horse behind. I never saw Elias again. He died in 1881 – I heard later – of a lung sickness. I never went back to that country. Not until this year – and I did not go all the way in. I stopped in this town – because this town is as close as I could bear to come.”

—

Absalom stopped there.
He closed his eyes for a long time.

Father Volk thought at first that he had gone.
He leaned forward.
He could still hear the thin whisper of Absalom’s breathing.

After perhaps two minutes – Absalom opened his eyes again.

He said: “There is a little more, Father. Then I am done.”

—

“I never told anyone what I saw. Not for 56 years. I did not tell my wife – though I had one for a while in the 1880s in the state of Iowa. I did not tell my brother when he asked me why I had come back off the plains a different man. I did not tell the parson at any church I ever sat in. I did not tell the men I worked with on the railroad – though we told each other every other kind of story a working man tells. I did not tell it, Father – because I did not think there was a man alive who could hold it. I am telling it now – because I am about to become a listener myself – and I did not want to arrive with it in my mouth.”

—

Father Volk sat quiet for a long moment.
Then he said: “Absalom – may I ask you one question?”

Absalom said: “One – only one.”

Father Volk said: “What do you think it was?”

Absalom took a long time to answer.
When he did answer – his voice had gone very low – and Father Volk had to lean forward to hear him.

He said: “It was not a demon, Father – because a demon knows the shape of a man and the shape a man makes in the world. This did not. It was not a beast – because a beast has business with the world. It eats – it sleeps – it breeds – it kills to live. This one had no business with any of that.”

“It was not hungry. It was not angry. It was not anything I know how to name in that way.”

“I have thought about it every night for 56 years, Father. And the closest I have come to a thing I can say about it is this: There are places on this earth that were not made for people. There are places where the ground remembers something older than us – older than any of us – older than the Sioux who lived there before we came – and older than whatever lived there before them – and older than any living thing that has ever walked upright on this ground. And once in a great while – when the snow is deep and the wind is still – something in one of those places notices that we are on it – and it takes a look – and then it takes what it wants.”

—

Absalom stopped.
He was quiet for so long that Father Volk thought again that he had gone.

Then Absalom said very softly: “There is one more thing, Father.”

Father Volk said: “Yes.”

Absalom said: “I have thought about this for a long time – and I want you to hear it before I go – because it is the worst part – and I want to say it once and be shut of it.”

“I do not think it was hunting us, Father. I think it was calling us home. I think that thing in the snow – whatever it was – thought that we belonged to it. Thought we had been away for a long time – and it was time we came back.”

“Oo went to it. Cath went to it. Dorsey went to it. Kesler – I believe – went to it. Merritt did not go to it. Merritt kept himself in his chair by the trapper’s fire and would not go.”

“And I have not gone. Not in 56 years. But I have felt it calling, Father – every winter. When the snow gets to a certain kind of depth – and the wind gets to a certain kind of still – I feel it calling – like my mother that night – like Oo’s voice from three sides of the draw. It says: ‘Come home now, Absalom. Supper’s on.’ And it has said that every winter for 56 years.”

“I have not gone. I do not think I will go, Father, when I die. I think when I die I will go where the Lord God will send me – and that will be where I belong. But if I am wrong, Father – and I have been wrong about many things in my life – if I am wrong – and when I die that thing takes me instead – then I want one man on this earth to know it happened. I want one man to know why the last buffalo hunter did not come home. So that maybe – in some little way – it did not win everything.”

“That is why I have told you.”

“That is all I have to say.”

—

Absalom closed his eyes.
His breathing got slower.

Father Volk sat with him for another hour.
He said the prayers for the dying in Latin – in the quiet of the room.

Absalom did not open his eyes again.

Around 3:00 in the morning – Absalom’s breathing stopped.

Father Volk waited a while – and then he got up and he crossed Absalom’s hands on his chest – and he closed the eyes properly.
He put his own crucifix on the pillow beside the old man’s head – because he did not know what else to do.

Then he sat down in the chair again – and he took out his notebook.
He wrote down what he had heard – from memory – as well as he could.

He wrote until the sun came up.

—

Absalom Rutledge is buried in the small Catholic cemetery outside Bellefonte Springs, Wyoming.
His stone gives his years – and nothing else.

There was no next of kin to claim the body – so Vera Holston paid for the burial out of the last of his rent money.
Father Volk said the words over him.

Father Volk did not tell anyone the story for many years.
He kept the notebook in his personal Bible – tucked between the pages – and he took it out only rarely – and he never showed it to any other priest.

He died himself in 1961 of a heart condition in the town of Rock Springs, Wyoming.
He was 65 years old.

His papers were sorted by his younger sister – who came out from Wisconsin to see to it.
She found the notebook inside her brother’s Bible.
She read what was in it.
She did not know what to do with it.

She kept it in her attic for the rest of her own life – and it was found among her things when she in turn passed in the year 1972.

The notebook was donated – along with some other of the family papers – to a small historical society in the Wyoming State Archives – where – presumably – it still sits.

On the last page of it – in a hand that was not steady – Father Volk had written a single line:

“God forgive me. I believed him.”

—

Vera Holston – who kept the boarding house at Bellefonte Springs – lived until the year 1947.

She was asked once by a young woman writing a piece for a county newspaper about the town’s older buildings – whether anything unusual had ever happened at the boarding house.

Vera said: “Only once.”

The young woman said: “What was that?”

Vera said: “There was an old man who died in the back room in December of 1934 – and every winter since – when the snow gets deep and the wind gets very still – along about 3:00 in the morning – I have heard a voice from the back garden calling.”

“It says the same thing every time. It says three words.”

The young woman said: “What three words?”

Vera said: “Come home now.”

The young woman said: “Whose voice is it?”

Vera said: “It is a woman’s voice most winters. Sometimes it is a man’s voice. Once it was a voice I did not know – and it was calling for me. That was the winter of 1940. I did not go to the window.”

The young woman asked her if she had ever gone to see who it was.

Vera said: “No – and I will not. And if you have any sense, young lady – you will not either – because whatever is calling – it is not asking. It is telling you where it thinks you belong. And once you go to the window – once you draw back the curtain – once you let it see you – you see it well.”

“Absalom Rutledge said it best. It is not hunting – it is calling – and I do not much care to be called.”

—

The young woman did not print any of this.
Her editor said it was not the kind of thing that belonged in a piece about old buildings.

But she remembered it.
She wrote it down in her own private notebook.
And 40 years later – when she was an old woman herself – she gave that notebook to a granddaughter.

And it is from that granddaughter that this story eventually came out.

—

So here we are – then – at the end of a story that a man carried for 56 years before he set it down – and that a priest carried for 27 years after him – and that a small-town newspaper woman carried for the rest of her life – without ever being able to print it – and that at last was passed down the line from one keeper to the next – until it reached this microphone – and me – and you.

I do not know what Absalom Rutledge saw in the snow that winter in the year 1878.
I do not think he knew either – in any way that words can go around.

I think what he saw was old – and I think it was there before we were there – and I think it noticed him.
I think it is still there.

And I think on certain winter nights – when the snow gets to a certain kind of depth – and the wind gets to a certain kind of still – and the country goes as quiet as a room with a door shut – it still calls.

I hope wherever you are listening tonight – that you are not in that kind of country.

And if you are – do not go to the window.
Do not draw back the curtain.
Do not answer.

Whatever is calling – it is not asking.