Mysteries In Our National Parks: Ghost Horses: A Mystery in Zion National Park

Ethan stood with his legs spread apart, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes hard. Wind began to blow over the hill, bending the grass toward the ground like stalks of wheat, moving Summer’s hair in dark wisps across her face. Jack wasn’t about to back down, and neither, it seemed, was Ethan. Finally, like clouds parting, Ethan’s face cleared. With what looked almost like a smile, he said, “OK.”

Nothing Ethan could have said would have taken Jack more by surprise. “OK…what?” he asked, still not believing Ethan’s turnaround.

“OK, I’ll try to be friends.” Smiling slyly, he said, “So you want to learn how to dance?”

“Sure,” Ashley answered, nodding eagerly.

“Then I’ll teach you. I’ll teach you and your brother the Ghost Dance.”

Summer pushed the hair off her face, saying, “No, Ethan—”

“Yes. It’s a good dance, very old. Gotta be danced around a cedar tree.” Ethan looked completely different when he smiled. His teeth were white and square in his dark face, but the smile didn’t make it all the way up to his eyes—they still glittered coldly. “Don’t worry,” he told them. “You’ll like the Ghost Dance.” Without another word Ethan spun around and began running through the gravestones, higher and higher in the cemetery grounds until he veered off at the top of the hill. Summer followed him, glancing nervously over her shoulder as she went.

“I guess we’re supposed to go after them,” Ashley said.

“Except there’s no way I’m going to dance. Not here. Not with Ethan.”

Ashley’s voice rose half an octave. “What do you mean? We can’t tell Ethan ‘no’ when he’s finally trying to be nice. You’ve got to.”

“You dance. I’ll watch.”

“No way!” Grabbing the edge of his sleeve, Ashley tugged hard. “Please!” she begged. “Maybe it’ll make us all friends! Besides, at the powwow you said you wished you could dance like them.”

“That’s not the same thing. They had costumes and drums. Out here I feel stupid!”

“No one will see! Besides, our whole trip to Zion will be ruined if we don’t get along with them.”

That much was true. He looked around the cemetery. His parents, still talking, were finally making their way up to Sacagawea’s marker, but beyond them the grounds were completely empty. Jack heaved a sigh. “OK. But if any stranger shows up, I quit. And let go of my sleeve. You’re stretching my shirt.”

As they climbed toward the Ingawanups, Jack noticed that Ethan seemed to be searching for something. After a few minutes he began kicking rocks away from the ground around a small green tree that stood no more than two feet high.

“Hey, watch where you’re kicking those things,” Jack yelled. “One of them nearly hit my sister.”

Summer murmured, “Ethan, maybe we shouldn’t do the Ghost Dance…”

Her brother ignored her. “I just needed to clear some space around this cedar tree. I told you that’s what we’re supposed to dance around—a cedar tree.” Impatiently, he gestured for Jack and Ashley to come closer. “Go ahead,” he told Summer, who asked him, “You sure, Ethan?”

When Ethan nodded, Summer said in her soft voice, “Stand around the tree. Boy, girl, boy, girl. Take hands.” Jack grasped Summer’s hand as if in a handshake, but she shook her head and said, “No, like this,” and twined thin fingers through his.

Since there were only four of them, the circle was small—Summer, Jack, Ashley, Ethan. His voice low, Ethan began to sing:

I’yehe’ Uhi’yeye’heye’

I’yehe’ ha’dawu’hana’ Eye’de’yuhe’yu!

Ni’athu’-a-u’ a’haka’nith’ii

Ahe’yuhe’yu!

Tugging Jack’s hand, Summer moved in a circle from right to left, left foot first, followed by the right one, barely lifting her feet above the ground as they moved. Awkwardly, Jack stumbled along; on his other side, Ashley had caught the motion perfectly and danced as though she’d always done it that way. Ethan’s voice grew louder, pounding each note like a beat on a tom-tom. Jack guessed he was singing the same song over and over, although the words sounded so strange that Jack couldn’t tell whether they were being repeated or not.

He glanced down the hill to the Sacagawea monument, where his mother and father stood looking up at the kids and smiling, probably thinking how sweet it was that the four of them were doing a little circle dance together. Probably figuring that everything was all right now. But was it?

His attention was jerked back to the dance, because Ethan had stopped his chant and Summer began to speak. Her voice soft, her eyes half shut, she murmured, “Grandmother’s grandmother saw the big fire on the mountaintop. Our people were dancing the Ghost Dance. They danced. They danced. The fire burned higher.” Summer spoke in a monotone, her voice neither rising nor falling, but for some reason it made Jack’s scalp prickle.

“Grandmother’s grandmother saw the smoke. It rolled down the mountain. It covered the earth and the people and the animals. No one could see, but they kept dancing. The smoke got thicker. It hid the sky. It hid the earth. It hid the horses, and turned them into ghosts.”

Now Summer spoke in a singsong. “After two days the smoke was gone. After two days the horses were gone. They became ghost horses. But sometimes, when the people danced, the ghost horses returned.”

While she told the tale, Summer’s eyelids drooped lower and lower, while Ashley’s eyes widened until the whites showed. As for Jack, he caught the smell of—no, that was crazy. He couldn’t be smelling smoke—there wasn’t a wisp of it showing anywhere, nothing rising into the perfect blue sky, and from that high on the hill he could see all around. Then Ethan began to sing once more, louder than before,

I’yehe’ Uhi’yeye’heye’

I’yehe’ ha’dawu’hana’ Eye’de’yuhe’yu!

Ni’athu’-a-u’ a’haka’nith’ii

Ahe’yuhe’yu!

By that time, Steven and Olivia had climbed closer to where the kids danced around the little cedar tree. They were still 20 feet away when Ethan stopped abruptly and pulled his hands away from Ashley’s and Summer’s.

“Oh, don’t stop,” Olivia begged. “That was just—charming.”

Ethan turned into stone man again. He didn’t say a word.

“I loved it!” Ashley exclaimed. “Can we do it again? Maybe when we get to Zion National Park? Ethan says we need a cedar tree; I bet there’s lots of cedars in Zion. You’ll do it again, too, won’t you, Jack?”

Jack didn’t know whether he wanted to dance the Ghost Dance again. It made him feel off balance, and not just because of the strange rhythmic words that he couldn’t understand. It was something more, something he couldn’t quite wrap his thoughts around.

But the dance could be a way to keep things smooth between himself and Ethan, and for that reason alone he should agree to do it once more. What did it matter, anyway, if he shuffled around in a circle while Ethan sang, or chanted, or whatever you called it—Jack didn’t know whether the words had any meaning at all.

That part about the horses, though, that Summer told—that part was different. Ghost horses. Ghost horses moving across the empty plains in search of—what? He shivered a little, even though the mid-September sun felt warm on his arms.

“Won’t you, Jack?” Ashley’s voice broke into his thoughts.

“Sure, I’ll dance again,” Jack answered softly. He wasn’t agreeing to make Ashley happy, or to connect with Ethan and Summer or to make the trip to Zion run more smoothly. He would dance to see if in a different setting, under a different sky miles and miles from here, he would still smell that hint of invisible cedar smoke.

CHAPTER THREE

Here we are, riding in an SUV made in Korea, Jack thought. Look at us: two Shoshone kids; my mom, whose four grandparents came from Italy; my dad, with a Norwegian mother and a father who could have been from anywhere, whoever he was—my dad never knew him—and us, Ashley and me. I guess this mixed-up carload is about as American as you can get.

“Hey, what are you thinking about?” Ashley asked him.

“Nothing. Just where things came from.” Stretching his arms, Jack asked, “Hey, Ashley, do you know what they first named this park, before they changed it to Zion?”

“I don’t know,” Ashley shrugged. “What?”

“It was Mukuntuweap National Monument, in 1909. It didn’t get named ‘Zion’ until 1919.”