The hawk turned, uninterested, to investigate more dark shapes emerging from the blinding white horses, their legs collapsed under them, eyes closed forever.” Unmoving cows, statues some on their sides, others standing, all frozen where they were. What seemed like a line of small haystacks were, upon closer inspection as the hawk zeroed in, cows. As his eyes adjusted, however, other secrets were discovered. A fence post here, a clump of bushes there, an upturned wagon, haystacks. So he kept to the south, swooping closer to the ground, and finally the peaceful-seeming landscape gave up some secrets. Misery hung over this landscape like a cloud, even on the sunniest day. The smudges there were tepees, made out of fading buffalo hide, clustered together in groups, the groups too close to those from other tribes, but forced, due to the government, to live together. There, even scrawny squirrels and half-dead rabbits were precious. Land that was overhunted-that land was the Great Sioux Reservation, bordered by the rugged Black Hills on the west, the Missouri River on the east. “But the hawk knew the landscape there were vast areas of it he avoided due to a scarcity of prey.
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