His cousins urged him to stay the night. His route home would take him through Witches’ Walk, they said. But he laughed. Salamanca held nothing to scare anyone who’d been through the war. He put on his army coat and started walking.
In a few yards, he was wondering if there could be anything to worry about. The neighborhood was dark, as if the Seneca knew a witching night. But it was warm and still, and the moon was bright. The young veteran kept walking.
At one point on a dirt road near the Allegheny River, he heard voices from a pasture, speaking in Seneca. He heard the word for apple. He kept still and heard a phrase that sounded like Ak hide nay (“Be quiet!”), and then in Seneca, “There’s someone on the road.” He froze.
“Let’s go to the other end of the field,” another voice said.
“OK,” said the first. “The apples are better there, anyway.” Out of the darkness behind the trees came two horses. They walked peacefully across the pasture.
The soldier ran home. His parents had forgotten to leave the porch light on. He was in such a hurry to get in that he banged his head on the door.
One of our favorite characters from the tales of DuWayne Bowen is this “man the animals talked to.” Bowen always said that the fellow had been real and that he had known him.
The Man the Animals Talked To
(Early Twentieth Century)
In the 1930s an old Seneca man moved to Salamanca from one of the other reservations. He made his way doing odd jobs for a few bucks and the occasional meal. People got to know him through the work he did. He spent most of his time with his animals, several cats, and a pack of dogs. He was a curious character.
He walked wherever he went, a couple of dogs always with him. The understanding between them was uncanny. In his presence, these pets seemed more composed than typical animals. There wasn’t the frisking, the sniffing, the reflexive behavior common to cats and dogs. There was a sense of mission about them.
People passing his house often saw him in his rocker on the porch, animals alwaysnear. Sometimes he spoke to them, always in Seneca. It scared people more to hear that he paused to listen. Others swore they saw the other animals lean in when a single one had its say. People wondered if these were witch animals, but there was no report of trouble from them, and when the old man wasn’t around they acted like well-mannered pets, not wizards in disguise. Word got out that he could talk to animals and that he was the man to call whenever an animal was sick.
Many could recall him leaning near the head of an ailing horse or cow as if conversing with a patient. He usually made up a potion, and most often the animal got well. He never accepted a fee for work like this.
People never visited him after sundown. The lights in his house were never on at night as if he could see in the dark like an animal.
The Dark Gray Stallion
One summer in the 1930s trouble came to the houses on the hill.
At all hours of the night people heard horses’ hooves on the roads and on the wooded paths behind the houses. Soon they started seeing a strange horse. One old woman reported coming out on her porch at night to find a well-groomed, dark gray stallion, standing still and looking at her with a more-than-natural focus. She screamed, and it trotted into the woods.
Her husband came out a night or two later for a pail of water and saw the same horse staring at him. The night after, he looked out and saw it stalking the house. He shined a flashlight through the window at it and it took off.
The community was worried. The old-timers considered this a witch that had come among them in the form of a horse. They were about to call a council of the elders when the man with the dogs paid a visit to the old couple. Some of the neighbors joined in. Everyone told him what they had seen and heard. When they were through, he told them they might see the horse again and that it would be bolder. He didn’t say much when they asked him how he knew.
Two nights later, a loud thump on the side of the house woke the old couple who had first seen the horse. The woman looked out the kitchen window to see the critter looking in, a foot or two away. She let out a yell and it vanished. The next morning, the man with the dogs came back, heard them out, and decided to stay with them that night.
Around sunset he and four of his big dogs came back. He carried a bag, a walking stick, and a hunting knife. He and his dogs sat on the dim back porch and waited.
Around midnight, the dogs perked up their ears. Sure enough, it was the sound of hooves coming down the slope on the path that approached the house. The dogs ran out silently in four directions, and soon the man and woman of the house heard a commotion. They came to the door and looked out on the scene.
Barking, snarling, and snapping from all directions, the dogs had surrounded the horse. It stomped, snorted, and whinnied fiendishly. It reared and lashed out with its hooves, but it could not break away from the dogs. Their owner came out and spoke a single sharp phrase in Seneca, which made the horse stand still and look at him. The man walked into the woods, followed by the horse and its escort of dogs.
The old couple waited on the porch, the man holding his shotgun. In an hour, the four dogs ran back to the house, quaking and looking back into the woods as if they had seen
