Eye of the Wolf Page 2

  Father John nodded.

  “Good.” Nathan handed him the tape. “It’ll help if the elders hear the message. The voice will send chills down their spines.”

  Father John got to his feet and started for the door.

  “John . . .”

  He turned back.

  Father Nathan gripped the armrests and began leveraging himself upright, his massive chest leaning over the desk. “I don’t like the logic of where this might be going,” he said. “If some crackpot gets his jollies from killing people and leaving the bodies on an old battlefield, there’s no telling how many people might end up dead.”

  2

  THE REDBRICK SENIOR citizens center stood in a snow-covered field off Seventeen-Mile Road, a deserted look about it except for the three pickups parked at various angles in front, as if they’d fallen out of the sky with the snow. Father John pulled in alongside one of the vehicles and hit the off button on the tape player. He’d been playing and replaying the message all the way from St. Aiden’s, searching for the hidden meaning. Where was the meaning? Each time the tape started—This is for the Indian priest—he’d felt the same sense of foreboding. He couldn’t get used to the voice. It always sounded different—the endless changeability of evil.

  He took the tape player, slammed out into the crisp air, and made his way up the sidewalk, his boots kicking up fantails of white powder. A wedge of snow at the edge of the sloped roof threatened to drop onto the little mounds bunched against the building. He yanked open the front door and stepped into a large, open room, redolent of fresh coffee and hot fry bread. The round tables inside the door were vacant, metal chairs tilted on the front legs and pushed against the table edges, but two elders, Ethan Red Bull and Max Whiteman, sat hunched over Styrofoam cups at a table near the window in back. A gray-haired woman leaned into the door from the kitchen on the right and gave him a welcoming wave with a dishcloth as he started around the vacant tables.

  “Help yourself to coffee, Father,” Ethan called out. Both men had shifted in his direction, dark eyes watching him approach. They tossed their heads in unison toward the metal coffeepot and stack of Styrofoam cups on a cart pushed against the side wall, and Father John walked over, poured himself a cup of coffee, and—cup in one hand, tape player in the other—headed back to the elders.

  Max Whiteman nudged a vacant chair away from the table with his boot. “Take a load off your feet,” he said.

  Father John set the coffee mug and player on the table, shrugged out of his jacket, and tossed it onto an adjacent table along with his cowboy hat. Then he took the chair between the two old men. It was hard to tell who was older, Max or Ethan. Both in their eighties, ranchers with cowboy hats perched on white heads and the outdoors etched in brown faces, brought up on stories told by their grandfathers of the days when Arapahos had lived free on the plains, warriors in feathered headdresses thundering across the empty spaces after the buffalo, protecting the villages from enemies.

  “How are you, grandfathers?” Father John said, using the term of respect for men who had reached the fourth hill of life. From the top of the fourth hill, they could see great distances, which in the Arapaho Way, accounted for the wisdom of the elders.

  “Hi’zeti’.” Max shrugged. He was a stocky, compact man with eyes like narrow, black slits in a round, pudgy face, and a large head that sat directly between his shoulders. He had on a dark plaid shirt with the small bronze buffalo of his bolo tie riding halfway down the hump of his chest. “We’re a couple of tough old buzzards,” he went on, nodding at the man across the table. “Ain’t that right?”

  “Gotta be tough to outlast winter.” Ethan Red Bull glanced at the window and the snow clinging to the edges of the pane, then lifted a fist and nudged at the brim of his cowboy hat, freeing tufts of white hair that spilled onto his forehead. He was a slight man, with dark, rheumy eyes, a prominent nose, and ropelike veins that pulsed in his thin neck. “How are things holding up at the mission?”

  Things were holding up fine, Father John said. Then, sipping at his coffee, he launched into the pleasantries, the polite small talk that always preceded the real point of a visit. He talked on about the AA meetings, the religious education classes, the hospitality volunteers who checked on the shut-ins and made sure the elders had food stocked in their cabinets, and the after-school programs for kids, all the while his thoughts circling around the tape in the player that sat in the center of the table.

  After a few minutes, Max rolled his massive head toward the player. “You ain’t fixin’ to play us some opera, are you?” he asked.

  “No opera.” Father John heard the serious note in his voice. He was aware of the elders working on their coffee, the dark eyes following him over the rims of Styrofoam cups. “I met with Father Nathan over at St. Aiden’s this morning,” he said. Then he told the elders about the phone call, the distorted voice, and the cryptic message, and as he talked, he pulled from his shirt pocket the folded piece of paper on which Nathan had written the message. He smoothed it in the middle of the table. Max pushed the paper toward Ethan, a gesture of respect, Father John realized, toward the elder man.

  Ethan stared down at the sheet for several seconds, then slid it back. He waited until Max had read through the message and lifted his eyes before he said, “You got a tape of this?”

  Father John nodded, then pushed the play button and listened to the sounds again: whirring, clicking, and finally the high-pitched, nonhuman voice speaking of bodies, enemy attacks, and death. When the voice stopped, he hit the off button. The tape cut off in the midst of the whir, leaving a sense of vacancy in the room, as if a large, empty space had settled around them. The rattle of metallic pans in the kitchen seemed to come from a long way off. Both of the old men wrapped their fingers around their cups, no longer drinking the coffee, just staring over the rims.

  Father John waited. A long moment passed before Ethan set his cup down, cleared his throat, and said, “What does this tell you?”

  “Somebody could have been killed and left on one of the old battlefields,” Father John said. “I don’t know which battlefield.”

  “More bloodshed.” Max glanced at the other elder. “This here voice”—he flicked his fingers at the tape player—“is an untrue voice, an evil spirit wanting to stir up trouble and bring us more death.”

  Several seconds went by—four, five, six—before Ethan refolded the sheet of paper along the creases and handed it back to Father John. “The bodies gotta get proper burials,” he began, “so the spirits can go to the ancestors and the ancestors’ll recognize them and lead ’em into the afterworld.”

  Father John didn’t say anything. He understood that the elders always insisted that the dead receive proper burials, even bones from the Old Time, uncovered while a road was being built or the earth excavated for a new building, even the bones brought back to the reservation from the shelves of museums where they’d been stored. All were given proper burials, with the sacred red paint placed on the skulls and the smoke of burning cedar and the sound of pounding drums carrying the prayers to the Creator.

  “You take this to the police,” Max said, his gaze still on the tape player, “and they’re gonna say, ‘Bodies on a battlefield? They belong in the Old Time, so why should we worry?’ ”

  “They’re not from the Old Time.” A fierceness had come into Ethan’s tone. The elder pawed at his hat, this time pulling it forward. “This here evil is today. The untrue voice is saying people been killed now. The dead bodies are out there somewhere. You gotta find ’em, Father. You gotta find ’em so the spirits can get some peace.”

  Father John leaned into the back of his chair until the rim cut across his spine. He took a draw of coffee. “The battlefield could be in the area,” he said, threading his way through the logic. “Father Nathan thinks the message was intended for me. I’ve been called the ‘Indian priest.’ ”

  The elders nodded at that.

  “My parishioners are Arapahos.
It could be an Arapaho battlefield.”

  “Could be one of the battles on the Powder River.” Ethan sat back and crossed his arms over his thin chest. “My grandfather was in them battles. Warriors fought the soldiers all over the Powder River country. Soldiers killed a lot of the people. Burned our lodges and took our women and children. Grandfather said the medicine wolves was following the soldiers the whole time, dozens of wolves that made the nights hideous with their howling. Some of the soldiers got so scared, they took off, ’cause they knew them wolves was on the side of Arapahos, and if the warriors didn’t get their revenge, the wolves was gonna get revenge for them.”

  Max drew in a long breath and sipped his coffee a moment. Finally he said, “There was some other battles. Arapahos joined up with the Sioux and Cheyenne and attacked wagon trains and stage stops up and down the Platte River. That’s where the people found my grandfather, a little white boy wandering around lost after the warriors burned a wagon train. One of the warriors lifted him up onto his pony and took him to his lodge and made him his son. Called him Whiteman.” He smiled, squinting into the distance, as if he might see the old man who had passed on the story of how he’d come to the tribe. “Could be one of them battles.”

  “Maybe,” Father John said. He didn’t think so. The Platte was a good hundred miles away.

  Ethan pushed himself to his feet and stood over the table a moment, grasping the edges to steady himself, his breath coming in quick, sharp jabs. “Either you boys want some hot coffee?” he said.

  “No, thanks,” Father John said. Max was shaking his head, a wide hand still wrapped around the Styrofoam cup.

  The other elder went over to the table, listing sideways a little as he planted one boot after the other. He refilled his cup and walked back. When he’d sat down, he said, “Soldiers weren’t the people’s only enemies in the Old Time. All them wagon trains heading across the hunting grounds, white men picking off the buffalo with their Winchesters and chasing the herds so far off the warriors had to ride for days to find ’em—some of them other tribes would’ve just as soon seen us dead, so they’d get whatever buffalo was left after the white people got done. There’s battlefields around here where Indians was fighting Indians.”

  Max was nodding, his chin dipping into his chest. “Arapahos was always having to fight the Utes to keep ’em from making off with our ponies and our women. Then there was the battles we had with . . .” The old man stopped, his gaze fastened on the man across from him.

  “Shoshones,” Ethan said. Stillness settled over the room, like the stillness of night creeping over the plains, when not even the wind makes a sound. “Last fight our people had was out in the badlands by Bates Creek. You know where it is, northeast of the reservation?” He lifted a hand in the direction.

  Father John nodded. Three or four years ago, one of the other elders had taken him out to the site of the Bates Battle—a deep canyon boxed in by steep, rock-strewn bluffs.

  “Massacre is what it was.” Max closed his eyes, as if he were watching the images in his head. “The first light of day was just starting in the sky when the Shoshones come riding into the village. They wasn’t alone. They brought troops with Captain Bates, and they was all firing rifles. They kept firing ’til lots of Arapahos was dead and lots more was wounded. Burned out the lodges, stole the food the people had stored up for winter, stampeded the ponies so the warriors couldn’t hunt. Come close to destroying us. People said the sky turned the color of blood. Wolves was howling something terrible.”

  The old man paused. He opened his eyes and squinted at some point across the room. “We been here on the rez with the Shoshones for a long time now. We was a pitiful bunch when we come straggling in here. Most of the people was more dead than alive, half starved, still mourning over all the relatives killed in the massacre. We been trying to get along with Shoshones ever since and forget about what happened. It’s not good to talk about Bates. It might bring the evil back.”

  Father John picked up the folded sheet of paper and slipped it back inside his shirt pocket, part of the message burning in his mind. The dead lie in the gorge. He looked at Max, then at Ethan. “The Bates Battlefield,” he said, his voice soft with certainty.

  The elders were nodding in unison, as if they had already reached the same conclusion and had been waiting for him to catch up. Neither spoke, and for a long moment, the quiet running through the hall was as chilling as the howl of a wolf.

  Finally Ethan said, “More bloodshed at that terrible place is just gonna bring back all the old evil we been trying to put behind us.”

  Father John got to his feet and leaned over the table, shaking the knobby hands, thanking the old men. Then he grabbed his coat and hat and headed for the door. The Bates Battlefield was in the middle of nowhere, over rough dirt roads that snaked across bluffs and down into valleys. Before he sent a platoon of law enforcement officers into the badlands on a wild-goose chase, he intended to check out the place himself.

  3

  THE MURMUR OF voices ran through the tribal courtroom, and every few minutes a new blast of cold air shot past the opened doors as someone filed inside. Vicky Holden squared the yellow notepad on the table and checked her watch. Almost one. At any moment, the door on the left would swing open and her client, Frankie Montana, would appear. Two tribal attorneys sat at the table across the aisle, pulling papers out of briefcases, heads tilted together in conversation. She glanced back at the knots of people—all related to Frankie, she suspected—settling onto benches arranged like pews in a church. Lucille, Frankie’s mother, was two rows behind. Vicky managed what was meant as an encouraging smile.

  The call had come this morning. Vicky had arrived at the office at seven-thirty, ahead of the secretary, Annie Bosey, who had followed her from the one-woman law practice she’d been struggling to keep afloat to the new firm that she and Adam Lone Eagle had started. Vicky was still shrugging out of her coat when the phone had started to ring. The answering machine would pick up, she remembered thinking. The ringing had stopped. A moment later, it started up again. What was it about an unanswered phone that had always bothered her? The unsettling sense of an emergency at the other end, a dread of the news? She’d reached across the desk and lifted the receiver.

  “Vicky, it’s Lucille. You gotta help us.”

  It had taken a moment to place the name and the voice. Lucille Montana. Lucille Yellow Plume when they’d gone to school together at St. Francis Mission. Vicky hadn’t spoken to the woman since October, the last time Frankie was in trouble.

  “What’s going on?” she’d asked. Six months ago she’d gotten the circuit judge to dismiss a breaking and entering charge against Frankie. The sheriff’s investigators had made the serious mistake of continuing to throw out questions after Frankie—who knew his rights cold—had asked for an attorney. A year ago, there had been a couple of DUIs and an assault complaint. It had taken all of her legal skills to keep the man out of prison. So far he’d spent only a few months in the Fremont County jail and another short time in the tribal jail.

  “The rez police come and arrested Frankie last night” Lucille said. “I told ’em, he’s a good boy, staying out of trouble, hardly drinking anymore.” A rising screech of panic came into the woman’s voice. “It’s harassment, Vicky. That’s all it is. You gotta get him out of jail.”

  “What are the charges?” Vicky kept her own voice calm.

  “They say Frankie assaulted three Shoshones over at Fort Washakie Friday night. Assaulted!” The woman forced a laugh—she might have been clearing her throat. “It was those Shoshones assaulted Frankie. You gotta help him, Vicky. He’s got a right to protect himself.”

  Vicky had told the woman that she’d look into the matter. Then she’d pulled her coat back on, stuffed a notepad inside her briefcase, and headed out of the office and down the flight of stairs to the entry of the office building on Main Street in Lander. She almost collided with Adam—coming through the door, the collar of
his topcoat turned up, flecks of moisture shining in his black hair, the little scar on his face red with cold. A handsome, modern-day warrior, she’d thought, a man that women followed with their eyes when he walked down the street.

  “Whoa!” Adam set both hands on her shoulders, as if she were a pony he wanted to corral. Specks of light flickered in his dark eyes. “You’re going the wrong way.”

  “Frankie Montana’s been arrested,” she’d told him.

  In an instant, the light disappeared and his eyes became opaque. A mixture of disgust and annoyance moved through his expression before his face settled into a blank and unreadable mask, the kind of mask that Indian people had presented to outsiders for centuries. She felt a spark of anger ignite inside her. Whenever she and Adam had a disagreement, he had a way of pulling on that mask reserved for outsiders.

  “I’ll explain later,” she’d said, shouldering past. She hurried down the street and around the corner toward the parking lot where she’d left the Jeep, conscious of Adam’s eyes boring a hole into her back before the door had thudded shut.

  It had taken all morning to go through the legal maneuvers. She’d driven north on the reservation to Fort Washakie and obtained a copy of the charges from the Wind River Police: assault with a deadly weapon—a rifle—a detail that Lucille hadn’t mentioned. Trent Hunter and two brothers, Rex and Joe Crispin, had filed the complaint. All were in their twenties—Frankie’s age, the same age as her own kids, Susan and Lucas, which, she supposed, was one of the reasons why she’d always agreed to defend Frankie, hoping along with Lucille that he’d get his life straightened out. She’d driven to the tribal attorney’s office in Ethete and demanded that Frankie be brought before the judge today—He’d already been held for twenty-four hours. Then she’d gone back to the low, reddish brick building with the sign in front that said, “Wind River Law Enforcement,” where both the police headquarters and the jail were housed. She’d cooled her heels in the hot, cramped entry for what had seemed an hour and had probably been fifteen minutes, checking in at the office on her cell while she waited. “Boy, is Adam in a tear this morning,” Annie had told her, the sound of a pencil tapping against the edge of a desk. “Dumped a pile of work on me and wanted it done yesterday. What’s going on?”