“What bothers you?”
“Eldon Lone Bear told me the Walking Bears didn’t own their own ranches until Robert’s grandfather managed to cobble together a few dozen acres in the 1950s. He didn’t know of any connection between Cassidy and the Walking Bears, although Cassidy had other friends on the rez. He visited Lone Bear’s grandfather from time to time. Stayed at the ranch when he was on the run from robbing banks. After the Wilcox train robbery, Cassidy hid out with Jesse and Mary Lyons. He had known Mary earlier.”
“You’re saying there had been something between Cassidy and Mary?”
He nodded. “If he did leave a map behind, he might have left it with her. But Mary’s great-granddaughter, Charlotte Hanson, told me she had never heard any family stories about a map.”
Vicky pushed her plate aside, half the hamburger left, the fries untouched. She drank some of the cold, sweet tea. “You think there might be something to the rumors? Robert might have actually found something?”
“The caller said he was murdered. If that’s true, the killer could have been after the treasure.”
“There’s nothing he could do with it for a long while,” Vicky said. Then she told him what Gianelli had said about how difficult it would be to dispose of one-hundred-and-twenty-year-old banknotes and gold coins. “The killer would have to wait until the news about Robert’s death faded away. He would have to take the treasure to another state where people haven’t heard stories about Butch Cassidy’s buried treasure.”
“So the killer has to bide his time, unless the witness decides to come forward or . . .” John O’Malley paused. “There is another option.”
Vicky got it then. All the mysterious phone calls, the pleas for help in bringing a killer to justice; all of it could be a ruse to pressure the killer. “The caller wants a share of the treasure,” she said. “Cut him in, and he’ll shut up about Robert’s death being a homicide. No one will ever know who he is or what he saw. The investigation will grind to a close, and the death will be either unknown or an accident.”
“If that’s so,” John O’Malley said, “he is playing a more dangerous game than we had suspected.”
It was close to five o’clock when Father John pulled into Eldon Lone Bear’s yard. The breeze had gathered force through the afternoon, and now it stirred basketball-sized dust balls around the dirt yard. He turned off the engine and waited. The air was dry and hot, the sun inching west in the vast blue sky. Pagliacci soared around him. Eldon’s pickup stood against the side of the house, which meant that most likely the elder was home. If he was up to company, he would come out.
After he had left Vicky, Father John had spent a couple of hours at the senior center, drinking coffee and playing checkers with Ray Dark Horse. Watching every move because Ray was used to luring opponents into traps that allowed him to clear off the board. Then he had driven to Arapahoe and visited two parishioners, Lucky Nightman, recuperating from surgery, and Janice White Moccasin, left bedridden after a stroke. All the while, trying to ignore the question following him like a shadow: how had a Walking Bear come to possess Butch Cassidy’s map? Because everything they had discussed, he and Vicky, was speculation. Without a genuine map, Robert couldn’t have located the buried treasure. But what if the map was genuine and Robert had managed to find the treasure?
Father John had been heading back to the mission when he decided to veer west toward Lone Bear’s place. Maybe it didn’t matter how Robert’s grandfather got the map, unless the map was genuine. Then it was the logical connection that held everything together.
The front door opened. Lone Bear leaned outside, squinted into the sun, and waved him in.
25
THE OLD MAN bustled about like a kid excited to have company. Obviously he had gotten everything ready, made coffee, carried the mugs into the living room, and set them on the little table next to the sofa before he opened the door. He urged Father John to an upholstered chair, adjusting the cushions first, offered coffee and poured milk into the mug before he handed it to Father John. Finally he sank into the sofa.
Father John sat down on the chair that rode low to the floor; his knees popped up in front of him. He placed his cowboy hat on one knee and took a sip of the coffee. Hot and fresh, with a strong, pungent odor. The polite preliminaries came first: the wind kicking up a howl this afternoon, blowing everything around, the powwow next weekend offering the biggest prizes yet. “Ever thought about taking up dancing?” Eldon’s eyes twinkled, probably at the image of the tall white man stomping through a dance. “You seen enough dances, probably could do the grass dance in your sleep.”
“And probably have, but not in broad daylight.” Father John laughed.
“Sure am glad you put me onto the Cassidy movie they’re making. Been out there most the day, riding Bucky around. I swear that horse took to the camera like a movie star. You should have seen him preening. Thinks he is a movie star, I guess.”
“You’ve been out riding most of the day?” The man was at least eighty-five. A rejuvenated look about him, it was true, but still eighty-five.
Eldon took a long drink of coffee, then set the mug on the table. “The day I can’t ride Bucky over the prairie is the day I’ll be dead.” He smiled. For a second, a distant look came into his eyes, as if he were riding through the past—on the prairie, across the pasture, up into the mountains. A lifetime of rides. “They’re doing good work,” he said. “Intend to tell the real story of Butch Cassidy. Everybody knows he was an outlaw, robbed banks and trains, but that wasn’t all of him. Oh, he ran with a wild bunch, that’s for sure, but he never killed anybody and he kept the rest of the gang from hurting people. Sheriff was killed after the Wilcox robbery, but Butch wasn’t around when that happened. And if he had been, it wouldn’t have happened. Naturally he got blamed, ’cause he was the supposed leader, and if he hadn’t been a good one, a lot of folks would’ve gotten killed.”
Father John finished his coffee and set the mug on the vinyl floor beyond the fringe of the woven rug that connected the chair and sofa. “How much longer will they be filming here?”
“I’m darned if I know. Today Butch, Sundance, and the others were escaping from the posses, riding hard and fast to the rez. Finally lost the posse, but more showed up, figuring Butch would be looking to hide out with friends here. That’s where we got involved . . .”
“We?”
“Raps and Shoshones are showing up with their rides. Want to be in the film.”
“They weren’t keen on the film being made.” Father John could still see the disturbance after Mass, hear some of his parishioners telling the director to go home. He had to admit a surge of tourists prowling through the mountains looking for Butch Cassidy’s treasure was a disturbing idea. “I guess when you agreed to be in the film,” he told the old man, “it made it okay.”
Eldon leaned so far forward, Father John thought for a moment he might fall off the sofa. “People started hearing how much the movie company was paying. That’s what made it okay.” He settled back. “That director, Paxton, kept asking me what I remember about Cassidy. They’re getting ready to shoot scenes in the 1930s when Cassidy came back. Looks like I’m the only Rap alive that remembers him.”
“You believe he came back?”
“Everybody believes he came back, except the historians that get their stories from books. Paxton’s been talking to people around here, and he’s heard a lot of tales about Butch coming back. I remember Butch when he came to my grandfather’s camp. Big white man with a loud laugh. Scared me to death at first. I must’ve been four years old. But he had candy in his pocket, and I sure liked candy. Wore brown trousers, rough kind of material that scratched my legs when I sat on his lap. It was like sitting on a log, his thighs were so big. Chewing on my candy. I couldn’t stop looking at his face. He had more hair than I’d ever seen on a man, covered his cheeks and chin and was real stubbly.
I reached up and patted his chin. He just laughed. I remember his big, bellowing laugh. And my grandfather saying, ‘This here white man is a friend. He helped out the people when we needed help.’” Eldon was shaking his head, remembering. “Refill?” he said, pushing himself forward.
“Let me get it.” Father John set his hat upside down on the floor, got to his feet, and picked up both his mug and Eldon’s. In the kitchen he found the metal coffeepot on the counter next to a box of cereal and a can of pork and beans. He refilled the mugs, took the milk from the refrigerator, and poured a little into his mug, then went back into the living room. He handed Eldon his coffee and sat down with his own.
“Seems to me it would have been dangerous for Butch to come here. There must have been men who would have liked to claim they brought down Butch Cassidy.”
Eldon took a long drink of coffee. “Butch had ties hereabouts, and he was a man that appreciated ties. Came from a Mormon family that he had to stay away from, so having an outlaw son didn’t shame them. He was always looking to replace his family.”
Father John took a sip of his own coffee, the idea of a genuine map and a treasure turning in his mind. “Do you think he came back hoping to find the treasure he buried?”
Eldon went still a moment, then started nodding. “Story I heard, he went camping in the Wind Rivers with some of his friends. His old girlfriend Mary went along. You talk to her people?”
Father John said he had visited Julia Marks at White Pines, but the woman’s memory was gone. “Her daughter, Charlotte, told me it’s possible they’re descended from the daughter Mary had with Butch before he left the area. The child grew up with an Arapaho family on the rez, and Butch never knew about her.”
Eldon was still nodding, as if he were nodding Father John through the story. “I heard the rumors on the telegraph a long time ago. I figure Butch wanted to check up on Mary, so he hid out with her and Jesse after he robbed a train. I heard he came back other times to see her. Last time he came, they were both old, but . . .” He drew in a quick breath that expanded his thin chest. “There’s still life in us old folks. Butch and Mary went hiking into the mountains themselves and left the others at the campsite. Reckon they had a lot of reminiscing to do.” He finished his coffee and set the mug on the table. “Could be Butch was looking for his old treasure. If so, Mary might’ve brought his map along.”
Father John finished his coffee and set the mug back on the floor. “There’s something I don’t understand,” he said. Eldon hunched forward, eyes leveled on him. “It makes sense that Butch would have left a map with Mary, but her great-granddaughter says she never heard anything about a map. As far as she knows, the idea of a Butch Cassidy treasure map was concocted by store owners for the tourists. But Robert Walking Bear believed the map he found in his grandfather’s barn was the original map . . .”
Eldon held up his hand, palm outward. “Don’t believe anything those Walking Bears say. They always been a loose cannon rolling around the rez, taking advantage of folks, claiming things that weren’t true. Robert’s grandfather, Luther, used to claim his grandfather was Butch Cassidy’s best friend. Said he even rode with Cassidy.” He shook his head. “Out-and-out lie. Wasn’t anybody in the gang from around here. Butch came here to be safe, not to find other outlaws.”
“If the Walking Bears weren’t ranching back then, they couldn’t have hidden Butch. I don’t understand how the map came to be in Luther Walking Bear’s barn.”
“You ask me, they stole it. Maybe drew up a map themselves and said it came from Butch.” Eldon lifted a fist in the air. “Oh, I’ve heard how Robert must’ve found the treasure and that’s why he was killed. I don’t believe any of it.”
Father John spent another ten minutes with the old man, chatting about the movie and about a man with a big laugh and stubbly hair on his face. Like a shadow, Father John thought, moving across the rez, the past making itself known. Finally he got to his feet, told Eldon—shifting forward on the sofa—not to get up, and let himself out the door. The wind had died down to a warm breeze that brushed his face and flattened his shirt against his chest. He set his hat firmly on his head and got into the pickup, the cab as hot as a boiler. He had turned on the engine and rolled down the windows when the cell in his shirt pocket started buzzing. “Father John,” he said, holding the cell in one hand, shifting into reverse with the other.
“Mike Denton, state patrol.” An unfamiliar voice, a name he didn’t recognize. “We have a fatal accident on the Loop Road. Arapaho man. We thought you would want to know. We’re about to bring the body out. No ID yet.”
“Where exactly are you?”
The officer gave him the mileage from the turnoff on Highway 26 as Father John backed across Eldon’s yard. He shifted into forward and said that he would be there in twenty minutes.
* * *
THE ROAD TWISTED and turned, lifting itself above the reservation that lay in the distance, rooftops glinting and small tornadoes of dust blowing off the roads. An Arapaho, the officer had said. It could be anyone. A parishioner or a member of the Eagles team who had grown up and was driving in the mountains. A couple of thousand families, and tonight, one of them would be bereft.
He prayed silently as he drove, shunting the conversation with Eldon to the back of his mind and forcing himself to concentrate on the present—the dead man in a vehicle down the mountainside. Let the past take care of the past.
He glimpsed the line of vehicles ahead—SUVs, an ambulance, patrol cars with roof lights flashing—as he came around a curve that swung out over a drop-off. A little creek, icy blue in the distance, bubbled through the valley below. Ahead, the road narrowed into another curve. He could picture an oncoming vehicle veering into the uphill lane, forcing the driver to react quickly, turning the wheel to avoid a head-on crash, and shooting off the mountain. Everything could change in an instant.
He pulled in behind a state patrol vehicle and got out, a familiar uneasiness moving over him. Uniformed officers stood about the vehicles, staring down the mountainside where four men were struggling up the hill, hauling a litter with the lumpy outlines of a body beneath a tarpaulin. Farther down the slope, Father John could see a white truck that looked as if it had run itself out and crashed into a clump of pines, hood pointed downward as if it were bound for the creek. The doors hung open, the sides black with dust, suggesting the truck had rolled before coming to a stop upright. Several men were poking about the vehicle, fastening thick wire cables to the undercarriage and threading them upward to a wrecker that squatted close to the drop-off.
One of the officers broke away and came toward him. “Father O’Malley? I’m Trooper Denton.”
“Thanks for notifying me,” Father John said. “Any idea of who was in the truck?”
“Nothing official yet, but the truck is registered to Dallas Spotted Deer. We found a driver’s license on the body in the same name. Do you know the man?”
“I’ve met him a few times.”
“Then you can confirm the initial ID. How about family? Wife? Children?”
“I don’t believe he was married.” He could picture the man hovering around Ruth Walking Bear after Robert died. Round, pockmarked face, belly that hung over a silver buffalo-head belt buckle, and a lonely, gentle look about him, self-effacing with a kindness in his dark eyes. “He’s a cousin of Robert Walking Bear, who died up here.”
“We’re going to need a family member to come to the morgue and make a positive ID.”
“I can tell Robert’s widow, Ruth.”
There was a palpable relief in the way the officer turned toward the officers struggling over the lip of the road with the litter, as if the matter were settled, the most difficult part taken care of.
“I’d like to bless the body.” Father John stepped past him.
“Sure.” The officer’s voice trailed behind him. “Blessings never hurt anybody.�
�
26
DALLAS SPOTTED DEER dead. No wife or children. Closest relative, the wife of a cousin. A lonely man.
The thoughts tumbled through Father John’s mind as he drove back down the mountain, across town, and onto the reservation, columned in shadow. Stars popped like diamonds in the silvery light of early evening. The image of Dallas Spotted Deer on the litter had imprinted itself in his mind: eyes staring into nothingness, face contorted with bruises and broken bones, the right side of his head smashed in. Dallas had been found half in and half out of the cab, left leg nearly severed beneath the truck. Dear God, have mercy. Mercy. Mercy. All time was present to God. The past, the future, all caught up in the present. Have mercy on him. He prayed out loud for Dallas Spotted Deer then, shocked, terrified, going off the edge, rolling and plummeting down the mountainside, doors flying open.
The state patrol officer assumed Dallas had been drinking. Why would he have taken the curve so close to the edge? Fast enough to go over? Well, the autopsy would show his alcohol level. Another question bothered Father John: what had taken the man up a narrow, steep mountain road in the first place?
* * *
AHEAD, OUT ON the prairie with the darkness coming down, was a small house, lights glowing in the window. Father John slowed for a left turn, then crawled over the borrow ditch, part of him thinking how terrible an accident could be, even a pickup overturning in a borrow ditch. He had seen accidents like that, passengers and drivers taken to the hospital. He stopped next to the front stoop and waited.
The door flung open immediately. Ruth stood in the opening, leaning forward, peering into the night. She let her gaze run over the pickup, leaned out farther and surveyed the yard. Then, a little wave as she drew herself back inside, gripping the edge of the door, her skirt billowing in the breeze.
Father John followed her into the house and closed the door behind him. Ruth had walked into the center of the small living room and turned to face him, shades of surprise and disappointment moving across her face. Finally, she said, “I was expecting someone else.” In the kitchen at the back of the house, Father John could see the table set for two, plates and glasses neatly arranged, napkins tucked at the sides of the plates. A pair of candles stood in the middle of the table. “You being a priest,” she said, “I sure hope you’re not bringing bad news.”
The Man Who Fell from the Sky Page 18