17
October 1907
JESSE WHITE OWL squinted into the cold and, hunched inside his canvas great coat, guided the mare through Fort Washakie. Past the Wind River boarding school, the agent’s cabin, the stone dormitory where the soldiers lived. The brittle air deadened the sound of the mare’s hooves. He reined in at the hitching post in front of the yellowish stone building that was the Wind River Agency. In the yard off to the side, clumps of wooden beams held upright with iron plates stood silhouetted against the gray sky. Hanging from the beam, moving in the wind, were three ropes frozen into nooses.
Jesse looked away from the scaffolding. Yesterday after he came down from the mountains, he’d stopped at the Mercantile store. He’d wanted the news, and Indians were always hanging around the Mercantile ready to pass on the gossip. The magistrate had come from Lander the day before yesterday, he’d learned. People had jammed the agency building and crowded onto the porch and spilled out onto the grounds, demanding justice for Bashful.
It had given Jesse a sense of relief—the anger that had swept over the reservation. He’d felt the force of the anger in the men leaning against the counter, telling what had happened. Witnesses had stood up, one after the other. They had been in the photographer’s village, they said. Even Carston Evans had stood up. They had all seen what happened, and they spoke the truth of how the warriors had galloped into the village, pointing their Winchester 73s into the sky, firing blanks—cartridges of black powder and wads of cardboard—and how everyone had started screaming and running, death at their backs.
It was Thunder who had galloped up to Bashful’s tipi. When he rode off, Bashful was dead. The magistrate said Thunder was guilty of murder. The other warriors were accomplices, were they not? They rode with Thunder, didn’t they? They must have known what Thunder intended to do. Everyone at the agency had shouted, “Yes! Yes!” The magistrate had handed down the sentence: The three warriors would be hanged the day after tomorrow.
Now Jesse made his way across the porch of the agency building and let himself through the heavy wooden door. The hinges squealed like a trapped animal. The killers would not be needing the contraption outside. He could feel the weight of the Colt .32 automatic pistol—no bigger than his hand—jammed inside his boot against his ankle.
Inside, boots had carved a groove down the middle of the wood floor all the way to the office on the far side of the entry. Jesse could see the agent, Mike Fleming, a slight-framed white man with strips of gray hair combed over the top of his scalp. He was seated at the desk, pouring over an opened ledger book.
“What is it?” The white man did not look up. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“It’s important, Mr. Fleming,” Jesse said.
The white man lifted his head, a slow movement that looked as if it took place with some pain. “Jesus, Jesse. You know you Indians need an appointment.” He peered over the top of round, rimless spectacles and drew his mouth into a thin line of disapproval. “You can’t barge in anytime the mood strikes you. I got work to do. We got three executions scheduled for day after tomorrow. Where were you during the trial? You seen it all, I dare say, working with Curtis like you was. Could’ve been some help if you’d been here to tell your story. You get scared of talking to the federal magistrate?”
Jesse held his cowboy hat in both hands in front of his stomach, the perfect picture of contrition, he thought, the image of a humble, hapless Indian the agent wanted to see. “I feel real bad about it. I hear Bashful’s killers are gonna get what’s coming to them.”
“You bet they are. Magistrate wants to make an example of them. We can’t have Indians getting themselves up in regalia and acting like savages. Attacking village . . .” He broke off, shaking his head. “If I’d had any idea what Curtis was up to, I would’ve put a stop to the project, that’s for certain. What d’ya want, Jesse, now that you’re here?”
“I was thinking to have a few words with Thunder and the others,” Jesse said, bending forward a little, not as straight and tall as usual.
“Can’t happen, Jesse. You know the rules. No visitors except family before an execution.” The agent looked down at the ledger book and gave him a little wave, as if he were flicking away a pesky fly. “Go on, get outta here.”
“I got a message for Thunder,” Jesse pushed on. “It’s from Bashful.”
“You got a message from Bashful?” The white man’s head jerked back up. “Before she was killed?”
“Day before yesterday,” he said.
“You got a message from a dead woman?”
“I been in the mountains and I had a vision. Bashful come to me and give me a message for Thunder. Man’s gonna die in two days . . .” He could sense the agent’s interest. It was a wedge that he pushed into. “Man’s gonna die, could give him some comfort, Mr. Fleming. Let the poor man die with a little comfort.”
“I never know when you Indians are bullshitting me, Jesse. You on the level?”
Jesse waited a couple of beats. “I want all of ’em to pay for Bashful’s death,” he said. “Still, won’t do no harm to let ’em go into the sky world feeling a little better.”
“I suppose she forgives them?”
“She was a kind woman.”
“You loved her, didn’t you? Always thought you and Bashful should’ve gotten married, but her being a chief’s daughter made her pretty high up.” He laughed, his head bobbing in rhythm to the guttural noises coming from his throat. “Even Indians got their upper classes. So what happened? Her brother, Stands-Alone, refuse to give you permission and married her off to a white man instead?”
The agent pushed back from the desk and lifted himself to his feet. His chest looked caved in below the chickenlike neck. Arms as thin as twigs inside the sleeves of his white shirt hung at his sides. He could crush the man, Jesse was thinking, with his hands.
“What do you say, Mr. Fleming? Can I have a few minutes with Thunder?”
“Yeah, what the hell. Messages from the dead.” Shaking his head, the agent came around the desk. His face was so close that Jesse could smell the sourness of the man’s breath. “Five minutes, Jesse. You sure you ain’t up to something?”
“Just delivering a message.”
“Well, I gotta pat you down. Spread eagle . . .” The agent nodded toward the wall. “Gotta make sure you ain’t packing any weapons.”
Jesse turned around and, spreading his arms and legs, set his hands hard against the wall. The agent’s bony fingers ran down his arms, punched through his jacket into his stomach and ribs, and started working along his pant legs. Jesse held his breath. The fingers were on his calves now, above his boots.
They stopped moving.
“Okay, you’re clean.” The agent’s voice sounded hollow behind him. “Watch yourself. Jesse. You’re going in with three killers.”
“I know them,” Jesse said. He followed the man down a hall to the back of the building. In the corner was a door made of iron bars. The agent yanked at the gold chain on his belt until he was fingering a long, gold key at the end. He jammed the key into the door and kicked it open.
“This is your lucky day,” he shouted. “Jesse White Owl’s here with a message from the beyond, where you bastards are going real soon.”
Jesse stepped past the man into a room about the size of the agent’s office. He could feel the pistol scrape against his ankle. Thunder stood at the small window, staring past the bars at the scaffolding outside. The other warriors were on the bunks against the stone wall on the right. Ben Franklin sat on the lower bunk, his face in his hands. On the top bunk, Alvin Pretty Lodge was curled toward the wall. The strip of brown skin between the tail of his shirt and the band of his blue jeans made Jesse wince. He didn’t know these men at all. They weren’t brave warriors, with paint on their bodies and rifles waving overhead. This was who they really were: cowards who attacked villages and killed women.
Cowards who killed Bashful.
He would have to make
the shots count. One shot in the forehead for each of the cowards; one for himself.
Thunder was coming across the cell toward him, arms outstretched. “I do not come as a friend,” Jesse said.
The Indian stopped in place, surprise flowing through the despair in his expression. Everything about him looked hopeless: the angle of his shoulders, the slight bend in his back, the way his face fell forward, black eyes studying the ground. “I’m sorry for your loss, Jesse,” he said. “She was beautiful, and I know you loved her.”
“Why?” Jesse heard the hopelessness in his own voice. “I want to go to the sky world with her. I want to tell her why she died. What happened? Did you punish her for marrying a white man?” Jesse went on, all the explanations that he’d gone over in his mind. He was barely aware of Franklin getting to his feet, Pretty Lodge pulling himself upright against the headboard. He moved in closer. “You loved her, too, didn’t you, Thunder? Is that why you shot her? Because her eyes never looked on scum like you?”
Thunder moved backward. “You’re a crazy Indian, Jesse. You’d better go on and get outta here.”
“I have to know!” Jesse was shouting now, the words spitting like gravel from his throat. Pretty Lodge jumped off the top bunk and lined up next to Franklin, cowards all of them.
“Everything okay back there, Jesse?” The agent sounded far away, his voice muffled and thin.
“Yeah, everything’s fine,” Jesse yelled. “Just having a last talk.”
“Two more minutes and you gotta wind it up.”
Jesse glanced from Thunder to the other Indians and, reaching down, pulled the pistol out of his boot. He straightened up slowly, keeping the gun on Thunder. “Tell me,” he said, his teeth clenched. “In the name of the Creator and all of the spirits, before we all die, tell me why you killed Bashful.”
Thunder didn’t take his eyes from the pistol. “You gonna shoot us, Jesse? Go ahead. Pull the trigger.” He threw his head toward the window with the bars across the glass and the scaffold beyond. “You think we want to die out there, get our necks broke like sheep? Go ahead and kill us now, Jesse. You’ll be doing us a favor.”
Jesse let his gaze take in the cowards on his right, perspiration rolling on their foreheads. Then he locked eyes again with Thunder. “Why did you kill her?”
The Indian drew the palm of his hand down over his nose and chin. “Our families were in them tipis, Jesse, our little children. Don’t matter how authentic the photographer wanted the photos, we was shooting blanks into the air.”
“You can’t fool me, Thunder.” The trigger felt like ice against Jesse’s finger. “There were witnesses that saw you riding up close to Bashful.”
“I got my wife and little boy in the tipi next to Bashful’s. You think I was shooting when I rode close?”
The smallest pressure, Jesse was thinking, a tightening of his forefinger and the bullet would smash into the man’s head.
But he didn’t know . . . he didn’t know the man.
“I swear to you by the ancestors,” Thunder said. “I swear I didn’t kill Bashful.”
“How did it happen?” Jesse heard the crack in his voice. They were coming to him again, the images he’d tried to block from his mind. The warriors racing into the village, people scattering. The rifle blasts, one on top of another, the sounds of screaming, the puffs of gray smoke and the odors of rotten eggs. He’d been concentrating on the glass plates. Removing the holders with the exposed plates from the camera, shoving other holders into Curtis’s hands as fast as he could, so that the photographer could make his images. Shooting off his own rifle when the photographer yelled, “Stop.” He hadn’t seen . . .
“Shoot us, Jesse.” Thunder said. “Be done with it.”
Jesse dropped his arm. The Colt brushed against his pant leg. “I swore to kill the man that killed Bashful,” he said. “We’re gonna leave here now. I’m gonna tell the agent I’m all done. Soon’s he opens the door, I show him the gun and we’ll go.”
“Where we gonna go, Jesse?” Thunder asked. “There’ll be a posse out before we get half mile down the road. If the posse don’t get us, Bashful’s clan’ll come after us. Stands-Alone’ll hunt us down. Where we gonna hide? We’re dead men, Jesse, and you’ll be dead with us. Stay alive, Jesse. Find Bashful’s killer so folks’ll know who did that terrible thing.”
Jesse turned toward the bunks. “You wanna come?”
The other men were shaking their heads in unison. “We ride with Thunder,” Franklin said.
Jesse jammed the pistol into his jacket pocket, then stepped back and shouted out into the hallway. He grabbed hold of the bars and leaned his forehead against the cold iron.
It seemed a long time before boots clacked on the plank floor, coming closer. Finally, the clink of the key in the lock, the door squeaking open. Jesse made his way back down the hall and out the door into the cool afternoon.
18
VICKY SPOTTED ADAM through the dim light and the blue smoke hanging over the tables in the restaurant. He was in the last booth along the left wall: Indian man in mid-forties, black-haired, square-jawed, wearing a dark sweater with the light collar of his shirt visible, emphasizing the copper tone of his skin. He looked self-possessed and strong. She couldn’t imagine Adam Lone Eagle ever doubting himself.
“I’m meeting a friend.” Vicky smiled at the heavy-set blond hostess with bright red lipstick who had lifted a menu off the podium at the entrance.
The woman threw a glance over one shoulder toward the dining room. “The gentleman in back?” she asked, the faintest note of disappointment ringing in her tone.
Vicky shrugged out of her coat and hung it on a rack with the other coats, then she started into the dining room, working her way past the tables covered with plates of steak and baked potatoes and baskets of bread. Candles flickered in tiny, round vases. Most of the diners were white—a mixture of couples and families—but a few Indian families were scattered about. Dishes and silverware clanked over the din of conversation. The whole room was wrapped in the odors of seared meat, melted butter, and smoke.
Adam was on his feet when she reached the booth. “Sorry I’m late,” she said, aware of the heads swiveling around, the eyes trained on them as Adam leaned toward her and brushed his lips against her cheek.
He ushered her into the booth, then slid across from her. “I was starting to worry that you wouldn’t come,” he said, before launching into the small talk—the polite preliminaries to whatever he’d wanted to talk to her about. Recommending items on the menu. Commenting that winter was on the way. Vicky tried to follow along. Nodding. Nodding. It was no good. The image of T.J. insisting that he had an alibi was burned into the inside of her eyelids.
“What is it?” Adam asked, after the waitress had taken their orders: two small filets, medium. There were pinpricks of candlelight in his brown eyes.
Vicky sat back. “Am I so transparent?”
“Like the glass around this candle,” he said, running a finger around the rim of the vase.
“What happens,” she began, “if you find out a client has been lying to you and . . .” She hesitated, then plunged on. “He could be guilty.”
“We’re talking about T.J. Painted Horse?”
Vicky glanced away. She shouldn’t have started this. “A hypothetical question, Adam. Forget it. It’s not important.”
“Not important? I can see it all over your face.” Adam sat back, not taking his eyes from her. “It’s filled up your thoughts. So let’s talk about this hypothetical client of yours. He’s lied to you, which means he hasn’t admitted to committing the crime. So you give him the best damn defense you can. Make the prosecutor prove the case point by point.” Adam shifted forward, a defense lawyer warming up to the summation. “Even guilty clients have the right to a fair trial and a damn good lawyer.”
The waitress emerged out of the blur of diners beyond the booth. Hosting a tray with one hand, she opened the stand with the other, slid the tray o
n top, and began delivering plates of filet and potatoes, sides of salads, a basket with bread poking out of the napkin.
“It’s not that simple, Adam.” Vicky sliced into the potato and watched the melted butter and sour cream dribble into the slice. T.J. killed his wife! “I don’t want to help a murderer go free.”
“Well, we don’t always know who’s guilty, do we?” Adam shrugged and gave her a smile that, she realized, was meant to encourage her. “I have a proposal for you,” he said. “I think that we’d make an unbeatable team.”
Vicky took a bite of her own steak. She had to force it down. “Team?” she said after a moment.
“We complement each other.” He leaned over the table, so close that the candle light danced over the tiny scar that ran along his cheek. “I always liked that word. Complement. Complete. You’re a sensitive lawyer. You don’t like the idea of murderers running around. I’m the pragmatic type. Sometimes murderers go free. That’s the way it is.” Moving even closer, lowering his voice until it was almost a whisper, he said, “I’m making you a business proposal, Vicky. I’ve been thinking about leaving my firm in Casper and concentrating on Indian law. How about forming a firm together in Lander?”
“A business proposal.” Vicky repeated the words, trying to wrap her mind around the idea. She shifted her gaze to the top of the booth beyond the man’s shoulder. What had she been thinking? That Adam was interested in her? Attracted to her? Dinners together, telephone calls. The friendly kiss when she’d arrived, and all the time he’d been scouting out a new law partner, a business associate.
“Strictly business. We can make ourselves experts in Indian law. Water. Oil. Gas. The Arapaho tribe will no longer have to go to Cheyenne to find experts. We’ll be stronger together than alone. You’re Arapaho, but you’re a woman. I’m an outsider, but I’m still native. We cancel out each other’s weaknesses.” He paused for a moment, then hurried on. “And we’ll be able to talk to each other about our cases. No more hypothetical clients. Think about it, Vicky. It’s not easy practicing alone.”
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