According to Jesse Lasky, vice president of production of Famous Players-Lasky, The Covered Wagon will be the first epic Western to capture the hardships of emigrant wagon trains. Marauding Indians intent upon destroying innocent people accounted for much of the hardships. The studio has assembled 500 wagons for scenes depicting the train winding over the vast and barren prairies. So far the $500,000 budget for The Covered Wagon has risen to almost $800,000. “The Covered Wagon will be the greatest moving picture ever made,” Lasky said. “Jimmie Cruze will take his place among Hollywood’s most celebrated directors.”
One scene features an Indian attack on the 500 wagons camped in a box canyon. The Indians crawled down the rocks wielding their horrible weapons, such as hatchets, spears, and bows and arrows, and emitting bloodcurdling screams to launch the surprise attack. Cameras captured the action and the horrible expressions on the Indians’ faces, as well as the fear on the faces of the innocent white emigrants.
Among the Indians are “buffalo Indians,” old men from the time the tribes survived by hunting buffalo and attacking white wagon trains. “Filming this picture brings back their old memories,” Lasky said.
Col. Tim McCoy, a rancher who served in the Great War, rounded up the Indians and convinced them to play themselves in the movie. “The colonel drove a hard bargain,” Lasky explained. “Indians get paid $5.00 per day, same as white players. They get extra pay for the horses and tipis.”
Father John drained the last of his coffee and read through the next paragraphs:
The filming has taken place in all kinds of weather from blistering sun to snow and blizzards. Dust raised by hundreds of oxen, horses, and the covered wagons lay over the entire location. Lasky said that the cameramen film through the dust, which adds a sense of authenticity.
Premiere of The Covered Wagon will be April 10 at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. Some of the Indians will be on hand to help promote the film.
Father John read through the last sentence again. Charlie Wallowingbull had been among the Arapahos and Shoshones in Hollywood. An Indian, running into some kind of trouble, stepping on someone’s toes, disappearing. There was logic here after all, he thought. The disdain and prejudice toward Indians at the time seeped through the article like a bad odor.
He went back to the list of websites. On the fourth page, he found a site with Arapahos in bold letters and clicked on it.
Col. Tim McCoy enlisted his friends, the Arapahos, for the movie The Covered Wagon in 1922. McCoy later went on to become a major Western actor who starred in more than a hundred films. Many of the Indians he had recruited for The Covered Wagon appeared with him in subsequent films, including Spoilers of the West and End of the Trail.
The silent so-called cowboy-and-Indian films solidified the Western myth for Americans. Cowboys were seen as lone champions of civilization bringing decency and law into a primitive society. Indians were cast in roles of ferocious savages intent upon killing whites and, by extension, civilization itself. Little attempt was made to present the Indian view that they had the right to protect their lands and way of life from the encroaching wagon trains. Yet the Indian actors were willing to play such roles for the money and food they received, much needed on the reservations of the 1920s.
Father John closed the site and perused the rest of the list. Nothing to suggest what may have happened to an Arapaho in Hollywood in the spring of 1923. Except the prejudice that existed, the stereotypical views of savage Indians, and the fact that the movies were more real than life and that most Americans had encountered Indians only in the movies. The thought sent a chill along his spine. Anything might have happened to Charlie Wallowingbull.
He typed in Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre, The Covered Wagon premiere. Another list of websites, shorter this time but all of them looked interesting. He opened one of the sites and read that Tim McCoy and fifty Arapahos and Shoshones had put on a show with Indian dances, drums, and demonstrations of roping and sign language every evening before the movie was shown at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre. The Indian show took place for eight months.
A small photo on the website showed the lobby bill for the performances. Black type splashed over the images of Indians in feathered headdresses and beaded shirts and dresses: Real Indians present authentic Indian culture. Ancient dances and songs. See Indians “talk” sign language.
The Indian show was a hit, according to the website, helping to turn The Covered Wagon into one of Hollywood’s most successful films of the 1920s. A decade later, the film was still ranked among the top five movies in earnings.
Father John navigated to another site, and this was what he wanted, a photo of the Arapahos and Shoshones who had gone to Hollywood. Most were wrapped in blankets. A few wore feathered headdresses. They all wore moccasins. They stood huddled together, staring without expression into the camera, except for three young men standing a little apart on the right. It looked like Goes-in-Lodge in the center, the reserved place of honor for the leading man. He didn’t recognize anyone else. There were no identifications.
He studied the three young men on the right. Possibly Charlie Wallowingbull, William Thunder, and James Painted Brush. It was logical—three friends, standing apart.
“What happened to you, Charlie?” he said out loud. The sound of his voice came back to him out of the silence in the house.
ELEVEN PARISHIONERS AT Mass this morning, scattered about the pews, kneeling, hands clasped over the top of the next pew, jackets unzipped. Old faces and old friends, Father John thought. He had offered the Mass for the soul of Kiki Wallowingbull, and everyone had nodded. Most of the old people who regularly came to daily Mass—pickups banking around Circle Drive in fantails of snow, headlights blinking in the gray light—would be praying for Kiki anyway. The same generation as Andrew and Mamie, mourning their own losses through the years.
He lifted the chalice for the consecration: Take this and eat. This is my body. He held the chalice over the altar, then genuflected. This was always the moment that brought him to himself, the heart of the matter, the reason he had become a priest. He had fought against a vocation. Two, three years spent fighting. The priesthood? It was not his plan. His plan was a doctorate in American history, a teaching position at a small New England college, a wife, and a bunch of kids. His life had stretched in front of him, content and fulfilled.
But always this moment at Mass: This is My Body. You are not alone. I am with you.
He had finally accepted that there was another plan for him, one he had known nothing about and never would have chosen. Working at an Indian mission that he had never heard of, with people he hadn’t known anything about before he had arrived almost ten years ago. Odd how the mission had become his home, the people his family. We go in the way we know not, St. John of the Cross had said.
This is my blood. He lifted the chalice of grape juice that recovering alcoholic priests consecrated in the place of wine and took a sip. Do this in memory of me. Black heads bowed and nodded over the pews. The quiet of early morning invaded the church. He prayed silently: Have mercy on Kiki’s soul.
THE ODORS OF hot bacon and fresh coffee filled the entry as Father John let himself into the residence. Walks-On came running down the hallway. He patted the dog’s head, hung his jacket on the coat tree, and went into the study where he found the photograph he had printed out last night sitting on top of a pile of papers, dark faces staring out of the past. He followed Walks-On back to the kitchen where Elena was at the stove turning strips of bacon, humming softly to herself. Strands of her short, gray hair sprang free from the beaded barrettes she had inserted in the back. She stopped humming and, without glancing around, said, “Help yourself to coffee.”
He filled a mug, poured in enough milk to turn the coffee a caramel color and took a chair at the round table in the center of the kitchen. The Gazette lay folded next to a knife and fork. He pushed the newspaper aside and smoothed out the photo.
“What’s this?�
� Elena set down a plate of bacon, fried eggs, and toast.
“I was hoping you could help me,” he said, sliding the photo in her direction. Elena dropped onto a chair, picked up the photo, and held it close to her face.
“Some of the old Indians that were in the movies,” she said.
He told her it was a photo of the Indians who had spent eight months in Hollywood promoting The Covered Wagon.
She nodded. “I heard about that. Lived in tipis up in a canyon. Rode ponies to Hollywood every night. Made good money, I heard.” She spun the photo across the table. “This about Kiki going off to Hollywood?”
Father John gave her a little smile, took a bite of egg and bacon, and washed it down with coffee. “You must be reading my mind.”
“Kiki got himself killed here ’cause of what he was up to. Selling drugs to his own people. Trouble is, Andrew won’t ever accept the truth, so he says Kiki must’ve gotten killed ’cause of something in Hollywood, just like his father. Only everybody knows that his father ran off and left everything behind. The rez wasn’t good enough for him once he got a taste of Hollywood ways.”
She leaned forward and bit at her lower lip a moment. “I wasn’t gonna say anything, ’cause you shouldn’t say bad things about the dead.” She glanced across the kitchen, a mixture of sympathy and disapproval working through her expression. “You know the way grown-ups talk, then shut up when they see the kids? Well, I heard my father talking with some of the old men that went to the movies. They said that Charlie Wallowingbull didn’t know his place. Come close to getting all of them fired and sent home. They said he got mixed up with one of them white women. A big star, I guess. Somebody no Indian had any right to fool around with.”
“What was her name?”
Elena lifted both shoulders in a weary shrug. “Just some movie actress. I don’t remember her name.”
“Did they say what happened to Charlie?”
“Up and left one day. That’s what I heard. Andrew should just leave it alone, and so should you. Won’t get you nowhere, stirring up a lot of painful memories.”
Father John took another bite of toast and egg. Mixed up with a white woman, he was thinking. No Indian had that kind of right. Then it occurred to him that Charlie might have run off with the white woman. He dismissed the notion. If she were an actress, there probably would have been a lot of publicity and everyone would have known what happened to Charlie.
Then a new thought crept like a shadow at the edge of his mind: What if there had been publicity? Articles in the movie magazines of the time, mentions in the gossip columns. It wouldn’t have been something the Arapahos would have talked about; it would have been hushed up, everyone trying to protect Anna Wallowingbull. Better to let her think Charlie had just walked away alone. Sometime today he would try to find a couple of minutes to check the internet again.
He pushed the photo toward her. “Recognize any faces?” he said.
“Goes-in-Lodge.” Elena set an index finger on the figure in the center. “Those three over here”—she moved her finger to the side—“I’d say Charlie’s one of ’em. The other two are probably William Thunder and James Painted Brush. I heard they was real close.”
“Any idea who Kiki might have talked to on the rez?” he said.
Elena had gotten to her feet and was leaning over, refilling his coffee. She had the same look that came over his mother when she was running out of patience with him. She turned her back on him and jammed the coffeepot into the brewer. “You think he was going around pestering people about what happened to his great-grandfather way back then?”
“Arapahos have long memories.” Father John ate the last bite of eggs and took another drink of coffee.
She had turned around and was smiling at him—the kind of I-give-up smile his mother broke into when he had finally worn her down. He half-expected Elena to throw both hands into the air. “All the same, folks wouldn’t’ve liked getting asked about stuff that happened before they got born. If Kiki bothered them, nobody’s talking about it. Now that he got himself killed, nobody wants the fed out on the stoop every time they open the front door, asking a lot of useless questions.”
Father John tapped his index finger on the images of the three young men. “Kiki might have gone to see some of Thunder’s or Painted Brush’s descendants. Any idea of who might have been willing to talk to him?”
“No Thunder descendants around here.” Elena sat down and peered at the photo again. “Thunder family left the rez a long time ago. They’re Oklahoma Indians now.” She chewed at her lower lip a moment. “I heard somebody named JoEllen Redman is living around here. She’s supposed to be a Thunder, but I never met her. Never comes to the get-togethers or celebrations. But there’s dozens of that Painted Brush clan. No telling which ones Kiki might’ve bothered.” She pushed the photo his way. “You ask me, the only one that might’ve heard anything is Ella Morningstar. If I was looking for one of my ancestors, I’d go see her. Makes it her business to know everything about everybody.”
Father John got to his feet. “Would you mind putting out the word on the moccasin telegraph that I’d like to talk to JoEllen Redman?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Won’t do any good if she don’t wanna talk to you.”
“Thanks,” he said. She would get the word out anyway. He picked up the photo and looked at the image of the elderly Goes-in-Lodge, the man everyone else would look up to, even confide in. He folded the photo and slipped it inside his shirt pocket. Then he thanked Elena and headed down the hallway. He knew Ella Morningstar. She was a descendant of Goes-in-Lodge.
15
IT WAS MID-AFTERNOON—the temperature a frigid twenty-eight degrees, the sky a gunmetal gray, and snow drifting down—before Vicky left the office. They had spent the morning, she and Adam, working on the tribal water case. The water consortium had asked the court for an injunction to prohibit the tribes from selling water to Riverton until the civil case could be heard. All of which meant more documents requesting that the injunction not be granted and reams of paper to protect the rights of the Arapahos and Shoshones to sell or giveaway or do whatever they wished with the water resources on their own reservation.
And Adam’s calm demeanor, the firm set of his jaw, steadying her somehow, as they had worked out the wording in the documents he would file this afternoon. This was what they did best—he hadn’t expressed the thought, but she could see it moving behind his eyes. This was the kind of case that mattered.
The pickup ahead belched black smoke that lay like an oil slick over the snow on Rendezvous Road, the rear wheels spitting back clouds of snow that splattered the Jeep’s windshield. Vicky peered past the wipers and followed the pickup onto Seventeen-Mile Road, past the sign breaking out of the gray light—St. Francis Mission—past the white spire of the church floating among the bare branches of the cottonwoods, past the cemetery.
At the intersection with Highway 789, the pickup turned south and Vicky drove north toward Riverton. Trailer parks, warehouses, and garages flickered past the windows, her thoughts on John O’Malley. He was the way she had remembered, as if six months had melted away and he had never left the rez, never gone to Rome. But it was August then, and now it was winter, and everything had changed. Still, she was so glad he was back. She could be glad for a little while, she told herself. Later, when he left again, she would have to figure out how to be.
She fit the Jeep into the traffic along Federal, passing a truck with a horse trailer that swayed behind, her eyes searching both sides of the street for a nail salon. There were a number of salons. She wasn’t sure which one was new. It could take a while to find the salon where a girl named Dede worked. A strip mall stretched ahead on the left, and she slowed down to read the small sign close to the curb: Pizza, Coffee Shop, Beauty Products, Star Nails. A banner that said New was plastered next to Star Nails. She pulled into the turn lane, waited for three oncoming cars to pass, then turned into the parking lot. It took a moment befor
e she spotted the small shop with a neon-lit star on the plate-glass window. Above the star, in large black letters, was the word Nails. She took a vacant place in front and made her way through the falling snow across the sidewalk that had been shoveled to a thin layer of ice.
The nail salon was a narrow slot fitted between a take-out pizza shop and a shoe repair shop. Inside the odors of hot cheese and spicy tomato sauce mixed with the faint chemical odors of leather and fingernail polish. A glass-fronted counter divided the small entry from the series of stations that ran down one side all the way to the back. Two women with gray hair and sparkling rings sat at the middle stations, hands flattened on white towels. Hunched toward them, stroking red polish on their nails, were two girls who looked about eighteen with big, blond hair, tight tee shirts, and dangly earrings. One of the girls was chewing gum.
Vicky had the feeling that they hadn’t heard her come in, or if they had, they chose not to acknowledge her presence. Finally the girl with the gum looked up, red lips parting in a practiced smile: “Be with you in a few minutes. Pick out your color.” She nodded toward the rack of polishes on the wall next to the counter.
“I’m looking for Dede,” Vicky said.
Both girls stopped polishing and stared at her long enough for the gray-haired women to look around, annoyance creeping into their features.
“Babs!” the girl with chewing gum shouted. The other girl concentrated on the polishing task.
“Babs! Somebody here about Dede.”
A rustling noise came from the back, followed by the sound of a chair scraping a hard floor. A door flung open. An older woman, probably in her fifties, trim and fit-looking in blue jeans and white shirt with stylishly cut dark hair and the air of “manager” about her came down the line of stations. Her cowboy boots rapped out a sharp staccato on the floor.
The Silent Spirit (A Wind River Reservation Myste) Page 14