The Silent Spirit (A Wind River Reservation Myste)

by Margaret Coel

  “John!”

  “I don’t need a hospital.” He didn’t think any ribs were broken. Bruised, was probably all. He’d had bruised ribs before, the first time when he was nine and crashed his bike, the last time when he collided with a runner during a baseball game his senior year at Boston College. He was in for a long night of pain and sore muscles. The Coke was making him feel a little nauseated.

  “I’m so sorry,” Vicky said.

  “It wasn’t your fault. Bellows didn’t like the way we looked.”

  “No. It was my fault. I dragged you into this. I had to know if Bellows was the guy that contacted me.”

  “And now we know,” he said.

  19

  LIGHTS GLOWED IN a few windows of the apartment building, and the entry was lit up like an aquarium, clouds of condensation on the glass panes. Vicky pulled into her reserved place in the parking lot and watched another tenant pick her way down the sidewalk sheathed in ice and let herself into the entry. The woman bent over the elevator buttons before disappearing past the sliding doors. No one else was around. Green numbers glowed in the dashboard: 12:13. Warm air pumped out of the vents. The deep hush of nighttime and snow settled over the building and the rows of parked vehicles.

  She stared up at the light in the window at the far end of the second floor. She had left the shades open this morning, and after a couple of minutes, she saw Adam stroll past the window. Waiting for her, worried. Angry, more than likely, and he had every right. She should have called this evening and let him know where she was. It was stupid to leave the office early without a word to anyone. Just run off like that, making a dash for her own freedom. Driven by what? The determination to help a man who wouldn’t even give her his name? An Arapaho, like herself, too frightened of the powers of white men to trust anyone.

  She turned off the ignition. The hum of the engine faded, and the vents went quiet. It was surprising how quickly the cold air started to seep inside, breaking through the cracks, drilling past the windows. Still she waited, trying to steady herself for the look on Adam’s face, the disbelief and disappointment in his eyes. And what to say? How to explain? That an anonymous caller had most likely killed Kiki in self-defense, just as he claimed? That the caller was not the drug dealer Jason Bellows? Another wave of relief rolled through her. As long as drugs weren’t involved, she was certain she could help the man. There was every chance he would be exonerated.

  She could imagine the disappointment deepening in Adam’s eyes until they resembled shiny black stones at the bottom of the Little Wind River.

  Vicky got out of the Jeep, and in a couple of minutes she was riding up the elevator, sucking in the warm air and clapping her gloved hands to punctuate the confidence she wished she felt. She walked down the corridor and was about to insert her key in the lock when the door flung open.

  “My God. Where have you been?” Adam invaded the doorway.

  Vicky stepped past him. “Sorry I didn’t call,” she said.

  “I thought we were going to have dinner together.” His voice came from behind as she set her bag on a chair and hung her coat in the closet. This morning dinner had seemed like such a good idea. A chance to talk. Later he would spend the night. They could put themselves back together as a couple. But all of it had left her mind.

  “I am sorry.” She turned toward him. “There was someone I had to see in Riverton.”

  Adam stood still a moment, taking her in, deciding how to understand. Oh, she knew the expression well, the way he looked at a client when he was trying to sift through the half truths and fill in the rest. “Did you eat?” he asked.

  She shrugged. It wasn’t important.

  “I picked up some Chinese,” he began, but she waved away the thought. Somehow it made her stomach churn.

  “We had better talk,” Adam said. He stationed himself on a stool at the counter that separated the small dining room from the even smaller kitchen and nodded toward the vacant stool beside him.

  Maybe you should try . . . John O’Malley’s voice rang in her head. She had told herself she would never again let John O’Malley into her life. She would not go through the pain again, the kind of pain addicts endured in withdrawal that turned them inside out. Yet how quickly she had turned to him. Like falling back into a familiar pattern, a way of walking or seeing, or turning her head. She had left him at the residence and watched him walk up the sidewalk, holding on to his side. She had felt limp with guilt. It had been her decision to go to Tracers, her problem. She shouldn’t have involved him. And yet, for a brief time it had been the way it used to be—she and John O’Malley working together.

  Vicky slid onto the stool and locked eyes with the man next to her: black hair with traces of white shining through, dark complexion and the telescopic gaze that focused on the smallest detail. So handsome that the eyes of women trailed him in every restaurant, every store they went into. He had large, patient hands, clasped together on top of the bar, waiting. He was Lakota, the largest tribe on the plains in the Old Time, the aristocrats of the plains, some historians called them, who ruled by sheer numbers and outrageous courage. All the other tribes, her own people included, tried to avoid them, but that was difficult. They were everywhere. Mostly her people had tried to get along with them.

  She smiled at the idea. Difficult to avoid, so try to get along.

  “What’s funny?” He didn’t sound amused.

  “You and me,” she said. “Arapaho and Lakota.”

  “We were a good team.”

  Were. She said, “I went to talk to Kiki Wallowingbull’s girlfriend. I was hoping she could help identify the caller.”

  Adam spread his hands flat. “I’m not even going to ask how you found Kiki’s girlfriend.”

  “Listen, Adam,” she said. Then she told him the rest of it: how Jason Bellows and Troy Tallfeathers, who had been the firm’s client, had trashed the girl’s house; how she had thought Bellows might be her caller and had gone to Tracers to identify him.

  “My God, Vicky. What are you thinking? You, alone at a place like that?”

  She told him she hadn’t been alone. He got it right away. Face going lighter, almost pale, eyes narrowing into slits.

  “Father O’Malley with us once again,” he said. “You couldn’t have come to me?”

  “I didn’t think you would understand.”

  “Well, you’re right about that.” He gave her a moment, then he said, “Is that it? Anything else I should know about my partner? About our firm?”

  “Bellows isn’t the caller, and I don’t believe drugs were involved in Kiki’s death. The next time the man calls, I’ll try to coax him to come forward. I think he’s telling the truth.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Why do I care about my own people?” She waited a moment, allowing the question to hang between them. “Why do I care that they get justice instead of being screwed over by white laws and white stereotypes that all Indians are drunken bums who deserve to be locked up? So what if an Indian is convicted for a crime he didn’t commit? He probably got away with another crime, so it balances out. Why do I care if that’s the kind of justice we’ve had to live with?”

  “Okay, I get it. You’re a big crusader, you’re going to right all the wrongs. Good. Good.” Adam got to his feet. “We need somebody like you, the Indian Joan of Arc, finally here to save us from the white hordes.”

  “You’d better go,” Vicky said.

  Adam opened the closet door, found his black jacket, and pulled it on. “I’m going to the Crow Reservation tomorrow,” he said, calmer now. The litigator in the courtroom, calm and rational. “The tribal council is considering hiring our firm to advise them on developing the coal on the reservation. I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’m sure you can handle anything else that comes up with the water case.”

  He seemed to be waiting, expecting her to say something—zipping the jacket, pulling on his gloves. Vicky looked away, but he moved to the periphery of
her vision, swinging around, yanking open the door. She couldn’t be the woman, the partner, he wanted. Orbiting around him. She couldn’t go back to the woman she had once been, trying to fit herself around Ben Holden’s whims and demands.

  The floor trembled as the door slammed shut.

  THE COMPUTER SCREEN glowed in the half light of the study. Outside, snow pecked at the window and the wind banged the porch door in back—a steady tapping noise that reverberated through the residence. Father John could hear Walks-On snoring on his rug in the corner. Waves of warm air spewing from the vents alternated with the cold drafts that swept across the floor. He typed in a string of words: Movie actress 1922 The Covered Wagon. He sat as still as he could, waiting. The smallest movement, he had discovered, sent spasms of pain through him despite the tape he had wrapped around his ribs. Bruises the size of fists had blossomed on his skin. He had winced with the pain as he pulled his shirt back on.

  Lines of black type, the keywords in bold, started to materialize on the screen. He read down the lists of websites and clicked on one that looked promising. An article by Walter Winchell culled from Photoplay , with narrow columns, a curlicue font, and two photos framed in black lines, like mortuary photos. A woman with long, curly blond hair and a doll-like face—cupid lips and painted eyebrows—stared out of the photo at the top of the page, looking very much alive. Posing for the photographer like an actress accustomed to taking directions, hands demurely folded in the skirt of a flimsy-looking white dress.

  His mother had kept photos like this in the family album: great-aunts and three- or four-times-removed cousins, posing for some unknown relative with a box camera, the men stiff and formal in buttoned suit coats and high-necked shirt collars, gripping bowler hats over their stomachs; the women beautiful in flowing dresses and wide-brimmed hats. Frozen in time, as if they would go on forever, the sun falling over the smiling faces, the women’s white arms.

  He smiled at the memory. Later, in some history class, he had studied the 1920s, the era when life had changed for American women. Emancipated, free to vote at last, free to find their own way and pursue their own careers. It was the era of Prohibition and bobbed hair, and the Charleston and flaunting the law in speakeasies. And with it all came a new sexual freedom for women.

  Printed in bold under the doll-like face in the photo was the caption: Lasky featured player, Missy Mae Markham, accepts minor role in first Western epic.

  Father John read down the narrow columns:

  Our sources tell us that Missy Mae Markham will appear as an extra in The Covered Wagon! Naturally, when we heard the news, we were determined to bring our readers the story. Now that story can be told.

  Our sources say that Missy Mae Markham turned down the leading role of heroine Molly Wingate on the basis that the part was beneath her. She stormed into Jesse Lasky’s office in the studio at Selma and Vine streets, threw a copy of the script onto the desk, and screamed that she would never stoop to riding outdoors in the sun all day in a covered wagon. Reportedly she told the famous studio head he could find an unknown player for such a lowly part in a foolish movie no one would pay to see.

  As you know, readers, Missy Mae Markham is rumored to have a very powerful, anonymous patron in Hollywood. Consequently, Mr. Lasky had no choice but to honor her outburst. The part of Molly Wingate was given to Lois Wilson. While not an unknown, she has not generated the enthusiasm among moving picture fans that has made Miss Markham a box-office hit. Nevertheless, Miss Wilson is a beautiful and accomplished player.

  Our sources also say that Miss Markham got wind of the fine performance that Miss Wilson was delivering in the role she had turned down. She ordered her chauffeur to drive her to the desert where she notified the director, James Cruze, known to everyone in Hollywood as Jimmie, that she would play Molly Wingate after all. Faced with reshooting at great expense, Mr. Cruze telegraphed Mr. Lasky. Evidently Mr. Lasky sent a messenger to Miss Markham ordering her back to Hollywood. But Miss Markham stamped her little feet and refused to leave. She claimed the desert air was good for her lungs, and she enjoyed meeting new people. We assume she referred to the 500 Indians who are players in The Covered Wagon.

  At long last, a compromise was arranged. Lois Wilson would remain in the heroine’s role, but Miss Markham could have any other role she wished, as long as it did not require extensive reshooting. A press release from the studio said that “Miss Markham has generously agreed to appear in a lesser role than she usually plays to guarantee the success of The Covered Wagon.”

  Look for the familiar blond beauty cradling a baby in the scene at Fort Bridger when The Covered Wagon premieres, dear readers, and remember that you read the real story here.

  Missy Mae Markham. The name was familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, like other names of long-ago movie stars that surfaced from time to time in a book or magazine or in snatches of conversation: Valentino, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin. Father John studied the smiling, doll-like face. Eyes lit with determination and the satisfied look of a child who has thrown a tantrum, gotten her own way, and was already plotting to throw another. He wondered if Missy Mae Markham was the woman Elena had heard rumors about—the white woman Charlie may have gotten involved with.

  He waited a moment for the sharp cut of pain to subside in his ribs, then closed the site and clicked on one with the words in bold type: Trouble on Location of The Covered Wagon. Another Winchell byline in Photoplay materialized. The article was shorter, like a news flash that had made the deadline.

  Trouble brews on the location of The Covered Wagon. Our sources tell us that Missy Mae Markham seems determined to call attention to herself, which can only aggravate the problems that the director, James Cruze, has encountered while shooting an epic Western moving picture on location, such as the constant desert winds, dust raised by 500 wagons and hundreds of horses, and a flood when a lake dam burst and water inundated the tent city where 3,000 people are housed. Not to mention the fact that Mr. Cruze must worry about the equipment, food, lumber, and hundreds of head of stock that had to be transported to the location. Through it all, our sources say that Miss Lois Wilson, despite the fact she suffered frostbite in shooting a scene, has behaved like a true professional.

  We are sorry we cannot report the same for Lasky’s golden girl, Missy Mae Markham. It appears she has turned her attention to the Indians working as players. She has been heard declaring that Arapahos were the handsomest, bravest, and most interesting men she has ever met. (We can only surmise what her patron must think.) Our sources say this development came about after J. Warren Kerrigan, who plays Will Banion, rebuffed Miss Markham’s attention. No doubt a popular player such as Mr. Kerrigan is accustomed to the wiles of beautiful moving picture stars such as Miss Markham and knows they often lead to trouble. It is unfortunate that the Arapahos seem to be unaware of the dangers.

  Need we also mention that, out on the desert, there is little control over alcoholic beverages or other intoxicants with which players like to indulge themselves. Our sources say that night after night, tent city becomes a moving feast of parties, where Orange Blossoms and other stimulants flow freely.

  Perhaps Col. Tim McCoy, the real cowboy hired as technical adviser for the movie, should warn his Indian charges?

  Father John clicked on another site. A full-page layout of photos from Silver Screen magazine came up. At the top was a photo of Missy Mae Markham in a dark dress with a frayed shawl over her shoulders, huddled on a stool in what appeared to be a room in a tenement, the look of a waif about her, except for the pistol gripped in her hands. The caption below said: Missy at work in the studio lot on her new film in which she must defend her honor. The other players need not fear! Missy is an expert marksman who learned to shoot on her daddy’s ranch in Texas.

  The caption beneath the photo on the middle of the page said: Stars arrive for premiere of The Covered Wagon at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre the evening of April 10. The photo showed lanes of a
utomobiles—square-topped sedans with elongated hoods, coupes, Packards, and Model Ts—stopped in front of the theater. Crowds of people stood on each side of a wide carpet that stretched from the street to the theater entrance, heads craned toward the stars walking along the carpet, men in dark tuxedos, women wrapped in furs, jewels gleaming in their hair. Klieg lights lit up the sky like fireworks.

  Yet another photo showed Missy riding in the passenger seat of a light-colored, long-bodied Packard convertible, a white scarf lifting into the air. On April 12, 1923, hundreds of fans lined the streets to welcome Missy and Mr. Jesse Lasky on their arrival in Flagstaff to scout the location for yet another moving picture.

  At the bottom of the page was another photo of Missy Mae Markham, but this one was different. A candid shot taken before she’d had a chance to assume the demure, satisfied pose of a movie star. She stood among a group of Indian men in tanned-hide shirts and trousers and moccasins, black hair tied in braids, headbands with eagle feathers that rose over their heads. She looked small, reaching only to their shoulders despite the high-heeled shoes that poked beneath the hem of the flowing white dress. The Indians looked out at the camera, but she stood sideways, laughing and glancing up at one of the men, as if he had just whispered something surprising in her ear. There was a radiance about her, a white light glowing in the center of the dark faces. The caption read: Missy takes time from a busy shooting schedule at the studio to visit with Arapahos from The Covered Wagon. None of the Arapahos were identified, but Goes-in-Lodge stood in the center, the faintest look of unease etched into the old man’s stoic face. Other buffalo Indians stood on either side. Standing a little apart, close to the movie star, were James Painted Brush, William Thunder, and Charlie Wallowingbull.

  Father John pressed the print key and waited while the printer gyrated and hummed and finally spit out the copies. He studied the photograph. Missy Mae Markham had fixed her eyes on Charlie Wallowingbull.