The Thunder Keeper

by Margaret Coel

She started walking, glancing now and then at the GPS in her hand. He stayed in step beside her. The wild grasses and brush spreading across the valley were dappled in sunlight. Clouds as white as snow billowed over the mountain peaks.

  They headed in a slightly different direction than he would have chosen. He’d seen the movement when he’d first gone to the ledge. He was pretty sure he could find the pipe without the gadget, but it was probably taking them by the most direct route.

  “I’ll be moving back,” Vicky said. She kept her eyes straight ahead.

  “When?” He wasn’t surprised. The moccasin telegraph had been weighted down with rumors: she was moving this weekend, next weekend, next year.

  “Next month.” She stopped walking and looked around, taking into herself the mountains and cliffs, the creeks meandering through the valley to the lake. “This is mine,” she said.

  “What about Lucas?”

  “He’s all for it. We’ve had long talks, he and I. He thinks I’ll be safer here, where his father is.” She gave a little laugh and started out again.

  Father John walked alongside her without saying anything. He knew she’d gone to Denver to get away from Ben Holden. He wondered where he’d be next month. At St. Francis, he hoped, but he could never be certain. He was on borrowed time here. Every day precious, to be enjoyed while it lasted.

  “I have some business to finish up at the firm,” Vicky went on. She swung her backpack around, removed a bottle of water, and took a long drink. Then she handed the bottle to him. Her lipstick on the rim had a sweet taste. “But now that the appellate court has overturned the ruling in the Navajo Nation case . . .”

  “Congratulations,” he said. He’d read about the ruling in the Gazette a week ago.

  She gave him a smile that betrayed her satisfaction. “Anyway,” she went on, “the firm doesn’t have any other important cases affecting Indian people at the moment. A good time to come home.”

  She drew in a long breath. “Even after I get back, I’ll have to return to Denver to testify at the trials of Baider and Kurt. They’re looking at the death penalty, and that’s before Wyoming gets a shot at them.”

  Father John didn’t say anything for a moment. He was thinking of Jimmie Delaney. He’d visited the man yesterday. Shrunken with remorse against the cement wall of a cell at the county jail in Lander, he’d pleaded guilty to accessory to murder, conspiracy, assault. After he testified against his bosses, he’d probably be sentenced to a long prison term.

  They were headed up an incline now, and Father John felt the same pull in his calves he’d felt running up the mountain to the ledge. It had been raining then and dark. Now the sun burned warm through the shoulders of his jacket, despite the clouds building over the mountains. In the distance, he could hear the faintest rumble of thunder, sputtering like an engine trying to turn over. It would rain later.

  Vicky dropped down on a boulder and took another drink. A little row of perspiration glistened on her forehead, just below her hairline. He sat next to her and took a drink after she’d finished.

  “What about the lawsuit?” she said.

  He took a moment before answering. “We’re going to settle with the woman.”

  “What?” Vicky turned toward him. “She followed Father Ryan here. That hardly makes her an innocent party. You might have won in court.”

  “So the lawyers say.”

  “Well, who suggested settling?” She stared at him a moment. “Why?”

  Father John shrugged. “The man made promises he couldn’t keep. She believed him, gave up her job, moved to Riverton. It’ll take her a while to get over it.” He held her gaze a moment. “A man shouldn’t do that to a woman,” he said.

  “Oh, John.” She shook her head. “Some developer will put up a box store on the land and cover the earth with an asphalt parking lot.”

  “Maybe not,” he said. “The Provincial’s trying to convince a wealthy benefactor to buy the land and donate it back to the mission.”

  “You have the luck of the Irish, John O’Malley.”

  “Yes,” he said. “And usually it’s—”

  “Well, let’s hope this time it’ll be good.” She stood up. “The GPS says we have another couple miles. We’d better get going before it rains.”

  He followed her up another incline. On the far side, he could see the parallel tracks of flattened grasses and scrub brush. The tracks wound to the left, but Vicky continued straight ahead: the direct route, guided by an invisible satellite.

  They were in a wide meadow now, mountains curving around the far side. Vicky stopped and studied the GPS a moment, then walked past a grove of willows and stopped again. He followed.

  Erupting through the grass and brush, barely visible, was a large circle of gray-black rocks. In the center, a slight depression where the earth had a bluish cast.

  Father John stooped down and picked up a rock the size of his hand. He turned it over, testing the weight and heft. It looked like hardened lava. “Hard to believe diamonds make their home in such simple rock,” he said. Like the spirits, he was thinking, in the sandstone cliffs.

  Vicky started walking again, holding out the GPS. He went after her. “Baider’s crew was digging here.” She gestured toward a small area. The earth had been tamped down, and clusters of wild grasses struggled to get a foothold, unlike the grass flourishing nearby.

  “Looks as if Gus Iron Bear and the other elders had the damage repaired,” he said.

  Vicky stooped over and brushed at the stand of new grass. It sprang up under her hand. She stood up and turned toward him. “Maybe the spirits repaired the damage. This is their home.”

  She smiled and went on: “What if the spirits played a trick on Baider and his crew? What if the spirits salted the area?”

  He held her eyes. “You mean, put the lesser-quality diamonds near the surface where they’d find them and hid the gem-quality stones far below?”

  “Well, Father O’Malley,” she said, “what does your Jesuit logic say to that?”

  “It says we don’t know everything.”

  She started laughing, and the sound of her laughter mingled with the first clap of thunder over the mountaintops, like the pounding of horses’ hooves far away, drawing closer.

  He said, “Jesuit logic also says it’s going to rain.”

  She shook her head. “It’s only thunder guarding this place.”

  “All the same, we’d better start back.”

  “We’re walking softly here,” she said, taking his arm as they started back across the meadow, retracing their steps. “We don’t have anything to fear. Thunder won’t harm us.”

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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