Nothing Is Impossible: Further Problems for Dr. Sam Hawthorne

by Hoch Edward D.

  “That’s a lot of skins,” he commented to Landsman. He’d never taken the time to study a tepee up close before.

  “About forty, mainly buffalo. I gave Running Elk the poles myself, from a shipment of California wood the Army couldn’t use. Fine old oleander. It’s a bush, really, but out there they grow to the size of trees.”

  “Who are these spirits supposed to be?”

  “Who knows? Kinsmen, enemies killed in battle. They hear noises sometimes but I tell them it’s the wind.”

  “What’s wrong with Running Elk?”

  “Old age, mostly. There’s no doubt he’s a sick man.”

  “Is Lakwella his daughter?”

  The sutler’s voice dropped to a whisper. “No, she’s his daughter-in-law, Running Cloud’s wife. It’s good that she cares for the old man. His wife, Running Cloud’s mother, was the first to die from the evil spirits.”

  “That’s a terrible scar on her face.”

  Landsman nodded. “Her husband did it.”

  “My God! Running Cloud?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But why?”

  The bearded man shrugged. “Among the Sioux, disfigurement is the standard punishment for infidelity in marriage.”

  Lakwella came around the side of the wagon just then. “Will you both stay and eat with us?” she asked. “Running Elk requests it, and I know it would please him.”

  Ben and the sutler exchanged glances. “We’d be pleased to,” Landsman answered for them both. “I’m in no hurry to reach the next fort.”

  The meal was roasted buffalo meat, and Ben found it tastier than usual. He complimented Lakwella, who’d done the cooking, and she smiled with pleasure. The heat of the fire had turned her scar a bright red, but she seemed unaware of it.

  “Tell me about the ghost in your tepee,” Ben asked as they were finishing the last of the meat.

  Old Running Elk sighed. “It is why I am isolated like this, cast off over the hill from the others. They fear this space within my tepee.”

  “May I see it?” Ben asked. They were eating outside, around the campfire. Though it was nearly evening, the air was still warm. The summer flies had stayed away because of the fire, and Ben found it to be a pleasant interlude on his ride north. Now, however, he accepted the wave of the old Indian’s hand as permission to enter the tepee. He knew he was involving himself in something that was none of his concern, but the idea of a haunted tepee was irresistible.

  The tepee was roomier than he’d expected. He could stand upright in the entire center portion. Bedding was kept along the edges, along with food and supplies. Lakwella had accompanied him inside and she pointed to the open flaps at the top for ventilation. “We need those when a fire is burning. The smoke goes right out.”

  “Do you sleep here often?”

  “Most nights, yes.” She touched her face. “For the past six months.”

  “You are married to Running Cloud?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does he sleep here, too?”

  “No. He will not until I ask him, and I have not done that.”

  “I’m sorry about your face,” Ben said. “The sutler told me what happened.”

  “He should not bother others with my problems.” She peered up at what was visible of the sky above them. “The sounds come only when the wind blows. I know it is these poles. Perhaps they have worm holes that cause the noise.”

  “Perhaps the worm itself comes out by moonlight to kill those who sleep here.”

  She frowned. “You are a foolish man. There is nothing humorous about death.”

  “How many have died here?”

  Lakwella held up three fingers. “The first was Running Elk’s wife, soon after he began using the new tepee—almost a year ago. Then there was his son, Black Elk. After that, my baby died.”

  “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have asked if I’d known.”

  “The medicine man, Blue Fox, says it is a haunt and he can do nothing. He says the tepee is possessed by the spirit of a dead chieftain who was buried under the spot where it first rested for a night. The others believe that and stay away. They make us camp away from them so no children will wander into our tepee by accident.”

  “Do you believe it?”

  “Would I stay here if I believed it?”

  Ben couldn’t help staring at her scarred face as he responded. “You might if you no longer cared about living.”

  Suddenly Lakwella looked toward the campfire outside, alert to some change. She went to stand beside her father-in-law and Ben followed. A half dozen braves had appeared over the rim of the hill, riding back toward camp. One horseman pulled a platform made of poles lashed together, on which rested the carcass of a buffalo. As they passed, Running Elk stood in tribute and called out a greeting in the Dakota tongue. One of the horsemen, a handsome brave a bit older than the others, detached himself from the group and rode over to the tepee. He greeted them all. “This is Blue Fox,” Lakwella said. “He is our medicine man.”

  “Ben Snow.” Ben gave the sign of greeting. “I am a traveler, heading north.”

  Blue Fox nodded. Then turning to Running Elk he asked, “How are you today, old man?”

  “The chill has me—even when it is warm. But I will survive to see another winter.”

  “Will you hunt here all summer?” Ben asked Blue Fox.

  “As long as the buffalo run. Then we will journey to the winter camp at Wounded Knee, where others will join us.”

  He was about to ride away when Lakwella said to him, “Tell Running Cloud that I wish to speak.”

  “I will do so.”

  The old man stared at her in silence, and even the sutler seemed surprised. No one spoke until, some minutes later, the summoned warrior appeared at the top of the rise and his squaw went to meet him.

  “She has not spoken to him in six months, not since he cut her face,” Ben told Landsman in a low voice. He glanced at the old man nearby. “Did the baby belong to her lover?”

  Landsman shook his head. “I saw the child. It was Running Cloud’s son.”

  Lakwella was coming back down the hill, Running Cloud trailing behind her. “He will be staying here tonight,” she announced to Running Elk. “Your son has come home. I will get him food and drink.”

  The old man nodded and Landsman looked surprised. “This is really something,” he told Ben under his breath.

  “What do you suppose caused her change of heart?”

  “I don’t know, but I think I’ll stay the night to see what happens.”

  Ben gazed up at the sky. The evening sun was already vanishing beyond the hills to the west, and he knew he’d cover very little ground before he, too, would be forced to camp for the night. This seemed as good a place as any, and Landsman generously offered space in his wagon.

  “I’m used to sleeping under the stars,” Ben told him. “But I’ll share a campfire with you.”

  Running Cloud and Lakwella shared the tepee with Running Elk that night. The sick old man seemed to welcome his son’s return, but in the traditional manner of the Indian he showed little emotion. Ben sat with Aaron Landsman by the campfire after the others had retired, until the full moon had risen. Then the sutler went off to his wagon and Ben unrolled his blanket.

  As he was falling asleep, he happened to open his eyes. In the bright moonlight he thought he saw an Indian brave standing at the top of the hill, but perhaps it was a dream.

  Just after dawn, Ben was awakened by a terrible wail from the direction of the tepee. “He’s dead! He’s dead!”

  It was Lakwella’s terror-filled voice, and Ben grabbed up his pistol as he ran toward the sound. It had awakened Landsman, too, and the sutler was peering bleary-eyed from the wagon.

  “What is it?” Ben shouted, pulling open the flap of the tepee.

  Lakwella stared up at him. She was cradling Running Cloud’s head in her lap. “He’s dead, just like the others! The ghost has walked again! This tepee must be burnt
, destroyed forever!”

  Running Elk was awake now, too, and when he realized what had happened he began a wailing lament for the dead. Ben bent to examine the body, and when Landsman joined him he suggested to the sutler that they carry Running Cloud outside into the morning air.

  But outside, with the rising sun bathing his face, Running Cloud was still dead. Ben examined his body carefully, turning him over to look at his back. He had slept nude, as most young braves did, and there was no mark on his body to indicate an unnatural cause of death. “What happened during the night?” Ben asked Lakwella.

  “Nothing. We slept. I woke up once and he stirred a little, but then we both went back to sleep. When I woke again at dawn, he didn’t move even when I shook him. It was like his brother, and like my baby!” She looked desperately at the dead man’s father. “I should never have asked him back! It’s my fault he’s dead!”

  The others at the main camp had heard her cries and some of them now appeared over the hill, led by the medicine man, Blue Fox.

  He, too, examined the body, and soon Ben could see that preparations were already under way for the funeral. The body was taken away to be prepared for the traditional Sioux burial ceremony.

  Some of the women sat with Running Elk, comforting him, and Lakwella went off by herself. Ben stayed by the tepee, trying to read some answer in the symbols painted on the skins that covered it. That was when he noticed four fresh notches cut deep into one of the supporting poles near the entrance. They were like the notches on a gun butt, though bits of the wood itself seemed to have been removed. He wondered if ghosts were in the habit of keeping count of the number of lives they took.

  Aaron Landsman walked over to where Lakwella sat alone on the grass. Ben followed and heard him ask, “Did you make love to him last night?”

  She turned, startled by his voice, and shook her head vigorously. “I only invited him back as a beginning. I was not ready for that yet.”

  The sutler nodded. He said no more to her.

  After a time, Ben asked, “Do you believe the tepee is haunted, Lakwella?”

  “They all died. Four of them.”

  “But you are still alive. Running Elk is still alive.”

  She only shook her head, staring at the ground.

  “The woman was old and your baby was tiny. Tell me about Running Cloud’s brother. What was he like?”

  “Black Elk was good. He was still a boy, younger than my husband.”

  “Did he die the same way?”

  “Yes.”

  Ben walked back to Landsman’s wagon. “Are you staying for the funeral?” he asked.

  “No, it’s a private thing. They don’t want us for their ceremonies.”

  “If you’re leaving soon, I’ll ride a way with you.”

  Landsman nodded. “I could use the company.”

  They said farewell to Running Elk and the others, and Landsman promised to catch up with them on their winter trek from Wounded Knee. Then he climbed up on the wagon and got his horses moving. Ben mounted Oats and rode alongside.

  “I feel as if I’m leaving an unfinished story,” he said after they’d ridden for a time.

  “Them people are superstitious. You can’t believe all that haunting business.”

  “Then what am I supposed to think, Landsman—that you killed Running Cloud?”

  “Huh?” Landsman reined in the horses and turned. “What in hell are you talkin’ about, Snow?”

  “You were Lakwella’s lover, Landsman. You were the reason she got her face carved . . .”

  Aaron Landsman was silent for a moment, as if weighing his words.

  “Do you think I’d fool with a squaw?” he asked finally.

  “You went up to her just now and asked if she’d made love to her husband. That’s hardly an ordinary question from a tradesman to a squaw.”

  “I’m more than a tradesman to those people.”

  “But I doubt if you came here to sell them rifles, Landsman. That’s illegal, even for hunting purposes. If you were doing it, you wouldn’t have admitted it so readily to me. You came here mainly to see Lakwella, didn’t you?”

  “I take an interest in the girl, yes. I treat her like a daughter.”

  “More than a daughter. When I asked you if the baby belonged to her lover, you said you’d seen the child and it was Running Cloud’s son. But surely a months-old Sioux baby couldn’t be identified with Running Cloud to the exclusion of other tribal members, and certainly not by an outsider like yourself. When you said that, the only thing you could have meant was that the baby was a full-blooded Indian, betraying none of the physical characteristics of a half breed. You had reason to know that Lakwella’s lover was a white man. How else would you know that unless you were the lover?”

  “All right, Lakwella came to my wagon a few times,” Landsman admitted. “But the baby was Running Cloud’s. He found out she had a lover, though he never knew it was me. I felt bad about what happened to her.”

  “And you killed him.”

  “No! I never touched him. Whatever killed him killed the others as well, but it wasn’t me.”

  The man seemed so sincere, Ben was almost ready to believe him. “If you didn’t kill him, who or what do you think did?”

  “I don’t know,” said Landsman. “It’s almost enough to make you believe in ghosts, isn’t it?”

  They rode on for a time in silence, and presently they reached the White River. “She’s low enough to ford at this point,” the sutler decided. “I think I’ll cross here.”

  “Then I’ll be leaving you,” Ben said.

  Landsman nodded. “I’m sure our paths will cross again.”

  “You’d best stay away from Lakwella.”

  “I know that.”

  Ben watched him cross the shallow water until the wagon was safely to the other side. Then he turned west and urged Oats into a gallop. He had time to make up, even though he had no destination.

  The white-haired man finished his story and leaned back in the chair. Mary Best glanced at Dr. Sam and said, “It’s a fascinating story. Did it really happen like that, Mr. Snow?”

  “It did,” Ben told her. “But I was never able to solve it. I never learned what killed those people inside Running Elk’s tepee. Was it really haunted, as the medicine man said, or did something else cause those four deaths? To this day I sometimes think Aaron Landsman was involved, but so far as I know he wasn’t even present when the first three died.”

  “Did you ever see him again?” Sam asked.

  “No. Our paths never did cross again.”

  “What about Running Elk and Lakwella?”

  “And that medicine man, Blue Fox?” Mary asked.

  “I never saw any of them again. On December twenty-ninth of that year the Seventh Cavalry rode through the snow at Wounded Knee and slaughtered them all—over two hundred men, women, and children. That was Custer’s old regiment, and some say it was belated revenge for what happened at the Little Big Horn fourteen years earlier.”

  “So it’s a story without an ending,” Sam said.

  “Unless you can supply one. That’s why I took the train up here. When you get to be my age, things like that bother you. Unfinished business, you know?”

  After a while it was Mary who spoke. It wasn’t the first time she’d helped Dr. Sam with one of his problems. “There wasn’t any ghost in that tepee, Mr. Snow. I can tell you what killed them, if you want to know.”

  “I do want to know!”

  Mary glanced toward Sam but didn’t wait for his assent before plunging in. “Aaron Landsman had nothing to do with Running Cloud’s death, or with the deaths of any of the others. They were killed by poisonous sap from the poles that supported the tepee. There was no ghost, and no murderer. The deaths were accidental.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, Mr. Snow. You told us Landsman gave them the poles the previous year from a shipment of oleander wood the Army couldn’t use. The Army couldn’t use it bec
ause the sap of the oleander is poisonous. It was the sap, drawn out by the heat of the fires in the tepee, that killed Running Elk’s wife and two sons and grandson. The sap no doubt contributed to his own illness as well, though his constitution was stronger.”

  “What about Lakwella?” Ben Snow asked. “She seemed unaffected.”

  “Just luck, I suppose. And she hadn’t slept there for the entire year, only since Running Cloud cut her face.”

  Ben nodded. “But are you sure Landsman didn’t know about the sap when he sold them the wood?”

  “He was innocent, or he never would have told you it was oleander. No, Mr. Snow, those four poor people died by accident.”

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter after all this time,” Ben said, “tragic as it was. They would only have lived until Wounded Knee anyway.”

  Then Sam Hawthorne spoke. “Mary is no doubt right about the first three deaths, but I have to correct her about Running Cloud. He was murdered by Lakwella.”

  Mary stared at him. “How can you know that, Sam, after forty-five years?”

  “Because you’ve forgotten one of Mr. Snow’s observations—the fresh notches on the tent pole. We’ve disposed of the ghost, but if the deaths were accidental how do you explain those notches? Of course they weren’t to count the number of deaths. They were merely to remove fresh slivers of wood from that pole—wood that could be inserted into meat as it cooked, or bled of its remaining sap over a hot fire. If someone poisoned Running Cloud that night, it could only have been Lakwella, who had invited him back. I believe she finally realized what was killing the people in that tepee, especially after her own son died. Perhaps she even saw him touching the sticky poles and then putting his fingers in his mouth as babies will do. She survived herself by avoiding the poles, and perhaps sleeping with a cloth over her head at night. She never told anyone, though, because she could never forget the terrible scar on her face. She was waiting for just the right moment to invite her husband back, to make him think all was forgiven and they could begin anew. With Landsman and you there as witnesses, it was the perfect time.”