by Joseph Flynn
“You should have come to me, White River,” she said.
The old man smiled.
“Isn’t that what I’ve just done?”
Her voice hardened. “Come to me from the start.”
The old man shrugged. “We are a patriarchal people.”
Marlene stepped close and looked down at White River. He couldn’t remember a time since childhood when a woman was tall enough to do that. Then, in a matter of seconds, she seemed to grow before his eyes. A giantess. Not at all pleased by the lesser being in front of her.
The old chief refused to cower. “Kill me, if you wish, but then you will share in the destiny of what I have started.”
The truth of his remarks cut the woman, if that was what she was, down to size. She still loomed over him but in the proportions of a normal person not the fearful exaggeration of a mescal hallucination.
“I am here now,” Marlene said, “and it is your good fortune that I approve of what you’ve done, in outline if not in every detail. I will be watching you. If I see anything that displeases me, you will be the first and perhaps the last to know. If I think you’re going too far, I will stop everything you’ve done. Then I’ll let you live with all your regrets. You and all the other patriarchs.”
White River knew he was about to be dismissed. The woman might vanish as he watched just to show him what her powers were. But there was a point he wanted to raise, a warning to offer. He raised a hand, asking her to wait.
“What?” she asked.
“I consulted many spirits before I started this journey. All the signs were favorable except one.”
Marlene’s eyes grew huge and her pupils narrowed to vertical slits.
“Do you mean me?”
“No. I am concerned about my great-grandson, Bodaway. He made the taking of the train possible. But he might prove our undoing by going too far. His heart doesn’t understand what we will do, and his mind rejects it.”
Marlene laughed, making a sound far too wicked for any human throat to produce.
“A college boy, yes? A believer in only the sliver of nature science can touch.”
White River nodded. “This is true. I fear he might go too far, but I need him to return the train.”
“Would you have me speak to him?”
“I would be grateful.”
“So you need me after all.”
“Of course, I always knew you’d come.”
Marlene laughed again, this time with bitter irony and in a human register.
“You remind me of someone else, old man.”
“John Tall Wolf?”
An edge crept back in Marlene’s voice. “You know of him?”
“I saw him in a vision.”
“So you are close to the spirits.”
“Not as close as I’d like.”
“But you fear neither death nor capture.”
“My only fear is for Bodaway. I sense he will challenge Tall Wolf and lose more than a fight.”
That was when all human form disappeared from the woman. Coyote stood fully revealed and enormous, leaning in close to White River, fangs bared and eyes afire. The creature’s breath was vile as it spoke to him.
“Tall Wolf is mine, and no one else’s,” Coyote warned.
Moving so fast his eyes could not follow, the Trickster turned and was gone.
When White River awakened, the rising sun in his eyes, he saw he had slept in the glade.
A white man might think he’d had a nightmare and nothing more.
White River knew better. He had to seek Bodaway. Warn him of the danger he faced.
From both Tall Wolf and Coyote.
Find some way to convince the young man both threats were real.
Perhaps the stench of the beast, still strong upon him, would be persuasive.
Chapter 34
Los Angeles
Jack Stanton, the station master of Union Station, opened the door of his home in the city’s Los Feliz neighborhood. The residence was a Spanish Revival beauty with stucco walls and a red barrel-tiled roof set in a landscaped garden against a hillside. With Stanton was a handsome middle-aged woman in a blue business jacket and skirt. She didn’t wear a wedding ring but she held a leather folio in her left hand.
She extended her right hand to the tall man standing in front of her.
“Patricia Derby. I’m Mr. Stanton’s lawyer, and you are Mr. Tall Wolf?”
John nodded. “Co-director of the BIA’s Office of Justice Services, but I still think of myself as a special agent, especially when I’m doing field work. May I come in, please?”
Not budging for the moment, Ms. Derby said, “Just to be clear, you are a federal officer and lying to you would be a crime?”
“Right both times,” John said.
He waited to see if he’d be admitted to the house.
If not, he’d inform the lawyer he’d have LAPD watch Mr. Stanton’s house until he could return with a material witness warrant and take her client into custody. Ms. Derby, unable to see John’s eyes, protected against the bright Los Angeles sun by his Ray-Ban sunglasses, still managed to correctly assess where her client’s best interests lay. She stepped aside, gesturing to Stanton to do the same, and they allowed John to enter.
They led him into the home’s living room, gestured him to take a seat in a wing back chair, while they sat side by side on a leather sofa.
Derby said, “Unless I direct Mr. Stanton to speak directly to you, I will be answering all your questions. Will that be satisfactory? If not, I’m afraid we’ll be unable to cooperate.”
John smiled. “Why don’t we just give things a chance? Maybe it won’t be too painful.”
Stanton seemed to relax a bit; Derby only looked more guarded.
Nonetheless, she agreed to proceed.
Looking at her, John asked, “What was the nature of the family emergency that called Mr. Stanton away from his job?”
“His son, Patrick, had an adverse reaction to a prescription medication during track practice. He lost consciousness twice. He seems to be improving but remains in the hospital for observation.”
“My best wishes for a full recovery,” John told Stanton. Turning to Derby, he said, “May I have the name of the hospital and the boy’s doctor, please?”
Derby provided them.
“Were you on your way to be with your son when I arrived, Mr. Stanton?” John asked.
Derby gave her client a hard look — telling him, in effect, to keep quiet.
She told John, “Patrick is resting comfortably, the last we heard, and his mother is with him.”
“I see,” John said. “I understand that Mr. Stanton has a younger son, Michael. Where is he right now?”
“How is that relevant?” Derby asked.
“Well, is he with his mother and brother at the hospital?”
“He’s traveling to a baseball tournament,” Stanton said, breaking discipline.
Derby gave him a scolding look.
“Again,” she asked John, “what does that have to do with anything?”
John held his hands wide, a man just being reasonable.
“If Patrick is resting comfortably, and has his mother for company, and Michael feels free to play baseball, what’s the reason Mr. Stanton is at home in the company of his lawyer instead of doing his job at Union Station?”
Neither Derby nor Stanton said a word
John turned to Derby and asked, “Did Mr. Stanton contact you for professional help before or after his son was admitted to the hospital?”
“We talked at the hospital. I’m Patrick’s aunt.”
For John, that was a mark in Stanton’s favor. If he had sought out legal representation during a family crisis, that would have increased the impression of acting from a guilty conscience. Even so, something was bothering the man, and John felt sure he knew what it was.
Still addressing Derby, John said, “The Super Chief run from L.A. to Chicago wasn’t paid for by any particular
railroad company, was it?”
The lawyer shook her head. “No, it wasn’t.”
“So how was the crew for the train assembled?”
Stanton’s face tensed, telling John he was on the right trail.
Derby started to whisper in Stanton’s ear, but John cut her short.
“Ms. Derby, Mr. Stanton, it’s the considered opinion of a number of federal investigators that the only way the Super Chief could have been stolen was if one or more members of the crew was in on the plan. The FBI is running background checks on the crew as we speak. One member of the crew has suffered a heart attack, and the last I heard it was uncertain whether he’d survive. The situation has gone from bad to worse.”
Both the station master and his sister-in-law looked far more worried now.
John continued, “It occurred to me that Mr. Stanton, as the station master at Union Station, might have been afforded the honor of picking the crew for the Super Chief run from a list of volunteers.”
Unable to restrain himself, Stanton nodded. Derby didn’t chastise him.
“What I need to know, to speed the investigation along, and maybe save a life or two, is whether any member of the Super Chief crew pushed to get his place on board.”
Derby looked at Stanton and nodded.
He said, “Rick Engram. He said it would be an honor he’d always remember. He wanted it bad.”
“How bad?” John asked. “Did he offer you any personal incentive?”
John thought Derby might object, but she remained silent.
“He did. Five thousand dollars.”
“Did you take it?”
Stanton shook his head. “What I told him was, I didn’t need or want any money. Wouldn’t take any. If he wanted to do anything to show his appreciation, he could make a donation to my son’s baseball team.”
“Didn’t five thousand dollars strike you as a lot of money to get that assignment?” John asked.
Stanton shrugged. “People who love trains will spend all sorts of money indulging themselves.”
John couldn’t argue with that. He’d made a request of Byron DeWitt hoping to prove just that point.
“As far as you know, did Engram follow through on his end of the bargain?”
Stanton nodded. “He did.” Then the station master gestured to a gift box standing on the end table next to the sofa. “And that came shortly before you arrived. Looks like it might be a bottle of Scotch to me, but I didn’t ask for it.”
John thought it might also be something with more kick than a hundred proof.
Learning there was no one else in the house, he hurried Stanton and Derby outside. He didn’t feel certain that a bomb had been sent to silence the station master, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. They waited outside while the LAPD bomb squad was called and went inside to make a definitive determination.
John took the opportunity to ask Stanton directly, “If you didn’t take a bribe, and I believe you didn’t, why didn’t you come forward immediately with the information about Rick Engram?”
The man’s face went red with embarrassment. “I still screwed up, didn’t I? I just hoped the train would be found without my dumb-ass move coming out.”
John sighed. The high cost of personal vanity always confounded him.
To make the punishment fit the crime, he told Stanton and Derby they’d have to do the interview all over again with the FBI making a record of it. He’d see if he could have the LAPD bill the fool for the bomb squad’s work, too. That’d have to cost a whole lot more than five grand.
He called Byron DeWitt to let him know what he’d found out. Save the FBI the trouble of looking at the wrong members of the Super Chief crew. That was when DeWitt told him, “We found another member of the Super Chief crew in another hospital. Dale Brent was suffering from a ruptured kidney. The organ had to be removed. Brent told the docs he’d been kicked in the back by an Indian.”
“Damn,” John said.
“Yeah, overt violence rears its ugly head.”
“Where’s the hospital treating Brent?”
“Flagstaff, Arizona.”
“Looks more than ever like the train’s still in the Southwest.”
DeWitt pointed out, “That still covers a lot of ground.”
“Less than before, though.”
Chapter 35
Northern New Mexico
“What’s your white name?” the old Native American woman asked.
She stood barely five feet tall but her back was ramrod straight. Her face was seamed with nearly as many lines as that of Alan White River. Her eyes were as dark as a raven’s wing, showing no light of mercy and precious little humanity. This was a person to be feared, if not for the strength of her own limbs then for those who would do her bidding with no hesitation.
One such specimen stood to her right, perhaps a foot-and-a-half taller, decades younger with broad shoulders and big hands, but going soft at the jawline and around the middle. Signs of power yielding to privilege as the years passed.
Visiting the two in the old woman’s home was the subject of the old woman’s question, another man, younger than the big guy, showing no signs whatsoever of middle-age spread.
“My white name is Thomas Bilbray,” he said.
“Your voice and English are smooth,” the old woman told him. “You’ve been to white schools for many years.”
“That’s true.”
“Are you one of them more than one of us?”
“I was for some time. Then my father and grandfather died. The only elder left to guide me was my great-grandfather, Alan White River.”
The old woman’s expression eased just a bit.
“I know of him. Wise as a spirit, some say.”
“Far wiser than me, but perhaps closer to the next world than this one.”
“What is your real name?”
“Bodaway.”
The old woman laughed, the emotion being all the more powerful for being so unexpected.
“Firemaker. A fine Apache name.”
“Yes, mother.”
The big man at the old woman’s side flinched, fought unsuccessfully to keep a scowl from his face. He’d expected to see the stranger humbled or at least dismissed out of hand. Instead, he’d been complimented on his name, and had dared to presume the greatest of familiarities with the old woman.
She smiled at the stranger, Bodaway, as she’d never smiled at him.
“Do you now know who you truly are?” she asked Bodaway.
“No, but I believe I am finding my way.”
“You found your way to us,” the big man said, “but for what purpose? Maybe you’re an enemy posing as a friend.”
Bodaway opened his hands in a gesture of supplication. “I’ll tell you why I’m here, and you may decide what to do with me. I’ve come to claim the life of John Tall Wolf. To kill him. So he won’t interfere with my great-grandfather’s plans. I was told you might be interested in helping me.”
The old woman stared at Bodaway now, looking for any sign of deceit or treachery.
Finding none, she nodded in satisfaction. “We are interested. My grandson, Arnoldo, and I are most interested in that. Tell us what your plan is.”
Bodaway explained his idea to Maria Black Knife, John Tall Wolf’s grandmother, and to Arnoldo Black Knife, John’s cousin. They both listened closely to what he had to say.
Chapter 36
Ruidoso, New Mexico
Maj Olson climbed onto her dirt bike at first light. Her train had stopped for the night on a siding not far from the southern New Mexico town. Don Prosser, the senior engineer, had reported their position to the nearest dispatcher. He’d confirmed their right to park wherever they wanted, and the dispatcher took into consideration any adjustments to through traffic he might have to make.
Now, Prosser, standing alongside the train, looked at Maj and asked, “How long’ll you be gone?”
“Can’t say. I won’t stop to pick any wildflo
wers, though.”
“You gonna leave us unarmed while we wait?” Dean Spaneas said.
Train crews in the U.S. typically worked unarmed. Then, again, thefts of trains, especially ones that simply disappeared, had been unheard of — until the Super Chief had vanished. Now her crew was involved in the hunt for that train. Maj could see how the guys might continue to be on edge. No longer content to depend on the contents of a toolbox for protection.
Well, Prosser, Spaneas and Ed Fenwick were nervous.
Leo Taylor looked cool and relaxed even in the gathering early morning heat.
She asked Leo, “Cops or military?”
“Both,” he said. “Marines and San Bernadino PD, but only a year with the cops.”
“Why’d you leave?” Maj asked.
“Thought it was a better idea than killing my sergeant. Caught on with the railroad through my brother-in-law.”
“You have any problems with these other guys?” Maj meant the rest of the train crew.
“Unh-uh,” Leo said. “They’re salt of the earth.”
She’d been planning to ride with only her sidearm for protection. She got off her bike, went into the passenger car and came back with the M-4 slung over her back and her badge on a lanyard around her neck. She handed her Beretta to Leo.
“You’ll have to make do with one magazine,” she said.
“That’s plenty,” he replied.
She told Don Prosser, “You’re in charge of the train; Leo has the final word on security. Everybody good with that?”
They were but Prosser returned to his original question, “Is there any limit to how long we wait for you to come back?”
She said, “If I’m not back by nightfall, call John Tall Wolf at the BIA or Byron DeWitt at the FBI and have them come look for me.”
Maj got back on her bike and rode off on a small state road to the east, disappearing into the rising sun.