Vicky lifted herself out of the chair and followed the priest and the agent into the corridor. A door opened on the right, and they started down a narrow hallway, past a series of closed doors—the closets and storerooms the Lakota had discovered. She had never been in this section of the administration building. There was so much she didn’t know about the man leading the way, so many spaces he occupied about which she had no idea.
He stopped at the far door, pushed it open, and led her and Gianelli inside. “The mission archives,” he announced. The room was small, little more than a closet, with a column of sunlight filtering through a narrow window across the table. Cardboard boxes and the spines of old books protruded from the shelves on the walls; a storeroom, the Lakota had called it.
“Todd spent a lot of time working here,” Father John explained. “He found several references in the old records to places where the Arapahos had lived in Colorado. He would have left the ledger book with the other records.”
Vicky glanced about the small room. She felt both elated and weary. Dozens of cartons, several hundred books. They would have to go through every one.
Father John moved to the shelves on one side. He reached up and brought down a small carton, which he set on the table. Slowly he began pulling out the contents, arranging them next to the carton. “A guess,” he said. “Over the years the priests at St. Francis encouraged the elders to write down their stories. Some of them did so. Others were willing to tell their stories, and the priest wrote them down. They’re all here. Seems logical Todd would have put No-Ta-Nee’s story with the others.”
Vicky leaned toward the items spread over the table. An assortment of pads, notebooks, and papers stapled or clipped together. The carton appeared empty. There was no ledger book.
Except that now Father John was bringing out what looked like a tan leather envelope, and she realized it had been placed where Todd had found it in the carton at the museum. On the bottom—quiet and unobtrusive, like the carton itself.
Vicky cleared a space, and Father John set down the package, tied in leather thongs, like the parfleches used to carry small items in the Old Time. Carefully she undid the thongs, pulled back one flap, then another. Inside was a ledger book that looked like a thousand other ledger books manufactured for nineteenth-century merchants and accountants and government agents: the gray-green color and the black curlicue design on the front cover.
The room was quiet. Gianelli shifted next to her, and for a moment she thought he might reach out and flip open the cover. She saw the look Father John gave him, the nod he gave to her.
She picked up the ledger book and held it toward the four directions—east, south, west, north. “Ho ’Hou.’” She murmured the word four times, thanking the ledger book for preserving the story, the story for allowing itself to be told, No-Ta-Nee for telling it, Todd for protecting it. Then she set the book down and slowly opened the cover. The figures danced across the page, moving right to left, in muted shades of red, blue, and yellow. Warriors on horseback, dogs pulling travois piled with household goods, women and children trailing behind: moving to a new village. Above the head of one warrior was the glyph of a red bull: No-Ta-Nee. The details in the pictographs told the story: name glyphs above the warriors; the colors of the horses; the types of wagons; the soldiers’ uniforms; and the weapons carried by soldiers and warriors.
She read each page out loud: Chief Niwot leading the people to Sand Creek. She knew it was the chief by the figure of a left hand above his head: Niwot meant Left Hand. The women setting up the village in the midst of the Cheyenne village, the soldiers appearing on the bluff, carrying the weapons used at Sand Creek; the attack at dawn. On she read, her voice quiet and calm, until she reached the last page. There were six figures: four children, a woman, with the glyph of a snake above her head: Mahom, Snake Woman, and No-Ta-Nee. “The Arapaho survivors of Sand Creek,” she said.
She closed the book, but kept her hand on the rough cloth cover, allowing the power of the story to gather inside her. The sunshine slanting across the table felt warm on her hand.
Gianelh’s voice broke the quiet. “The book belongs to the Denver Museum of the West. And three people were murdered over it. It will be used as evidence. I’m going to have to keep it.”
Slowly Vicky slipped the book back inside the leather package and tied the thongs into a gentle, secure knot. Then she picked up the package and handed it to the agent. “Not for long,” she said.
29
Vicky turned onto Circle Drive, following a flatbed truck with planks of wood hanging out the back. She stopped in front of the administration building, but the truck rumbled on down the drive, its engine growling into the quiet of St. Francis Mission. Slipping out into the sunshine that burst across the graveled parking area, she gave the door a hard slam and studied the facade of the building in front of her. It had the vacant look of three weeks ago, when Emil Coughlin had climbed out of the passenger seat and hurried her up the stone steps.
Now she climbed the stairs alone, her heart sinking. What if Father John had left again? She hadn’t heard anything on the moccasin telegraph about his going away, but she hadn’t heard he was going to Boston either. Only that one day he was gone. She hadn’t talked to him since the day he’d almost gotten himself killed trying to protect her—the day they had found the Sand Creek ledger book. She could still feel the reluctance with which she had handed the book over to the FBI agent, Ted Gianelli, despite the way Father John had slipped an arm around her and said, “You can trust him, Vicky. He won’t let anything happen to it.”
He had called the next day to see how she was feeling. She was feeling lousy, she told him, with an egg-sized lump on her face and an eye ringed in black. She looked like a one-eyed raccoon. And how was he feeling? Just great, he assured her. But it was a little tough cleaning up the office with a cracked rib.
“A cracked rib?” she had said.
“The Lakota had a punch that came in like a fastball.”
She had offered to come over and help him clean up the office, but he assured her Elena and the grandmothers had already run him out of the place, and by this evening he was sure the office would be in better shape—
“Than you are?” she had said.
He laughed and told her he was having a hard time explaining the cuts and bruises to the kids on the Eagles baseball team. It was really not the way to settle disputes, but sometimes, well, sometimes, you had to stand up for the people you—he had stopped, drawn in a breath, and said—the people you care about.
He hadn’t called her since, which meant he hadn’t needed her help. No kids in trouble. No couple bound for divorce court. Nobody in jail. Which was good news, she realized, and just as well. She’d been so busy the last three weeks, negotiating with the museum for the Arapaho artifacts, tying up the loose ends, arranging for the elders to go to Denver to claim the sacred and cultural items. So busy she hadn’t called him; she’d had no reason to call. It was an unspoken rule between them—they never called each other without a legitimate reason.
Inside, the building was as quiet as the last time she was here. The door to Father John’s office was closed. She rapped twice, waited, and rapped again. Then she pushed the door open. The office looked as if it had undergone a spring cleaning, books neatly stacked in the bookcases, a daisy blooming in a pot on the filing cabinet, and piles of papers arranged on the desk, instead of tumbling across it. Unlike his desk.
Just as she closed the door she heard the soft noise of a chair scuttling across the floor. She made her way down the corridor, past the closed door that led to the archives, and stopped at an opened door. A man with close-cropped sandy hair and light, plastic-rimmed glasses sat at a small table across from a desk, tapping on a typewriter. “Father Geoff?” she said.
He swung around, a startled look in his eyes. “You must be Vicky Holden.”
She gave him a smile, but it was not reciprocated.
“He’s not here, if you
’re looking for Father O’Malley.” The priest turned back toward the typewriter.
“When will he be back?” Vicky persisted.
The priest leaned back in his chair, his profile to her. “I suppose you won’t be satisfied, will you, until you have won him completely over to your side.”
Vicky was quiet a moment, trying to comprehend what the man was saying. Then: “I’m afraid you misunderstand.”
Father Geoff swiveled toward her. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is when you keep coming around? How hard it was for him after your little trip to Denver?”
Vicky could hear the sound of her own breathing, could feel her heart speeding. “I know what you think,” she said, “and you are wrong. You have misjudged Father O’Malley and me.”
“Have I?” His eyes were as gray and impenetrable as the surface of a lake.
She turned on her heels and retraced her steps down the corridor, past Father John’s office, through the heavy front door, slamming it hard behind her. She was flushed with anger. What right did this priest have to assume anything about her, about her life, about her most private feelings—feelings she did not even want to admit to herself? She flung open the door to the Bronco and slid onto the seat.
Another truck wheeled past as she was about to back onto Circle Drive. She watched it pull in behind several other trucks parked at the far end of the mission in front of the old school. Pushing the gear into drive, she started after it.
Two men were already unloading large sheets of wallboard when she parked beside them. A hot gust of wind caught her skirt as she got out. “Is Father O’Malley here?” she called.
“Inside.” One of the men jerked his head backward.
She hurried up the steps. The minute she walked through the door, she spotted Father John partway down the shadowy hallway, talking to three workmen. As if he’d sensed her presence, he turned around and walked toward her. Even in the dim light, she could make out the reddish line on his cheek, the mark on his forehead.
“Welcome to the Arapaho Museum,” he said. Then, glancing back at the workmen, he explained, “We have our first visitor.”
Vicky still felt shaky with anger. She wished she could have stepped into his arms, felt the comfort of his touch. She started circling the entry, forcing herself to focus on the way the light cascaded down the new staircase, the taped drywall on one side of the hall, the smells of plaster and fresh-sawed wood. “So, it’s really happening,” she said after a moment, when she felt more in control. “I didn’t think it would happen so soon.”
“So soon?” Father John said. He moved closer. “What are you saying?”
She let out a long breath. “The provincial—Father Rutherford, I believe his name is—said he’d been considering the museum after meeting with you.” She made another circle. “He probably would have approved it even if I hadn’t called.”
“You called the provincial?” There was a mixture of amusement and incredulity in Father John’s voice.
“That’s what I came to tell you,” Vicky said. “The provincial and I had a long talk last week. I told him I’m the attorney in charge of reclaiming a great many Arapaho artifacts and that we had no place to store and exhibit them. I told him how desperately we needed this museum.”
Father John started laughing. “He’s too busy to take my calls, but you call him up and have a long chat.” He folded his arms and leaned back against the wall, shaking his head. “The provincial’s assistant called last week and gave me the go-ahead on the museum. I thought I’d witnessed another miracle.”
“Yes,” Vicky said, making another little circle, “we lawyers often work miracles.” She stopped, catching his eye. “What do you mean, another?”
“I got a call from Doyal last night. The University Press in Colorado is going to publish Todd’s thesis.”
Vicky closed her eyes a moment, allowing the sun cascading across the entry to warm her. “How wonderful,” she said. “A permanent record of all the places in Colorado where the people had once lived. Some of the lands may belong to us again someday, if I have anything to say about it.” She gave him a long smile. “The tribe has hired me to negotiate with the bureaucrats in Washington over claims to the lands promised the Sand Creek tribes.”
Father John was nodding, smiling at her. “That’s good news. The bureaucrats don’t have a chance.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Vicky said. “They’ve stalled for more than a hundred years. They’ll probably stall a few more, but eventually—”
“Eventually, you might see justice.”
“It would be nice.” She glanced around. “I wish Todd could be here to see it. I wish he could see this.” She waved toward the corridor with the new wallboard—the museum taking shape.
Father John was quiet a moment. “It’s going to be hard to find the kind of director he would have been.”
Vicky made another little circle. “I have a suggestion,” she said. “There’s a young Arapaho woman, Lindy Meadows, who works in a museum in Florida. Maybe—just maybe—she’s ready to come home. You could call her—”
Father John held up one hand. “But you could get through.”
“Fair enough.” Vicky laughed. “In the next month or so boxes of artifacts will be arriving here. We’ll be getting most of the items listed in the inventory.”
“Most?”
“Not every item falls under the rules of NAGPRA. But all of the sacred objects will be returned.”
“The ledger book?” Father John said.
“The ledger book.” Vicky held his eyes a moment. “After Emil and his associates stand trial for murder, kidnapping, theft, and a lot of other charges, the ledger book will finally come home. It belongs to Charlie Redman and No-Ta-Nee’s other descendants. They’ve agreed to place it here in the old school with the rest of the artifacts.”
“We’ll display it right here,” Father John said, sweeping one arm toward the shaft of sunlight in the center of the entry. “In a large Plexiglas display case. It will be the first thing people see when they visit the museum. They will read it. Scholars will study it. Everyone will know the true story of Sand Creek.”
Vicky kept her eyes on the entry. In the column of sunshine, she could imagine the display case with No-Ta-Nee’s ledger book propped inside, opened and inviting. “It will be beautiful,” she said.
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