The Dream Stalker

by Margaret Coel

  “You and Gabriel and who else?”

  “Mattie Bosse.” The Indian brought his eyes back to Father John. “Now he’s dead, too. Who’d wanna shoot a couple of broken down old cowboys?”

  Father John was quiet a moment. He hadn’t realized Bosse had also been a cowboy, hadn’t thought of him as other than one of the tribal councilmen. “What do you think Gabriel wanted to see you about?” he asked.

  The old man shook his head. “Like I said, Father, I ain’t seen Gabriel in more’n thirty years, not since I got hired on down at the KO Ranch in west Texas. Worked there up ’til a few months ago when my leg went and got gangrene and they had to cut it off. Wranglin’s not much good with one leg, so I come back up here where I got family. Gab stayed around here for a while after I left, then he lit out for some ranch in Arizona. That’s the last I heard ’til this.” He waved the postcard before slipping it back inside his pocket.

  Father John stood up and stamped his boots into the ground to work out the kinks in his legs. He wasn’t getting anywhere; he didn’t know much more than when he’d driven out here. The cowboy had a sister and two old friends. One of the friends was dead, and the sister and other friend knew nothing about him. Unless. . . . “Did Gabriel have any other friends on the rez that you know about?”

  The Indian shook his head slowly. “Nah. Gab left thirty years ago. Earth keeps turnin’.” He looked at the child, eyes watchful. “Might’ve called on Mattie, I guess, ‘cept he was on the tribal council. Doubt he would’ve remembered old Gab or me. Same with Alex, even though he used to cowboy with us.”

  “Alex? You mean Alexander Legeau?” Father John swallowed back the excitement. Maybe there was some kind of pattern after all.

  The Indian let out a quick snort. “He only got to be Alexander after he got his uncle’s ranch. He was always a lucky—” The Indian stopped himself, his eyes still on the child, who had produced another horse and was staging a kind of war in the mound of dirt. “Alex was a good cowboy, but I never thought he had it in him to run a big spread like that. Surprised the hell outta me.”

  “Do you think Gabriel went to see Legeau?”

  Fast kicked the heel of his boot into the dirt, building up a miniature mound, then knocking it down. “How’d I know? I ain’t seen nothin’ of Alex in more’n thirty years either. You think he wants an old one-legged cowboy come callin’ at his big, fancy ranch house? I ‘spect he’d sic the dogs on me. Sic the dogs on Gab, too, most likely.” The old man let his head wave back and forth. A faraway look came into his eyes. “The days we was friends is long gone by. Him and Mattie went their ways and got to be real important. Me and Gab just kept on cowboyin’.”

  The little boy had started running around the mound and hollering, as if he were now the horse. “Would’ve been real nice to see old Gab,” Fast said over the sound of the child’s voice. “Talk about the old times. I’m real sorry I didn’t get down to the post office for my mail.”

  Maybe you were lucky, Father John thought. He patted the old man’s shoulder, thanked him, said he hoped to see him tomorrow at Gabriel’s funeral. Then he told him Matthew’s funeral would probably be held in a couple of days. It depended on the coroner, on the family. He was thinking the coming days could be filled with funerals.

  As the Toyota shuddered into life, Father John debated with himself whether to call Gianelli right away. All he had was another theory—the possibility of a connection between the two murdered men and a prominent rancher who may or may not have known that Gabriel Many Horses had returned to the reservation. He rammed the gear into drive and nudged the Toyota across the dirt yard and out onto the road. Before he mentioned the name of Alexander Legeau in the same sentence with murder, he wanted to have a talk with the man himself.

  24

  Father John drove north across the reservation, past the turn-off to Fort Washakie and on through Ethete. A few miles beyond Bighorn Flats, he took the jog around Riverside Dam and continued north on Maverick Springs Road, “Toreador en garde” filling the cab. The sun rode on his left, leaping over the buttes, draws, and arroyos. The farther north he went, the more isolated the land, with the only sign of human life an occasional wreck of an old cabin rising unexpectedly out of the bareness. Ahead lay the humpbacked hills of the Owl Creek Mountains.

  As he came down the gradual slope into Wildhorse Flats, he saw the Legeau ranch before him. The barns and outbuildings, the pastures girdled with log fences, the white ranch house—all glowed in the sun, like a medieval village. He swung right into the driveway and parked near a bed of red and yellow tulips. A series of paving stones led across a stretch of lawn to the house.

  The front door opened partway as he came up the steps to the porch. Peering around the door was an elderly Indian woman—Arapaho, he guessed by the quiet way her eyes stayed on him.

  “I’m Father O’Malley, Grandmother,” he said. The woman gave a little nod: She’d heard of him, the priest at St. Francis.

  “Is Alexander Legeau in?”

  The woman pulled the door back and motioned him to enter. He removed his cowboy hat as he stepped into the entry. Sunshine streamed through the two windows flanking the door. The floor was dark and polished, a handsome frame for the rug upon it, woven in reds, whites, blues, blacks, and yellows—the colors of the Arapaho. A staircase rose on the left, the railing and balustrade polished to the same hue as the floor.

  The old woman ushered him through an archway on the right into a living room that resembled a lodge in some exclusive club, filled with overstuffed sofas and chairs, blue velvet drapes folded back at the windows, tables with tops as shiny as glass supporting stacks of old leather books and silver boxes, walls lined with oil paintings of horses and cattle in green mountain meadows. Over the stone fireplace that took up most of the far wall was a deerskin shield with a black bull painted on it. The Hiiteni, Father John realized. The symbol of Alexander Legeau’s dream power.

  “Please wait here, Father.” The old woman turned back into the entry and disappeared. He could hear the quiet shuffle of her footsteps along a hallway.

  He walked over to the bank of windows that looked out over the back: another stretch of lawn, more beds of tulips, a series of barns and, beyond, five or six quarter horses grazing in a pasture. A couple of cowboys in blue jeans and checkered shirts emerged from one of the barns, saddles slung over their shoulders. They strode toward the horses. Neither cowboy looked like Alexander Legeau.

  “To what do we owe this unexpected pleasure?” a woman asked.

  Father John turned toward the entry. Lily Legeau stood in the archway, framed by the sunshine. She was dressed in a pale yellow tunic and long pants made of some kind of gauzy material that clung to the curves of her slim body. Silver bracelets glistened at her wrists. A silver necklace fell among the folds of her tunic. Her black hair was parted in the middle and pulled back, shiny in the sun. He knew she was probably in her sixties, but she had the clear, dark complexion, red lips, and tapered eyebrows of a younger woman.

  “This is a beautiful place, Lily,” he said. “I’m surprised you want to give it up.”

  “The ranch is Alexander’s dream.” She came toward him, extending a slim hand tipped with red nails. Her hand felt cool and silky, like the petal of a rose. He could see the tiny crow’s feet at the edges of her eyes, the quizzical furrow in her forehead, but her skin stretched taut across the high cheekbones and the delicate curve of her nose.

  “My husband followed his dream to help Our People,” she said, pulling her hand away. “Just as his dream spirit, the bull, instructed him. He is still following his dream. The nuclear storage facility will help the People even more. So, you see, his dream has come true. How many of us see our dreams come true, Father? Of course, some people believe the Dream Maker controls our dreams and determines whether they will come true.” She shrugged, as if to dismiss the idea. “But it takes very hard work to make a dream come true, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Even the
n it may not happen,” Father John said. “I was hoping Alexander might be around.”

  “Please have a seat.” She stepped back a little ways, let herself down into one of the overstuffed chairs, and crossed her legs, gracefulness in the movement. “I’m afraid Alexander’s out on the ranch. Can I help you?”

  Father John perched on one of the sofas and hung his hat over one knee. “I thought Alexander might like to know about the funeral arrangements for his friend.”

  “You came all the way out here for that, Father? Surely a phone call . . .”

  “I was in the area,” he said. A stretch of the truth. He wasn’t in the area until after he’d determined to come to the ranch.

  The woman lifted her face and seemed to study him, to weigh the information. After a moment she said, “A terrible blow for my husband, Matthew’s death. They were boyhood friends, you know. Hadn’t seen much of each other over the years, however.” She glanced around the room a moment. “Of course, these last months, they’ve been working on the plans for the facility. Matthew understood the enormous opportunity. With him gone, well, I’m afraid my husband will have to carry both of their work loads. Not alone, of course. I’m always here to help him. And we mustn’t let up. We must continue to make sure the People receive accurate information—the facts, Father, to counteract the scare tactics put out by Vicky Holden.”

  Suddenly Lily looked beyond him toward the entry. Father John could feel another presence in the room, and he glanced around. Alexander Legeau stood in the archway. “Father O’Malley? What brings you out this way?” the rancher asked.

  Father John got to his feet and shook hands with the other man. He looked older than his wife: a working cowboy just in off the range in worn jeans and red print shirt, with a jeans jacket slung over one shoulder and a black Stetson cocked partway back on his head. He stood half a foot shorter than Father John; his build was slim and wiry, his grip that of a man still capable of throwing a calf.

  “Darling, how fortunate you’re here,” Lily said. “Father O’Malley stopped by to tell us about the arrangements for Matthew’s funeral.”

  Father John stepped back and took both the rancher and his wife into view. “Gabriel’s funeral,” he said.

  Silence descended over the room, as if a windstorm had suddenly subsided. From outside came the sound of a horse whinnying, a man shouting. Lily seemed to withdraw into the overstuffed cushions of the chair. Father John couldn’t decide whether she sought protection or just a solid position from which to launch an attack. The rancher remained still, a large, ropelike vein pulsing in his neck. “Old Gab,” he said after a moment. “I seen in the newspaper that some drifter got shot. Then I seen another article that said it was Gab. First I heard of him in a good many years. Thirty, at least.” He glanced at his wife, as if for confirmation.

  “Didn’t even know he was back on the rez,” the rancher continued, warming to the subject now. “Friend of yours, was he?”

  Father John drew in a long breath, then plunged on: “In a way. He called and arranged a meeting just before he was murdered.” He watched the rancher for a reaction, a flicker of awareness that whatever information Gabriel Many Horses had given to Matthew Bosse, he might also have given to him. Silence seeped through the room, and Father John sensed that the rancher had taken in the information just as he had hoped he would.

  Alexander Legeau crossed the room to the bank of windows and looked out, his jacket still slung over one shoulder. After a moment he said, “We used to ride together, Gab and Mattie and me and a couple other guys. Hell, we worked ranches all over this area. Got started when we wasn’t much taller’n fence posts.”

  “Did Gabriel work here?” Father John made an effort to keep his expression unreadable.

  “Gab? Sure, he worked here some of the time. So did Mattie. Old Tinzant—he was my father’s brother—hired us on. Never had no kids himself, so he was good to me and the guys I cowboyed with after my dad died. Used to call me Breed. He’d say, ‘Hey you, Mr. Breed,’ even though he was probably a breed himself. Dad’s family, they come from some French trader in the early days, and there wasn’t too many white women wandering ’round these parts then. Anyway, I got a lot of Indian blood from my mother. She was all Arapaho, like my beautiful wife here.” He gestured toward Lily, who was still pressing herself into the cushions, an earnestness about her.

  The rancher went on: “Tinzant married a white woman, and she had some nephews. After she died, they showed up here, maybe thinkin’ they was gonna get the ranch when the old man died. But he left the ranch to me, Mr. Breed, just like he said he was gonna.” The rancher gave a short, dry laugh. “Surprised the hell outta them white relations of his wife’s.”

  “Gabriel was trying to locate some old friends,” Father John said, bringing the subject back to the murdered cowboy. “Did he come to see you?”

  The rancher looked startled, as if he’d just been jabbed with an electrical wire. “Who told you that? I ain’t seen Gab in thirty years.”

  Lily was on her feet now. She stepped to the side of her husband, linking one arm through his. “That old cowboy was part of the past, Father. He had nothing to do with us. I’m surprised you seem to think otherwise.”

  Father John kept his eyes on the rancher. “Two men who worked on your ranch have been murdered. I’m wondering why.”

  The rancher shrugged, patted his wife’s hand. “Folks turn up dead on the rez from time to time. You been around long enough to know that, Father O’Malley. Everybody knows why Matthew Bosse got killed. He’s been working on the nuclear waste facility, and there’s a lot of white protesters don’t wanna see that facility built. As for Gab, no tellin’ what trouble he got himself into. He was always a hothead, doin’ things the rest of us would say no thanks to.”

  “His funeral’s tomorrow morning, nine o’clock,” Father John said.

  Alexander gave his wife’s hand a kind of caress before releasing her arm. “I ‘spect I’m gonna be busy.” He backed into the entry, a signal the meeting was over, and Father John followed.

  “By the way,” the rancher said as he opened the front door. “How’d you happen to connect me to Gabriel Many Horses?”

  “Just heard it around.” Father John set his cowboy hat on his head and stepped onto the porch. His boots made a loud thwacking noise on the steps.

  * * *

  It was past dark before Father John finally got to his office. The kids were waiting when he drove into the mission, and he was glad to spend the next couple of hours practicing baseball. They worked on defense: the hows and whens, as he called the strategy. How to position the infield. When to guard against a stolen base. The Eagles were great at strategy. They’d brought home the trophy last season, in large part because of strategy, and they hadn’t rusted out over the winter. He was the only one feeling a little rusty.

  Now, with darkness settled outside, he saw his own reflection in the window next to the desk as he punched in Vicky’s number. No answer. He pressed down on the lever and tried her office. When the answering machine picked up, he left another message for her to call him.

  The same message he’d been leaving since yesterday. Still, she hadn’t called back. He hung up and called Gianelli’s office. Another answering machine: “You have reached the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” He hit the lever again and tapped out the agent’s home number. Someone answered on the first ring. In the background was the sound of kids jabbering and laughing. “Gianelli here,” the agent said.

  “I’m worried about Vicky.” Father John passed up the customary greeting. The agent knew his voice.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I haven’t been able to reach her for a couple of days.”

  “Maybe she took your advice and left town. That would’ve been the smart thing to do. Vicky’s very smart.”

  “She didn’t leave town, Gianelli. I know her. Somebody’s been trying to kill her, and now she’s missing.”

  “You hav
en’t talked to her in two days. That doesn’t mean she’s missing.” Gianelli stopped. His breath came in sudden bursts. “Okay, I’ll call Eberhart. He’s supposed to be keeping a watch on her. He’ll send a patrolman over to check her house and office. I’ll get back to you if there’s anything suspicious. Okay?”

  “Thanks.” Father John wished the offer made him feel a little better. “Something else,” he began. Then he told the agent about the connection among a bunch of old cowboys: Many Horses, Bosse, Fast, Legeau.

  “Who’s Fast?” the agent wanted to know.

  Father John related what he knew; it wasn’t much—an old cowboy with one leg and probably a serious case of diabetes who’d returned to the reservation to finish out his life. He told the agent where Fast was living. Then he said that something must have happened years ago; something Gabriel had come back to clear up before he died. Whatever had happened, it involved Legeau. Just a theory, he said.

  “Damn right, it’s just a theory.” Gianelli’s voice came like a burst of thunder. “Not a shred of evidence to connect Alexander Legeau to murder. He’s a respected man around here. A real example of how hard work pays off. Sure, I know, he inherited that ranch of his, but it was a small operation when he took over. Alexander built up the herd, made the ranch one of the best known in Fremont County.”

  “Look, Gianelli. I’m just pointing out that Legeau and the two murdered men go back a long time.”

  The line went quiet. Finally the agent said, “Okay. I’ll drive out to the ranch and have a chat with Mr. Legeau. And listen, John, stop worrying about Vicky. From what I’ve seen of that woman, she’s capable of taking care of herself.”

  The electronic buzz followed the cutoff click, and Father John replaced the receiver. He strode out of the administration building, locking the door after himself, and got into the Toyota. He drove west on Seventeen-Mile Road, then south on Rendezvous Road, the shortest route to Lander.