by Pat Price
-36-
When I walked back into the dining room Jimmy's Father was talking in his monotone voice and Jimmy appeared to be very focused on what he was saying. I made loud sounds as I walked across the family room so that I did not blunder into what they were talking about. Both had been speaking in native dialect but seamlessly shifted back into English as I crossed the room and sat down on the stool in front of the counter.
"Father was telling me about the inquiries he has been making," Jimmy said. Chief Two Feathers took over.
"I took Henry Sipoff, Bear Olson's uncle, to dinner off reservation. Henry has a weakness for alcohol and tends to talk and brag too much about his nephew. Bear Olson has been a source of pride to the nation because he is a law enforcement officer for the white community. They accept him as a hero especially after he saved so many people in the accident on the Interstate Highway." The Chief thought for a moment then continued, "and then last year he saved those old people in Phoenix when their house caught on fire. He is in the newspaper a lot these days."
"So, Jimmy told you what we're doing and why?" I asked.
"Yes, he did," Chief Two Feathers said.
"Why would Olson want to do this? Kill so many people who have never harmed him."
"You have to understand," the Chief said, "most Indians choose not to participate in the white world and they have little in their own lives to interest them or even to be proud of these days. We have been herded like cattle and forced onto land that the white man did not want. Some Indians were moved from one piece of land to another because the land became valuable for several reasons. In some communities it was not that long ago when Indians were treated very badly because they were Indians."
"I can understand that," I said, probably a bit too quickly. "But people have to get on with their lives and get that behind them."
"Racial memory can last a long time," he said. "The number of Indians going to school and becoming successful is slowly growing. People like James and Rebecca and even Bear Olson have moved into the white world and compete successfully."
"Except that he wants to make a statement," I said.
"Yes, that is true. He wants to make a statement. His Uncle Henry said that everyone in the world will know Bear Olson's name someday soon. You have to understand it was not so long ago when Indian males were warriors. We lived in a harsh environment and were a hard people because we had to be to survive. The gene in the Indian that produced warriors was dominant and now it has no outlet. The white man has been trying to mold the Indian and other minority peoples into his own image. I have often suspected that if the black man had been herded onto reservations like the Indian, he would have been more like us, turning inward instead of outward trying to imitate the white man.”
"Well, Olson’s plans would appear to be public knowledge," I said, looking at Jimmy then at this father. "An elderly friend of mine on the Hualapai reservation outside of Kingman knew about what Olson was planning."
"That may be public knowledge among the Indian population but not in the white world," Jimmy's father said. "Indians, unlike white people, speak in metaphors and time is never a factor. An Indian may speak about an event and it may happen tomorrow or next year or it may already have happened. Unless you know for certain what the time frame is, you will not know if he is speaking in past, present, or future tense. This causes the white people to dismiss most of what an Indian says. If a white person overheard two Indians talking about someone possessing powerful medicine that could destroy a city, they would dismiss it out of hand because an Indian could never do such a thing."
He was silent for about a minute as he collected his thoughts and sipped his tea. He finally put the glass down on the counter top and continued, "I do not pretend to be an educated man. I finished high school on the reservation and I can read and write pretty good for an Indian," he said, sweeping his hand around toward the family room. I looked in the direction his hand was pointing to as he moved it. Two of the walls in the family room were bookshelves from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. There were hard back and paperback books interspersed with magazines. "I am largely self educated but I read on a variety of subjects ranging from civil engineering to government. I do not however, understand for the life of me, how he can turn fuel into a bomb."
"I cannot explain the actual chemistry of it myself," I said, "but believe me, it can be done. In fact, Jimmy and I could probably do it ourselves in our office in Newport Beach. Trust me, it is not that difficult and I have trouble understanding why someone has not done this before."
"I think," the Chief said, "Olson may believe he can make some type of a statement by doing this, but he does not realize that this act could destroy what progress the Indian has made in this world. We are only now integrating into the white society and something like this will turn the white man against us."
"It's not just the white man you have to worry about," I said, "every man and woman of any race or culture will be outraged. If Olson pulls this off it could ignite a world war. If nations who have surveillance satellites and were our former enemies see two nuclear detonations in this country they may think that it's time to get in on the act and even up old scores. If that happens then the American Indians will not have what little they currently have."
"You have to understand," the Chief said, "there are a growing number of people in the nations that do not want to participate with the white man. They know they are never going to regain their lands and self-determination. As far as they are concerned, if they cannot have what is rightfully theirs, they will deny it to the white man as well and that is what is probably driving Bear Olson."
-37-
Jimmy and I had been talking to Chief Two Feathers for about an hour when the Chief looked at his watch and pronounced that it was time for dinner.
"I thought we would wait for Rebecca," Jimmy said.
"Rebecca is a grown woman and I am a hungry old man who needs his dinner. I will leave a note for her and she will meet us at the diner next to the trading post," the Chief said, pulling a ballpoint pen out of his shirt pocket and removing a white tablet from a drawer under the counter on his side. He wrote a short note and tore the page from the tablet and carefully laid the paper square on top of his glass.
"She will notice this because she will want to put the glasses in the sink when she comes home," he said, looking up and smiling.
"She might be mad because we left the glasses on the counter instead of putting them in the sink ourselves," Jimmy said.
The Chief looked at Jimmy and smiled then the two of them looked at me. "I do not think that will be the case," the Chief said.
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The inside of the restaurant next to the trading post looked somewhat like the Road House in Kingman, only smaller and a shorter lunch counter sat where the bar would have been. About ten feet across from the counter was a line of 4 booths and a single line of 8 square tables filled the space between them.
Jimmy and I followed Chief Two Feathers inside the small café. The Chief slid into a booth that backed up against the wall. "Sit here beside me James," he said to Jimmy. Jimmy smiled at me as he slid into the booth next to his father. I sat down on the opposite side and moved across the vinyl covered bench seat and sat next to the wall. A miniature chrome version of the jukebox was mounted on the wall. I reached into my pocket and pulled out about a dollar in change and fed the chrome box. I then flipped the display cards in the box by their little handles until I found a Willie Nelson song that the old rancher in Kingman played. I punched the number for the song about six times and the speakers on the big jukebox came to life with Willie singing about a lost love.
A waitress came over to the table with 3 menus and laid them on the table separating Jimmy and his father and me.
"Get you boys something to drink?" she said, then added, "what'll you have Chief Two Feathers?"
"You would have made me feel like a young man again if you had included me as one of the boys P
hyllis," Chief Two Feathers said.
"Now I can't be calling the head of the tribal council 'boy', can I?" she said looking at the Chief and smiling. The Chief smiled back and you could see some chemistry working between the two of them. Phyllis was a white woman and looked to be in her mid to late forties and was what we would call a full figured person. She was dressed in jeans, a white frilly shirt, and the local style of boots known as goat roper boots.
"Thank you for the thought," the Chief said, "I'll have a glass of your best ice tea please."
"Make it two more," Jimmy said. Phyllis smiled at the Chief again and left. She disappeared past the swinging double doors into the kitchen.
"That's a lot of woman to love," Jimmy said.
"Yes she is James, yes she is," the Chief said.
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The food at the restaurant was surprisingly good. Chief Two Feathers ordered a strip steak; Jimmy ordered the meat loaf as did I. The food was simple but well cooked and you could tell that care was taken when it was placed on the plates. Phyllis, ever the attentive hostess hovered over us refilling our ice tea and placing more bread on the table before it was needed.
I suspect however that Jimmy and I by ourselves probably would not have received the same level of service; in fact I was sure of it. Phyllis floated around the table like a butterfly and was always smiling at the Chief. He returned the smile with his eyes, twinkling like a department store Santa Claus. The two of them were feeding off of each other.
When we were finally down to stuffing oversized pieces of apple pie down our throats Rebecca came in. The way my seat was situated I could look between the bar and a post in the middle of the room and see the doorway. I noticed the door opening from the corner of my eye and someone stepping inside. It was Rebecca. She was dressed in a light tan colored hip length fabric jacket with a white sheep skin collar. She was wearing ankle high laced up hiking boots and jeans that, while not tight, were at least snug. Her hair was long, black, and fell over her shoulders. She walked with long strides without bouncing as she came across the open area of the restaurant, her arms moving casually in time with her legs.
She stopped in front of the table and smiled.
"Rebecca, sit down and have dinner with us," the Chief said, looking up at his daughter.
"Good evening everyone," Rebecca said without an accent, sliding into the booth next to me. The inside of the trading post restaurant was cool to cold from the air conditioning and she looked cold with a few goose bumps from the change in temperature from the outside to inside but the heat from her left leg went through my jeans, or maybe it was the heat from my imagination I was feeling. She spoke to her brother and I heard the words and felt detached from my body for a short instance. The sensation was almost the same as I experienced whenever shooting starts and things shift into slow motion. I heard her speak my name and I snapped back.
"Are you here with us?" she said, not as a question. Jimmy and his father quietly laughed.
"Yes, yes I am. I'm sorry I was preoccupied with something," I said, stumbling over my words. "What did you say?" I said, trying to recover.
-40-
Phoenix is blessed or cursed with an abundance of general aviation airports. The small airports are a blessing if you fly light aircraft and a curse if you live near one of them. We rented a small Cessna 172 along with a pilot. The 172 is a high wing aircraft which means the wing is mounted on top of the cabin. The high wing makes the Cessna ideal for ground searches because there is nothing below the cabin window to obstruct your view. The 172 is one of the workhorses of general aviation light aircraft.
We lifted off the short runway about an hour after dawn. We planned to fly over the same areas during the morning and during the late afternoon. The reason for this was we wanted the shadows accented on the canyon walls. I made a tracing over the map given to me by John McClintock. I wound up with a map showing only the canyons located inside a five mile radius of the general area where they believed Olson had his operation. The plan was to locate the mouth of each canyon and fly the length of it in both directions during the early morning hours and the late afternoon hours. The plan would give us about two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon with a four hour break in between.
If we failed to locate the canyon within three or four days we were prepared to fall back to plan B and kidnap Olson and drop his ass down a mine shaft, one piece at a time. The morning air over the desert was turbulent, which is pilot talk for rough and bumpy. An hour into the flight and I was toasted. The noise and turbulence was the equal of any helicopter ride I had ever had in the military.
We spent two hours and covered about 60% of the canyons we wanted to survey the first morning. At that rate I was afraid we would run out of time before our self-imposed deadline of three days expired. Once we landed, Jimmy dragged me to the Ford and drove us to a national electronics store located in down town Phoenix and we bought two noise-canceling headsets.
The afternoon flight went about like the morning flight except it was more tolerable. The headsets cut out over half of the noise so when we landed we were only bored and not tired as well. The next two days passed much the same as the first. We spent the days flying and the evenings with Chief Two Feathers and Rebecca eating at the reservation restaurant and planning for the next day's flight.
We were beginning to get desperate when on the morning flight of the forth day we hit pay dirt. The Cessna was plodding along at about 500 feet above the west wall of a canyon. Jimmy was looking out the pilot's side back seat window when he reached up and tapped the driver on the shoulder.
"Come around and fly this stretch again, I saw something back there." I looked over my left shoulder at Jimmy.
"What was it," I yelled over the engine noise. I had slid the left earmuff from the headset off of my ear so I could hear Jimmy.
"I think it was the front end of a pickup truck sticking out of a cave or from an overhang," he yelled back.
The pilot pulled the plane up and tilted it over on its side and held the angle until we were heading back in the direction we had just come from. Once the plane was leveled out we flew back along the East Side of the canyon for about a minute then repeated the turn around again. We were now on the West Side of the canyon with the left wing tipped down so that Jimmy had a better view. He had the binoculars up to his eyes and looking down on the east wall of the canyon. We continued on for not more than ten seconds when he called out again.
"That's it, get a fix."
I pressed a button on the handheld GPS unit and three seconds later the display showed me the coordinates of where we were when I pressed the button. I pressed the save location button and the green save light winked at me. I had the location of what was probably Olson's stealth operations center.
"Got it," I yelled to Jimmy and the pilot. Jimmy sat up straight and tapped the pilot again.
"Turn 90 degrees to the west and see if we can find a canyon that runs parallel to this one," Jimmy said over the engine noise.
The pilot gave us a thumbs up and rolled the Cessna over to the right and pulled another steep turn while the compass rotated around to 270 degrees. He leveled the wings and we motored along at 70 miles per hour for just about two minutes and we crossed over another canyon. I pressed the locate button on the GPS and waited for it to compute the location of the second canyon.
"Come around and follow that canyon to the north and see where it comes out," I said to pilot.
The plane came up on its right wing and the pilot rolled us around until we were just shy of pointing at the new canyon. He leveled the wings and with a slight bank to the left we were parallel and following the canyon. Fifteen minutes later we were over the mouth of the canyon where it spread out onto the flood basin. I took another position fix where the canyon walls fell away behind us. We flew out over the basin in a more or less straight line until we crossed over the state highway and I pressed the GPS locate button for the last time that day.
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I called Mendoza that afternoon and arranged for a meeting in the federal building in downtown Phoenix. We arrived around 2:00 and parked in the lot that wrapped around the building. Even though summer was past the black asphalt was soft and felt sticky on the soles of my boots as we walked from the truck to the concrete of the sidewalk. We entered the front of the building and waited in line to walk through the metal detector, then on to the receptionist.