Ghost Dance

by Mark T Sullivan

  His anger faded as quickly as it had come. ‘Sometimes. But you’re different than them.’

  ‘I’m a drunk, too.’

  Gallagher struggled to attach words to the conflicting feelings buffeting him and seized on one that surprised him. ‘You know about the woman you were named after, don’t you? Andromeda?’

  She waved a hand in the air. ‘I don’t know. My mom said it was her grandfather’s mother’s name. They were from Greece.’

  ‘It’s from myth,’ he said. ‘Andromeda was a great princess, raised to be a warrior. You helped Perseus become a hero, slay Medusa and thwart an evil king.’

  She smiled. ‘I did all that, huh?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They were quiet again for a long time, acutely aware of each other in the tiny bedroom. At last Andie cleared her throat. ‘Okay, we keep going. We need to make a list of what we don’t know and figure out a plan.’

  Over the next thirty minutes they came up with more than a dozen questions, including these: how was Many Horses’ journal connected to these killings? And how could they find the other journal holders before more were killed?

  ‘I think the answer’s in the journal itself,’ Andie said at last. ‘And we’ve lost two parts of it.’

  Gallagher thought about that, then seized on another possibility. ‘We may have lost two parts, but we’ve read them. We know what’s in them. What we don’t understand is the significance. If we can figure out what makes Many Horses’ story so important, we might figure out who wants it enough to kill for it.’

  Andie nodded. ‘We need to talk to an expert on the Sioux.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THURSDAY, MAY 14

  ‘RIDICULOUS!’ SNAPPED ROGER BARRETT. He wagged his hand so frantically that the silver bracelets on his left wrist clanged. The professor was in his early fifties, with a sharp face, brush-cut black hair, a turquoise earring and a gaunt body. Barrett was an archival specialist from the University of Nebraska who was spending two years attached to Dartmouth’s School of Native American Studies. His cluttered office was just off the school’s library.

  ‘It’s real,’ Gallagher insisted.

  ‘No. If such a journal existed, I would know of it,’ Barrett declared snippily.

  ‘We’ve seen it,’ Andie insisted.

  ‘A hoax, most likely. But bring it if you must and I’ll take a look’

  ‘The two pieces we had were stolen,’ Andie said.

  ‘Then we’re all wasting our time,’ Barrett sniffed, and with a flamboyant wave of dismissal, he swiveled his desk chair and began rummaging through a stack of printed material on the floor.

  Andie yanked out her badge, leaned across the desk and shoved it under the professor’s nose. ‘I didn’t want to use my official status,’ she said in a soft yet commanding voice that caused Barrett to turn. ‘But the journal may be related to murders in Vermont.’

  ‘Murders!’ Barrett shot upright. He toyed with a heavy turquoise ring. ‘I haven’t heard anything about any murders involving a Sioux journal.’

  Gallagher glanced at the cover of the Rutland Herald in his lap and wondered how long the silence might last. Lieutenant Bowman had somehow kept the ramifications of Olga Dawson’s death from leaking to the press. The story on today’s regional page said simply that the fire remained under investigation. There was no mention of Charun, the drawings or the connection to Hank Potter.

  ‘We’re keeping that part of the investigation quiet,’ Andie said. ‘Professor, would such a journal be valuable enough to kill for?’

  Barrett rubbed a bony finger along his lower lip. ‘From an anthropological as well as a historical perspective, I imagine a nineteenth-century journal written in English by a Lakota woman would be extremely valuable, especially if she survived Wounded Knee and told us how she danced the Ghost Dance.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ Gallagher asked.

  ‘Because the details of the actual Ghost Dance from that time were closely guarded,’ Barrett explained. ‘We have descriptions of it by whites watching from afar. But we have no personal blow-by-blow, this-is-how-you-do-it from the peak of the movement.’

  Gallagher frowned. ‘But aren’t there Native Americans who still practice the ritual on reservations out West?’

  Barrett nodded. ‘Yes, but that Ghost Dance is a modern interpretation of the rite. It could be argued that the ceremony as it was practiced in the 1890s largely died at Wounded Knee. So I guess what I’m saying is that such a journal’s value—either intellectual or monetary—would depend on the writer and what she was writing about.’

  ‘We can tell you what we’ve read,’ Andie offered.

  Barrett sat forward, elbows on his desk, chin cradled in his hands, as they told him everything they remembered about the two pieces of the journal.

  ‘If this is a hoax, it’s a sophisticated one,’ the professor said when they had finished. ‘Some of the things you are describing—the lock of hair and stones, for example—are unrelated to the Ghost Dance, but deeply rooted in other Sioux religious practices. The stones are sacred talismans used by shamans during many of the various ceremonies that make up Lakota spiritual life to this day. The hair relates specifically to a ceremony known as The Releasing of the Soul.

  ‘When Many Horses says the hair can set her free, she’s probably referring to that rite, which was actually outlawed around the same time the Ghost Dance was banned,’ Barrett continued. ‘In Lakota society, after death, a lock of hair was snipped from the deceased and purified in sweet-grass smoke, then wrapped in buckskin and stored in a special place in a relative’s home. It was believed that the soul lived in the hair and had to be kept for at least a year before it could be released. During that time the family would gather what was necessary for the ritual—a buffalo cow robe, among others—and men there would be a great celebration in which the soul would be released to go on toward the life beyond.’

  ‘And all Sioux believe this?’ Andie asked.

  ‘Not dogmatically as a Catholic or a Jew might,’ Barrett admitted. ‘The Sioux religion is a charismatic one, passed on from one generation to the next, interpreted anew by each generation. That’s why we don’t know what the Ghost Dance was really like. Each successive Sioux, in a sense, invents his or her own religion, based on the spiritual ways of those who have gone before. Which is a verbose way of saying that a given Sioux may or may not believe in a ceremony like setting free the soul. But if she believes, she believes fervently.’

  Gallagher asked, ‘Why did the government outlaw the soul-releasing ceremony and the Ghost Dance?’

  ‘You’d have to understand the way people thought a hundred years ago to—’

  Barrett halted in mid-sentence, turned to his computer and began typing. Now came the screech of a modem and then a beep as the computer connected. He typed in a series of codes, followed by the words ‘Mooney/Tinmouth,’ then hit Enter.

  Immediately there popped up on the screen a heading that read:

  Tinmouth Correspondence Relating to the Army Investigation of the Battle of Wounded Knee and to the Sioux Campaign of 1890-1891. James Mooney et al: Report of the Secretary of War. Volume Nine. Appendix 3, pages 8004-8009. U.S. National Archives.

  Barrett highlighted the entry and hit Enter. The transcript of a letter popped up on the screen and he turned it so Andie and Gallagher could read.

  Major John Appleby

  Chaplain, U.S. 7th Cavalry

  Camped near Cheyenne River Agency. Dakota Territory

  22 October 1890

  Major General Horace Tinmouth Chief of Chaplains U.S. War Department Office of the Secretary Washington. D.C.

  Dear General Tinmouth,

  At your request, I have passed seven weeks among the Sioux on the agencies at Standing Rock, Cheyenne Creek and Pine Ridge in Dakota Territory. Your concern about the growing influence of the Ghost Dance here is more than justified.

  The situation grows more volatile every day.

 
; The most dangerous Sioux, including Sitting Bull and Hump, have embraced the rite. Big Foot is jubilant ‘about the coming of a messiah.’ All braves under Big Foot have Winchester repeating rifles. General

  Beyond that, however, the stated policy of the United States is for the Indian to be assimilated into our Christian culture. This ceremony represents a giant step backward in our efforts to eradicate savage custom.

  Two weeks ago I got into position above No Water’s camp at Pine Ridge at first light. Below me, a throng of eight hundred gathered around a twenty-foot aspen festooned with offerings.

  Through the monocular I observed braves and squaws form a circle some four hundred yards in diameter. The squaws wore loose white robes with wide, flowing sleeves. The robes were painted blue at the neck, which is cut in a deep V and decorated with figures of birds, the moon and stars. The braves’ Ghost Dance shirts were adorned with painted eagles and feathers attached by quills to the wrist and left to fly in the breeze. Many of the dancers painted their faces red with black half-moons on their cheeks and foreheads.

  As the sun rose, the savages held hands and began a stamping pattern to their left. Their feet raised a fine red dust on the plain. And their detestable singing made what little hair I have left stand on end.

  This went on from dawn toward midday. Shortly after twelve hundred hours, a fast-moving storm, the first after a tiresome, parched spell out here. advanced from the west. The sky turned purple. The wind hastened; and so did the dance and the song, until the whole pack of heathens whirled and howled.

  I have a strong faith in Jesus Christ, General, and as the Chaplain of the 7th Cavalry since the massacre at Little Bighorn, you know my faith has been tested many times. But I do not rightly know how to explain what happened next. The motion of the storm cloud turned circular, but opposite in direction to the dancers below. A misty, swirling funnel emerged from the belly of the clouds. Rain fell on the dancers. Lightning flashed. Thunder clapped. At least fifty of the dancers pitched forward into the mud.

  They convulsed and twitched, then lay stone-still. Some of the stricken lay in the mud for an hour or more while the storm raged and the frenzied dance went on around them.

  Around thirteen hundred hours, the cloud retreated to the east. One by one, those who had fallen rose again. A section of the multitude broke from the circle and closed around each of those who had risen. And every time that happened, the one who had fallen would speak and gesture wildly and the whole lot of them became even more frenzied.

  I left the bluff as frightened as I have been in my lifetime.

  I still cannot explain what occurred that day. But you have known me nearly fifteen years. General, and at the risk of you thinking me mad, during that ceremony I felt the presence of something, something that must be stopped for the good of all.

  Please relay my concerns to the Secretary of War.

  Yours in Christ.

  Major John Appleby

  Barrett said, ‘That gives you an idea of the world your journal writer was living in shortly before the massacre.’

  Andie gestured toward the computer. ‘How extensive is your archive?’

  ‘The most comprehensive repository of its kind,’ Barrett said proudly.

  ‘Is Sarah in there?’ Andie asked.

  Barrett’s eyebrows shot up and his nervous, foppish energy returned. ‘I’ve never heard the name, but possibly, possibly. Most of the documents have been scanned in by my graduate students.’

  The professor turned the computer screen back in his direction. Gallagher got up on his crutches, grimaced at the fire in his thighs, but came around the desk. Andie followed. A white bar appeared on the flat blue screen. Barrett typed: ‘Lakota/Many Horses.’ The computer came back: ‘No matches found.’

  Barrett looked up. ‘Does she mention any relatives?’

  Andie said, ‘A mother. Painted Horses.’

  Barrett thought, shrugged, sniffed and typed the name. The computer came back ‘No matches found.’

  ‘She mentioned a man named Ten Trees,’ Gallagher said.

  The professor’s mouth curled up in a sly grin. ‘I know Ten Trees.’ He tapped out the name on the computer, hit Enter, and immediately a file filled the screen. The brief biography identified Ten Trees as a prominent Sioux shaman who fought alongside Crazy Horse during the War for the Black Hills. After Crazy Horse’s death, Ten Trees joined Sitting Bull in exile in Canada, only to the of pneumonia. No mention was made of Many Horses, but at the end of the article there was a cross-referencing code of letters and numbers separated by semicolons.

  ‘Photo ten three six oh four,’ Gallagher read out loud. ‘You have pictures of Ten Trees?’

  Barrett got an odd look on his face. ‘I’ve never seen one, but that’s what it means,’ he said. He highlighted the code and hit Enter.

  There was a beep and then there flashed on the computer a sepia-toned photograph of a powerfully built man, a woman and a young child in front of a tepee. The man stared into the camera with defiant, almond-shaped eyes. He had a broad, flaring nose and his hair was long and loose, except for a plait gathered in rawhide and decorated with a single feather that hung at the breast of a collarless, flowing denim shirt.

  The woman was hauntingly beautiful, almost as tall as the man, with her hair in two dark braids and her neck surrounded by a high choker crafted of quills. A plaid shawl around her shoulders matched the skirt she wore. But it was the girl at the woman’s side who almost caused Gallagher’s knees to buckle.

  No more than five, she had her mother’s soft, round cheeks and her father’s deeply set, almost Asian eyes, which looked shyly up at the camera and out through more than a hundred years in a way that made his head spin.

  ‘Where did that picture come from?’ Gallagher demanded shakily.

  Barrett scrolled down to the bottom of the picture. Ten Trees and family; Mary Parker family genealogy and photographic collection, Rapid City Historical Society, Rapid City, South Dakota.’

  ‘She said Mary Parker was her teacher at the mission school at Standing Rock!’ Andie crowed. ‘That girl has to be Many Horses!’

  Gallagher’s head spun faster and he thought he might faint. It was impossible but true: the little girl had the young face of the woman in his dream.

  ‘Are you all right, Pat?’ Andie asked.

  ‘I’m feeling faint,’ he said. ‘My legs.’

  They got Gallagher to a chair where he sat in numb shock Barrett did several more searches, all of which confirmed that Mary Parker had been a Catholic missionary teacher on the reservation for ten years, beginning in 1880. Then he downloaded the photograph and printed it out. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help,’ he said, handing Andie the picture.

  ‘You’ve been of more help than you know,’ she replied. ‘Pat, I think I know how we can track down the rest of Many Horses’ journal!’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ‘WHY THE CHURCH?’ GALLAGHER asked, hobbling out of the truck two hours later. They were parked in the lot across the street from St. Edward’s Catholic Church in Lawton. Pigeons flushed from the belfry on a chill, damp wind that blew hard out of the northeast. A ragged vent of powder-blue sky opened, then shut in the storm canopy.

  ‘The crucifixes,’ Andie said. ‘If the bundles all contained a crucifix, men I’ve got to believe that the people who hold them are like my mother and Olga, descended from Catholics who lived here in Lawton at the turn of the century. If Professor Barrett can find Miss Mary Parker in old documents, maybe we can find the other holders in the church records.’

  Gallagher nodded. But his mind was lurching about, which it had done repeatedly since they left Barrett’s office. How was it possible that the girl in the photo archive matched the one in his dream? Gallagher’s skin itched as if he had been invaded somehow.

  Lost in these troubling thoughts, Gallagher crutched his way out into the street. A cherry-red, jacked-up Ford F-350 with mud tires and a rack of overhead s
potlights sped toward him. Andie jerked Gallagher back. The truck fender brushed the crease in his pants. Gallagher caught a glimpse of the driver. Bernie Chittenden, the dour owner of Lawton’s general store, threw him a hatchet stare as he passed. He speeded up, then squealed tires around the corner and was gone.

  ‘Hey!’ Andie cried.

  Almost immediately, a blue Chevy Suburban turned onto Whelton Lane. Chief Mike Kerris slowed to a stop and rolled down his window. He was alone. There were two bait-casting rods in the back seat. He popped a grape lollipop from his mouth and flashed a shark’s grin.

  ‘Your cousin just tried to run us over!’ Andie shouted.

  ‘Which cousin?’ Kerris replied laconically. ‘I got a lot of them.’

  ‘Bernie Chittenden.’

  ‘Bernie?’ Kerris laughed and pushed back the baseball cap on his head. ‘No way. Bernie’s weird, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Christ, he doesn’t even hunt.’

  ‘I’m telling you, he almost hit Pat.’

  ‘Pat?’ Kerris smirked knowingly. ‘Did Bernie hit you, Pat?’

  ‘Just missed.’

  ‘Well, then,’ Kerris said dismissively. ‘But if it makes you feel any better, I’ll go have a talk with the Bemster. By the way, how goes the mental-health vacation, Andie?’

  Andie’s body went rigid. Her fingernails dug into her palms. ‘Keeping busy.’

  The chief’s grin disappeared. ‘Not in my town, I hope. Not while you’re on leave.’

  ‘I’m a citizen, too, Mike,’ she said evenly. ‘By law I should be able to walk the streets without fear of someone running me over. By law I should be able to talk to whomever I want to.’

  Kerris’ eyes went half lidded. A candied, purple tongue flickered at his lips. ‘You go sticking your, nose into official business when you’ve got no official business and I’ll arrest you, Andie, obstruction of justice.’

  ‘Justice!’ Andie scoffed. ‘You don’t even understand the concept.’

  The chief stared at her with a sudden hatred that surprised Gallagher in its depth. ‘I spent seven years paying. What more do you want, Andie? My skin?’