Watching Eagles Soar

by Margaret Coel

  * * *

  The telephone jangled into the quiet as Vicky Holden stuffed into her briefcase the legal papers she wanted to review at home tonight. Her secretary had already left. The answering machine could take the call, she told herself, snapping the lock. She picked up the briefcase and started around the desk as the phone emitted another jangle. She stopped, swung around, and lifted the receiver. “Vicky Holden here,” she said, struggling to mask her irritation.

  “You that Arapaho lawyer?” It was a woman’s voice, not one she recognized.

  “Yes.”

  “You gotta get over to Nancy Starbird’s place.”

  Vicky felt her heart sink. When was it—three weeks ago?—she’d filed Nancy’s divorce papers and gotten the restraining order against Amos. “Is Nancy all right?” She held her breath.

  “Amos got killed.”

  A wave of relief washed over Vicky: Nancy was okay, and whatever had happened to Amos—God help her for thinking it—he had it coming.

  “You better get to Nancy’s place,” the caller said.

  * * *

  The sun bulged orange-red over the Wind River Mountains, shooting red, orange, and pink flares through the blue sky as Vicky left the Bronco behind a line of pickups at the side of Willow Road. The small green house stood in the middle of a bare dirt yard with an old pickup on one side. Lined up across the yard like guards were about a dozen men: plaid shirts and blue jeans, black braids hanging from beneath cowboy hats. There were the little nods, the flick of eyebrows, the slanted eyes on her as she hurried past. A medley of hushed conversations floated outside through the screened door. The entire Echo Hawk Clan was here, Vicky thought as she rapped on the thin frame.

  The screened door swung outward, and Nancy stood in the opening, two black braids spilling down a thin chest, a bruise purpling the side of her face. Wordlessly, she reached for Vicky’s hand, and Vicky followed her into the small living room crowded with young women, grandmothers, and elders. The smell of fresh coffee seeped into the air. Across the room, sitting in a circle of elders, was Father John O’Malley. She caught his eyes a moment before turning to Nancy. “Tell me what happened,” she said.

  “Somebody shot Amos.” Nancy sank back against the doorjamb, eyes puddling with tears. Vicky was about to put her arms around Nancy when a puffy-faced woman with narrow, dark eyes and a cap of gray hair stepped between them. Edna Echo Hawk, the clan matriarch, began cradling Nancy. “Now, now, we’re gonna take care of you and the kids,” she said.

  Suddenly Vicky was aware of the tall, redheaded white man beside her. Father John was always present, she thought, when someone needed him. Glancing up, she asked, “When did it happen?”

  “About five thirty. Out on Bull Bear Road,” Father John said. His voice was soft.

  Vicky felt a little chill course through her. Nancy’s trips to the emergency room, the disturbance calls—enough for her to finally seek a divorce, a restraining order. And now the bruise on Nancy’s face. What had she decided to do next?

  “I got real worried when Amos didn’t get home,” Nancy was saying.

  “What?” Vicky stared at the young woman.

  “I was gonna tell you, Vicky,” she began in a thin, childlike voice. “We got everything patched up, Amos and me. He come back home last week. He promised we was all gonna move up to the compound with the clan, so things was goin’ real good.”

  “Real good?” Vicky heard the sharpness in her tone. “He hit you again.”

  “We told her not to get back with that no-good husband of hers,” the grandmother said. “What good’s that restraining order when he kept comin’ round anyway? He’d tell her anything, and she’d believe him.” Turning toward Nancy, she said, “He wasn’t never gonna bring you up to the compound, ’cause he knew he couldn’t kick you and the kids around up there. No way was we gonna let him.”

  Just like in the Old Time, Vicky was thinking, when the family clans lived together—clung together—following the buffalo across the plains, setting up tipis along the streams, the warriors always standing guard, protecting the women and children. But Nancy didn’t live in Squirrel Canyon with the rest of the clan. She and Amos were Kono’utose’i Oi—modern people. They had their own home, their own little family. Except Nancy had no one to protect her and the kids. Only herself.

  “Was anyone else here this afternoon?” Father John asked Nancy. In his eyes, Vicky saw the reflection of her own worry.

  The young woman shook her head. “The boys was playing over with LuAnn Runner’s kids.” She paused, eyes darting between Father John and Vicky. “What d’ya think? I went out to Bull Bear Road and shot Amos just ’cause he hit me again?”

  “Don’t talk crazy,” the grandmother said. “Mary Wilson come over for coffee this afternoon.”

  Surprise and confusion crept into Nancy’s face. “Mary Wilson wasn’t here.”

  “Course she was. What’re you talkin’ about? She was here all the time that no-good husband of yours was gettin’ himself shot.” Locking eyes now with Vicky, the old woman said, “Mary Wilson’ll tell everybody so.”

  “Look, Nancy,” Vicky said, a lawyer tone, “don’t talk to anyone—the police or the fed—without calling me. Do you understand?”

  Father John and Vicky walked past Nancy’s clansmen—her brothers and cousins—silently holding their line in the dirt yard. The sky glowed orange with the fading sunset; the air was still hot. When they reached the Bronco, Vicky said, “As soon as the fed learns about the divorce filing, the restraining order, the emergency room visits, Nancy will be facing a murder charge. Who had more reason to kill Amos? Obviously the clan thinks she killed him. That’s why they called me. That’s why Edna Echo Hawk is insisting she has an alibi.”

  Father John was quiet a moment. Then, taking Vicky’s arm and leading her past the Bronco to the Toyota, he said, “Let’s go have a talk with Mary Wilson.”

  * * *

  Father John had knocked a second time on the front door when an old woman with thin shoulders hunched inside a pink cotton dress appeared around the corner of the white frame house. “Vicky? Father John? You lookin’ for me?” Mary Wilson clutched a black bag to her sunken chest.

  Father John began explaining that they’d come about Amos Starbird.

  Yes. Yes. Mary Wilson nodded. She’d heard about Amos. She was on her way over to Nancy’s now, poor girl, even though the whole clan was most likely there looking after her and the kids, but you never know, she might help fix some food, or . . .

  “Grandmother,” Vicky said, using the Arapaho term of respect. “Did you go to Nancy’s this afternoon?”

  Worry and confusion mingled in the old woman’s face. “Maybe I should’ve stopped in, like she asked me, but . . .”

  “Who asked you?” Father John said.

  “Well, I didn’t ask who was calling, just one of Nancy’s grandmothers wanting me to check on her. I figured Amos was acting up again.” Disapproval flashed in Mary Wilson’s eyes. “So I drove over about four thirty and seen Nancy out in the side yard by that old pickup her clan give her. Looked like she was fixin’ to go somewhere, so I come on back home.”

  They watched Mary Wilson’s old Chevy pull onto the road, jerking forward in a blue cloud of exhaust, before they got back into the Toyota. “Nancy had all the time in the world,” Vicky said, a sense of dread as heavy as a buffalo robe pressing down on her. “She grabbed one of Amos’ guns and drove across Seventeen-Mile Road to meet him. He must have seen her. Probably had a good idea what she had in mind, so he turned off on Bull Bear Road. She followed him to the dead end, shot him, threw the gun into a ditch somewhere, and drove back home before anybody could show up with the bad news. Oh, God, John.” She drew in a long breath. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

  Vicky saw the little vein pulsing in his temple, recognized the look that always came into his eyes as he searched for t
he faulty proposition, the hole in the logic. Wheeling the Toyota into the center of the road, he said, “We don’t know when Amos left the garage.”

  The low-slung building sat on an apron of cement at the eastern edge of Riverton. Black letters spelled HA K’S on a plate glass window in front. Father John drew up next to the opened garage door. In the dim interior, he could make out the shadowy hulk of a truck. As he and Vicky climbed out of the Toyota, a stoop-shouldered man in overalls came around the edge of the door, hands crumpling a red, grease-streaked rag. “Closed up,” he said.

  Father John introduced himself, then Vicky, and the man nodded, a grudging recognition: Indian priest, Indian lawyer lady. Stuffing the rag into a back pocket, he said, “What can I do for ya?”

  “We’d like to talk to you about Amos Starbird,” Father John said.

  “Yeah? What about him?”

  “Amos is dead,” Vicky said. “Somebody shot him this afternoon.”

  The man shifted his gaze a moment to Vicky. “No great loss to the world.”

  “Where were you this afternoon about five thirty?” Vicky asked. She was grasping, she knew, looking for someone else with a motive to kill Amos.

  “You ain’t the police. Nobody’s business where I might’ve been.”

  “The FBI agent will want to know,” Father John said.

  The man eyed Father John for a long moment, considering. “Right here,” he said.

  “When did Amos leave?”

  Leaning sideways, the man shot a wad of spit across the pavement. “How’d I know? I was on the dolly under that truck.” He waved a bony hand toward the shadowy interior. “Phone rung, and next thing I know, Amos says he’s gotta get home. Guess that wife of his must’ve called.”

  * * *

  There was an eagerness to the way people moved across the sun-baked cemetery at St. Francis Mission toward the pickups parked in the drive, Father John thought, as if no one wanted to linger at the grave of Amos Starbird. Members of the Echo Hawk Clan were already piling into the beds of old pickups and sliding three and four together onto the front seats.

  Father John said another prayer over the grave before following the last of the crowd across the cemetery. He saw Vicky leaning against the door of the Toyota, squinting into the sun. “Nancy’s no longer a suspect,” she said when he reached her.

  He drew in a long breath, feeling a sense of relief. He’d spent the past three days dreading the phone call, the news that Nancy Starbird had been arrested for murder.

  Doors slammed; an engine backfired; a rust-smeared pickup wheeled past, tires crunching the gravel. Vicky waited; then: “The coroner’s report says Amos was probably killed about four thirty, at least an hour before his body was found. Mary Wilson swears she saw Nancy in her yard about four thirty. According to the fed, there was only one call to Hank’s Garage all afternoon. It was made from a pay phone at Ethete at exactly four o’clock. Amos left right away. In twenty minutes, he would’ve been at the bend on Seventeen-Mile Road where somebody was waiting, so he turned down Bull Bear Road—a dead end.”

  Father John glanced at the slowly moving pickups, the little clouds of dust clumping in the hot air. “Somebody wanted to make sure Nancy wouldn’t take the blame,” he said.

  Vicky nodded. “Whoever called Mary Wilson used the same pay phone at Ethete.”

  Father John wasn’t surprised. “Where will the investigation go from here?”

  Turning her gaze at some point behind him, Vicky said, “The fed still has other leads. Amos got in his share of bar fights and he owed money to a few people in town. But . . .” She paused, keeping her eyes on the distances. “The fed will never solve this case. He doesn’t know the old Arapaho ways.”

  Father John followed her gaze past the dirt-mounded graves, plastic flowers drooping in the heat, toward the line of pickups snaking around the curved drive and out onto Seventeen-Mile Road, carrying the elders and grandmothers, the women and the warriors of the Echo Hawk Clan.

  He felt the soft pressure of Vicky’s hand on his arm. “It was all of them, John,” she whispered. “All of them.”

  “I know,” he said.

  Hole in the Wall

  The Seventh Commandment: Thou shalt commit no adultery.

  Vicky Holden sensed another presence in the office. She looked up from the legal brief on her desk. Bertie Eagle Cloud stood in the doorway, black hair falling around the shoulders of her white tee shirt, worn blue jeans stretched tight around thick thighs. She raised her arm. In her hand was a black pistol.

  “Bertie!” Vicky sat motionless, her breath caught in her chest. From outside came the muffled hum of late-afternoon traffic on Main Street in Lander, the sharp retort of an engine backfiring.

  “I shot Ralph.” The arm began to waver. Falling, falling, the nose of the pistol dropping toward the carpet.

  “Let me have the gun.” Vicky slowly rose to her feet and crossed the small office. Reaching down, she slipped the cold, hard metal from the woman’s hand. “Come sit down,” she said, guiding Bertie to a barrel-shaped chair in front of the desk.

  She walked around the desk and set the gun inside the center drawer before sinking into her own chair. Clasping her hands to still the trembling, she leaned toward the other woman. A client, of sorts. Last year she had helped Bertie negotiate a new lease for her convenience store at Ethete on the Wind River Reservation. Just a month ago, Vicky had run into Bertie and Ralph at the Ethete powwow. They sat together watching the dances—an Arapaho couple sliding into middle age.

  Bertie said, “I give Ralph fair warning. I tol’ him, ‘You take up with that whore again, I’m gonna kill you.’” She rearranged herself in the chair and folded her arms across the heaving chest. “He can’t have some other wife. He ain’t some great chief in the Old Time. He’s got one wife for twenty years now, and that’s me. Well, he goes off with that whore Liz Redman anyway. I didn’t have no other choice.”

  Vicky was quiet. Outside, the traffic sounds seemed far away; the golden light of sunset glowed in the window. “Is Ralph dead?” She heard the hushed sound of her own voice.

  “I missed the bastard.” Bertie’s head tilted in an angle of defiance. “I should’ve grabbed Ralph’s rifle instead of that pistol. I can shoot the thirty-ought-six. I got an elk with it last month. It would’ve hit Ralph, instead of putting a hole in the wall. Next time I’m gonna use the rifle.”

  Vicky lifted herself out of the chair, walked over, and perched on the vacant chair next to Bertie. “Listen to me. There’s not going to be a next time.”

  Something changed behind the woman’s narrow eyes. “I thought you was gonna understand, Vicky. I don’t got a choice. He took up with that woman again. I got every right . . .”

  “Not to kill him.” Vicky emphasized each word. “Whatever Ralph has done, it’s not worth spending the rest of your life in prison.”

  The woman let her gaze roam around the office. “Next time I’m gonna use the rifle.”

  Vicky drew in a long breath. Bertie had just confessed to a crime of assault with a deadly weapon. “I must advise you to turn yourself in to the police,” she said. “I’ll go with you.”

  “If I’d found the thirty-ought-six, that bastard wouldn’t still be walkin’ around.”

  “If you turn yourself in, it will go easier for you,” Vicky said. “Maybe Ralph won’t press charges.”

  Bertie laid both hands on the armrests, propelled herself upright, and started for the door. “I think I remember where he put it.”

  “No, Bertie!” Vicky got to her feet. The woman was already through the waiting room, flinging open the door.

  Vicky ran after her. “Wait,” she called as the woman hurried along the outside corridor that led to the second-floor offices. She turned into the stairway. The clip-clop of footsteps echoed against the wood walls. And then she was on the street below, arms
swinging, thick legs pumping toward the black pickup at the curb.

  “No, Bertie,” Vicky shouted over the railing, as the woman folded herself behind the steering wheel. Another moment, and the pickup pulled into traffic, engine growling, blue exhaust bursting from the tailpipe.

  Vicky knew with a cold certainty that Bertie Eagle Cloud intended to finish the job she had started. She had to warn Ralph.

  She ran back to her desk and flipped through the Rolodex until she found the couple’s listing. Then she picked up the receiver and punched in the number. The electronic ringing buzzed in her ear. There was no answer. Ralph was probably at Liz Redman’s house. She tapped out the number for information. One, two, three rings before the operator came on the line. “Sorry.” The voice sounded bored. “No listing for Liz Redman.”

  Vicky slammed down the receiver. She would have to warn Ralph herself. But Liz Redman lived near the Wind River on the eastern edge of the reservation—an hour’s drive away. By the time she got there, it might be too late.

  She lifted the receiver again and called the Bureau of Indian Affairs police on the Wind River Reservation. Another operator, and finally the familiar rumble of the police chief’s voice. “Art Banner here.”

  “It’s Vicky,” she said, her mind searching for the words that would protect a client, yet notify the chief of an imminent danger. She said, “Bertie Eagle Cloud just left my office and . . .”

  The chief cut in: “So that’s where she’s been. My boys been lookin’ all over the rez last couple hours.”

  Vicky was quiet a moment. Ralph must have already pressed charges. “What’s this about, Art?”

  A long intake of breath sounded over the line. Finally, the chief said, “Ralph Eagle Cloud’s dead.”

  “Dead.” The word sank into the office quiet like a boulder falling to the bottom of a lake. Her mind replayed the slow-motion image: Bertie retreating down the corridor, sliding into the pickup, on the way to kill a man already dead.