It made sense, Father John was thinking, except for one thing. Dean must have begged Janis to leave with him, but she hadn’t gone with him. And yet, she went to Dean’s apartment on Sunday evening, looking for him. Maybe she’d decided to leave the ranch after all. But it was too late by then. The Lakotas had already found Dean. And she’d gone back to the ranch, back to Orlando.
He tried to follow what Vicky was saying, something about Janis Beaver staying with Aunt Rose and stealing the gun. “The perfect weapon,” she said. “It could be traced right back to me.” The sound of her laughter was forced and tight. It drifted over the thrum of the tires on the asphalt.
They were climbing now, the pickup bouncing over the narrow road. The slopes on either side blocked out the moonlight, so that only the headlights shone through the darkness. He could still see Janis Beaver, huddled in the tipi, the pretty face hard with certitude. Dean had come for her. He’d loved her, but in the end, she’d chosen Orlando. And now she was lying unconscious—God, let the ambulances be there!
Father John wheeled through a sharp curve, trying to remember. Where was Janis lying? There were several young women close together by one of the bonfires. Had she been among them? In another group? A solitary mound in front of one of the tipis? Had all the faces simply blurred together in his own shock?
The road was climbing along Bull Creek; the trees were sparse now, crowded out by clumps of willows that looked black and grotesque in the moonlight. He eased on the brake and peered ahead for the turnoff into the area of Bull Lake.
He steered around another curve, then spotted the break in the willows. He turned left. The willows crept close to the sides of the pickup, the tires chattered on the gravel. He could see the dam ahead, a black wall rising out of the earth, backlit by the moonlight. The road veered to the right, climbing toward the top of the dam. Another quarter-mile, and he could see the lake, an enormous body of black water. A metallic sheen rippled over the surface.
A white Wind River police car, a kaleidoscope of lights whirling over the roof, blocked the road ahead. The driver’s door hung open. Father John jammed down the brake pedal. In the headlights, he could see the bulky figure slumped next to the door.
31
Father John got out and ran to the prone body. A hole as big as a crater gaped in the officer’s chest and a pool of oil-black blood was soaking into the fragments of his blue uniform shirt. The holster on the black belt was pushed back, the flap still snapped over the gun handle. Father John lay a hand against the man’s neck. It was as inert as leather.
He looked up through the whirling red and blue lights at the sky. It was immense, a vast and impersonal darkness with moon-edged clouds moving eastward and breaking up at intervals to reveal a scattering of stars that flickered in the void. They were too late. The Lakotas were here, and when the officer had tried to stop them, they’d shot him. It was a moment before he could summon a prayer: “God, have mercy on us.”
He got to his feet. Stepping around the body, he reached inside and grabbed the black radio. He fumbled with the buttons a moment. A shrill noise mixed with static, then a woman’s voice. “Go ahead.”
“This is Father O’Malley,” he managed. “The officer at Bull Lake . . .” The name, what was the man’s name? He leaned over the body, unable to read the blood-smeared badge. “He’s been shot. Get some other officers up here. The dam’s going to be dynamited.”
“Cars are on the way, Father.” The woman was shouting at the other end. “Father, you better get out of there.”
He replaced the radio and turned to Vicky. The blue and red lights washed intermittently over her face and black T-SHIRT. “The Lakotas are at the spillway,” she said.
She was right, he knew. There was no movement along the top of the dam, no sign of anyone, only the flat concrete surface that held back the lake from the darkness dropping away below. The Lakotas would plant the dynamite deep inside the spillway; the dynamite would blow a hole in the base; the water would surge through and bring down the dam. And the flood . . .
“Listen to me,” he said. “This whole place is going to be obliterated. Get the flashlight out of the pickup. Start climbing. Climb as high as you can. Please, Vicky.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “For goddsakes, John. We have to get to the spillway.” She shouldered past and threw herself into the passenger seat.
He got in behind the wheel, and started maneuvering the pickup backward into a narrow clearing. There was no time to argue, and it wouldn’t do any good. She would never run away. They hurtled down a narrow path that angled along the side of the dam.
In the gray light, he could see the boulder and rock face of the dam rising higher and higher outside Vicky’s window as they dropped toward the creek below. The sound of running water grew louder, and then the creek came into view, a narrow funnel of silver pouring out of the concrete spillway that resembled the entrance to a tunnel. The cuts of other service roads converged through the brush and rock.
Vicky leaned forward, braced her hands on the dashboard, and stared down at the roads. “They’ve already left,” she yelled. “The trucks are gone!”
Father John tightened his grip on the wheel. The roads below were vacant. He felt a stillness settling over him—the stillness of death. The Lakotas had already set the dynamite and gotten out of there. The dam would blow at any moment.
They were close to the creek now; he could feel the cool moisture in the air. He turned right, and the pickup lurched to a stop in a clump of willows. “Wait here,” he said. “Let me take a look around.”
“It’s my world that’s about to be destroyed, John.” Vicky threw her door open and started to slide out.
He took hold of her arm. “Listen to me, Vicky. I need you to stay here. Watch for the trucks, do you understand? You can see the roads from here. The Lakotas might not have finished setting the dynamite. They could come back.”
It was a moment before she nodded. He grabbed the flashlight from under the seat, got out, and started through the willows, moving at a diagonal toward the edge of the spillway, sweeping the flashlight beam ahead. The squish of his boots in the muck mixed with the sounds of the creek. He was breathing in the damp spray.
He reached the base of the dam and started edging along the sloped rock-faced wall. At the entrance, he grabbed the rough corner and swung himself around. It was pitch black inside. The flashlight beam was no more than a thin strand of light penetrating the darkness. He waved the beam along the wall, then across the opposite wall. Webs of green moss crawled over the concrete and glistened in the light. Deep inside, almost lost in the blackness, was the faint metallic sheen of the gate. Water ran beneath and spilled out into the creek, sending up little jets of spray.
He was about to start up the spillway when the light beam hit the dynamite. Twelve sticks taped together, dangling from some kind of hook embedded in the concrete. Extending from the middle tube were two thin leg wires—one blue, the other yellow. They ran above the surface of the water, then angled out the entrance.
He kept the light beam on the wires: along the creek, into the willows. Suddenly they disappeared. He stooped close to the ground and pushed aside the branches until the beam found the yellow wire, thin and stiff, running in a straight line into an area of trampled grasses. He traced the wire toward the small metal object glinting in the light.
He moved closer. A clock, he could see it clearly now: the black numerals circling the white face and the yellow wire attached to the hour hand. A black wire ran from the minute hand. He struggled to pull from his memory everything he’d ever heard about dynamite. The tiniest electric spark—that much he knew—and it would detonate.
He went down on one knee and shone the light over the wiring, conscious of the sound of his own breathing against the water lapping over the rocks. The hour hand was on 12; the minute hand was a little more than one minute before 12. One minute, and the hands would touch, and when they touched, an electrical charg
e would shoot through the wires to the dynamite.
Something had to deliver the charge—a battery. That was it! The blue wire he’d lost in the willows was attached to a battery; so was the black wire on the minute hand, making a complete circuit. He had to detach the wires.
He reached for the clock, then drew back his hand. The minute hand was a hair’s breath from 12. The wires so close, he could accidentally jam them together and set off the dynamite. He had one minute now to find the battery.
He started following the black wire from the minute hand, crouching low, stumbling through the bramble, throwing back the willow stalks, counting off the seconds. The flashlight flickered off, then on again.
Twenty-five seconds, twenty. The wire twisted through the brush and disappeared in the undergrowth. He stepped backward, picked up the trail again, then lunged into the brush. He had it now, the tiny black wire snaking close to the ground. He kept the light on top of it all the way to the oblong black box set on a bed of willow branches.
Ten seconds. He threw himself toward the box and fell on his knees. The wire from the minute hand looped over the positive pole. The blue wire attached to the dynamite was twisted around the negative pole. He yanked at one wire, then the other. They strangled the poles, refusing to let go. He threw down the flashlight and fumbled for the end of the black wire and started unwinding it, his mind still ticking off the seconds.
Six. Five. Four.
“Come on,” he shouted, yanking as hard as he could. The wire popped free, and the recoil sent him backward into the mud and trampled branches. He lay still for several minutes, gasping for air, his heart pounding against his ribs.
He didn’t see the shadow until it flickered across the beam of light.
32
“What the hell...” a voice shouted.
If U Father John felt something hard crash against W his ribs and he flipped sideways. His face pushed into the wet, mushy earth and sharp roots. The crash came again and again, his shoulder this time, then his back. A jagged line of pain ran down his spine and into both legs. The pain seared his lungs. He couldn’t breathe.
He clawed at the ground and managed to get enough leverage to raise himself up so that he could see the large, broad-shouldered Indian standing over him, the white buckskin trousers splashed with mud. Moonlight splayed across his dark face, and Father John could see the scar carved into the man’s cheek. Orlando’s body guard, a rifle gripped in one hand.
“It’s that damn priest,” the man hollered to a shadow on the other side of the creek, half-hidden in the willows.
“What’d he do? Pull one of the battery wires?” Another Indian started wading toward them, boots slapping at the water. He climbed onto the bank, slipped backward, then caught himself and stumbled forward, dragging his left leg. Mud covered his buckskin pants almost to his knees.
“We gotta kill him, Martin,” the man with the scar said.
Martin Crow Elk, Father John thought, the Indian who’d taken him over the ridge to the shadow ranch. The other man was Roy He-Dog, Orlando’s bodyguard. He wondered what kind of fake IDs they’d used to convince Ted Gianelli they were not the Lakotas he was looking for.
“Don’t see it makes any difference how he dies,” Crow Elk said, his voice high-pitched with the whine of an adolescent. “He oughtta die like the rest of the evil ones.” He leaned over and examined the battery. “All we gotta do is put the wires back and reset the clock, and they’re all gonna die.”
He-Dog seemed to consider this a moment, then he wheeled around and started back into the willows. “I’ll take care of the clock. Ten minutes’ll be enough for us to get out of here.” His voice trailed behind him like a shadow, and Father John understood. The two men had set the clock and given themselves enough time to drive up one of the roads on the other side of the dam. When the dam didn’t explode, they’d raced back.
Crow Elk stooped over, his left leg outstretched, his moccasin slipping in the marshy earth. He picked up the wires.
“Hold on,” Father John shouted. It took all of his breath. He gasped for more air. “This isn’t what Wovoka wants.”
“What!” The Indian looked up. “What right you got, talk about Wovoka. What’d you know?”
“I know what Wovoka preached to the Ghost Dancers. Live a good life, live in peace.”
“Yeah? Well, that changed after the soldiers came and killed Big Foot’s people, dumped the bodies in a trench, the last believers. Nothing but filth, those white troops. Earth’s gonna be cleansed of filth in the regeneration. Wovoka give Orlando the instructions on what to do.”
“No, you’re wrong.” Father John raised himself against the pain until he was sitting upright. He wrapped an arm around his ribs and fought for another gulp of air. “Wovoka was a holy man. He knew about the massacres that had happened before, but he still preached peace. He never wanted innocent people to die.”
“Shut up.” The Indian bent over the wires.
“You dynamite the dam,” Father John managed, “and hundreds of people will die. Innocent people, Martin. Both Indians and whites. I don’t think you want to kill innocent people. You could’ve shot Vicky, but you didn’t. Who killed the officer up there?” Father John tilted his head toward the top of the dam. “It was He-Dog, wasn’t it?”
The Indian glanced between the wires and the battery. “Righteous people gonna live in the new world, soon’s the flood’s gone and the earth’s clean. Orlando’s gonna come back. He’s gonna bring Wovoka.”
“Wovoka will condemn you,” Father John said. The pain ratcheted through his voice.
The Indian threw his shoulders back and shouted. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Father John could hear the break in the man’s voice, like a spidery crack in glass. He started to his feet, coughing with the effort, aware of He-Dog crashing back through the willows.
From somewhere in the darkness came the faint wail of a siren.
“Clock’s set,” He-Dog shouted. He held the rifle low along his thigh and bent his head in the direction of the siren. “Fix the battery. Let’s get outta here.”
“Think of Wovoka, Martin.” Father John was almost upright now. He dug his boots hard into the soggy ground to steady himself. “You blow up the dam, Wovoka won’t want you with him. You’ll be an outcast. You’ll be alone.”
“Shut up, white man!” He-Dog’s voice sounded like the howl of a wild animal. He raised the rifle and hunched forward, a slow, deliberate motion. His top lip rolled back; the scar pulled taut across his cheek.
Father John had a sense of time collapsing around him, compressed into a finite moment of consciousness.
“Drop the gun!” Vicky stood up in the willows, pointing a long-nosed handgun at Roy He-Dog. “Now,” she yelled, moving forward and planting her feet apart. “I’ll shoot you.”
Father John kept his gaze on the gun in her hands. She must have climbed back up the road. He could still see the gun inside the officer’s holster. Now she held it steady, not more than three feet away from the back of the Indian’s head.
He-Dog reached down and set the rifle in the mud.
The next thing Father John saw was Martin Crow Elk lurching sideways, pulling the wires toward the battery. Father John leapt forward and crashed against the Indian, knocking him to the ground. He rolled over, grabbing his stiff leg and sobbing.
Father John took hold of the wires and, stumbling to keep his balance, ground them beneath his boots until they disappeared into the mud. Then he picked up the battery and hurled it as hard as he could in the direction of the creek, grunting out loud with the pain that seared his ribs.
He walked over and unpeeled Vicky’s fingers from the gun. The sirens were coming closer, a distinct, sharp sound that banked against the concrete dam.
He-Dog stood motionless. “You’re gonna pay, white man,” he said. “You and this white woman that used to be Indian are gonna pay. You got no right . . .”
“Get down
.” Father John waved the gun.
The Indian shot him a look of hatred, then began folding himself downward. Onto his knees, his hands. Finally he stretched out, the side of his face against the mud.
Father John picked up the rifle. Then he slipped the officer’s pistol into the back of his belt.
He went over to Vicky and slipped his arm around her shoulders. “It’s over,” he said.
She slumped toward him, as if she’d finally understood what she was staring at: Crow Elk sprawled on the ground, still grasping his leg. He was sobbing quietly, a kind of relief in the sound. He-Dog lay on the ground as still as stone.
“I saw two men wading across the creek,” Vicky said, her voice choked with tears. “I was so afraid for you. I ran up the road to the officer’s body and . . .”
“I know,” Father John said. She was shaking beneath his arm.
It was then that Father John heard the low rumble of an engine kicking over. Then, headlights flayed the darkness on the other side of the creek. There was the sound of tires skidding in gravel. He saw a dark pickup plunging up a track at the far side of the dam. The pickup reached the top of the ridge, then taillights winked up at the sky as the truck dipped south, toward the reservation.
He sensed Vicky tense next to him. “There were others,” she cried. “They’re getting away.”
“The police’ll be here any minute. They’ll stop them.” He hoped that was true. “We’ll wait.”
Vicky listened to the tires humming on the asphalt. A soothing sound, she thought. She lay her head against the back of the seat and watched the stripe of orange light widening in the sky. John was quiet beside her, lost in his own thoughts, she guessed, his gaze locked on the road moving toward them.
It hadn’t been a long wait at the dam. Ten minutes at most before the sound of sirens had filled the air and headlights shone through the pines. And then, crouching shadows darted toward the spillway, like troops moving into a village occupied by the enemy, flashlight beams bouncing in the air. One officer had reached the spillway and started inside, moving through a bubble of light. Other officers materialized on the slope above.
The Shadow Dancer (A Wind River Reservation Myste) Page 22