She slid the pages into a neat stack and began reading:
My mother was Mahom. She came from a leading family of our people. She was the sister of Niwot, who was called Left Hand by the whites. He was a great chief and the people trusted him. He was also a peace chief. He worked with the Cheyenne chiefs, Black Kettle and White Antelope, to make peace on the plains. The chiefs told everyone to go to Sand Creek where the people would be safe until a peace agreement was made. My mother and her other children went with Chief Left Hand. They camped a little apart from the Cheyennes. There were only about fifty Arapahos in the camp when the soldiers came. Chief Little Raven and the other Arapahos were still on the way. Some boys were able to run away from the soldiers. They found ponies and rode to warn Little Raven. The old chief told his people to cross the Arkansas River and go to Oklahoma. They never returned to Colorado.
My mother said that the camp at Sand Creek was like all our camps. We had a camp pattern that we always used. We always put up our tipis in a circle, with the openings facing the east and the rising sun. The tipis of the chiefs were in the middle. She said that when the soldiers came, Chief Left Hand ran from his tipi toward the soldiers with his arms extended, his palms out, which was our sign of peace. The white soldiers knew him. He used to visit their ranches in the Boulder area. It was the soldiers from Boulder who shot him. My mother was able to run away with her children. They were the only Arapahos at Sand Creek who survived.
I heard that Chief Black Kettle and Chief White Antelope did the same for their people. They grabbed white flags and ran out to the soldiers and shouted for them to stop. But the soldiers kept coming. They killed White Antelope. Then Black Kettle shouted to the people to run. It was terrible. The soldiers kept shooting, and people were running around, trying to get away. They killed everybody they saw, even little children. I heard they shot a tiny girl who was toddling around.
Afterward many warriors joined the Sioux and went on a rampage along the Platte River. They cut off the overland roads into Colorado. They were enraged at what had happened at Sand Creek, and they were inconsolable at the deaths of their families. Finally the government offered to make a new peace treaty that would give us reparations for all we had lost. Chief Little Raven asked me to interpret the words of the white commissioners.
There were many Indian people at the treaty meeting. There were many relatives of the old people and the women and the children who had been killed, and some Cheyennes who had survived Sand Creek. Many of them were still sick from gunshot wounds. Everyone was sad. “It is very hard for us,” Chief Little Raven said. “Many of our people lie at Sand Creek.”
The commissioners said that a great injustice had been done to our people. They promised to make reparations. Medicine Lodge Treaty Council, 1867. Margaret Fitzpatrick.
Catherine gathered all the papers together, smoothing the edges of the little stack, trying to grasp the full extent of the meaning. She was aware of Marie’s eyes watching her, filled with questions she didn’t know how to ask. Whatever was written on the pages belonged to Catherine.
Finally Catherine said, “There’s more to the story. Leland Stern and Ethan Russell and most likely many of the other founding fathers probably helped themselves to the Arapaho and Cheyenne lands after Sand Creek. They were here, and the Indians were gone. The government promised to make reparations, but if the Arapahos and Cheyennes had tried to come back and take possession of any of their lands, they would have been killed. It was a hundred years before the government made reparations.”
Catherine was about to drop the stack of papers into the carton when she saw another carton at the bottom. She set the papers on the grass and pried it out. “What’s this?” she said. But she knew the answer, even before she had lifted the lid.
Inside, wrapped in a soft white cotton, would be her father’s revolver. She pulled back the cotton and stared at the K-38 Special, the blued, double-action revolver with a six-inch barrel that she had learned to shoot when she was twelve years old. What she saw was a girl with black braids and braces, gangly and awkward and lost between two worlds, and the kind man who had become her dad, on Saturday afternoons in the summer at a shooting range, taking aim at the targets stapled to the target board.
“I think you should take it,” Marie said.
“I don’t need it.” What help would the revolver have been last night? In the bottom of her bag, and the bag on the floor two feet away. Elizabeth Stern would have shot her if she had even glanced toward the bag.
“Take it anyway,” Marie said. “For me.”
Catherine closed the lid, wedged the box back into the carton, and set the papers on top. Rex was awake now, shaking himself and watching her, as if he were waiting for her to say they were going home.
“Not yet, buddy,” Catherine said, patting the top of his head, scratching the hard knobs behind his ears. “Soon, I hope.”
She stood up and waited while Marie pulled herself to her feet. “Would you like to come to Sand Creek with me tomorrow?” Catherine said. She wondered why she’d asked. He was still out there, and she didn’t want to put Marie in danger. But Marie looked so . . . bereft, as if she felt that Catherine had gone away from her. It was true, but not the whole truth. She finally had herself, but she would always love Marie. She told her about the homecoming run, how Arapaho kids would leave Sand Creek and run in relays across the ancestral lands in Colorado all the way to the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. There would be a ceremony, blessings of the elders, drumming and singing in memory of the dead at Sand Creek.
“Yes,” Marie said. “I would love to go with you.”
33
Catherine could hear the drumming when she pulled into a vacant space on the dirt lot filled with pickups and dust-spattered sedans. A crowd of three hundred or four hundred people, she guessed, stood on the bluff on the far side of the lot. Groups of Indians—women with small children in tow, other kids running ahead, and men lugging ice chests and folding chairs—crossed the lot and headed up the dirt incline. Dust balls scattered around their boots. The air was hot; the brown earth dried and burned, the stubby patches of sagebrush blistered. There was a hushed solemnity to the place, like the solemnity of a cemetery, with only the steady, muffled sound of the drums.
Marie had slept for the last thirty miles over the dirt roads, and now she yawned, rubbed at her eyes, and combed her fingers through her hair. It had been a four-hour drive from Denver, and they had left early, driving into the rising sun, the sky ablaze in streaks of pink and red and vermilion. Even the rolling brown plains had turned pink. They talked about the Arapahos, Catherine’s people, Marie had called them. They had lived here, Catherine had said, reassuring herself. Along the streams, in the shade of the cottonwoods. It was like a game that she and Marie had played, nodding toward the occasional cluster of trees. “Could have been over there. Chief Left Hand’s village, possibly. Margaret Fitzpatrick could have lived over there.” She was starting to learn about herself. It would be a long process. Maybe she would go to the Wind River Reservation and see if anyone remembered her mother.
The sun burrowed into her like a laser beam when she got out of the car. She stuffed the keys into her jeans pocket, opened the trunk, and set her bag inside. Then she pulled out the blue fabric chairs, folded into narrow bags, that Marie had brought. She slammed the lid and waited for Marie to put on the straw cowboy hat that cast a line of shadow above her nose. Odd, Catherine thought, as they set off for the bluff. She had deliberately left her own hat on the backseat, and Marie hadn’t said anything, as if she’d guessed that Catherine would welcome the sun washing over her, warming parts of her that had always seemed cold.
She could feel the dark eyes following them as they reached the top of the bluff and started through the haphazard groups of people seated in folding chairs and standing about. A trail of smoke rose from a small campfire at the edge of the crowd. The sweet smell of sage wafted through the air. She found a bare spot where the
y opened the chairs and sat down. The runners gathered near the campfire, kids, most of them, with black hair and bronze skin, dressed in shorts and tee shirts with “Sand Creek Memorial Run” printed on the backs. Beyond the runners, she could see the dirt path down a gradual slope toward a platform with an iron railing. And beyond the railing, she knew, was the site of the massacre, a stretch of bare plains broken by scrub brush and stands of cottonwoods along the dried creek bed. She felt an uneasiness prickling her, a queasiness in her stomach. The people had run up the creek bed.
“So you have finally come to Sand Creek.” Norman Whitehorse appeared beside her. She nodded, then introduced Marie. “Sometimes people feel a little sick the first time.” He had hooked his hands into the pockets of his blue jeans and was peering down at her, as if he expected her to bolt out of the chair and run for a bush. “Soon’s the elders give the blessing, the first relay of runners will get started. They’ll run ten miles, then the next relay team will take over. They run so people won’t forget the terrible thing that was done here.”
“My ancestors were here,” Catherine said. “Most of them were killed.”
“I know,” Norman said. He nudged a webbed folding chair across a foot of dirt with his boot and sat down. “At least we would’ve gotten some of our land back with a settlement.”
“Maybe someday we’ll get a better settlement, land for ranches and homes.” She doubted that was true. The people had already agreed to a settlement for the lost lands. She knew that Norman knew the truth: the land was gone.
The crowd started moving like a giant organism shifting sideways. A group of elders came through the opening, Harold YellowBull and James Hunting among them. They circled the runners, then turned and faced them. Harold stooped over and lifted a pan off the campfire. Gripping the handle with both hands, he held out the pan like an offering and began speaking in Arapaho. The sound was melodious, a rising and falling with points and counterpoints, like the mournful sound of a jazz saxophone. Smoke poured out of the pan, drifting and curling through the crowd.
Norman leaned over the armrest. “He says the people that got away from here always remembered and carried the memory with them the rest of their lives. He says that now we gotta keep the memory, so the people that died here won’t be with the forgotten people. He says it’s our duty to remember. The running and the remembering will help our people heal.”
The kids stood quietly, heads bowed, sunk into themselves, Catherine thought, summoning the strength for the long run ahead. The drumming started again, a low thudding noise that reverberated in the quiet vastness. The other elders raised their hands toward the kids, palms outward in the sign of peace, and muttered something in Arapaho: wishing them well, she guessed, wishing them Godspeed. The kids turned and started running, a long line snaking down the dirt path toward the railing, veering onto a side path, disappearing for a moment then reappearing out on the plains where the villages had stood. Still running, a long line of black-haired kids weaving up the creek bed. Catherine was on her feet now and so were Marie and Norman. Everyone was standing, watching the runners until they looked like a white line drawn across the brown plains.
The crowd had begun to thin out, and the sound of engines coughing into life and tires squealing punctuated the quiet. Some of the families had eaten sandwiches and drunk cans of soda from the ice chests, but they now had packed up everything and were making their way down the slope to the parking lot. There were a few families still finishing picnics. Norman and the elders had left. They were to be in the vans with the relay teams, driving down the dirt roads beside the runners. Every ten miles, the sweat-soaked kids would climb into the vans and pour water over their heads and down their throats. Eat a little. Sleep a little. The next team would be running. The same routine for almost six hundred miles, across Colorado and part of Wyoming.
Catherine had walked back to the car for the small ice chest that Marie had set in the trunk along with the chairs. They had pretended they were having a picnic, but the smell of mayonnaise and turkey sandwiches had made her stomach turn. She’d sipped on a can of Coke, but she had no appetite. Neither did Marie, she realized. Marie had taken a few bites of her sandwich, then slipped it back into a plastic bag and dropped it into the cooler.
“I want to see the site,” Catherine said. She had been thinking about walking to the platform and looking out over the railing since the blessing had ended and the runners headed out, but she wasn’t sure how she could summon the courage.
“I can go with you,” Marie said.
Catherine shook her head. “It’s okay. I’d like to go alone.” She pushed herself out of the chair and walked past the last knots of people folding chairs and packing ice chests, past the campfire with embers flickering and the odors of sage still in the air. She went down the path and crossed to the railing.
The site spread below, even more beautiful and serene from the overlook. The sound of the breeze riffling the cottonwoods drifted toward her. Out toward the northeast, she knew, was the site of the Arapaho camp. A cluster of tipis, a small group of people, not more than sixty, and all of them part of Chief Left Hand’s band. His family, her ancestors. Spread north and west was the large Cheyenne camp, six hundred people, a few warriors, but mostly women, children, and old people. The soldiers had stopped on the bluff and looked down onto the sleeping camp, just as she was looking down now. Then the noise had started: the clanking of sabers and harnesses, the whinnying of the horses, the churning of the wagons that hauled the howitzers over the dirt. And Colonel Chivington lifting his rifle and shouting: Remember your dead on the plains!
She turned around and walked back. A few people were still milling about, and Marie had struck up a conversation with two women near the edge of the bluff. Catherine picked up the ice chest and started for the car. She had to catch herself from sliding down the incline into the parking lot. She felt slightly numb, drained. The sun was blazing in a perfect, blue sky. A pickup pulled out of a space and downshifted past her, the tires spitting out a cloud of dust. She passed several sedans lined up next to the rental car. She opened the trunk.
It was then, out of the corner of her eye, that she saw the yellow head emerging from the dark-colored Pontiac sedan two cars away. She froze for an instant, and in that instant her eyes took in the rest of her surroundings: the tan sedan next to her, a pickup at the end of the row. No one else in the lot. She was alone with the killer.
She had one thought. Everything must appear normal. He must not know that she had seen him. Normal. She leaned down as she set the ice chest into the trunk, and in that instant, she slipped her hand into her bag and slid out the revolver that Marie had insisted she bring along. She gripped it in her right hand, a smallish thing. Strange how familiar it seemed, as if she were a kid again, fixing her fingers around the handle, her thumb barely brushing the trigger. Dad standing beside her saying, “Don’t take your eyes away from the target, Catherine. You can hit the bull’s-eye.”
She slammed the lid and turned slowly, her arms straight at her sides, the gun in her right hand a little behind her. The killer was about ten feet away, moving past the trunk of the tan sedan. In his hand was a black revolver with a long silencer. Everything about him seemed big, larger than life, a phantom figure from a nightmare. The yellow hair like the crazy wig of a clown, the dark tee shirt and blue jeans, the cowboy boots. He was smiling in a way that only involved his lips. His eyes were dark and dead.
He could shoot her in an instant.
He likes to have his fun. She could hear Bustamante’s voice. You’re an easy target. He’s overconfident.
“Haven’t you heard that it’s over?” she said. Start a conversation, she was thinking. Distract him. “The story has already run. Elizabeth Stern and Gilly Mason are in custody. The police know who you are and how to find you.”
“Wrong, Catherine.” He turned his head slightly and spat out a wad of saliva. “If they knew how to find me, I wouldn’t be here. They don’t
know shit.”
“There are people on the bluff.” She could see Marie still talking to the women, and a couple of men folding chairs. “You’ll never get away with this.”
“Oh, I’ll get away all right. By the time anybody notices you sprawled in the dirt, I’ll be a half mile down the road. Nobody’s gonna find me out here in all this emptiness.” He worked his jaw for a moment, then spat again. “You surprised me, Catherine, and very few people surprise me. Calling your friend to come rescue you. Running your car off the highway in the mountains. Oh, there’s lots of other times I could’ve taken you out. Nights out walking your dog. Parking lot at the hospital. I was there waiting for you. Up at the ranch, I saw you out running. But I was waiting for the right moment. I wanted to see your face, watch the fear light up in your eyes. You’re prettier up close than I thought. But I made a contract. I always fulfill my contracts. It’s a shame, Catherine, but I believe you’re gonna have to say good-bye.”
Something shifted in his mouth, his lips twisted. He turned his head a quarter inch and started to spit again, and in that instant she raised the revolver and pulled the trigger. The gunshot blasted the air. He staggered backward, eyes bulging, saliva draining out of the corners of his mouth, a string of saliva hanging off his chin. His hand was shaking on the gun that rose toward her.
She fired again, and this time he fell backward, dropping onto the dirt, legs bent like the legs of a plastic robot. In her line of vision, coming off the bluff, running down the slope, sprinting across the lot—a blur of dark faces and black hair, blue jeans pumping and tee shirts heaving, and running ahead of everyone else, Marie. Her mouth opened in a round O, arms outstretched. There were sounds of screaming a long way away.
Blood Memory Page 31