Death on the Greasy Grass

by C. M. Wendelboe

  Willie backed up, feigning hurt feelings, his hands held out in front of him. “All I was going to say is that’s a hell of a place to hide a key. For someone so paranoid.”

  “Who else knew Harlan stashed his key there?” Manny asked.

  Stumper paused. “Probably everyone on Crow Agency. Certainly everyone in Lodge Grass.”

  Stumper had inserted the key when Manny stopped him. “Aren’t you going to disable the alarm?”

  Stumper turned the lock and opened the door. “Security system’s been shot for the better part of a year. Harlan never got around to having it fixed. And yes, most everyone knew about that, too.”

  They followed Stumper into the building as he felt his way around the wall for the light switch. The fluorescents flickered for a moment before catching, a steady humming filling the huge room.

  Stumper caught Manny’s slack-jawed stare. “Winter was Harlan’s slow season, and he’d clear the tables so the local kids had a place to play ball.”

  Manny nodded to basketball hoops on portable stands on one end of the building. “It’s certainly big enough to play ball in here.”

  Stumper led them to where Harlan had arranged wall-to-wall display tables clustered together according to the type of relic. They’d been set so close together that there was just enough room for prospective bidders to walk between them as they inspected the artifacts. Manny walked awed among the tables, the largest collection of authentic Indian artifacts outside a museum he’d ever seen.

  “Did I lie about Harlan’s annual auction being impressive?”

  Manny turned away from Stumper and started walking the displays. “You didn’t lie.”

  “Look at this.” Willie stood hunched over a table two rows down and Manny joined him. Willie pointed to a cradleboard, Crow by the beaded diamond pattern at the top and bottom of the board, tapering slightly at the bottom. Red and yellow beads set on light blue formed the background. Three deerskin ties to hold a baby at the center of the board lay stiff and twisted from years of hard weather. A yellow plastic tent with the item number on it sat in front of the cradleboard for prospective bidders to match up to bid sheets.

  Manny brushed past Willie, stopping at a table displaying metal trade axes, some still secured in ash handles with buffalo sinew, others pegged in place with square nails, each with its own plastic tent and number assigned. Ornately decorated axes, more ceremonial than practical, were laid out side by side. Their beaded and quilled handles of various colors vied with blades in various stages of brown and black and bluish patinas.

  On the opposite end of the table, Harlan had arranged knives of different lengths and different functions. Skinning knives were displayed next to hunting knives, next to knives used in ceremonies.

  Manny had started walking past when his eyes clouded, his focus drawn to one knife apart from the others: a warrior’s knife. A killing knife. Manny bent over, one hand resting on the table for stability, his other hand reaching out. He touched a dark stain on the blade near the hilt that he knew was ancient blood. He tried pulling his hand away, but it remained on the blade as he fought the physical connection to what he witnessed somewhere deep in his clouded mind.

  And then the stench of blood. The stench of pain. The stench of death. He swayed in the heat, the intense heat, of that June day overlooking the Greasy Grass when Colonel Custer fought Lakota and Cheyenne warriors. The heat, always the heat, caused Manny’s vision to shimmer. A warrior squatted and peered through thick reeds at his friend in the open field just out of the protection of the tall buffalo grass. Two Lakota rode up a hill, their war cries loud, their horses’ flanks whipped with quirts, tongues lapping the air as they bore down on the luckless warrior caught in the open.

  Manny felt the need to scream a warning to the warrior caught alone. But this was a Crow, sworn enemy of the Lakota, and Manny hesitated. Shots erupted in Manny’s head, the ringing in his ears followed by resounding disbelief. The first Lakota had jumped from his pony, run to the fallen Crow warrior, and dropped to his knees. One hand had grabbed his enemy’s hair and the other had held a knife poised to slice. Even before he had been able to make the first scalp cut, he had been shot in the back by his own comrade’s rifle. Manny tried shouting.

  And his throat closed shut watching the other Lakota coolly murder his friend. He looked down only to make sure before he dropped to his knees and slid the knife around the base of his friend’s scalp, lifting the bloody souvenir. The warrior slid the knife into the sheath on his belt, along with the Crow scalp and that of his fellow Lakota. The man mounted and rode slowly away from the killing field. The knife—the scalping knife—fell to the ground unnoticed.

  Lights overhead flickered and caught, the humming bringing Manny back to the present. He shook his head to clear his mind, the strength returning to knees that had nearly buckled. The last thing he felt like putting up with now was some fleeting vision he couldn’t possibly need—or want—to interfere with his investigation.

  Manny staggered and turned his back on the table with the knife display, concentrating in front of him on the table hosting bow and arrow displays. In the center of the table lay a Crow bow made of mountain sheep horn and covered with rattlesnake skin. It lacked a bowstring, yet Manny knew enough about them from archery in his youth to tell that a very powerful man must have strung the instrument.

  Various deer – and elk-skin quivers surrounded the bow, some ornately beaded, others painted on the tanned hides with geometric patterns of forgotten clans. Harlan had arranged single arrows around the quivers, the different fletching with various types of feathers as sure to identify the makers as if they’d left palm prints behind. Manny picked up one arrow and ran the dried, century-old feather fletching carefully over his hand. A warrior was nocking the arrow, a spike buck deer was feeding on an elderberry bush. Once again, Manny shook his head to clear the images flooding his thoughts. “Harlan must have been quite organized,” he said, gesturing to the tables categorized by type of artifacts to maximize the bidders’ inspection.

  Stumper laughed and waved his hand over the room of wall-to-wall tables. “Only in this was Harlan ever organized, and only because he knew the smoother his auctions went, the more money he made. And Harlan was all about money.” Stumper turned to a table holding rifles and handguns. Ammunition was still in original boxes, some pristine, others torn and weathered, spilling out graying bullets sticking out of rust-colored casings.

  Manny started walking past the knife displays, turning back to the scalping knife. Hairs were standing at attention along his arms and the nape of his neck. He swayed, unsteady, as the face of the warrior emerged slipping the knife from his belt sheath. Ageless stains on the blade exposed the blood of another’s tribe. And obscured the blood of his friend’s—his own. Manny felt his legs buckle, and Willie caught him.

  “You okay?”

  Manny nodded.

  “You getting visions again?”

  “Never.”

  “You’re still in denial.”

  Manny forced a smile. “What, you’re offering me a twelve-step program for vision seekers?”

  “Suit yourself,” Willie answered. “But I think you need to talk with Reuben. They’re becoming more frequent.”

  Older brother Reuben, the only sacred man Manny knew—or trusted in these matters—had only riddles as to how and why the visions crept up on Manny at odd times. “I’m okay.”

  Willie shrugged and moved on to another table, while Manny moved in the opposite direction. He bent to a beaded elk-skin dress lying neatly beside an eagle feather fan. A chief’s daughter’s dress. Imperfect rows of red and black and yellow glass trade beads told the story of a Blackfoot woman making the dress over a warm fire one frigid wintery night.

  And the red catlinite pipe next to it, the stem and bowl properly detached. An old man had passed the pipe around to guests in his tipi over
a hundred winters ago, saving his pipe adorned with ermine skin and hawk feathers only for ceremonies. Manny was aware that he knew it had belonged to a Cheyenne elder. He knew, yet he drove it from his mind. Visions just didn’t happen without a reason, without the Creator’s hand guiding him. At least not to a City Sioux.

  “Quality is an understatement.” Willie had walked a row over and stood in front of a table displaying pottery. He clasped his hands behind him as he leaned over, examining the relics.

  Stumper picked his teeth with his pocketknife as he stopped beside Willie. “Things were simpler back in the day.”

  “You got that right,” Willie agreed. “Men had to hunt and fight and protect the tiospaye. The hard stuff. All women had to do was some fleshing and cooking. Take care of kids.”

  Manny nudged Willie. “Go back home and tell Doreen women had it good back then.”

  Willie backed away, his eyes widening. “You’re not going to tell her what I said, are you?”

  Manny smiled. “The mad Lakota woman? Not on your life. She’d be as likely to kill the messenger.”

  Willie breathed a sigh of relief. Doreen Big Eagle had put her brand on Willie last year and held him by the short hairs. They even talked of setting a wedding date.

  Stumper leaned across the table and winked at Willie. “Sounds like your honey’s got you where she wants you, big guy.” He backed up when Willie leaned across to grab him. “Now us Crow warriors, we wear the breechclouts in our families.”

  “Bullshit,” Willie said. “You’re no different than us.”

  “We are. Back in the day, we did the fighting and hunting. Swapped stories over campfires while the women did the simple things, everyday things, like set aside what to use for TP when you finished your morning constitution.”

  Willie shrugged. “Guess they used paper, same as the settlers. Same as the soldiers.”

  Manny shook his head. “We NDNs didn’t have a lot of paper to go around. I’m thinking knowledge of the softest prairie grasses was worth their weight in corncobs.”

  “You’re probably right.” Willie put his hands on his hips and looked around the tables. “Anything missing?”

  “What the hell do I look like?” Stumper asked. “A psychic?”

  Willie started around the table, and Manny stepped between them. “Do you have an auction flyer?”

  Stumper stood with his neck craned up, glaring at Willie, holding the stare long enough to show Willie he wasn’t intimidated by someone so much bigger. Stumper turned and led them through Harlan’s office door, a portal to a different world than the neat organized room they’d just left. Gone was any façade of organization and tidiness, buried somewhere in all the clutter and trash littering the office. The large room appeared smaller because of the amount of garbage strewn about. Manny stepped over empty beer bottles, many half-full of stale brew. The decaying yeast-malt odor caught in his throat and he turned away.

  A half-smoked Chesterfield sat where it had died on the edge of Harlan’s desk, imprinting the wood with another black mark. Who the hell smoked Chesterfields anymore? Yet, Manny resisted the urge to snatch the snipe and the matchbook beside an overflowing faux rattlesnake ashtray and light up. Did Willie struggle like that? Standing among all the beer and booze bottles in Harlan’s office, did Willie feel the overwhelming urge to grab a beer?

  Manny picked his way between two file cabinets piled high with cases of Budweiser. A four-pack of Mike’s Hard Lemonade sat atop the beer as if Harlan had crowned it king of the office. Lemonade for hot summer nights, no doubt.

  “Harlan always live like a hog?” Willie moved an empty bottle of Beaver Tail Ale from the desktop. “And always drink the good stuff?”

  Stumper laughed and kicked a bottle of Moose Drool from the chair leg before dropping into the railroad chair missing one arm. He propped his feet on the desk and grabbed a paper clip from it. “Harlan was like those competition eaters that stuff as many eggs or hot dogs in their mouths as possible. Except he liked his booze. He took his drinking seriously. I guess I’d call him a professional alkie.” Stumper laughed again and started picking his teeth with the paper clip as he nodded toward the cases of Budweiser stacked on the file cabinets. “He kept those for guests. And yeah, he always lived like this. When he had auctions, he shut the blinds so no one could see what a pig he was.”

  Willie tossed the beer bottle into the round file and it broke. Harlan wouldn’t have minded. “It would take me a month in my worst days to drink this much.” He motioned to the beer. “He must have had a lot of guests.”

  Stumper leaned against the chair and the rusty springs squealed in pain. “Harlan hated to drink alone, and the door was open to other competition drinkers like him.”

  “Anyone in particular came around for free beer?”

  Stumper nodded. “Sampson Star Dancer.”

  Manny brushed an empty Cheetos bag on the floor and sat on the corner of the desk. “You know this Star Dancer?”

  “Who doesn’t.”

  “Star Dancer,” Willie breathed as if he knew the name. “Star Dancer.”

  And in Manny’s collective memory, he’d heard of the Star Dancers of Crow Agency, too. “Seems like there was a Montana state senator years ago named Star Dancer.”

  Stumper nodded. “Good memory. Smoke Star Dancer. Held the state office for six terms.”

  “Any relation to Harlan’s drinking buddy?” Willie picked up papers from the desk, and absently put them down. Keep your mind off the beer, Manny thought.

  “Sampson is Old Smoke’s son.” Stumper stood and stretched his back. “Or should I say, Smoke’s outcast son. Old Smoke never cottoned to Sam’s drinking, and neither did the rest of the Star Dancer clan. Sam was a big disappointment for the old man, but at least his daughter amounted to something.”

  “She around here?”

  “She is. Fact is, she’s the one that kicked Sam out of the house after Smoke died. As fed up with Sam’s boozing as Smoke was, he just couldn’t bring himself to kick his only son off the ranch. But Chenoa did. She just couldn’t take any more of Sam getting tossed in the pokey and finally gave him the bum’s rush.” Stumper set cases of beer on the floor to reveal a Montana State Tourism calendar hanging on the wall behind the cabinets. “This is Chenoa.”

  “Chenoa Star Dancer?” Willie said.

  “Chenoa Iron Cloud now,” Stumper added. “Face of Montana Tourism.”

  “Know her?” Manny asked, waving his hand across Willie’s eyes. He walked to the wall and grabbed the calendar with the picture of a woman on an Appaloosa stallion. Shiny black hair falling in braids over taut breasts, and a bone choker encircling her muscular neck. She grinned at the camera with perfect teeth, and her gaze seemed to follow Manny as he stepped over trash to stand beside Willie.

  “She was my first love,” Willie said.

  “You’ve met her?”

  “In a way.” Willie handed Manny the calendar. “I got her picture hanging up in my locker at the police station back home.” Willie’s dreamy eyes roamed over the photo. “I’ve loved her for about twenty years.”

  “But you’re only twenty-three.”

  Willie shrugged. “I guess it just seems like I’ve always been in love with her.”

  Manny turned the calendar to the light and eyed it from different angles. Chenoa’s eyes continued to follow him, and Manny suddenly fell under her spell as Willie had.

  Stumper grabbed the calendar and hung it back on the wall. “Take a breath you two. She’s married. And”—he turned to Willie—“she’s older than Manny.”

  “No way.”

  “Way.” Stumper grinned and leaned against the wall. He’d abandoned the paper clip and stood working the tip of his pocketknife between his teeth. “And there’s hardly any makeup on her face.”

  “If she’s older than I am . . .”

/>   Stumper tapped the picture. “Old Smoke was in his eighties when he died, but he looked late fifties, early sixties. Chenoa’s got his genes. She never ages. She looks the same as when she was runner-up in the Miss Montana pageant nineteen years ago.”

  “Who were the idiots,” Willie asked, “that awarded her only runner-up?”

  Stumper smiled. “There was a bit of a scandal that year. Seems like Chenoa came out for the swimsuit competition wearing a skimpy two-piece. Little more than three Band-Aids. Judges had to ding her on that.”

  “Oh, I bet they’d have liked to ding her,” Willie said, staring dreamy-eyed at the calendar.

  Manny turned to Stumper. “Why did Sam hang around with Harlan? Birds of a feather sort of thing?”

  Stumper slipped on an empty pizza box as he walked to a door and caught himself on the wall. The latch was broken, probably sometime after the Earth’s crust cooled, and Stumper swung the door open. He nodded to a small room. “Harlan let Sam crash here when he needed it. And he needed it often with all the beer he and Harlan put away.”

  Manny walked past Stumper into a room barely big enough to turn around in. He pulled the string on a bare bulb suspended from the ceiling. Two surplus military cots hugged a wall stained brown with tobacco juice and beer suds. Budweiser cans overflowed a cardboard Miller High Life box doubling as a trash can.

  “Not nearly big enough for someone named Sampson,” Willie said, ducking to avoid the bulb swinging from a breeze through a broken window.

  “Don’t let the name fool you,” Stumper said, careful not to brush up against anything filthy in the room. “Sam’s a runt, and the room fits him just fine. Smoke thought Sam would grow up tough with a name he had to defend.”

  “Sort of like ‘A Boy Named Sue’?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Did it?”

  “Did it what?” Stumper asked Manny.

  “Make him tough?”

  Stumper shrugged. “He was a tough one in ’Nam, from what I hear. But back home, he was just some drunk staggering down the street that people laughed at and veered around so they wouldn’t waffle him.”