White Ghost Ridge

by Carol Coffey

  Grass smiled. “You were a young feller then,” he said as he lowered his rifle.

  Locklear nodded. If the years had not been good to him, they had been cruel to whichever of the two Grass cousins was standing in front of him. Even in the dull porch light, he could see that Grass’s face was heavily lined. He was heavier than Locklear remembered and his black hair that was once worn army-tight, was grey and wispy and blew around his face in the small welcome breeze of the hot summer night.

  “Your cousin not around?” Locklear asked, hoping to figure out which of the two Grass men he was speaking to.

  “Oh, Frank died a good number of years back, never got to see retirement. I retired a few weeks after his funeral. My heart wasn’t in the job without him. We never got to do that fishing we were always planning on doing.”

  “Sorry to hear that, Grass,” he said, still using the man’s last name even though he now knew that he was speaking with Eddie, the younger of the two cousins.

  “Take a seat,” Eddie offered as he shuffled back to his seat on the porch.

  “That gun necessary?” Locklear asked, looking out into the darkness. There wasn’t a house around for miles and this didn’t look like the kind of place where anyone had anything worth stealing.

  “Oh, it’s mostly to scare coyotes coming to take my chickens. But, it’s also in case any young punks come looking to take something that isn’t theirs,” he said as he turned his head and looked to the horizon.

  Locklear followed Eddie’s eyes to the far left of his porch where in the distance he could see the glimmer of streetlights.

  “That’s Pine Ridge lit up over there. Things ain’t like they used to be when we were young and you were even younger. It’s much more dangerous now. Was a time the young kids looked up the local police, especially if we were Native. They knew we understood their ways, their struggles. Things were hard for folks. Still are. Worse, I think, now than then.”

  Eddie leaned to his side and took a cold beer from an ice bucket parked to the side of his seat.

  “Beer?”

  “No, thanks. I don’t drink,” Locklear replied.

  “Me neither. Never have. It’s alcohol free.”

  Locklear took the bottle from Eddie and checked the label.

  “Never knew there was such a thing, thanks,” he replied as he unscrewed the cap and gulped down the ice-cold beer.

  Eddie opened a bottle, took a small sip and sighed.

  “Well, guess you’re going to tell me now why you drove to the middle of nowhere to meet someone you haven’t seen for – is it thirty years?”

  “More,” Locklear replied.

  Locklear took another gulp and leant forward, staring into the moonlit night.

  “It’s quiet here,” he said.

  Eddie raised his bottle and took another sip. “I wasn’t born here. Came here, oh, I don’t know – when me and Frank were young and got ourselves jobs as tribal police. We were no more than kids. Frank, me and Frank’s sister, Rose – we were all born on Rosebud Reservation. Rose is in New York now. Comes back here once a year to keep in touch with her roots. Did real well for herself. She stays here sometimes and, you know, we got little in common except our past, got little to say to each other but it’s nice at the same time. She’s getting old now. Time will come she’s not able to get here. That’ll be tough then. She’s the only family I have left.”

  Locklear nodded but did not offer any response. As far as he knew, he didn’t have a relative in the world. He wondered if it was possible to miss something you never had. He could not conjure up any feelings of wanting a family. The loneliness that had dogged him throughout his life was, he felt, not due to the absence of relatives but to his nomadic childhood, with the feeling of not having one place where he had a sense of belonging.

  Eddie looked at Locklear’s empty bottle and took another cold one from his store at his feet. Locklear took it and opened the cap.

  “First beers I’ve had in over thirty years,” Locklear said.

  Eddie glanced at the Native man on his porch and noticed the fine lines that ran across his face. His visitor had once been a handsome young man, still was to an extent but he could see the damage that alcohol had done to him.

  “Almost lost you your job, I expect?”

  Locklear nodded but did not look at Eddie Grass.

  “Yeah, comes a time when what’s inside you fights with what is outside of you. Forces we have little control of. I never drank but Frank and me, we almost lost our jobs for different reasons. It’s a long time ago now.”

  Locklear remained silent and did not look at his drinking companion.

  “Frank and Rose’s dad and my dad were brothers. We were born in my grandmother’s house on the plains outside of Rosebud reservation and she was a proud Lakota Sioux. Knew all of the old tales. When we were little, we went with our parents to live in the centre of the reservation. All four were alcoholics. Drink was a real problem for us growing up. We were just kids when Grandma took us to live with her, all three of us, and she raised us. We didn’t see our parents much. One by one the disease took them until the three of us were orphans. Grandma lived until she was ninety-seven years old. Me and Frank took her here to this house when she couldn’t live alone anymore and she died right here, on a hot summer night under the stars with me and Frank by her side. She’d had a hard life, endured awful things, but she taught us to be proud Lakotas. She was proud when Frank and I joined the tribal police and Rose went to college. Alcohol has been the scourge of our people. Its sale is banned on the reservation now and that’s done some good but ... there’s a long way to go.”

  “How did you almost lose your job?”

  “Well, as much as Frank and I were committed to the law, we were proud of our traditions and lived as close to them as we could. Modern life though doesn’t often respect or accept those traditions. A proud Sioux can get caught between two worlds and struggle to know which world is right, the white world or our world. We got word that Rose’s husband had been beating her in New York. Frank was her real brother but as we were raised together I looked upon Rose as my sister too. So it was our responsibility as Lakotas to protect her. We went out there and, well, she was in a real bad way. Got teeth missing, face swollen so bad, arm broken. Frank wept. You don’t need to know all the details but we made sure he left her apartment for good and that he’d never come back.”

  “You didn’t ...?”

  Eddie waved Locklear’s suggestion away.

  “No. Nothing like that. Men who hit women are cowards I generally find. You stand up to them and give them a worse taste of their own medicine, they generally hide under whatever rock they had the misfortune to climb out from. We did beat him up real bad though. Made sure he felt the same pain he’d inflicted on Rose.”

  Locklear nodded but did not speak. In his heart he agreed with what the Grass cousins did and felt that, if faced with a similar situation, he might have done the same thing.

  “She wouldn’t come back here with us to the plains. She had a life in New York. A job, friends. So we helped her move to a new apartment so if he got any ideas he wouldn’t know where to find her. We thought it was over but when we got back home we found out he was pressing charges against Frank and me. We were suspended from duty. Looked like the captain was going to have our badges. Eventually, he dropped the charges in exchange for Rose not filing assault charges against him. Neither Frank nor I wanted her to agree to that, but it seemed the only way we could get on with our lives. We never told Grandma. She would have been confused as to why white law said it was wrong to avenge your sister. She would have thought all men, regardless of their colour, would protect their sisters.”

  Locklear nodded but could feel the discomfort of the personal nature of Eddie’s story rise up in him.

  Eddie blew out. “I’m getting maudlin in my old age. Don’t mind me. What can I help you with, Locklear?”

  Locklear put his beer onto the porch floor an
d rubbed his hands together. Slowly, he told Eddie Grass the details of the case and the dead ends he was facing.

  “So you’ve come looking for this kid, Jim Hunter?”

  “Yes, I need to talk to him. Do you know him or where I can find him?”

  Eddie looked towards to the lights of Pine Ridge in the distance.

  “Used to be I knew all of the kids and their parents, grandparents, but I’ve been retired a long time now. There’s a whole generation that have grown up over there that I don’t know. I don’t recognise his name but that’s probably his legal name. He probably uses a Native name on the reservation. You might talk to the local elementary school teacher – Lucy Bird. He most likely went to school there.”

  “OK – Albert Whitefeather, the Native who was killed in Richmond, was a member of the local Native American Rights group here. Who would I speak to if I wanted to know more about the group?”

  Eddie thought for a moment. “There’s an old guy name of Daccota Looks-Twice who used to be a member – but, well, there was some trouble a while back and I don’t think he’s associated with the movement anymore. He was a cop on the reservation here for many years. Was very respected. Haven’t seen him around for a while but I don’t go into town much. I’m a little out of touch with what’s happening now but I think it might be best to speak with a guy by the name of Hank Pauls. He’s always been involved with the movement.”

  “Hank Pauls,” Locklear repeated, surprised that the man did not have a Native American name.

  “That’s his legal name. He runs a store downtown selling Native American rugs and jewellery – store’s got his name above the door. His Native name is Han.”

  “Have you ever heard of an organisation, or, well I don’t even know if it is an organisation, but, well, does the word INTENT mean anything to you?”

  Eddie shook his head. “Other than the actual meaning of the word? No. Why do you ask?”

  “The other guy that was killed in Richmond, Holton – that’s the last thing he said to the man who found him – or rather, he said “Not Intent.”

  Grass shook his head and drained what was left of his beer. “Maybe he just meant he didn’t intend to do something? Like a confession?”

  Locklear sighed. “No. I feel that there’s more to it than that. He had files on his computer of the same name which someone had deleted.”

  “Sorry I can’t help,” Eddie said genuinely.

  “Don’t worry. It was a long shot. Here’s an even longer one – you don’t happen to know anyone referred to as the ‘White Ghost’?” Locklear grinned.

  “Ah!” Grass grinned.

  “You do?”

  Grass pointed. “Not a person, no, but that is the name of that ridge over there.”

  Locklear looked into the darkness. He shielded his eyes to block out the streetlights of Pine Ridge and focused on the land in front of it. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he noticed a long dark ridge in the distance.

  He stood and walked to the porch rail.

  “It’s a small ravine,” said Grass. “Runs for about three miles towards the edge of Pine Ridge and it’s around ten, maybe fifteen feet deep in the centre.”

  “Why is it called that?”

  “It’s just an old Lakota tale. My grandmother told it to me. Used to scare us kids with it when we were young.”

  Locklear looked at his watch. It was almost eleven.

  “I’d like to hear it, unless I’m keeping you up?”

  Eddie Grass waved Locklear’s suggestion away. He lifted another bottle of beer and saluted Locklear.

  “At my age, I’ll be up half the night after these anyway!”

  Locklear sat and Grass handed him another beer.

  “OK,” said Grass. “You know about the massacre of Natives that occurred here at Wounded Knee?”

  Locklear, slightly embarrassed, shrugged. “Yes, but I’ve forgotten the details.”

  “It happened near here in December 1890. Seems like a long time ago but the wounds it inflicted here live on. Lotta people still angry about it. US Army intercepted some Lakota and took them to Wounded Knee where they set up camp. Next day, more cavalry arrived with a Colonel Forsyth. They took the Lakotas’ arms and legend has it that one old Sioux man who was deaf refused to give up his gun because he had paid a lot of money for it. The story goes that the old man was performing a Ghost Dance when his gun went off and the army started shooting. The Lakotas were unarmed and tried to fight back but without guns they were sitting ducks. More than two hundred and fifty Lakota were killed that day, including women and children. Army dug a mass grave and threw them into it. Only twenty-five US soldiers died during the massacre and some of those who survived were awarded medals of honour. Medals for killing unarmed men, women and children.”

  Locklear looked into the darkness at the horror of the story. “Ghost Dance,” he said. “That was a ritual dance, wasn’t it? Performed to drive away white people from this country?”

  “Yes. Sure worked, didn’t it?”

  “And that’s why it’s called Ghost Ridge? Because the old man was doing a Ghost Dance?”

  “No,” Eddie replied. “The so-called ‘Battle of Wounded Knee’ happened a few miles from here. That ridge over there is named as it is because of what happened a few days after the Wounded Knee massacre.”

  Locklear nodded and waited.

  “My grandma said a wagon train was spotted a few miles beyond that ridge and the tribe at Pine Ridge were angry. They were grieving the loss of family, friends, whole generations of families wiped out. Some braves from the tribe tracked the wagon train to the ridge. It was snowing heavily and there were heavy mounds of snow collecting across the ravine. I guess the wagon-train folk thought the land ahead was just rocky but they couldn’t see what they were driving over. Wagons started to sink in the deep snow. The braves rode down and began shooting the people. All of them. Men, women, children, the old, the sick. It was a revenge killing for the loss of their people. Then they just left them there in the snow for buzzards to eat and take their evil spirits away from the land.”

  Unsure what he could say in response to such a terrible story, Locklear sighed heavily.

  “It was wrong, I know, but also understandable. They were different times. My people were fighting for their very survival and any white was a threat to that. More whites meant less land, more reservations. It was a war.”

  “And the name? How did that come about?”

  “The braves drove their horses up out of the ravine and when they reached the top one of them spotted a woman on the opposite side of the ridge. She was wearing a long black dress and she had the whitest hair and whitest skin they had ever seen. She was feeling around the snow until she felt a child. She lifted him but he was motionless. The boy had the same colour hair as her. She began to cry. My grandmother said the sight and sound of the woman terrified these strong, fearless warriors who thought she was the spirit of one of the women they had just killed. The chief’s son Wanduta rode over to her and the nearer he got, the louder she wailed. When he reached her, as he told the story for many years, he touched her to see if she was real and she stopped moaning and started screaming. Wanduta told the tribe that the woman had red eyes so he rode off and they left the ‘spirit’ there where she could be heard moaning into the night. The next day, when they returned with more braves to take any remaining supplies, neither her body, nor the boy she was holding, was there.”

  Unsure if the story was finished, Locklear waited.

  Eddie looked at him and shrugged. “Hence the name. White Ghost Ridge.”

  “Do you believe that a dead woman’s spirit rose up and screamed?” Locklear asked.

  Grass grinned. “Oh no, course I don’t. But I read an article once in an old magazine. Must have been fifty years ago. I think it explains what happened that day. I told my grandma about it at the time but she wouldn’t accept it. The article was about a young man, an antique dealer in Rapid City, who cl
aimed to be the great-grandson of that woman.”

  “A descendant? So, she survived?”

  “Article was old when I came across it,” Eddie said. “I think it was written around the late 1950s. This guy said his great-grandmother, a Norwegian settler, survived an attack on a wagon train. He said she climbed out of a ravine with her son in her arms and carried him for days. He said his grandfather, who was four at the time, had been knocked unconscious when their wagon overturned in the snow. Her husband and the rest of the people on the wagon train were shot during the attack by a local Lakota tribe. She and the boy were the only survivors. They walked for three days and were almost dead when a small cavalry unit came across them. She had only managed to walk about eight miles from the site – was probably walking around in circles. She and the kid were badly frostbitten and dehydrated. Guess they were pretty strong to have survived that. They settled in Rapid City but she never remarried. What really got my attention was when the article said that his great-grandmother was an –”

  “Albino,” Locklear interjected.

  “Yes. Which explains why she scared the braves. The article mentioned that albinism in Native peoples is common in the south-west, in tribes like the Hopi – but it’s pretty rare among the Sioux. Guess they had just never seen anyone like that before.”

  “Might also explain why she was feeling around in the snow for the child,” Locklear said, “and also why she didn’t start screaming until the brave came right up to her. Most people with that condition have poor eyesight. She probably couldn’t see him until he was right in front of her.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Did the guy in the article also have the condition?” Locklear asked.

  “I don’t think so, no. It was a black-and-white photo and I could see he was pale and blond but, no, he didn’t look like he had albinism. The article didn’t say he was either.”

  “Some story,” Locklear said.

  If the man Grass was speaking about was alive, he would be an old man now but Locklear knew albinism was hereditary and wondered if his ‘White Ghost’ was somehow related to this man and was another descendant of the woman who climbed out of a snow-filled ravine almost one hundred and twenty-eight years ago.