The Arrow Keeper’s Song (35 page)

“The smoked venison was delicious,” Father Kenneth began, “but this dressing …” It was late, nearly midnight, and he had no business eating; he would pay by tossing and turning through the wee hours of the morning. But these last few bites were impossible to resist. Besides, it had been all of five hours since dinner.

“They say gluttony is a sin,” Luthor dourly observed. He was playing a desperate defense, having lost his queen and a knight only a few moves ago. Checkmate was a distinct possibility, and it soured his mood.

“And the road to hell is paved with corn-bread dressing and sweet rhubarb pie,” Father Kenneth chuckled, and speared a giblet with his fork. Rebecca, who had long since retired for the evening, had begun her preparations early in the day. A couple pans of corn bread had to be baked, then a chicken boiled with onions and wild herbs for broth, and some of the meat set aside for another meal. She combined the corn bread with a leftover crumbled loaf of wheat bread, the stock, and chicken meat in a cast-iron skillet and baked the mixture until it assumed the proper thickness. Some of the stock she thickened for gravy and flavored with peppers and salt, spooning it over mounds of golden dressing. Father Kenneth knew the recipe by heart, but his attempts never turned out as delicious as hers, and he suspected she was deliberately concealing one or two ingredients just to keep him humble.

“I wish you'd never taught me this game, Father,” Luthor scowled. “Looks like you've beat me for the third time tonight.”

“No wonder, the way you've been playing,” the priest replied. “You've seemed distracted for most of the night, indeed for several days now. What is it, my friend?” Father Kenneth eased back in his chair and stroked his bushy yellow beard as he waited for an explanation. He had gained the trust of his parishioners by being patient and confidential. And it was common knowledge where his sympathies lay, for he had been a vocal advocate for the rights of the tribe.

Since the land rush over a year ago, the Southern Cheyenne had become a minority in their own homeland. The change, much to the priest's dismay, had occurred literally overnight and brought more poverty than prosperity as many of the Cheyenne, deluded by the opportunity for a quick profit, sold off their own grants and invested their earnings in foolhardy schemes on the advice of dishonest speculators. The net result was that most of the tribe now subsisted on the charity of the church or worked for Allyn Benedict out in the oil fields. There were some tribal families who had kept their businesses in town and others whose ranches dotted the grazing range between the Canadian and the Washita, and they could boast of a modest financial success. Their accomplishments, however, paled to insignificance alongside the fortune that Benedict and his associates had begun to reap.

“Nothing is bothering me,” the white-haired man answered too quickly. He rose from the game board and sauntered across the store to the window, to study with grave affection the town he barely recognized. Cross Timbers, after the land rush, had expanded its boundaries to the hillsides as the number of businesses increased and settlers built houses on land whose former owners had been Southern Cheyenne. Many of the tribal families had resettled a mile west of Cross Timbers in a cluster of cabins commonly referred to as Rabbit Town. Here many of the Cheyenne roughnecks lived with their families when they weren't out in the oil fields or squandering their hard-earned wages at Panther Hall. Luthor White Bear lived above his store, however, and had won the acceptance of the townspeople, who viewed him as just another businessman—albeit one with coppery skin.

A glass pane rattled as the wind pressed against the front of the building, kicked up the dust from the boardwalk, and stirred the leaves, setting them in motion like a column of charging cavalry that swept the street of an unseen enemy. Father Kenneth walked over to the merchant's side.

“Come summer there'll be folks in the street, even this late,” the priest said with a sigh. “Winter is a lonely season—the wind moans, the fields are barren, the whole world just curls up and waits for spring.” He clapped Luthor on the shoulder. “I won't press you, my friend. But if you should feel like talking, you know where I am.” He lifted his coat from a wall peg near the door and pulled it on. “I'd best be going. Seth Sandcrane's putting up a barn, and I thought I'd help out for the next few days,” said the priest. “Seeing as I'm the only decent carpenter in the territory,” he added with a grin. Shrugging on his coat, he searched the pockets for a moment until he found a thick-woven knit hat. “Our new doctor gave this to me for Christmas.” He was obviously quite pleased with the gift, which kept the top of his head and the tips of his ears toasty warm, even on gusty nights such as the one he was about to enter.

“Don't brood on me, Father,” Luthor said. “The hour is late, and Charlotte has yet to return home. She defies me at every turn these days, and I am concerned for her.”

“It is the way of parents and their children, ever pulling in opposite directions. You are not the only father to be tested by his daughter or son, and you will not be the last.” Kenneth spoke with conviction, all the while suspecting there was more to the merchant's gloomy state than Charlottes behavior.

Father Kenneth buttoned his coat and then opened the front door, allowing an icy draft to invade the interior of the store. It rustled the bonnets on their stands and caused the lamps to flutter. The pages of an open ledger flipped past several weeks all the way to the seventh of June, as if directed by an unseen hand. Luthor shuddered at the wintry evening's brisk intrusion and hurried back to the Franklin stove for warmth.

Out on the walk, Father Kenneth turned his back with some regret on the cozy familiarity of the mercantile and started up Main Street toward St. Joachim's. A wintry gust tugged at his beard with unseen fingers as he made his way past the darkened facades of the businesses that had come to town. The Lavender House Hotel and Lodging boasted thirty comfortable rooms that were frequently occupied by salesmen and oil-company officials come to meet with Allyn Benedict. Though the lobby appeared only dimly illuminated, the hotel saloon, whose doors opened onto a side alley, was doing a lively late-night business. Under Mayor Allyn Benedict's leadership, the town council had refused to permit any more than a couple of saloons to locate within the town limits. The Lavender House Saloon and a similar establishment connected to Yaquereno's restaurant across the street were the only places within town where a man could belly up to the bar and have a beer or whiskey. Gambling, other than perhaps a friendly game of poker, was not permitted in these saloons, nor were the “soiled doves” allowed to roost.

Mayor Benedict claimed his intentions were to keep the streets safe and the riffraff out of town, but Father Kenneth suspected there was more to this arrangement than civic-mindedness. The town ordinances certainly insured a steady flow of customers to Panther Hall. Every time the Capuchin organized a move to shut down the notorious establishment, his efforts were disregarded or surreptitiously defused by the mayor's office and the powers behind it. Once, another gambling hall had attempted to locate on the North Road within a couple hundred yards of Panther Hall, but the structure mysteriously burned to the ground before its doors even opened, and its owner mysteriously vanished, presumably to seek his fortune in a healthier clime.

Health. Now there was a subject worth concentrating on, Father Kenneth thought as he crossed the intersection of Main and Center, cutting across a scattering of windblown leaves. Overhead ephemeral clouds scudded through a sea of stars. He paused again and allowed his gaze to sweep across the burgeoning township, the hastily constructed businesses with their false fronts and the sprawl of houses on the north and south sides of town. He shifted his stance and looked past the church to the depot on the outskirts of Cross Timbers. A spur line of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe had reached town six months ago and continued on to the oil fields. The rails had speeded the town's transformation. The community was connected to the world now, and there was no turning back.

“Progress,” Father Kenneth muttered. Well, it had brought a real doctor to Cross Timbers, and that was a good. The priest glanced back toward the clinic that had been built on the spot formerly occupied by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Then, with a certain degree of displeasure, he noticed his competitor's place of worship. The Presbyterians had come to town and built a church on the north hill, among prospective parishioners. Holy King Triumphant Church was not only newer looking than its Catholic rival, but larger as well. Kenneth scrutinized the hilltop west of town. He pictured in his mind's eye the ceremonial lodge of the Southern Cheyenne. The place had seen little use of late. Spiders floated their webs across the doorways and windows. Field mice scampered with impunity across the blackened circle where the ceremonial fire had once blazed with life and summoned the tribal elders to bask in its sacred light; where once the Arrow Keeper sang his songs and dreamed his dreams and walked with the Mysterious One, Maheo. The slowly deteriorating medicine lodge seemed an apt metaphor for the condition of the Southern Cheyenne themselves, who with every passing day seemed to lose a little more of their identity and sense of worth. It was a downward slide, which Father Kenneth felt powerless to halt.

He lowered his head and continued up the street to St. Joachim's. The church was a humble structure, built along plain and simple lines, of yellow pine and native stone. A narrow vestibule opened onto a sanctuary capable of seating a hundred or so worshipers. The steeple jutting above the peaked roof contained a melodious brass bell that Father Kenneth had brought with him when he first came to live in the territory. The priest, with some help from the tribe, had not only constructed St. Joachim's but the humble, neatly kept cottage alongside that served as a rectory and sacristy. A covered walkway connected the cottage to the church, permitting the priest to don his vestments in his kitchen and then enter the house of worship through a rear door.

A whitewashed picket fence surrounded the church yard and provided a place for the parishioners to hitch their horses. In the spring the yard was often ablaze with Indian paint and firewheels and goldenrod as the earth in bloom offered its silent praise to the Lord. At least that was the image Father Kenneth perennially used in his homilies, every May.

“Matse-omeese-he
is a long way off,” the priest sighed, pulling up his collar and clutching his upper torso as the winter cold tried to worm its way past the woolen folds and through the button holes of his coat. A dark wind hounded him past St. Joachim's and followed him around to his cottage. It was then he heard the gelding neigh and, searching the darkness, spied the horse near the small corral and carriage shed the priest had built behind the rectory. At first he thought he had forgotten to latch the gate, permitting his own trusted mare to wander out, but on closer examination Father Kenneth discovered his own animal within the confines of the corral. This second horse belonged to Charlotte White Bear. The gelding stamped its foot and whinnied, recognizing the priest's voice. Father Kenneth looped the mount's rein over the top rail of the fence. A door crashed shut.

The priest jumped, startled, and glanced up as the door to the carriage house swung open to the unseen touch of the north wind and then closed again with a bang.

“I never left that open,” the priest muttered beneath his breath. He entered the corral through the gate and hurried across the trampled earth to the carriage house, which was really nothing more than a small barn, large enough to house his carriage with an extra stall for the mare during inclement weather. He caught the door in midswing and held it open, standing framed in the doorway. Someone was in there, watching him; he could feel it. The hairs rose on the back of his neck.

“Who's there?” he called out. “Charlotte?”

The wind stirred the straw at his feet, a loose shingle rattled, an oil lamp creaked as it swung to and fro from a cross-beam overhead. The priest fumbled for a second, then found the lantern and lifted it down. One good shake and he heard oil slosh in its reservoir. He found a match in his coat pocket and, willing his hands not to tremble, lit the wick. Amber light immediately dispelled the gloom and revealed the identity and whereabouts of the intruder.

“Oh, my God …” Father Kenneth exclaimed, sucking in his breath. He nearly dropped the lamp.

Charlotte White Bear sat propped against the left rear wheel of the carriage. Her coat hung off her shoulders, and her blouse was ripped, revealing one breast, round and brown-tipped in the amber light. Legs splayed out before her, arms limp at her sides, the woman's head was tilted back at an extreme angle, and there were bruises on her throat and face. Her tongue looked swollen, and it parted her puffed, cracked lips. Charlotte's eyes, which had teased and invited but a few hours past, were wide and blank, staring through the priest and into the heart of a greater truth, into the mystery of her own brief life that someone had violently ended.

PART THREE

T
HE
A
RROW
K
EEPER
'
S
S
ONG

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

April, 1899

T
HE LOCOMOTIVE
,
THIS GREAT BLACK IRON MONSTER
,
A HUFF
ing beast with fire breath and its maw full of ruby coals aglow like demons' eyes, loosed a piercing scream, howling in the cold, still air, announcing the train's arrival to the town of Cross Timbers. It slowed to a stop in front of a single-room station, a boxlike twelve-by-twelve cabin fronted by a wooden platform built on the edge of town. A telegraph wire connected the station to a wood pole alongside the depot's platform. But there were no passenger cars today, only a coal car and half-a-dozen flat cars carrying drill bits, timber, spools of cable, and chain for the derricks under construction to the north.