The Eagle Catcher (11 page)

The governor gave a short speech about how happy he was to be at the annual Cooley pig roast. He spoke a few words about the great state of Wyoming, probably the same thing he said every place he went, before he got to the point. “You folks in central Wyoming have among you the best man to lead our state in the coming years,” he said.

The guests were on their feet again, shouting and clapping, and the governor held up both hands to quiet them. “I'm going to do everything in my power to see that Ned Cooley is elected the next governor of our great state.” The crowd whooped and hollered like cowboys at a rodeo.

Ned reached over and pulled the stem of the microphone back up to his level. Surveying his still-standing guests, he waited for the noise to die down. “As you all know,” he began slowly “Cooleys were the first people to come to these parts more than a hundred years ago. We settled this whole county. When my great-granddaddy Mathias Cooley brought his little wife across the plains and lit on this place, there wasn't anything here but buffalos and Indians.”

Ned paused and waited for the laughter to die down.

“Ever since then, Cooleys have worked hard to make Fremont County a decent place for decent people. Now it's time to take all that Cooley experience to the statehouse. Friends, with your help, I aim to be the next governor of Wyoming.”

In the midst of the cheers and clapping that erupted around them, Father John caught Melissa's eye. He'd been right earlier. There was sadness there.

F
ATHER JOHN OPENED the heavy, carved door and took a few steps into the front hall. His boots clumped on the hardwood floor. Father Brad followed. “I'll be darned if it isn't a museum,” the young priest said, whistling between his teeth. Muffled voices and a slurry of footsteps came from the rooms that opened off both sides of the long hallway. A stairway ahead led to the upper level.

“Make yourselves at home.” Ned appeared in a doorway, waving the two priests into what had been the front parlor. “Everything is authentic Plains Indian stuff, I guarantee. My great-granddaddy started this collection. He was always willing to help out those Indians by givin' 'em a few dollars for their trinkets. Family's kept up the tradition ever since.”

Father John took in the room at a glance. Several guests were milling about. Large Plexiglas cases filled with Indian artifacts lined the walls. Heirlooms worth who-knew-how-much gotten from poor people for a few dollars. Well, at least the Cooleys had taken care of them. And now it looked as if they would go back to the Arapahos where they belonged, if the ranch deal went through. That was about the only good thing he could think about the Cooley collection.

Father John strolled around the room, waiting for other guests to finish examining the items in each case before he began. There were “possible bags,” all-purpose storage bags the size of a woman's large purse, woven of horsehair and embroidered with delicate glass beads in traditional geometric patterns: stripes for the roads of life; triangles symbolizing tipis and home; circles for the camp and the people. The designs came in dreams to those who created them, and they served as ongoing prayers for the health and well-being of whoever used the bags. Ned was pointing to one of the cases. “These here are parfleches used for carrying belongings,” he told Father Brad. The rawhide bags were large and beautiful, with geometric figures painted in the soft reds, blues, and greens distilled from clay, wild berries, and leaves. Next to one of the parfleches was a saddlebag, horseshoe-shaped rawhide that fit over the rump of a horse. It too was painted in intricate patterns and decorated in horsehair tassels.

Father John wandered through the large double doorway into the next room, with Ned and Brad following. Here several other guests bent over cases that held bows and arrows, spears and hatchets, plus rifles and knives Arapahos had gotten in trade with white men. One case displayed breastplates made of polished bones and rawhide shields that optimistic warriors in the Old Time had believed would deflect arrows and bullets.

“Best things are this way,” Ned announced, striding across the hallway to another room. Father Brad and several other guests walked with him. After a while, Father John wandered over. Dorothy was there, pointing out something to a small group. The cases were filled with clothing: vests, gloves, moccasins, and leggings, all swathed in glass beads. White deer-skin dresses were pinned on the walls like giant butterflies.

“Imagine doing all that fine beadwork by campfire with chips of buffalo bone for needles.” Dorothy glided across the room toward Father John, her skirt swaying. “Beading was almost a lost art, but I'm proud to say I've helped to reintroduce these crafts to Arapaho women. Beadwork groups meet every week at the Blue Sky Hall where I volunteer. I've gotten older women to come in and teach the younger ones.”

Father John said nothing. He had often seen Maria and the other grandmothers in the meeting hall at St. Francis, fingers flying over their beadwork while younger women sat beside them, doing what they did. “Arapahos like to make the things we need in beautiful ways,” Maria had once told him.

The other guests had already moved into the front room, and Father Brad poked his head through the doorway. “Ned's absolutely right,” he called. “The best is in here.”

Father John strolled through the doorway. All the cases displayed dance regalia: beaded aprons, bustles of eagle feathers, feathered headdresses. He stepped over to the narrow Plexiglas case at the far end of the room. Inside was a warbonnet, folded in half and pressed against the wall. Eagle feathers curved gracefully toward the floor.

“My pride and joy,” Ned said, coming up behind Father John, boots clacking against the wood floor. “It belonged to old Chief Black Night. He let my great-granddaddy have it. Shows how grateful he was to granddaddy for all he did for the Indians.”

Father John was thinking how each feather stood for a courageous or unselfish deed the chief had performed. Strange that he had given the headdress to a white man. After a moment he said, “It used to be on a stand in the center of the room.”

“Had to put it behind glass so's it wouldn't dry out,” Ned said.

The headdress was impressive, Father John thought, even flattened behind glass.

 

The Toyota's headlights bounced through the darkness ahead as Father John drove along Rendezvous Road back to St. Francis Mission. His assistant hadn't stopped talking about the party since they'd left. Father John nodded and uttered an occasional “uh huh,” but he wasn't listening. Too many questions lodged in his mind, like little bones he could neither swallow nor spit out.

One thing seemed certain. Harvey had wanted to talk to him about the girl Anthony was seeing, the girl Anthony had spent the night with, the girl he was protecting. Father John had a pretty good idea who she was and why Harvey had sounded so worried when he'd called. Not that Father John could have been of any help. There was no stopping romance, once it started racing down the track.

Still, the Cooley ranch deal was hard to figure out. Nothing about it made sense. Why wouldn't Ned sell the mineral rights to some oil company? Jasper would be interested, that seemed certain. And Ned could still sell the land to the Arapahos, for a smaller price, of course. But a smaller price might make it easier for them to buy. Yet Ned seemed intent on keeping the two together—land and mineral rights—and offering the Arapahos a hell of a deal, as Jasper put it. Maybe that's what bothered him—all that generosity and altruism on the part of Ned Cooley. Even throwing in a collection for which any museum would pay a small fortune.

Well, maybe he was misjudging the man. It wouldn't be the first time he'd made that mistake—he'd never won any prizes in understanding why people did what they did. He had a hard enough time understanding himself. Maybe Ned had been pricked by conscience now that he was likely to become the governor of Wyoming and genuinely wanted to see the ranch and the artifacts go back to their original owners. But if that was so, why had Harvey opposed the deal? Even more puzzling, why had he changed his mind, jumped from one side to the other?

Father John pushed down on the accelerator, and the Toyota shot up a gradual incline, its headlights bathing the blacktop ahead. Father Brad's voice droned on, but Father John wasn't following, a fact the young priest didn't seem to notice.

What was it Rita had said? Harvey had changed his mind after talking to Will Standing Bear. And Charlie Taylor always went along with Harvey. Did that mean Charlie had also changed his mind? Father John decided to have a talk with the tribal councilman and the elder as soon as possible.

T
HE LAST PICKUP skidded around Circle Drive and out onto Seventeen-Mile Road as Father John turned back into St. Francis Church. Ten o'clock Mass had been packed. Even the vestibule was jammed. There were faces he'd seen only occasionally at Mass, and some faces he'd never seen, all drawn by the shock of Harvey's murder. The close, musty smell of the crowd lingered in the air.

Father John made his way down the side aisle, forcing the vent windows open as far as they would go. The warm breeze washed over him. He was comfortable in this church, a chapel really, built by Arapahos a hundred years ago. Above the entrance were the painted symbols of the Trinity: a thunderbird for God the Creator, a tipi, sacred pipe, and eagle feather for the Holy Spirit, and the figure of a warrior for the Risen Christ. Around the whitewashed stucco walls marched stick-figure drawings of the Stations of the Cross. And circles everywhere for all the natural things in the world that are round—Mother Earth, sun, moon. Chains of circles were linked together to symbolize that all living creatures are related.

A variety of geometric symbols covered the vaulted ceiling: red lines for human beings; long blue lines for the roads humans must travel; yellow lines for the heavens; blue and yellow triangles for the morning star that connects heaven and earth. The floor was paved in light blue carpet, the color of the sky.

He crossed to the other side and pushed open those vents, drawing in a good cross breeze. Then he made his way down the center aisle checking for anything left in the pews. The kettle drum altar stood at the far end of the church. The people had insisted on the kettle drum. “Prayers will rise to the heavens, just like drumbeats,” Will Standing Bear had told him. On the table to the left sat the tabernacle, a miniature white tipi the grandmothers had shaped out of soft deerskin. The arched ceiling over the sanctuary was trimmed with a yellow band that marked the space below as sacred.

Father John knelt down in the front pew and bent his head over his hands. He had offered Mass this morning for Harvey's soul, and now he prayed again, silently, for his friend and for Harvey's family. For a moment he felt at one with the peace at the center of himself, that place where the most important part of him lived, where he was a priest, a servant of the servants of God.

Exhaling a deep breath, Father John raised himself off his knees and walked over to the sacristy, the little room next to the altar. Then he removed his green chasuble and white mantle and hung them in the closet next to a row of vestments, different colors for the different Sundays of the church year. After checking to see that the altar boys had placed the missalology and sacramentary in the cabinet, he walked back through the church and out the front door.

The buildings of St. Francis formed a circle, like an Arapaho camp, like all sacred things. The front door of the white stucco church faced the mountains, but its altar faced east and the rising sun. Outside walls were also stenciled in the geometric symbols that reached back into the oldest of times.

To the south stood the mission's first building, the school. The two-story gray stone structure hadn't been used in thirty years. It stood empty and boarded up, but every time Father John suggested demolishing it, the old people raised an outcry. They had learned to read and write there. Their young breath still clung to the walls. Young voices echoed in the hallways. So the building remained, abandoned, sagging on its foundation. He tried his best to replace the broken windows and keep the doors on their hinges. If the truth were known, he had become as attached to the old building as the Arapahos were.

The administration offices, a white brick building, stood on the northern curve. His office was there, and Father Brad's.

Next to the building was the asphalt court where Arapaho kids played basketball. Behind it sat several squat white buildings for adult classes and meetings. On the western curve, next to the two-story red-brick house where the priests lived, stretched the open field where, six summers ago, Father John had marked off the pitcher's mound, home plate, first, second, and third bases. Then he had started the St. Francis Eagles. The Indian kids needed a baseball team to play on, he'd reasoned, but the truth was he needed a baseball team to coach. Beyond the field was the new St. Francis School, a one-story building with an entry that jutted forward. It was shaped like a tipi.

Cottonwoods, Russian olives, and evergreens cast long, cool shadows across the buildings and grounds, turning the mission into an oasis on the plains. Father John relished the quiet, and the soft sound of the wind rustling the leaves. A short distance to the southeast, on the banks of the Little Wind River, Chief Black Night and his people had camped when they first came to Wind River Reservation. It was Chief Black Night who had given the Jesuits enough land for a mission. “We would be glad of some good man to teach our people about the Great Spirit,” he had said, according to one of the documents in the mission archives.
HeeniNouhu',
Arapahos called the priests. It meant “long garments.”