The Girl with Braided Hair (A Wind River Reservation Myste) (30 page)

“We have to get out of here,” Father John said. They had to get into the cottonwoods and scrubby pines on the right side of the house, then zigzag through the brush to the river. They could lose him there, he was certain. He knew where to cross the river—there was only the one place for a mile—and once they were on the other side, they could run for a house set back from Rendezvous Road. But first they had to run along the front of the guesthouse, he was thinking, and that would be dangerous—dark crouching figures moving against the white shingles. The killer would spot them in the moonlight.

The gunfire erupted again, and Father John realized that, this time, the bullet hit the passenger side of the Jeep. He could hear the window caving in, glass crashing over gravel. The killer was expecting them to make a run in that direction, he realized. They had only a moment before he grasped his mistake.

“Go left and run for the river. I know the place to cross.” He nudged Vicky forward. She started running, bent over herself, arms swinging, propelling her forward. He took off after her just as another shot exploded against the right side. The killer hadn’t seen them! They had another second of grace. He could hear his heart thumping.

“Run for the trees and keep going,” he said, but she knew that. She was already darting crablike across the bare dirt and the scattering of sagebrush, and he was running after her. Another second was all they had. “I’m behind you,” he said, not sure if she’d heard him.

The killer was onto them now, coming after them. The ground shook with a bullet that sprayed the dirt and brush. They lunged for the trees—he’d caught up to her now, close behind, shielding her—and they kept going, zigzagging around the trunks of cottonwoods that rose like black columns ahead. A broken branch caught at his shirtsleeve and swiped the nape of his neck. He felt the cool line of trickling blood. From behind them came the scuff of boots in the brush, hesitating, then advancing.

Vicky veered to the side, stumbling over a branch, and Father John reached out to steady her. Another explosion rent the air, and at that same instant—odd, he thought, as if they were one event—a sharp pain drove into his shoulder and lit his arm on fire and then his chest, a flame burning through his body, and he was aware of his left arm suddenly limp at his side, a heavy appendage that no longer belonged to him. His boot cracked against a fallen branch and he felt himself reeling sideways through the darkness and pain, Vicky a dark blur in the trees ahead. He tried to push on; he was still running, he thought, and yet why had his feet stopped moving? When had they turned into lead, barely lifting off the ground? He couldn’t believe he was falling—he couldn’t allow it to happen—and yet a clump of sagebrush was rising toward him and he felt himself sinking into it, all of his awareness now concentrated on the blinding light of pain.

VICKY PLUNGED THROUGH
the tangle of brush and fallen branches, the shadows of cottonwoods and the faint puddles of moonlight. Behind her, John’s hard gasps of breath and the sounds of his footsteps mingled with her own. The Little Wind River was ahead; surely she was only imagining that she could hear it rushing over the boulders. And yet, they must be getting close, and
I know the place to cross
, he’d said. She tried to hold on to that thought, darting ahead, listening for him behind her. Then she realized she was alone.

She stopped and looked back, trying to make him out in the darkness, moving around the trees.
Keep zigzagging.
But the sense of being alone swelled into the darkness, and she knew, then—the realization squeezing her heart—that he must have been hit. She started back, a blind woman feeling her way. Which way had she come? Where had she left him behind?

“John!” she shouted. The gunshot followed, aimed in the direction of her voice, she realized. She felt the force of the bullet dislodge the air around her. She kept going, moving toward the killer, her eyes searching the shadows. Then she saw it: a disturbance that lasted only a moment and disappeared. She made her way toward what she’d seen. Her breath was stopped in her throat; her hands had turned to ice.

“John?” she said, softly this time, and in response came a moaning sound that cut through her like a serrated knife. She darted toward the sound and, in the corridor of moonlight, she saw him crumpled on the ground, branches of sagebrush bristling about him.

“Oh, God, no!” she said, throwing herself down beside him. In the dim light, she could see the blood pumping out of his arm, the black puddle growing on the ground.

“Go on,” Father John said, the words coming in a rush of breath.

“Shhh.” She laid a finger against his lips. “Save your strength.” She grabbed his shirt with both hands and attempted to tear it. It was like steel. She bent close, took hold of the fabric with her teeth and pulled hard. The ripping noise burst through the quiet. She kept pulling and ripping until she had a strip, then another strip. She tied the strips together, willing her hands to stop shaking.

“Run,” he said.

“I’m not going anywhere.” She managed to loop the strips around his arm, feeling her way until she’d positioned them above the bleeding. He let out a groan of pain as she tightened the knot, but it wasn’t tight enough. Blood was still pulsing from his arm. She twisted the knot with one hand and ran the other hand along the ground, searching for something—anything strong enough. Her fingers bumped against a cold, hard object. A rock, but oblong and flat, not like a rock at all. A piece of rock, sheared from something large and useless. And this she could use. She gripped it hard, not wanting to drop it into the darkness, and managed to tie it into the knot she’d already made. She started twisting again, using the rock for leverage, leaning close. The bleeding was stopping. God, let it stop.

She was barely aware of the beam of a flashlight washing over them, her thoughts on the bleeding. Yes! It had stopped. Then she understood that, behind the beam, stood the killer. She held the twisted knot in place and blinked into the light, trying to make out who he was, but there was only a black figure, absorbing the moonlight, like the trunks of the cottonwoods.

“Don’t move.” The voice from behind the beam was low and controlled and…familiar. She’d heard the voice before; this was someone she knew.

“How many more people do you intend to kill?” She was shouting into the darkness. “Haven’t you killed enough?”

“Doesn’t look like it, does it?” The voice again, cold and calculating. “You’ve forced me to do this, you and your priest friend, digging up the past, poking around in what isn’t your business. What business was it of yours if some stupid girl got herself killed? Why should you care?”

She recognized the voice now. She could see him pushing back in his chair, fist tapping the edge of the desk.
Mister here’s a good man. He’s got the same rights as everybody else.
And she understood. There was only one man Liz had trusted. The man who had sent her to the safe house and knew where she was. The man who had sent Jake and Mister after her. And that man was still Mister’s friend.

“Liz Plenty Horses was innocent,” she said, “and you knew it. You set her up to be killed, didn’t you, Robert? Robert Running Wolf, right? Wasn’t that the name you used then? You convinced everyone else she was the snitch. But you were the one who was the snitch, isn’t that right? You were working with the FBI in Washington, and Jimmie Iron found out. So you ordered Jake to kill him. Did Brave Bird find out, too? Is that why he had to die? Or did you just want to make sure nobody else took control? And what about Liz? She’d begun to figure things out, right? You saw the chance to eliminate Brave Bird and put the blame for being a snitch on her. She had nowhere to go. You sent her to Denver, so people would think she’d left the rez. Then you sent Jake and Mister to pick her up and bring her back. You wanted to kill her yourself. Why? To make sure the job was taken care of?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. We were at war, you understand? War! The hell with Vietnam. We were at war right here in Indian country. Things happen in war, get it? So sometimes you have to work with the enemy. A little give-and-take. You give ’em a little and you find out what they’re up to. You gotta know what the hell you’re doing. You can’t have stupid people in charge. They’d bring the enemy right into the camp, with their stupid policies, so they have to be eliminated. Get it?”

“Why did you have to beat her to a pulp before you pulled the trigger?”

“All that bitch had to do was tell Mister and Jake that she was the one, she was the one ratted out Brave Bird, then everybody would’ve believed it. But would she say it? Would she? No. All she had to do was say it, for the good of the mission.”

“And what mission was that?”

“Indian rights, you stupid bitch. AIM was fighting for Indian rights! That was our mission! You think they let you into law school ’cause you’re so brilliant? They let you in ’cause they had to. They didn’t have any choice, unless they wanted a big discrimination lawsuit. You think we weren’t watching law schools, making sure they didn’t discriminate against Indian applicants? You and your partner, you got AIM to thank for your fancy degrees and your fancy office. We made everybody sit up and take notice. We made ’em give us our rights. You think anybody wanted Indians to have rights before AIM came along? We went to the barricades for you and your kids and all the other Indians with fine jobs and houses. We protested and we demonstrated and we fought like hell, and we used the courts against ’em, made their own courts say that we had rights. You should’ve said thank you, that’s what you should’ve done. Thank you and went on with your business. So some people got killed. People die in war.”

Vicky saw the motion, the rent in the darkness as he lifted the rifle. “Now you’re gonna die.”

Then, brightness everywhere, flooding through the night, and the loud voice reverberating through a megaphone: “Drop the gun!”

Charlie Crow was illuminated in the floodlights: the flabby build and rounded shoulders, the black hair brushed back from the pockmarked face.

“Drop it!” The voice burst through the floodlights.

He took his time, bringing the rifle down alongside the pant leg of his jeans, still holding on.

“Now, Crow! Rifle on the ground!”

Vicky huddled close to Father John and kept her hand on the stone tied inside the knot, holding it as tightly as she could. “Try to hang on,” she whispered, but she saw that he was unconscious, his breathing slow and ragged. She bent over him and laid her face against his cheek, the cool dampness of his skin. “Don’t leave me, John,” she said. Her voice was choked and heavy. “Please don’t leave me.” In the dark that rimmed the perimeter of light, she could hear boots crunching the brush and undergrowth.

The rifle jerked upward, the barrel turned on them. She felt her breath stop—everything stopped—and she had the sense that she was floating overhead, looking down on a couple huddled together, waiting for the bullets to rip them apart. She was aware of her own hand gripping the stone, and that was what brought her back to herself. This was what she had to focus on; this was all she could do. She could keep the tourniquet tight around John’s arm. She felt her pulse racing, her own blood coursing through her body, the screams strangled in her throat.

The gunshot, when it came, splintered the air. Vicky realized she had closed her eyes, and she snapped them open and lifted her head. Charlie Crow lay sprawled on the ground, the rifle at his side, the toes of his boots pointing toward the sky. She couldn’t take her eyes away, and yet, at the periphery of her vision, she saw the men in dark uniforms walking into the floodlights, carrying rifles, some of them, others shoving handguns into the holsters on their hips. Some were walking toward her and John. And Father Ian, running toward them through the brush, dodging around the trees.

Then she understood what had happened. He’d heard the first gunfire and he’d called 911. There was a Wind River police car nearby—police were probably keeping an eye on the mission—and backup cars had arrived in minutes. Sheriff’s officers, Riverton police officers, an array of uniforms tramping about.

“He’s been shot,” Vicky shouted to no one in particular, to all of them. “Get an ambulance.” But somewhere out in the vast space beyond the lights, there was already the muffled noise of sirens.

She was still gripping the stone, keeping the tourniquet tight, she realized, when the ambulance rocked into the circle of light. Still holding on when one of the medics pried her fingers away.

VICKY STEPPED INTO
the empty space at the rear of the crowd, Adam beside her, his hand firm against the small of her back, guiding her forward. From here she could see around the shoulders and the black heads of people standing close to the opened grave. The little white crosses that erupted over the bare-dirt graves shone in the hot August sun beating down on the mission cemetery. Even the breeze was hot, sweeping up the hill across the flat bluff, plucking at her skirt and blowing her hair. The crowd was quiet, reverent, heads bowed. Almost everyone was holding a flower of some kind, little flashes of purple and yellow and red next to the plaid shirts, blue jeans, and cotton dresses. She breathed in the perfume of the yellow rose she was holding. Yellow, for life.

In front, the casket that held Liz Plenty Horses’s skeleton stood poised over the grave on strips of thick, black plastic. Next to the casket were Father John and Father Ian, in the robes of priests—how natural John looked, except for the sling that held his right arm to his chest.

Father John dipped a sprinkler into the container that Father Ian held and started walking alongside the casket, sprinkling holy water over the top. She had to shift her position to keep him in sight, and each time she moved, she was aware of Adam moving with her, his hand firmly on her back.

“May the Lord receive your soul and hold you in his love…” Father John’s voice drifted through the sound of the wind. Then both he and Father Ian stepped back into the crowd, making room for Thomas Whiteman and Hugh Bad Elk. The elders moved close to the casket and Thomas held up a pan filled with burning cedar. Oh, she knew the ritual: there had been so many funerals.

Hethaithe hadwanenaidethe Jevaneatha jethuajene.
Vicky closed her eyes and let the prayers warm her, like the sun on her arms and face. She understood the meaning; the prayers of the elders were part of the memories lodged in her heart.
The good will go to live with God forever.

The crowd remained quiet as the casket dropped into the grave, the creaking of a motor punctuating the sounds of the wind. Then, almost in slow motion, people began filing toward the grave. Luna came first, head bowed, her black hair falling forward like a scarf. Behind her was a man probably in his thirties, dressed in a white shirt, leather vest, and dark slacks. His black hair was trimmed short around a narrow, Indian face. He held the baby in one arm—she fit comfortably on his hip—and he kept his other arm around Luna as they approached the casket. Maybe that was the way Jimmie Iron would have been with Liz, Vicky thought. It was possible. She watched Luna hold a clump of wild flowers over the grave a moment, before allowing them to float downward.

Inez Horn and Mary Hennings came next and tossed in little bouquets of flowers. The rest of the crowd had also begun moving forward, separating into makeshift lines, stepping back to allow room for an elder or a grandmother or a child, all of them letting the flowers drift downward over the casket. She spotted Diana Morningstar and the other women who had come to her office.

It had surprised her, the crowd that had jammed Blue Sky Hall last evening for Liz’s wake and had come to St. Francis Mission this morning for the funeral. Traffic had backed up on Seventeen-Mile Road—lines of pickups and sedans—waiting to turn into the mission. Vehicles had parked everywhere. They had jammed Circle Drive and crowded into vacant spaces in the field in the center of the drive. The pews had been filled. She and Adam had managed to get seats in the back. People were standing in the side aisles and across the vestibule. So many people, she’d thought, for a girl murdered more than thirty-five years ago, a forgotten girl. Who cared? Charlie Crow had said.