gostwalk
by
Margaret Coel


gostwalkBerkley Prime
Crime Books by Margaret Coel

THE EAGLE CATCHER

THE GHOST WALKER

THE DREAM STALKER

THE STORY TELLER

THE LOST BIRD

THE SPIRIT WOMAN

The Ghost Walker

Margaret Coel

BerKley PRIME CRIME, NEW YORK If you purchased this book without a
cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property.  It was
reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the
author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped
book."

This is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places, and incidents
are either the product of the author's imagination or are used
fictitiously,

and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business
establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

THE GHOST WALKER

A Berkley Prime Crime Book published by arrangement with the author

PRINTING HISTORY

Berkley Prime Crime hardcover edition October 1996 Berkley Prime Crime
mass-market edition September 1997

All rights reserved.

Copyright 1996 by Margaret Coel

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,

by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New
York 10014.

The Penguin Putnam Inc.  World Wide Web site address is
http://www.penguinputnam.com

ISBN: 0425-15961-2

Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing
Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

The name BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the BERKLEY PRIME CRIME design are
trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

10 9 8 7 For Margaret and Sam, so loving.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am fortunate to live in a university town where, every time you round
a corner, you meet an expert.  These wonderfully erudite people have
always been willing to share Their expertise and to act as my guides
through some tangled fields of knowledge.  I thank them all, especially
Professors Gene Erwin, Mancourt Downing, and John Tracy; psychiatrist
Jay Haws and addictions therapist Ann C. Noonan; Fay Tracy, Karen and
Carl Schneider, and Mary and Ed Kaupas.

And to those who read this manuscript and made many insightful
suggestions--Karen Gilleland, Ann Ripley, Sybil Downing, Dr.  Carol
Irwin, Dr.  Virginia Sutler, Dr.  George Coel--my hat is off to you
all.

We will not, however, bemoan thee as if thou wast forever lost to us,
or that thy name would be buried in oblivion; thy soul yet lives in the
great country of Spirits.

Jonathan Carver

Touch the Earth < 1 >

Snow had fallen all day, and now the open spaces of Wind River
Reservation lay under deep powder.  Father John Aloysius O'Malley
gripped the wheel of the Toyota pickup and peered through the half-moon
the wiper carved across the windshield.  He tried to follow the
depressions of the tire tracks running ahead, all that hinted at the
boundaries of Rendezvous Road--tire tracks and an occasional scrub
brush or dried stalk of goldenrod poking through the snow in the
ditches.  It was the second Sunday in January, the First Moon in the
Arapaho Way of marking time: the Moon When the Snow Blows Like Spirits
in the Wind.

A blast of frigid air filled the cab, and Father John glanced at the
dashboard.  The heater lever still rode on high, but the Arctic itself
had begun to stream through the vents.  The tiny needle on the
temperature gauge danced in the red zone.

He felt the engine start to miss as he pumped the gas pedal.  "Come
on," he coaxed, startled at the sound of his own voice in the vacant
cold.  The Toyota slid to a stop.  He flipped off the headlights, still
pumping the pedal.  Nothing.  The engine was as lifeless as a block of
granite.

He was already late for the meeting, which was why he'd taken the
shortcut to Lander.  Rendezvous Road angled across the eastern edge of
the reservation and joined Highway 789 near the southern boundary. Now
he wouldn't make the meeting at all, and how would he explain it to the
bishop's personal representative, Clifford Keating, who had driven into
a Wyoming blizzard to meet with the local pastors?

Father John opened the glove compartment, fished through a stack of
opera tapes, two maps, a couple of pencils, and a spiral tablet and
pulled out his earmuffs.  His fingers felt stiff inside his fur-lined
gloves as he removed his brown cowboy hat and adjusted the earmuffs on
his head.  Replacing the hat, he snapped the ends of his collar
together, then yanked the flashlight from beneath the seat and swung
out into the storm.

Cold seeped through his parka, past his flannel shirt and blue jeans,
into his skin.  The wind drove the snow slantwise, pricking his face
with hard pieces of ice.  He squinted as he groped for the metal catch
and threw open the hood.  A cloud of steam rose, and he jumped back,
even though the warmth had felt good.  He shone the flashlight over the
engine, spotting the broken radiator hose still dripping water.  The
coffers at St.  Francis Mission had enough last month for a tune-up and
new hoses or for two recapped rear tires.  He had bought the tires. Bad
choice.

He slammed down the hood and, pushing back the cuff of his parka,
turned the flashlight onto his watch.  Seven-fifteen P.M. The meeting
had started.  Highway 789 lay a mile ahead.  He might be able to catch
a ride there to Jake Littlehorse's garage, another two miles west.  It
was hard to imagine any other fools out tonight, except for priests
summoned by the bishop's delegate.

Swearing under his breath for not carrying a roll of duct tape and a
jug of antifreeze, he pushed the flash light into the pocket of his
parka and struck out for the highway, snow crunching under his boots.
He guessed the temperature to be at twenty below with the wind chill
factor.  His feet were beginning to feel like ingots.  Wyoming
blizzards had it all over the storms he had known in Boston.  You could
freeze to death here.

He had probably come half a mile, but there was no sign of the highway.
What was there to see?  One white road flowing into another.  Just
ahead, it looked as if the snow had been churned by a tractor, with
tire tracks crisscrossing one another.  Somebody had started down
Rendezvous Road and turned back.  Smart, thought Father John.  Whoever
it was had probably decided to head home to a warm fire.

As he got closer, he could distinguish the tracks of two vehicles.  He
couldn't have missed them by more than ten or fifteen minutes judging
by the deep, wavelike marks.  They made a wide turn across the road and
stopped at a dark, smudged area next to the ditch.  Father John angled
toward it.  He saw the boot prints, the trampled slope of the ditch,
the broken scrub brush.  Four or five feet below the road lay a dark
object, a log.  Only logs didn't wear boots.  The wind bore through
Father John's parka, sending shivers along his spine.

He started down, his boots sliding in the snow.  One boot hit something
flat and sharp--a boulder--and he drove his foot against it, steadying
himself while he extracted the flashlight.  It flickered a moment, then
went out.  He pounded the plastic tube into his glove until a narrow,
eerie beam burst over the log like figure: the boots, the patterns in
the black soles, the tops of gray socks.  The figure was wrapped in a
brown tarp, but hanging from the side was a strip of blue fabric with
white stars and red and yellow stripes: the Arapaho star quilt.  He
recognized the stillness of death.  He was looking at a corpse.  "Dear
God," he prayed out loud, "have mercy on his soul."

Jamming the flashlight back into his pocket, Father John climbed to the
road and started for the highway.  He was running now, gulping in icy
air that punctured his lungs like a thousand sharp needles.  He sensed
he had passed from cold to numbness, the beginning of hypothermia, but
his thoughts were focused on the poor dead soul wrapped in a star quilt
and tarp and thrown into a ditch.  "God help him," he prayed silently
over and over, the words matching the rhythm of his boots against the
snow.  He ran past the stop sign and turned west on the highway.  There
were no headlights, no signs of life, nothing but the blowing snow and
the white earth slipping into the gray sky.  Strips of icy asphalt
crept through the snow in places.  He felt his boots slipping.  He
nearly fell.  Catching himself, he slowed to a walk, breathing hard,
clapping his gloves together for warmth.

Just before he heard the motor, faint in the distance, he sensed the
slight tremble in the highway and swung around.  White pinpricks of
light glowed in the darkness.  He started running back along his own
boot prints.  As he ran, he pulled the flashlight from his pocket and
waved it back and forth before realizing it wasn't working.

Jiggling the switch, he ran on.  The flashlight sprang to life as he
came into the far reaches of the headlights.  He circled the plastic
tube in front, shouting, "Stop, stop!"  With a kind of shock, he
realized the truck was not stopping.  He jumped out of the way.

A gray Chevy pickup lumbered by, its wheels throwing clods of snow over
him.  He hollered after it, scarcely believing anybody would pass a man
in a blizzard.  Then suddenly the brake lights came on, and the pickup
ground to a stop.  Father John ran after it and grabbed the tailgate.
Half expecting the driver to take off, he lunged around the side for
the door handle and hoisted himself onto the passenger seat as the
truck started moving.

"Thanks," he managed through clenched teeth, swallowing the swear words
he usually forgot he knew.

In the dim light of the dashboard, the driver looked to be in his
twenties.  The beginning stubble of a blond beard covered his chin and
he wore a dark cap with ear flaps pulled down.  He sat
square-shouldered behind the wheel.  "Didn't see ya," he said.  "No car
anywhere."

Pounding his gloves together to work the circulation back into his
fingers, Father John said, "I broke down on Rendezvous Road."  It was
an effort to keep his tone civil.  "I'd appreciate a ride to Jake
Littlehorse's place."  Then he added, "I'm Father John O'Malley, pastor
at St.  Francis Mission.  You from around here?"

He knew the answer.  Nobody from around here would think of leaving
another human being out in a blizzard in subzero temperatures.  Not
unless he wanted the person dead.

"Yeah.  From around here," the driver said.

Father John wondered why his companion was lying; what difference did
it make?  He shrugged it off.  The cab was warm; the heat rising around
his legs made his skin tingle; he was grateful for the ride.  You
didn't have to like the guy who gave you the ride.

He turned his eyes on the frozen landscape sliding by his window.  The
snow seemed lighter, gentler, like cotton billowing downward.  Less
than an hour ago, he'd been driving down Rendezvous Road, late for a
meeting called by the bishop.  The meeting was probably half over by
now, and he could imagine the excuses Father George and Father Edward
and the other priests from Lander and Riverton had laid out for him.
"Always late.  Probably forgot.  You know the Jesuits."  And they'd all
have a good laugh, except for Clifford Keating, who wouldn't be
laughing.  Jesuits.  They were always trouble.

"So you broke down on Rendezvous Road?"

The question startled Father John.  His new companion hadn't seemed
very talkative, which was fine with him.  He was in no mood himself for
a friendly chat.  He decided to keep the conversation light.  No
mention of the body in the ditch.  He drew in a long breath before
explaining he'd been on his way to a meeting when his pickup had popped
a radiator hose.  He'd walked to the highway to catch a ride.

The driver was quiet, and after a moment Father John said, "Jake
Littlehorse's is just around the curve up ahead."

"Gotcha."

If the man were a local, Father John thought, he wouldn't have to be
told.  The truck banked around the curve, turned into a snow-crusted
driveway, and stopped in front of two squat frame buildings nestled
among some cottonwoods.  The buildings were dark.  The headlights
illuminated the black letters on the plate glass of one: jake's garage.
Father John knew Jake lived in a couple of rooms tacked onto the back.
He could be there.  "Mind hanging around a minute?"  he asked, stepping
out.

The driver reached across the seat and grabbed the door handle.  As the
door slammed shut, the truck started backing up, its wheels grinding
through the snow.  Metal screeched against metal as the gears shifted.
Then the truck took off down the highway.

Father John watched the red glow of the taillights a moment before
hunching his shoulders against the cold and starting down the driveway,
kicking up little clouds of just-fallen snow.  It swirled around his
blue jeans, sifted down into his boots.  In the back, the driveway
widened into a kind of court.  At the edge of the court stood an old
truck chassis and a pile of hoods and doors and wheels, half covered
with snow.  Calling Jake's name, he banged on the back door.  No
answer.  The tow truck wasn't around.  The garage man could be out on
an emergency.

Father John made his way back along the driveway, cold slipping over
him like a sheet of ice.  The nearest ranch house was at least a mile
farther.  On an impulse, he veered toward the front door and pounded
into the silence.  Then he grasped the metal knob.  To his surprise, it
turned in his glove.  The door swung open, its hinges shrieking like
owls in the night.  A wave of warmth tinged with the faint odor of
grease hit him as he stepped inside.  He closed the door and leaned
against it.  He wasn't going to end up like that poor, frozen corpse in
the ditch.

He knocked the flashlight into his glove until the bulb spurted enough
light to make out Jake's office: the glass topped counter with a cash
register and phone on top, a couple of hubcaps and a calendar on the
wall behind, and a metal chair next to the door that led to Jake's
living quarters.  He set the flashlight on the counter, pulled off his
gloves, hat, and earmuffs, and scooted the phone into the beam of
light.  He had just begun dialing 911 when he felt a hard object shoved
against his parka into the small of his back.  There was the sound of a
rifle being cocked, then a male voice: "You move, and I'll blow you to
kingdom come."  < 2 >

Jake Littlehorse was a nervous man.  Father John could hear the Arapaho
gulping in air as he jammed the rifle harder against Father John's
back.  The buzzing noise in the phone seemed a long way off.  One wrong
move, and he wouldn't hear the noise that followed.

In a steady voice, he said, "Jake, it's me.  Father John."

The pressure lifted from his back.  "Jesus, Father."  Jake's voice
quivered.  "You tryin' to get yourself killed?  How'd you get in here,
anyways?"

Father John turned around, catching the glint of the flashlight off the
blue-gray rifle barrel.  Slowly he replaced the receiver as Jake, still
pointing the gun, backed to the wall and flipped a switch.  White
fluorescent light flooded the small office, which had gone hot and
stuffy.  Father John yanked open the front of his parka, keeping his
eyes on the Indian, who leaned the rifle into the corner.  He looked
half asleep, black hair sprouting upward like a feathered headdress,
eyes narrow slits in a fleshy brown face.  He had on a rumpled green
sweatshirt and blue jeans that hung below a cliff of stomach flesh. His
stockinged feet were planted wide apart on the linoleum floor.

Father John said, "I thought you'd been called out.

The tow truck's not around.  The front door was unlocked, so I came
in."

"Truck's in the garage," Jake said, nodding sideways.  "Guess I
might've dozed off watchin' TV.  I thought I'd locked up and you was
some burglar.  I got lots of valuable things here them Indians are
always after."  A whine seeped into his voice.

"The Toyota popped a radiator hose on Rendezvous Road," Father John
said.

"Hell, how come you didn't say so?"  Jake raised his head and squared
his shoulders, a man about to enter familiar territory.  "Hang on 'til
I get my boots and coat."

The Arapaho disappeared through the door as quietly as he'd come in,
and Father John grabbed the phone and dialed 911.  He counted four
rings before the operator's voice sounded.  After giving his name, he
explained he'd spotted a body in the ditch along Rendezvous Road about
a half mile north of Highway 789.

"Hang on," said the operator.  After a minute she was back.  A patrol
car and ambulance were on the way.

Father John knew the body would be hard to spot.  If it hadn't been for
the tracks and boot prints, he would have missed it.  By morning it
would have been buried in snow.  It might have stayed hidden until
spring.  He told the operator he was at Jake Littlehorse's place, but
would meet the police on Rendezvous Road.

As he replaced the receiver, he sensed a presence in the room and
whirled around.  Jake stood so close, Father John wondered he hadn't
felt the Indian's breath on his neck.  He had silently entered the
office a second time, like a warrior stalking the buffalo.

"You didn't say nothin' about no body."  The Arapaho brown eyes
widened into a stare.  He kept his arms close to his sides, looking as
frozen and stiff as the poor soul in the ditch.

Father John explained he'd seen what he thought was a body.  It was up
to the police to investigate.

"I ain't goin' out there."  Jake shook his head.  "I ain't goin'
nowheres near.  The ghost's gonna be walkin' around."

Father John felt a flush of impatience.  "A few minutes ago you were
about to blow me into kingdom come.  Then my ghost would've been
walking around here.  Did you think about that?"

"You been a burglar, I might've pulled the trigger," Jake said.  "I
wouldn't've liked it none."  Stepping behind the counter, he stooped
over and began shuffling through cardboard boxes on the floor.  After a
minute he hoisted a roll of duct tape onto the counter, then swung a
gallon of antifreeze next to the tape.  Pulling himself upright, he
said, "You can patch that hose good enough to get the pickup over here.
I'll fix it tomorrow."

Father John saw the resolve in the Indian's eyes.  No appeal to reason
or common sense would change his mind.  Arapahos believed in signs and
wonders, in the mysterious and unseen.  How could he argue?  He
believed in them, too.  He picked up the receiver and again dialed 911.
"Father O'Malley here," he said.  "I'm going to need a ride to
Rendezvous Road."

"Hang on."  The operator's voice registered no surprise, as if she'd
expected the call.  No Arapaho wanted to go near an abandoned corpse--a
corpse that hadn't been properly blessed, whose ghost hadn't been shown
the path to the sky world.  Without the traditional blessing, the ghost
was left to its own devices, stumbling around the earth, lost and
terrified, trying to find the land of the ancestors on its own.  The
Indians on the Bureau of Indian Affairs police force had to take their
chances.  That was their job, but it wasn't Jake Littlehorse's job.

The operator said, "Chief Banner's going south on 789.  He'll stop for
you."

Father John hung up and pushed the phone back.  Nodding toward the duct
tape and antifreeze, he said, "What do I owe you?"

"Seven-fifty.  You can pay me tomorrow after I fix the radiator."

By the time Father John had snapped up his parka and pulled on the rest
of his winter gear, yellow headlights flashed through the plate-glass
window.  Scooping up the antifreeze and duct tape, he let himself
out.

He got into the white patrol car with the gold BIA insignia emblazoned
on the side and settled the duct tape and plastic bottle of antifreeze
on the floor next to his boots.  Art Banner sat straight-backed in his
bulky, dark blue uniform parka, the beak of his cap tipped over his
forehead, gloved hands curled on the rim of the wheel.  The rear wheels
skidded sideways as the patrol car backed out of the driveway and
lurched forward.  Snow billowed across the highway ahead.  "Dispatcher
says you found a body on Rendezvous Road."  The chief's tone was
relaxed, as if bodies routinely turned up in ditches on Wind River
Reservation.

Father John launched into the story, stressing the fact that the body
couldn't have been there long because the snow barely covered the
tracks and boot prints.

"Man or woman?"

Father John was quiet, aware of the warm air floating out of the
heater, holding the cold at bay.  He had assumed it was a man, but it
could have been a woman.  Women wore heavy hiking boots.  He said, "I'm
not sure."

"Crummy way to end up.  Dumped in a ditch on a miserable night.  Makes
you wonder what the hell went wrong."

Father John sensed something else was on the chief's mind.  When Father
John first came to Wind River Reservation almost seven years ago,
Banner was a patrolman along with other Indians--Arapaho, Shoshone,
Lakota, Crow, Pawnee--on the BIA police force.  A couple of years ago
he'd made chief.  Father John had never seen him lose his cool, not
from the broken bodies he'd pulled out of car wrecks, the drunken
brawls he'd waded into, or the battered women and children he'd carried
into emergency rooms.  There were times in emergency rooms when Father
John had had to step into the corridor to get his own anger under
control.  But not Banner.  He was always up to the job.

"You okay?"

"Yeah.  Yeah."  The chief shrugged.  "Tell you what, John, you're lucky
you don't have kids."

"You think so?"  Father John couldn't imagine what it would be like to
have tall sons, beautiful daughters.  It wasn't something he thought
much about.  He'd chosen a different path.  But Banner and Helen had
four grown children, three daughters and a son.

The chief laughed.  "Don't try that old psychology trick on me.  I'm
wise to the way you guys toss everything back like a baseball. Besides,
you aren't even a psychologist.  You used to be a history professor,
right?  Before the Jesuits exiled you here?"  "A high school history
teacher," Father John reminded the chief, probably for the twentieth
time.  Banner persisted in believing he'd once held some exalted
university position.  Was it so obvious that's what he had wanted?  To
teach American history at one of the Jesuit universities? He had been
on the fast track for such a position, would hold it now if it hadn't
been for what he thought of as "the great fall"--the ten-year love
affair he'd conducted with alcohol.

The patrol car turned across the snow-drifted highway onto Rendezvous
Road.  "Kids can worry you into an early grave," Banner said.  "And
turn your hair gray and keep you awake nights while they do it."

Father John stared at his friend.  "What's going on?"

"Patrick."  The chief sighed.  "The girls, they're doin' okay.  Their
mother keeps up with them.  But Patrick-well, he just got out of the
army and needs a job.  Problem is, he's a warrior now, and no job's
good enough.  Nothin' suits his dignity."

"What's he looking at?"

"Lookin'l Even that don't suit his dignity.  Only thing he's lookin' at
is soap operas."  Banner stopped the police car behind an ambulance and
another police car lined up at the edge of the road.  Lights fastened
on the other car's roof whirled like a kaleidoscope against the
darkness: red-black, red-black.  Two medics stomped up and down beside
the ambulance, moving in and out of the light, rubbing their gloves
together.

Banner threw open his door, and cold air blasted through the car.
Before the chief could swing out, Father John grabbed his arm.  "If you
think it might help, I'd be glad to talk to him."

The chief nodded slowly.  "Yeah.  I was gonna ask you.  Maybe you can
light a fire under that warrior."

Just then a young policeman opened the passenger door and bent down.
"You want to show us where you found the body, Father?"

Father John lifted himself out into the blowing snow and walked between
the police car and the ambulance to the side of the road, his eyes
searching for the boot prints, the smudged area.  Banner and the
policeman fell in beside him, their boots scuffing the snow.  Their
breath floated in little clouds.  Another BIA policeman came toward
them, shining a flashlight along the ditch.

"There," Father John said, spotting the packed, smudged area.  "I hope
I didn't disturb any evidence."

"Only need evidence for a crime," said the policeman with the
flashlight.

"Dumping a body is crime enough."  This from the chief.

Father John fixed his eyes on the policeman.  "What are you getting
at?"

"If there's a body out here, we can't find it."  He waved the
flashlight across the ditch.

Father John moved close to the edge.  The snow in the ditch looked even
more trampled, but where the body had been was only a smooth
indentation, like a narrow cot.

"This the place?"  Banner asked.

"Yes."

"You sure--" "It was a body, Banner," Father John said, irritated.
"Somebody's taken it."

Banner turned toward the other men.  "Check the ditch on both sides, in
case the body got thrown somewhere else around here."

Father John was lost in his own thoughts.  There was one man who might
have guessed he'd found a body on Rendezvous Road that wasn't meant to
be found.  As he and Banner walked back to the police car, Father John
said, "You might want to talk to a blond guy, early twenties, new to
these parts, driving a gray Chevy pickup."  <3>

The body preyed on his mind all night.  Father John managed to snatch
only a few intervals of sleep before getting up at about five.  He
alternated saying daily

Mass with Father Peter Roach, the seventy-two-year-old

Jesuit the Provincial had called from retirement six months ago to help
out at St.  Francis.  This morning was

Father John's turn.  He showered, dressed, and headed down the dark
stairs.  He flipped on the little light over the stove, which turned
the kitchen into a blur of shadows.

After brewing a pot of strong coffee, he poured some into a mug and sat
down at the round wood table, going over last night's events again in
his mind.  Everything about the body was unknown: the name, the face,
the terrible fate that had brought it to the ditch, the disappearance.
There were no explanations, only questions.  A couple of times the
three-legged golden retriever he'd acquired last fall--or who had
acquired him, as Father Peter insisted--struggled off the rug in the
corner and shoved a cold nose into his hand, then flopped back down and
resumed snoring.  Father John had named the dog Walks-on-Three-Legs.
Walks-on, for short.  He felt a kinship with this animal who had also
arrived at St.  Francis Mission not quite whole.

At about six-thirty, he let Walks-on go out for a few minutes while he
filled the dog's bowl with canned meat and rock-hard chow.  The quiet
of the house was broken by the sounds of the dog slurping and chomping
his breakfast as Father John shrugged into his parka and pulled on his
gloves.  Setting his cowboy hat low on his head, he let himself out the
front door and plunged into the frigid morning.

The buildings of St.  Francis Mission rose out of the snow around
Circle Drive like a miniature village under a Christmas tree: the white
stucco church, its bell tower floating among the ice-crusted cottonwood
branches; the stone administration building where his and Father
Peter's offices were; the cement-block Eagle Hall, half gym, half
meeting rooms; the one-room guest house; the old school--the mission's
first building.  He'd once suggested demolishing it, but the elders had
raised such an outcry he'd ended up apologizing for the suggestion. St.
Francis was like the reservation itself: What was here belonged here. 
It was a sacred space, enclosed by four sacred spaces: the Wind River,
the Little Wind River, the mountains, and the sky.

On the far side of Circle Drive stood the new elementary school with a
white stucco entry in the shape of a tipi.  Behind the school lay the
baseball field where, his first summer here, he had marked off the
baseball diamond, carefully measuring ninety feet between the bases,
and had started the St.  Francis Eagles.  The kids needed something to
do in the summer, he had told himself, but he knew he needed a baseball
team to coach.

The first daylight glowed in the east, spreading fingers of pink and
orange and magenta across the silver sky.  Last night's snowstorm had
passed over, leaving the sky clear and luminescent, a field of blinking
stars.  In the north was Nahax, the morning star, always the last to
rise.  Father John had the sense that St.  Francis was gripped in the
same winter stillness that had lain over Arapaho camps on the plains in
the Old Time.

The stillness of the plains had been the first thing he had noticed
when he came here, after an eight-month stint in Grace House.  The
silence had seemed loud then; he sometimes thought he could hear it.
Yet it was unlike the noise of Boston where he'd grown up.  As a kid,
making his rounds alone in the early morning, tossing the Globe onto
the little stoops of the red-brick buildings that lined the streets of
his neighborhood, he had been engulfed in noise--dogs barking, engines
roaring, tires squealing, a baby crying.  Noise had seemed natural
then, but it was silence that was natural.  It was only in silence, the
Arapahos believed, that you could hear the Divine drawing near.

He began the Mass as daylight stole through the side windows of the
church and played across the faces of the old people at prayer.  The
old faithfuls, he called them.  The elders and grandmothers who climbed
into pickups every day, no matter the temperature, and drove thirty or
forty miles across the reservation to Mass.  John and Mary Red Deer
were here, and old Donald Lightheart in his usual place in the first
pew, and Eddie Walsh, rosary beads twisted through gnarled fingers, and
five or six others.

This was their church, the Arapahos'.  They had built it and painted
the walls with sacred symbols: the lines and circles that symbolized
the journey of life.  Above the front door they had painted the figure
of the crucified Christ, the staked warrior, like the warriors in the
Old Time who had staked themselves to the ground so that enemies might
vent their anger upon them while the people escaped.  On the wall next
to the altar, they had painted a yellow daffodil, so that a flower
might always grace the altar, even in winter.  Father John knew the
Arapahos considered the Mass only one of the many ways to worship the
Great Mystery, the Shining Man Above.  There couldn't be too many.  He
offered Mass for the body in the ditch.

By the time Mass ended, daylight filled the church.  Back in the
sacristy, Father John removed the green chasuble he'd worn this
morning--green symbolized life and hope--while Leonard Bizzel, the
caretaker, placed the chalice and prayer books in the cabinet.  Leonard
hadn't reached fifty yet, but he moved with the deliberation of an old
man.  Every act received the same minute attention.  "Bad things goin'
on," he said.

The Arapaho had obviously skipped the preliminaries and gotten to what
was bothering him: the dead body.  The moccasin telegraph must have set
a record for sprinting news across the reservation, Father John
thought.  Then he remembered Leonard's son was on the BIA police
force.

"That ghost don't get a proper burial, it's gonna cause plenty of
trouble."  Leonard lingered on each word, as if it were an oracular
pronouncement.  "How come you seen the body?"

"The Toyota broke down on Rendezvous Road.  I was walking to the
highway to hitch a ride when I spotted it," Father John explained as he
hung the vestments in the closet.

"Ghost's causing trouble already."

"A radiator hose popped."

"Ghost did it," Leonard said.

Father John retraced his steps to the priests' residence under a sky
the color of blue-tinted glass.  The snow sparkled in the early morning
sun.  He tried to push thoughts of the body to the edge of his mind by
men tally ticking off the day's schedule: bills to pay, phone calls to
return, meetings to arrange, people to counsel.  He should call one of
the parish priests to find out about last night's meeting.  Scratch
that idea, he decided.  The bishop's representative would eventually
call him with the news plus a reprimand for not attending.

What he did want to do was drive out to Joe Deppert's place to see how
the old man was doing after his surgery.  And Banner expected him at
Fort Washakie to meet with the local FBI agent.  Any report of a dead
body on the reservation meant the FBI would be involved; major crimes
in Indian country fell in FBI jurisdiction.  But how the day went
depended on when Jake Littlehorse returned the Toyota.

He could smell bacon frying as he came up the stairs to the concrete
stoop in front of the priests' residence.  He piled his parka and the
rest of his winter gear on the bench inside the entry as Walks-on
shuffled down the hallway, tail wagging, a red Frisbee in his mouth.
"Later," Father John said, patting the dog's head before following the
aroma into the kitchen.

Father Peter sat at the table, his head bent into the Wind River
Gazette.  The old man's frizzled white hair wrapped like a muff around
a circle of pink scalp.  Elena was at the stove scrambling eggs and
tending wide slabs of bacon in a pan.  Little dots of grease spouted
into the air.

Elena had been the housekeeper long before Father John had heard of St.
Francis Mission.  With her round face and stocky build, the old woman
had the look of the Cheyenne, or the Shyela, as the Arapahos called the
people who had traveled with them across the plains.  She had once told
him how her grandfather had been a Cheyenne dog soldier.  When he saw
the beautiful Arapaho girl who came with her family to the Cheyenne
village to trade, he had approached her father and asked permission to
marry her.  Her father had agreed because it was a dog soldier who
asked.  After they were married, they had lived with her people, and
the dog soldier became one of the Hinono eino.

"I'll have my eggs fried this morning."  Father John bent over the old
woman, unable to resist teasing her a little.

She scooped the scrambled eggs onto a plate and laid a couple of pieces
of bacon alongside, flashing him the kind of exasperated look his
mother had turned on him when he was a kid.  "Behave yourself," she
said, handing him the plate, "or that ghost'll shoot his ghost arrow at
you and give you a big pain."

Another second, and Elena had placed a mug of coffee on the table,
scooped up the empty dishes in front of Father Peter, and sauntered
over to the sink.  Father John set his plate down and took the vacant
chair across from the old priest, still engrossed in the Gazette.
Father Peter was the temporary assistant at St.  Francis, but temporary
was beginning to look more and more permanent.  There weren't a lot of
Jesuits clamoring for assignments on an Indian reservation in the
middle of Wyoming.

When Father John first came to St.  Francis, Father Peter had been the
superior.  But four years ago, a heart attack had sent the old man into
retirement.  There he was last fall at Ignatius Center, immersed in his
beloved Shakespeare, when the Provincial had called him back.

Now their roles were reversed.  Father John was the superior,
responsible for operating the mission and looking after his elderly
assistant.  A couple of mornings when Father Peter hadn't appeared at
breakfast, he had pounded on the old man's bedroom door, fearful of
what he might find.

Father Peter pushed the newspaper toward him.  "You made the front
page, my boy."

Father John glanced at the headline: priest reports body in DITCH. Then
his eyes ran down the column.  It was all there: Father John O'Malley,
pastor at St.  Francis Mission, claiming to have found a dead body last
evening in the ditch on Rendezvous Road.  Chief Art Banner explaining
how the police were unable to locate any body.

"Now, you wouldn't be having visions, would you?"  The old priest's
blue eyes twinkled, but Father John knew he was only partly kidding.
Probably all the Jesuits expected him to fall off the wagon sooner or
later.  It had happened before.

He washed down a forkful of eggs with a sip of coffee, giving himself a
moment to reply.  "People will think so," he said finally, "if the body
isn't found."  That's what really bothered him.  The fact that the body
might never be found.  An unknown dead person, with no one to grieve
for him or remember him.  No one to bury him.

""Alas, poor ghost."" The old priest sighed again and looked away a
moment.  Then, his eyes back on Father John's, he began waving a knobby
finger.  "You could've been dead out in that blizzard yourself."

Father John drained the last of the coffee and smiled at the old man.
"Always carry emergency supplies in the winter.  I believe that was the
first lesson you taught me."

"Well, you might have fixed the pickup."

"But then I wouldn't have found the body."

Father Peter leaned across the table, a mixture of mirth and irritation
in his eyes.  "Are you saying you don't carry emergency supplies
because they might keep you from finding dead bodies?"

"Sounds logical."  Father John pushed back his chair and got to his
feet.  He liked bantering with the old Irish priest.  He reminded him
of his father.

"Well, I'll tell you what's logical," Elena said, turning partly from
the sink, hands submerged under billows of soapsuds.  "That ghost wants
to do his mischief.  He's not ready to go to the spirit world yet." It
was almost noon before Jake Littlehorse wheeled the Toyota around
Circle Drive, and Father John called Banner to say he was on his way to
Fort Washakie.  He drove Jake the thirty miles back to the garage and,
after paying him what came perilously close to the last of the
mission's ready cash for January, he followed the highway across the
southwestern edge of the reservation.  At a junction he turned onto a
narrow road that shot straight west.  Every few miles, he passed a
painted frame house with a propane gas tank propped on spindly metal
legs in the snow-covered yard, a couple of trucks scattered about,
laundry stiff on lines out back, and a TV antenna perched on the
roof.

He turned north on Highway 287, which skirted the foothills of the Wind
River Mountains.  Stands of cedars and lodgepole pines, their branches
heavy with snow, flashed by to the west.  In every other direction, the
plains, sparkling like a field of diamonds, stretched into the blue
sky.  Sunlight glinted off the hood, danced over the highway ahead.  He
squinted against the brightness.

It was on drives like this through the open spaces that he missed the
music of his favorite operas filling up the cab.  The plaintive notes
of "Si, mi chiamano Mimi" and "Vesti la giubba," or the rousing rhythms
of "Torreadoer en garde" lifted him out of himself.  And "Nessun
dorma" he loved.  Sung by one of the masters, it encompassed everything
beautiful in the world.  But the Toyota had never boasted a working
radio, let alone a cassette player, and the portable player he used to
keep on the seat had been broken.  There was no telling when he could
afford to buy another.  He tried to content himself with humming the
arias, sometimes launching into a chorus and surprising himself that he
knew the words.

He had driven about forty miles when he slowed down along the main
street of Fort Washakie, the little community that meandered into the
foothills.  He set the Toyota into a vacant space in the parking lot
next to the Wind River Law Enforcement Center, a one-story building
with red-brick walls and a sloping red metal roof edged with snow.

Inside, several Indians lined up in front of a glass enclosed cubicle,
while other Indians, mostly young, waited in the green plastic chairs
along the walls.  Father John greeted a couple of people he recognized
as occasional members of his congregation.  The young woman behind the
glass looked up and motioned him to a side door.  After disappearing a
moment, she opened the door, glancing about as if to make sure no one
else tried to enter.

"Chief Banner's waitin' for you, Father," she said scoldingly.

Father John pulled off his gloves and unsnapped his parka as he walked
down the corridor.  The string of overhead fluorescent lights cast a
white glare over the glass-paned doors and the beige walls.  Little
clouds of cigarette smoke hung in the air.  Somewhere a phone was
ringing, and the sound mingled with the clack of his boots on the tile.
A voice with the unmistakable timbre of the chief's drifted through an
open door.  He rapped one knuckle against the jamb before stepping
inside.

"Here you are," Banner said, swiveling around in the chair behind a
desk.  It reminded Father John of his own desk, piled with papers and
folders awaiting his attention.

"Meet Mike Osgood, new FBI agent in these parts."  The chief flung an
arm toward the man in one of the wood chairs on the other side of the
desk.

Osgood sprang to his feet and extended his hand.  His grip was firm,
despite his slight build.  He looked to be about forty, with a light
complexion, hair almost as black as Banner's, and eyes almost as dark.
The navy blue suit with the white shirt and yellow tie knotted at the
collar gave him a serious look, but he seemed relaxed and confident. "I
understand we have a dead body floating around the reservation," he
said.

Banner pressed a button and barked into the phone.  "Sergeant Deerkill,
on the double."  Then to Father John, "We're gonna need a statement."

Father John hung his parka over the back of the vacant chair and
stuffed his gloves into the crown of his cowboy hat.  Then he sat down,
balancing the hat on one knee.  Just then a young policeman in the same
kind of BIA uniform--light-blue shirt and navy trousers-that Banner
wore entered the office.  A tape recorder was in his hand.  "This
here's Sergeant Deerkill," the chief said.

The young man had the high forehead, the sunken cheeks, and deep-set
black eyes of the Lakota.  "Amos Deerkill," he said, setting the
recorder on the desk and perching on the corner.  He leaned forward to
shake Father John's hand, then the agent's.

"We want you to tell us everything you saw last night," the chief said.
"How you found the body, what it looked like, anything you can
remember.  Never know what might help."

Father John leaned back against the chair and began explaining how he'd
been driving down Rendezvous Road when his pickup popped a radiator
hose and stalled.

"Ghost made it break down," Banner interrupted.  Rocking back in his
chair, he peered across the desk, as if daring anyone to question it.

"Ghost?"  This from the agent.

"Yeah," said the chief.  "You got a body, you got a ghost.  The ghost
is causin' trouble already.  That's why we gotta find the body and get
it buried before that ghost causes any more trouble."

The agent turned toward Father John.  The message in his eyes was so
obvious Father John knew neither Banner nor the young sergeant would
miss it: We white men must strive to be rational.

Father John said, "Every soul deserves the blessings of a proper
burial."

The agent threw out both hands.  "Okay, okay.  Can we just continue?"

Again Father John started explaining, trying to recall all the details.
The more he talked, the more the story began to sound preposterous. No
wonder Father Peter thought he might be having visions.  The FBI agent
probably thought the same.

"You get the license on the Chevy that picked you up?"  This time the
agent interrupted.

Father John admitted he'd been so glad to get a ride, he hadn't noticed
the license.  He described the driver: male, early twenties, light
complexion, blond stubble on his chin.  Not a local.

"What makes you think so?"  the chief asked.

"He drove past me.  He didn't intend to stop, but something changed
his mind."

Banner and the young sergeant both nodded, as if that was all the proof
necessary to determine the driver came from elsewhere.

"We'll get this typed up for you to sign," the chief said as the young
policeman picked up the recorder and disappeared into the corridor.

"Lab boys got two casts of boot prints out at the site.  And they found
something else."  Banner opened a brown envelope, extracted a plastic
zip lock bag, and tossed it across the desk.

The agent looked at it first, then handed it to Father John.  He turned
the bag slowly in his hands.  Inside was a necklace strung with red,
white, and black beads and yellow porcupine quills.  The colors
symbolized the four sacred movements at the center of life: the four
winds, the four directions, the four seasons, the four periods of the
day, the four quarters of the world.  It might be worn by either a man
or a woman.  Returning the bag to the chief, he said, "Arapaho."

"Yeah.  Just like the star quilt.  Looks like we got ourselves a dead
Arapaho.  Only nobody's been reported missing on the rez lately."
Banner turned toward the agent.  "People usually go missin' in the
summers.  Mostly hikers, hunters, or fishermen who get lost in the back
country and fall off a cliff somewheres."

"Dead bodies don't just appear," Osgood said.  "They're always related
to some event."

The chief sighed.  "Weekend was pretty quiet.  Two other calls last
night.  Truck went off Seventeen-Mile Road.  Driver's at Riverton
Memorial.  Domestic disturbance out north.  Man's in jail; woman went
to her mother's.  That's it.  Friday night, Lander police got one call
involving Arapahos.  Loud party at the Grand Apartments.  Citation
issued to one Annie Chambeau.  Saturday night, another call, same
apartment.  Claimed she'd had an intruder, but no sign of him."

The agent slipped a small notebook and pen from the inside pocket of
his jacket.  "Annie Chambeau," he said.  The pen scratched the paper.
"I'll talk to her.  Maybe something happened at the party that led to
somebody getting killed.  I'll see you get a report."  He glanced up at
the chief.

Father John had been here long enough to understand that various law
enforcement agencies navigated a maze.  The BIA's territory was the
reservation, but serious crimes, such as murder, brought in the feds.
Something like this--a party in Lander, a possible murder, a corpse
that may or may not still be on the reservation-jurisdictional lines
began to blur.  Something like this demanded a lot of cooperation.
"I've got other sources I intend to interview," the agent said. Getting
to his feet, he strolled over to the coatrack next to the doorway and
pulled on a gray overcoat.  "Nobody can keep a body hidden forever. 
Sooner or later it's bound to turn up."  He touched two fingers to his
forehead in a little salute before turning into the corridor.

Banner levered himself out of his chair and swept one hand over the
multicolored map of Wind River Reservation tacked to the wall behind
his desk.  "Truth is, that body could be anywhere in thirty-five
hundred square miles.  Could be up here."  The chief pointed to the
northwest where the Shoshones lived.  "Or here."  His hand ran along
the southern half: Arapaho land.  "Chances of finding that body, if
somebody doesn't want it found, are about a zillion to one."

"What about the Chevy pickup?"

The chief shrugged.  "Some white guy lost on the reservation in a
blizzard."  He traced one finger along the map.  "He picked you up a
little ways past Rendezvous Road and drove two miles down Highway 789
to Jake's garage.  Most likely, he kept goin'.  Could be in Colorado by
now."

Father John stared at the map.  He couldn't shake off the uneasy
feeling about the young man who had given him a ride.  The cold
determination, the ruthlessness.  And he had lied about being from
around here.

"Suppose he'd been on his way to Rendezvous Road to retrieve the body,"
Father John began, sorting his thoughts out loud, searching for some
logical path.  "Suppose he saw me on the highway and decided not to
chance turning onto Rendezvous Road.  He stayed on the highway and
deliberately passed me.  Then he decided to pick me up in order to find
out if I'd been on Rendezvous Road and had seen the body."  He didn't
say what was becoming obvious: Had he told the man about finding the
body, his own life might have been in danger.

The chief flopped back into his chair.  "The guy that dropped that body
got the hell outta there.  Why would he take a chance on goin' back?"

"Maybe he started to worry it wasn't hidden well enough."

Banner slowly shook his head.  "The fed's off to talk to an Indian girl
and other sources he says he has, as if Indians are gonna tell a white
FBI agent something important.  We've got a gray Chevy pickup and a
driver who maybe knows about the body, but most likely never heard of
it.  And we got a missing body.  Ghosts, John.  We're chasin' ghosts."
<5>

The Toyota rolled down Old Wind River Highway on automatic pilot.
Father John rested one gloved finger on the steering wheel's rim.  His
thoughts were on the body, which had probably been dead close to
twenty-four hours now, but no one had missed him, no one had called the
police and said, "He hasn't come home.  I'm worried."  Nothing.  What
kind of life had he led to end up so alone?

The road veered sharply to the right, and Father John jammed on the
brake pedal, fishtailing around the curve.  The wind sent a cloud of
snow across the road ahead.  He gripped the wheel with both hands,
holding it steady through the whiteness and out the far side into the
daylight.  Another half mile, and he turned into the driveway at Joe
Deppert's place.

An uneasy feeling came over him as he slid out of the cab.  Mounds of
un trampled snow lay over the driveway and banked against the logs
piled beside the wood fence.  The open door of a tin shed creaked in
the wind.  The gray frame house looked empty, with the indoor shades
pulled halfway down the front windows.

The door swung open just as he was about to knock.  In the shadows
stood Deborah Deppert, somewhere in her eighties, with hooded black
eyes and gray hair curled around her head like a helmet.  He might
have knocked at any house on the reservation and found an elderly women
like her, in a printed housedress with an apron cinching her waist,
socks rolled at her ankles, and swollen arthritic feet in pink bedroom
slippers.

"Hello, Grandmother."  He used the Arapaho term of respect and remained
in place outside.  It was not polite to appear as if he even wished to
enter the home until he had been invited to do so.

"Well, Father John."  There was a note of surprise in the old woman's
voice.  "What you doin' out in the cold?  Come on in."

He stepped into a small room with gray daylight filtering below the
window shades.  He waited as Deborah set the door closed behind him.
The air smelled of wood smoke and some pungent medicinal odor, like
camphor or analgesic.  To the right was a double bed with a star quilt
spread over the top.  In the center of the room stood a round oak table
and a couple of wood chairs, and beyond, an arched doorway that led to
the kitchen.

To the left, Joe Deppert, swaddled in blankets, lay in one of two
recliners that faced a black stove.  Next to it sat a cardboard box
with some kindling wood poking out of the top.

"How is Grandfather?"  Father John whispered.

"Oh, he's not asleep."  The old woman stepped over to the recliner and
lightly thumped the pile of blankets.  "We got company," she said.

Joe opened his eyes.  "Marcus?"  His voice sounded soft and spongy.

"Father John, Grandfather.  I stopped by to see how you're doing."

A bony hand came out from under the blankets, and Father John reached
over and clasped it.  It felt like a brittle bundle of twigs.

"We thought you was Marcus when we heard the truck drive up."  There
was a mixture of disappointment and fear in his eyes.

Deborah patted the top of the other recliner.  "Sit here, Father.  You
want some coffee, don't you?"

The old woman sidled through the archway as Father John draped his
parka over the back of one of the wood chairs and laid his gloves and
cowboy hat on the table.  Then he sat on the edge of the vacant
recliner.  The fire cast an uneven heat; the room was drafty and cold
by the door, stifling as a sauna by the stove.

"How're you feeling?"  Father John asked the old man.  Two weeks ago,
the doctors had removed both of Joe's big toes.  Diabetes.

"Soon's I get these clunkers off, I'll be good as new."  Joe yanked at
the blankets to display the plaster casts.  "I gotta learn to walk with
no toes.  Easier'n walkin' with no feet."

Father John smiled at the old man's courage.  Joe knew that's what they
would amputate next.  "Has Marcus been coming by to help you out?"  The
young Arapaho was Joe's grand-nephew, the grandson of Joe's brother.
Arapaho families were too close for words like nephew and uncle.
Besides, Joe and Deborah had raised Marcus from about age twelve, after
his parents had died.

Glancing toward the kitchen, the Indian lowered his voice.  "Marcus is
real good to us.  Chops the wood and hauls in the logs.  Does the
shoppin'.  Only he ain't come around all last week.  I don't know what
become of him."

"I can get in some logs," Father John said, nodding toward the
cardboard box.  Another cold snap like last night, and Joe and Deborah
could freeze to death in this flimsy house.

"No need to bother yourself."  Deborah padded slowly back into the
room, balancing three coffee mugs on a plate.  She handed one mug to
Father John, another to her husband.  Then she plopped down on the same
wooden chair Father John had hung his parka on and took a sip from her
mug.  After a minute, she said, "Marcus'll be by today for sure.  He
don't forget us.  You hear that, old man?"  She scooted forward,
staring at the back of Joe's recliner.  "Marcus ain't the kind of boy
that don't respect his elders."

Squaring herself against the chair again, as if the matter were
settled, Deborah turned her eyes to Father John.  "His new job he's got
drivin' Jeeps to Denver takes a lot of time."

Father John took a long pull of the lukewarm liquid.  It had the taste
of coffee brewed hours ago and warmed over several times.  It worried
him: two helpless old people, isolated in a drafty house two or three
miles from the nearest neighbor.  And where was Marcus?  In a ditch
somewhere?  He shivered involuntarily.  Is this what it was going to be
like?  Every time he heard of somebody missing an appointment, not
coming around, was he going to jump to the conclusion that that was the
body in the ditch?

He forced his thoughts back to what Deborah had said.  Marcus had a
job.  Good news.  Marcus Deppert was one of the kids he'd worried
about, ever since the summer, a few years back, that Marcus had played
left field for the Eagles--when he'd felt like showing up.  Breezy and
self-confident, that was Marcus.  A little too smart in the wrong
things.  Since then, he'd spent three years in Leavenworth for dealing
drugs.  He was still on probation.  Father John sat back in the
recliner.  "Who's Marcus working for?"

"He ain't said exactly."  Joe shifted a little in the recliner.

"Well, it's a good job."  Deborah hoisted herself to her feet and
collected the empty mugs before shuffling back into the kitchen.

The old man motioned Father John to come closer.  "I'm real worried
about the boy.  So's his grandmother, only she don't wanna say so.  I
told her we should get the police, but she says no, 'cause of him
being' on probation.  Could you check on him?  Make sure he ain't in no
trouble, Teenenoo Hiinooni'it?"  He used the name one of the four holy
old men had given Father John a few years before.  It meant
"Touch-the-Clouds" and symbolized the heart of his life, what he tried
to do as a priest--reach toward the Great Mystery Above.  The name was
meant to remind him of his duty and to give him the strength to do his
best.

"Yes, of course, Grandfather," Father John said.  No missing persons on
the reservation lately, Banner had said, but who would report Marcus
missing?  Only these two old people, scared of the police looking into
what he might be up to.

"Where is he living now?"

"Got himself a place over in Easter Egg Village.  First yellow house on
Buffalo Road."  The old man drew in a long breath and let it out slowly
as if he were releasing a sharp pain.

"What else can I do, Grandfather?"  Father John asked.

Joe reached out and grasped his hand lightly.  "Don't listen to what
that old woman says.  We need some more logs in here."

Father John had on his parka, gloves, and cowboy hat and was out the
door before Deborah had reappeared in the living room.  By the time
he'd knocked the snow off the logs and loaded up an armful, the old
woman stood against the door, holding it open, eyes watchful and
resigned.  He brought in a couple more loads, filling the cardboard
box, then stacking logs next to it.  He offered to get them some
groceries, but they both assured him they had plenty of food, and he
promised to stop by again in the next day or two.

As Father John let himself out the front door, he saw Deborah had moved
close to her husband's recliner, and the old man was patting her hand
as if to reassure her everything would be all right.

Father John parked in front of the yellow house on Buffalo Road.  The
houses in Easter Egg Village clustered on top of a bluff, each small
bungalow splashed in a different pastel color--pink, green, blue,
yellow, violet.  Some Washington bureaucrat's notion of what subsidized
houses on an Indian reservation ought to look like.  The sun had begun
its descent behind the mountains, shooting red and pink flames across
the sky.  A pinkish glaze fell over the houses and the snow-covered
ground.

Father John got out of the Toyota and started toward the house.  The
temperature was spiraling downward.  It felt twenty degrees colder than
when he'd left the old people forty minutes ago.  The snow in front had
been stomped down, pushed into little piles.  Somebody had been here
recently.  He knocked on the door.  No answer.  Then he stepped
sideways and peered through the window.  The living room had the
stillness of space bereft of human energy.  A yellow-and-brown-striped
sofa and a small dark chair stood against one wall.  On the opposite
wall was a TV on a cart, and next to it an opened suitcase, half full.
 Marcus was either about to take a trip or he had just returned.

Father John headed back to the Toyota and drove two blocks to the
pastel green house of Ike and Mary Yellow Calf.  Ike was chopping wood
out front, and as soon as Father John pulled up, the Indian set the ax
against a pile of logs and came toward the pickup.  Father John climbed
out, and the Indian grabbed his hand, pumping it up and down with the
same energy he'd probably put into chopping wood.  He had on the kind
of faded jeans, long-sleeved plaid shirt, and down vest most of the men
on the reservation wore.  His black Stetson sat back, revealing a line
of even blacker hair.  Little beads of sweat stood out on his
forehead.

"I just stopped in to see Joe Deppert," Father John said.

"Ah."  Ike dipped his forehead into one sleeve, brushing away the
moisture.  "Been meanin' to get over there.  How's Grandfather
doin'?"

"He and Deborah could use some help.  They're getting low on wood.
Probably low on groceries, too, although they're too proud to admit it.
Marcus hasn't been around lately."  Ike cleared his throat, turned
sideways, and spit onto the snow.  "Don't surprise me none.  No damn
good, that kid."

Father John was surprised at the vehemence.  "What do you mean?"

"Ever since he moved into the village, people been comin' and goin' all
hours at his house.  Parties all the time."  "Deborah thinks Marcus
found a job."

Ike shook his head.  "You know how it is with the grandmothers.  They
love the kids no matter what.  They believe whatever the kids tell
'em."

"Have you seen Marcus lately?"

The Indian's forehead wrinkled into deep lines.  "Matter of fact, it's
been quiet all week.  Maybe him and that Rich Dolby he hangs with took
their parties elsewhere."

Father John jammed his hands into the pockets of his parka.  He was
thinking about what Banner had said: The Lander police broke up a party
of Arapahos Friday night.  Maybe Marcus was there, but it was a
stretch.  How many parties were there on any given night?  Marcus
Deppert couldn't attend them all.  Father John decided to talk to Rich
Dolby's mother, Loretta, who worked in the cafeteria at St.  Francis
Elementary School.  Chances were she'd know the whereabouts of her son,
and he might know the whereabouts of Marcus.

"Let me know if Marcus shows up," he said, getting back into the
Toyota.

Ike took the door and started to walk it closed, then paused.  "Don't
worry about the old people.  I'll put the word out on the moccasin
telegraph so folks'll know to look in on 'em.  Me and the wife gotta go
into Fort Washakie tomorrow for groceries.  We'll get 'em a load of
supplies."

"You're a good man, Ike," Father John said.  "Marcus probably be along
in a few days."

"Wouldn't count on nothin' with that kid," the Indian said, closing the
door.

Father John swung the Toyota out of Easter Egg Village onto
Seventeen-Mile Road and drove into the dusk.  He wasn't sure when the
green truck behind him first came into his rearview mirror, but now he
could see it coming up fast.  He kept his own pace steady, giving the
truck time to pass, if that's what its driver wanted.  There was no
oncoming traffic, but the road was slick with snow and ice.  The truck
was close enough now so he could almost make out the driver.  He--or
she--wore aviator sunglasses, even though it was starting to get dark,
and a knit hat pulled low over the forehead.  Suddenly the truck was
right behind him, looming in the rearview mirror, as if the driver
intended to run him off the road.  <6>

father John stomped on the accelerator, and the Toyota shot ahead,
tires yawing in the snow.  He gripped the wheel and hoped the pickup
wouldn't slide into the ditch on its own.  The truck started gaining;
he could see it was a Dodge.  As he banked around a curve, an oncoming
vehicle flashed into view and, as if in response, the truck dropped
back.  By the time a dark sedan lumbered by, the truck was a distant
shadow.

Father John kept his speed steady, one eye on the rearview mirror.  A
drunk, he thought, getting his kicks from trying to run an old pickup
off the road.  He'd had a lot of experience with drunks.  There were
two types: quiet and rowdy.  He'd been the quiet type, drinking himself
into a stupor every night while grading papers on the Missouri
Compromise, the Western expansion, the defining battles of the Civil
War.  Aviator glasses-that was the rowdy type.

Father John passed the sign for St.  Francis Mission and slowed for the
turn onto Circle Drive, one eye still on the rearview mirror.  The road
behind was dark.  The truck must have turned off at Miller or Bejan
Lane.

He stopped behind the white Cadillac in front of the administration
building and stepped out into the hardening cold.  A deep purple stain
spread across the late afternoon sky, washing the snowy grounds in
pale blue.  He mounted the stairs and stamped his boots.  The moment he
stepped inside, the familiar, musty smell of the old building swept
over him.  Through the open door to his office partway down the hall
came the low murmur of voices.

He stepped through the doorway.  "Ah, the pastor himself in our midst,"
said Father Peter, who occupied the metal folding chair reserved for
the occasional overflow of visitors.  His arms were folded across his
flannel shin; his head, with its ruff of white hair, rested squarely on
his shoulders.  The overhead light glinted in his blue eyes.

A couple of men Father John had never seen before rose from the
Naugahyde side chairs across the office.  One was Father John's height,
close to six feet four inches, with thick, neatly trimmed gray hair.
Little blue lines crisscrossed his nose and cheeks, which had the
telltale flush of too much alcohol in his past.  Father John recognized
the signs.  The man's eyes narrowed, as if he had only a nanosecond to
size up the pastor of St.  Francis Mission, and he meant to get an
accurate measurement.

The other visitor stood almost a head shorter, with a narrow face and
gray hair that receded from his forehead.  Both men wore the same
uniform--dark tailored suits, shiny white shirts, dark ties embellished
with miniature figures.  The short man came forward, extending a thin,
sculptured hand.  "Clifford Keating.  With the bishop's office in
Cheyenne."

Father John had expected a phone call, but here was the bishop's
representative in person to deliver whatever message he had delivered
at last night's meeting.

"Nick Sheldon," the taller man said, extending his hand.  "Sheldon,
Jones and Johnson.  Attorneys-at-law.  We've been waiting over an
hour."

Father John was taken aback.  "Did we have an appointment?"

"Yes.  Last evening in Lander."

"So we did."  He motioned the men to resume their seats.  He took his
time depositing his parka and hat on the rack behind the open door,
where two dark topcoats already hung.  As he took his own chair behind
the desk, Father Peter shot him a look that said, "Beware of vultures."
"Since you missed the meeting ..."  Clifford Keating began in a
conciliatory tone.

"My pickup broke down," Father John said.  Last night's meeting had
slipped into the background, eclipsed by a missing corpse and by his
worry over a young Arapaho who also seemed to be missing.

"Father Peter has explained," said the bishop's representative,
shooting his suit sleeves over white cuffs.  "We want to bring you up
to date.  The bishop called the meeting of pastors in Riverton and
Lander.  Naturally he wishes to satisfy himself that the spiritual
needs of Catholics in the area will continue to be cared for.  I'm
happy to say we have that assurance."

"Continue?"  Father John picked up a pencil and began tapping a pile of
paper on his desk.  He'd missed something here.

"Of course.  With one less parish, it is a concern."

The picture began to take shape.  The bishop intended to close one of
the local parishes, probably for financial reasons, and Clifford
Keating had been dispatched to make certain the other parishes could
handle the over flow.  The only thing still unclear was the role Nick
Sheldon played.

"We'll welcome anyone who wants to come to St.  Francis," Father John
said.  There would be few whites who would come.  St.  Francis was the
Arapaho church.

A thick silence settled over the office, and Father John realized he
hadn't gotten the entire picture.  Nick Sheldon crossed one leg over
the other.  "It seems you haven't been informed, Father O'Malley.  It's
St.  Francis Mission that will be closed."  Father John dropped the
pencil.  He remained absolutely still, aware of the sound of his own
breathing.  St.  Francis closed?  How could that be?  Shock began to
give way to anger, which welled inside him the way water pools in the
middle of a river.

"You must be misinformed," Father Peter blurted out.  "St.  Francis
Mission has served the Arapaho people for more than a hundred years. It
will continue to do so."

"I'm afraid not, Father," Keating replied.  "Mission work has changed,
outlived its purpose.  When you Jebbies first came here, there were
pagan Indians to convert and educate.  Well,"--he threw out both
hands--"mission accomplished."

Sheldon added, "The Arapahos are already Catholic.  Your high school
closed ten years ago for lack of money.  The BIA runs the mission's
elementary school.  And-am I not correct--your financial situation is
in desperate straits.  There is no justifiable reason to continue this
mission."

It was all Father John could do to keep from jumping up and ordering
both men out.  Obviously the Jesuit Provincial, from his office in St.
Louis, had decided to close St.  Francis.  He had informed the bishop
who had sent these two saps to smooth over the details.  No one had
informed him.  All of this going on.... He was so far out of the loop,
he hadn't even known there was a loop.

Sheldon continued, "This decision is in the best interests of the
Arapahos.  My client plans to build a multimillion-dollar family
recreation center on the mission site.  Movie theaters, bowling alley,
gymnasium, restaurants, the works.  Small towns can't support such
centers, which is why we prefer to build in the vicinity of several
towns.  That way, all the towns benefit."

"How, exactly, will the Arapahos benefit?"  Father John managed,
struggling to keep his anger under control.  He could feel the heat in
his face.

"Jobs.  The center will employ Indians."

"St.  Francis employs people from the reservation."

The lawyer smiled.  "A caretaker, two part-time secretaries, a
housekeeper, religious education teachers.  A total of ten.  Sometimes
twelve, when you can afford it.  My client will employ at least a
hundred."

"Who is your client, Mr.  Sheldon?"  Father John was stalling now,
trying to get his mind around the news.  St.  Francis Mission closed?
Even in the worst-case scenarios, when he'd lain awake nights worrying
about cutting back on staff or not making the payroll, it had never
occurred to him the Society of Jesus might sell the mission.  "The Z
Group.  A private partnership based in California," the lawyer said.

Father John got to his feet and leaned across the desk, his hands
gripping the hard wood edge.  "The Arapahos will never agree to this.
St.  Francis belongs to them.  This is where the drums beat at Sunday
Mass.  Where they can sign the Our Father in the Indian sign language.
Where the Christian message can take root in their own culture."

The two ambassadors appeared to ignore him as they stood up and began
fumbling with their topcoats.  Then the lawyer met Father John's eyes.
"I'm afraid you've missed the point," he said.  "The Arapahos
themselves have requested that we build the center on the site of St.
Francis Mission.  The business council will approve the plans at next
week's meeting."

After they left, Father John stood at the window and watched the
cherry-red taillights flickering in the darkness, aware of the sound of
the old priest's breathing next to him.  Softly Father Peter said, ""My
mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr'd; And I myself see not the
bottom of it.""

This was not a quote Father John recognized, but he didn't want a
lecture on Shakespeare right now.  He walked back to his desk and sank
into the chair, trying to make some sense of this.  "I suppose, sooner
or later, the Provincial would have informed us," he said.  "In the
meantime, the bishop decided to inform the other pastors, which forced
Keating and Sheldon to tell us.  Otherwise, we might not have heard
until next week, after the business council had approved the deal."

Father Peter shuffled across the office, folded up the metal chair, and
stashed it behind the door.  "Not a peep on the moccasin telegraph," he
said, shaking his head.  "' "Twas strange, 'twas passing strange.""

"Not if somebody wanted the mission sold before the people found out
about it," Father John said.

"The question then appears to be what do you intend to do about it, my
boy?"  The old man eyed him from the center of the office, a teacher
expecting the right answer.

Father John was turning over the options in his mind.  After a moment
he said, "I intend to make the acquaintance of Eden Light foot, the new
economic development officer on the reservation.  Obviously he supports
this, or the Arapaho business council wouldn't consider it.  I'll have
to try to change his mind."

But first he intended to talk to Vicky Holden.  If anyone had heard
about St.  Francis Mission being sold, it would be the Arapaho
attorney.  She had the pulse of the reservation.  He pulled the phone
toward him and punched in her number.  He knew it by heart.  <7>

Vicky Holden aimed the Bronco through the silent streets of the Lander
neighborhood she had called home the past three years.  The headlights
picked out the cars and pickups parked at the curbs and turned the
snow-packed streets the pale yellow color of butter.

She turned into the driveway of the brick bungalow she rented, her mind
on the divorce agreement she'd hammered out this afternoon with the
attorney representing her client's husband.  She hadn't gotten
everything Mary Featherly wanted or deserved, but sometimes the best
possible agreement had to be good enough.  She intended to look it over
again tonight.  And there were three or four phone calls she still had
to return.

One from John O'Malley.  Probably about this morning's article in the
Gazette.  She exhaled slowly into the quiet.  The only time the pastor
at St.  Francis Mission called was when there was some kind of trouble.
She would call him first, she decided, then scramble some eggs for
dinner before getting to the rest of the work in her briefcase.

Darkness settled over the Bronco the instant she flipped off the
headlights.  She grabbed the briefcase and floppy black leather bag off
the seat and stepped outside.  Rather than walking up the sidewalk,
which she had shoveled early this morning, she crossed the yard,
watching the clouds of snow rise and scatter in her footsteps.  Walking
through snow always took her back to the times she and her brothers and
sisters--cousins in the white world--had romped in the snow until they
turned numb with cold and then had jostled one another around the stove
in Grandmother's kitchen, giggling and laughing themselves warm.  Snow
made the earth fresh and new.

Just as she stepped onto the wooden porch, she heard the footsteps. She
whirled about.  A large shadowy figure came up the sidewalk.  She was
fully aware of her surroundings as if everything had been caught in a
freeze frame: light filtering through the darkness from the houses
across the street; shadows of cars and trucks at the curb; the porch
light on next door; the muffled sounds of a TV.  Would the neighbors
hear if she screamed?

"Who are you?"

The man in a cowboy hat and sheepskin coat stopped at the edge of the
porch.  "Ben."

She leaned back, aware of the doorjamb against her spine, her heart
catapulting in her chest.  Her ex husband, dropped from the sky, out of
nowhere, out of the past.  "You scared me," she said.

"I'm sorry."  Ben placed one boot on the porch, but made no move to
come up.

"Why are you here?"

"We've got to talk."  He still didn't move.  "I could use a cup of
coffee.  I've been waiting in the truck two hours."  He nodded toward
the street, and she felt a wave of anger at herself as her eyes
followed.  She had driven by the truck, but she'd been so preoccupied
with her own thoughts she hadn't noticed anyone in it.  She'd lived in
the white world for almost eleven years, yet she still didn't have the
hang of it--watch your back, stay alert.

"Just say what you have to say."  Vicky felt the old wariness gathering
inside her.  She didn't want to be alone with him.

"It's about Susan."

She stared at her former husband.  He always knew how to get what he
wanted.  He only had to mention one of their children, Susan or Lucas.
She turned around and, after fumbling to insert the key in the keyhole,
pushed the door open.  She flipped the wall switch inside, and the lamp
on the table sprang into life, illuminating the gray carpet, the
blue-flowered sofa, the coffee table with its neat stack of magazines
and her favorite pottery bowl, the dining table and chairs in the
alcove beyond the living room.

"Nice place," Ben said, closing the door behind them.

Vicky dropped her bag and briefcase on the sofa, then slipped off her
coat and hung it inside the small closet next to the door before facing
him.  He had already tossed his hat and gloves next to her things, and
was pulling himself free from the sheepskin coat.  She felt a kind of
shock at how much he was like that sense of him she carried inside her.
Just over six feet, straight as a lodgepole pine, with powerful
shoulders and chest and long, slender fingers.  His hair was still
black, but flecked with gray now, and combed straight back until it ran
along the collar of his tan chamois shirt.

Laying the sheepskin over the sofa, he smiled at her.  Years in the
outdoors had imprinted squint lines at the corners of his eyes, which
glistened like black pebbles in a mountain stream.  She knew the
contours of his face better than her own--the strong jaw and high cheek
bones, the noble nose of her people, the confident mouth.  She had
fallen in love with him the summer she'd graduated from St.  Francis
High School.  He'd been out of high school for four years, and had been
in the army and gone to Germany.  He talked for hours about the outside
world, a world she knew nothing about.  He spun a fantastic web of
words, and she got caught in the web.  He was everything she wanted.
She was seventeen.

She forced her thoughts to the present, the Time Being.  "What about
Susan?"

"What about the coffee?"

Her eyes locked with his a moment.  He had driven sixty miles on
snow-crested roads, in plummeting temperatures, across the reservation
from the Arapaho ranch up north where he was the foreman, and had
waited in the truck two hours.  She could throw herself upon him and
beat against his chest, but he wouldn't tell her why he was here until
the time was ready.

She walked past him into the shadowy alcove.  Moonlight filtered
through the sliding glass doors that led to the patio, which was
mounded in snow.  She turned into the small kitchen and flipped on the
overhead fluorescent light.  A white glow suffused the wood cabinets
and cream-colored countertops.

Ben leaned against the edge of the counter as she measured out the
coffee grounds and poured water into the Mr.  Coffee.  "I was going to
scramble some eggs," she said.

"Sounds good."

She felt his eyes on her as she broke the eggs into a bowl and whipped
them with a fork.  After pouring the thick yellow liquid into a frying
pan, she dropped a couple of slices of bread into the toaster.

"Just like the old days," Ben blurted, as if his thoughts would no
longer be contained.

"Don't, Ben," Vicky said, pushing the lumpy eggs across the pan.

"Sometimes at night, I lie awake in my bunk and watch the pictures in
my head.  You and me and the kids back on Lean Bear's ranch.  They're
good pictures, the way it used to be."

"You used to hit me, Ben."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him shift against the counter. "I
try to see that, too, Vicky, but the picture's blurry.  The drinking
times are big black holes."  He was quiet a moment, then said, "I
haven't had a drink going on six years now."

"It's no longer my business," Vicky said, dishing the eggs onto two
plates.  She laid a slice of toast beside the eggs and, skirting around
him, avoiding his eyes, carried the plates to the table.  A gauzy light
floated across the alcove from the kitchen and living room.  Ben
planted himself at the end of the table, a puzzled expression on his
face as if he weren't certain which of the turns in the past had been
the wrong one.

Opening the top drawer in the buffet that stood against one wall, Vicky
removed two place mats, two napkins, and a handful of knives and forks,
which she arranged on the table.  Then she returned to the kitchen and
poured two mugs of coffee.

"I just wanted you to know about the drinking," Ben said as she
delivered the coffee mugs and settled into the chair across from him.
The drinking.  The words reverberated inside her as if he had shouted
them in a mountain canyon.  It was true, he had only hit her when he
was drinking.  If there was anything she was grateful for, it was that
he had never hit the children.  He had truly loved the children.  Yet,
that had been the hardest to accept --the fact that he had been able to
control his rage around the kids, which meant his treatment of her had
been deliberate.  That was the Ben she must remember.  Not the handsome
and confident man across from her.

"Please, Ben," she said, scooting her fork under a clump of eggs. "What
about Susan?"

The Arapaho took a long draw from his mug before saying, "You know
she's back?"  His black eyebrows rose upward, as if he suspected she
did not know.  "Susan came to see me last week.  Drove all over the
ranch lookin' for me.  I was out pitching hay for the cattle."

Vicky swallowed the eggs slowly, trying not to betray the emotions
boiling within her.  Her daughter--their daughter--had returned to Wind
River Reservation and had not called her, had not come to her, but had
gone to Ben.  In Susan's and Lucas's eyes, she was the one who had
broken up their home, had given them to her own parents to raise, had
gone away to Denver to college and law school, had gotten the court
order that kept their father away.

"I guess she's not mad at me," Ben said, not in a hurtful way, but as
if he'd read her mind.

"When did Susan leave Los Angeles?"  Vicky heard her own voice,
disembodied, calm.  She could feel her heart thumping.

"Didn't say.  She's here with some white man and a couple of his
buddies.  She wanted to know if they could rent our old place."
Finishing the last of the scrambled eggs, Ben rested his forearms on
either side of the plate.  "Nobody's lived at Lean Bear's ranch since
you took the kids and left.  I only stayed long enough to close up the
place.  But I keep an eye on it.  It's still in good shape.  So I told
her, sure, but she didn't have to pay me rent.  She said her friends
wanted to keep everything legal.  So I said, okay, and the next day she
came back with a certified check for six months' rent."

As he talked on about how glad he was Susan had come back, how he'd
never liked the kids living in L.A."  how he believed families belonged
together; the image of Lean Bear's ranch flashed through Vicky's mind.
Ten miles up Sage Canyon in the foothills of the Wind River Mountains,
it was the place Lean Bear had chosen for his family when the Arapahos
came to the reservation a hundred years ago.  Lean Bear was Ben's
great-grandfather, one of the leading men of the tribe.  He had ridden
with her great-grandfather, Chief Black Night.  It had always seemed as
if invisible threads, stretching into the Old Time, had woven her life
to Ben's long before either of them was born.  It was to Lean Bear's
ranch he had brought her after they were married.

"What are Susan's plans?"  Vicky took a sip of coffee, conscious that
it had turned lukewarm.

"She said they plan to start a business buying and selling Indian arts
and crafts."

"In Sage Canyon?  It's so far away, so isolated," Vicky stammered.
Something about this didn't make sense.  She saw in Ben's eyes that he
had reached the same conclusion.

"I've been asking' myself why any white man wants to live like a hermit
with an Indian girl," he said.  "And how come his friends are hanging
around?"  Ben was quiet.  After a few seconds he went on.  "I've been
worried about her, so I drove up to Lean Bear's place this afternoon,
first chance I got.  Nobody around.  The house was locked up, and
they'd changed the lock.  I looked in the windows.  Stuff everywhere.
A real mess, not like you used to keep the place, Vicky.  I'd like to
go back tomorrow, but we've got to get the hay bales to the upper
ranges, or the cattle are gonna be real hungry."

"I'll go there first thing tomorrow," Vicky said.

Her ex-husband looked at her a long moment, a blend of approval and
gratitude in his eyes; then he pushed back from the table and got to
his feet.  She watched him slip on the sheepskin coat, sensing its
heaviness as if it had fallen over her own shoulders, and methodically
set the cowboy hat on his head, an act he performed every day.  She
fought against acknowledging the empty space he had left in her life.

"Let me know what you find out," he said.  "You can leave a message at
the ranch office."  Vicky stood up and followed him across the living
room to the front door.  He had more than an hour's drive ahead, in
temperatures no creature should be out in.  "You can stay here
tonight," she said.  "On the sofa," she added hurriedly.

Ben turned toward her and smiled.  "Not this time."  <8>

Vicky managed to open the door to her office while juggling her
briefcase, a stack of folders, and the black leather bag, the strap of
which had slipped off her shoulder and was riding down her coat sleeve.
She balanced herself on one foot to close the door with the other.
Ginger, her secretary, jumped up from behind the computer desk and
hurried across the small waiting room, grabbing the folders before they
spilled over the brown carpet.

"She barged in here and said she had to see you now," Ginger said, blue
eyes blazing.  She was a breed-an Arapaho mother and a long-vanished
white father-which accounted for the combination of rosy skin and
oil-black hair that hung in a single braid halfway down her back.
Dressed in her usual blue jeans and a long sleeved white blouse, she
looked as if she might depart for the rodeo at any moment, but she ran
the office like a war chief, causing documents and letters to
materialize out of the computer, fielding phone calls, marshaling
clients through the day.  Ginger did not appreciate any sudden change
in the schedule.

Vicky glanced through the doorway across the waiting room to the little
space that served as her private office.  Mary Featherly sat in one of
the rounded wood chairs in front of the desk, a yellow parka draped
around her shoulders.  She clasped a large red purse on her lap.  Her
appointment wasn't until this afternoon, and this morning Vicky had
intended only to drop off some documents before driving out to Lean
Bear's ranch.  Susan had come to her in a dream last night, walking
across the snowy fields, crying.  Vicky had bolted upright and pulled
the comforter around her shoulders to hold back the cold seeping into
her bones.  She had lain awake the rest of the night thinking about
Susan at the ranch with three strangers--white men--and rerunning in
her mind the old movies of Ben and her and the kids, wishing the ending
had been different, for the kids' sake.

She walked into her private office and greeted her client in as cheery
a voice as she could muster.  After depositing her brown wool coat and
black bag over the coat tree, she settled into her swivel chair and
withdrew the agreement from the briefcase.

"That bastard gonna let me and the kids have the house?"  The Arapaho
woman looked middle-aged; her face was leathered and wrinkled, her lips
were pulled into a tight line, and her black hair hanging over the
yellow parka was streaked with gray.  She was thirty, the mother of two
kids, about to be divorced, and furious at the dreams crumbled at her
feet.  Vicky recognized the signs.

Patiently Vicky began to explain the different points in the agreement.
Yes, Mary would have the house, but only until the kids became
emancipated, at which time the house would be sold, the profits divided
between the parties.  It was a small house in Lander; the profits
wouldn't be much.  The good news was that Herman had been working for
the state highway department nearly two months, and he could pay child
support.

"As long as he has a job," Mary interrupted.

"Yes, as long as he has a job."  That was the problem.  Jobs for
Indians had a way of vanishing overnight.  If there was anything the
Hinono eino needed, it was jobs.

Mary said, "That bastard should pay for all the times he drunk up
everything and didn't come home, and me and the kids went hungry."

Vicky went over the points again.  This wasn't about revenge; why was
it always about revenge?  This was about getting the best deal possible
so that Mary and the kids could move into a new life.  Vicky could tell
by the look of resignation creeping across the other woman's face that
she was beginning to understand.  It was another thirty minutes before
Mary got to her feet, leaned over the desk, and signed the agreement.

An hour later, Vicky guided the Bronco up the winding, snow-glazed road
in Sage Canyon.  She could feel the rear wheels slipping, and she
steered toward the center, halfway between the jagged boulders and the
dropoff into Sage Creek.  The sense of place flooded over her.  She
hadn't driven here since the day she'd taken the two kids and fled down
the canyon like a madwoman.  Yet it was familiar: the rock formations
washed in sunlight, the snow like downy feathers on the branches of the
ponderosas, the soft mountain air.

She turned onto the white road that led to Lean Bear's ranch and hit
the brake pedal.  The Bronco slid in a half circle before stopping at
the metal gate blocking the road.  It was over five feet high, with
three horizontal bars, and it hung between the posts of the barbed-wire
fence Ben had set out the first summer they were married.

Vicky slammed out of the Bronco.  The only sound in the mountain
stillness was that of the breeze hissing in the trees.  She walked
along the gate, running a gloved hand over the top bar, her boots
sinking into the powdery snow.  At one end, metal hinges held the gate
against the fence post; at the other, a large chain, secured by a
combination lock.  Squinting into the sun, she studied the green house
that squatted in the meadow a short distance beyond.  She could make
out what looked like fresh tire tracks leading to the house.

Ben hadn't mentioned a gate, but no gate would have stopped him.  He
must have climbed over, which was what she was now contemplating. She'd
climbed over fences and gates before, but not in an attorney suit.  She
gripped the middle rail, feeling the bite of the icy metal through her
gloves, and was about to pull herself through the rails when she heard
the distant thrum of an engine.

She walked back alongside the Bronco to the road.  Perhaps Susan was
coming, or one of the three white men.  The noise swelled into the
quiet.  Then there was a momentary lull and a ratchety gearing down.

As she waited for what sounded like a truck to come around the bend, a
crack appeared in her memory: She was driving the old pickup up the
canyon and over the narrow dirt road that wound to the upper pasture,
the high meadow surrounded by mountain peaks, with a creek purling
among the aspens and willows.  It was where Ben pastured the sheep in
the summer, a cool oasis even on burning days, with grass the color of
emeralds.  She had stashed a basket of fried chicken and bread and jam,
along with a thermos of hot coffee, in the bed of the pickup.  Susan
lay in a blanket in a cardboard box on the seat beside her.

Ben heard the pickup's engine and came galloping across the meadow,
head bent low over the neck of the mare, like a warrior in the Old
Time.  He dismounted by the cabin he'd outfitted as a bunkhouse next to
the old barn, and, with the mare grazing nearby, they sat on the
blanket she'd spread over the grass and ate their picnic.  And they'd
made love there in the grass, with the baby asleep in the box beside
them.

Vicky stamped her feet hard into the snow.  These were not memories she
wanted.  Suddenly a gray truck rounded the bend and headed downhill
toward her.  Then it skidded sideways into the turn, spraying snow as
the brakes grabbed.  It was still rolling when the driver, a white man
somewhere in his twenties, hopped out.  He had on blue jeans, a jean
jacket with a sheepskin collar, dark leather gloves, and hiking boots.
Wisps of blond hair hung out from his blue cap.  There was a swagger in
his shoulders as he came toward her.

"You lookin' for something'?"

Vicky sensed the charge of hostility in the air.  "I'm looking for
Susan Holden," she said in her courtroom voice.  "I'm her mother.  Who
are you?"

The young man seemed to consider this a moment, then shrugged.  "A
friend."

"Where is she?"

"Don't have the faintest."  Another shrug.

"I'd like you to open the gate so I can see if she's at the house,"
Vicky said.

"She ain't at the house."

"I'm not here to play games, Mr...."  Vicky waited for him to fill in
the blank.  He said nothing.

"Whatever your name is.  I'm here to see my daughter, and I don't
intend to leave until you tell me where she is."

The young man hooked his gloved thumbs into his jeans pockets and
regarded her through lowered eyelids.  A chill crept down her spine.
She was alone with this man, who might or might not be a friend of her
daughter's, off a mountain road that might or might not see another
vehicle before spring, and she had issued an ultimatum.

"Susan ain't here," he said after a long moment.  "She probably went
into Riverton to get some groceries."

Vicky looked past him, beyond the gate.  What he said was not outside
the realm of possibility, although Susan could also be at the house.
Vicky knew she was not about to get by this white man who had planted
himself like a chunk of granite between her and the gate.  Her
uneasiness grew.  It bordered on fear.  Who were these white men her
daughter had brought home?

"When will Susan be back?"

"Later," the white man said.  "Indian time."

Vicky drew in a long breath and started past him for the Bronco, the
uneasiness approaching a kind of panic as she turned her back.  She
forced herself to take a deep breath.  Why did she think he might grab
her?  Other than surliness, he hadn't shown any aggression.  Still, she
felt her muscles tensing involuntarily.  If he grabbed her, she would
fight like a mountain lion.

She flung open the Bronco door and slid onto the seat, slamming the
door behind her.  She felt the anger rising in her face like flames in
a campfire.  Backing the Bronco to where the man stood, thumbs still
hooked in his jeans pockets, she rolled down the window.

"I'll be back to see my daughter," she said.  "Six-thirty this evening.
White time."  She stepped hard on the accelerator, and the Bronco
churned backward through the snow.  Then she shifted into forward and
squealed onto the canyon road.  <9>

Hs soon as Father John reached his office, he put in a call to the
Provincial.  No answer.  An hour later he tried again, this time
connecting with a young Scholastic in the Provincial's outer, outer
office.  The Scholastic delivered a lecture, the gist of it being that
the Provincial was a good shepherd concerned about the well-being of
his flock at St.  Francis Mission.  Unfortunately the Provincial was
tied up in meetings from now until the end of time and could not be
disturbed.  Father John could be assured everything would be done,
however..  ..

Father John hung up.

No matter how much confidence the bishop's delegate and the corporate
lawyer had exuded yesterday, Father John knew they couldn't shut down
the mission overnight.  Nevertheless, the wheels were in motion.  He
didn't have much time to try to stop them.

And there was the missing young Arapaho.  Father John had found himself
wide awake in the middle of the night wondering what Marcus had gotten
himself into this time.  What was it Banner had said?  Kids gave you
gray hair and kept you awake nights.  That was the truth.  How much
worse was it when they were your own?  What he kept coming back to,
what bothered him the most, was that while Marcus might be
irresponsible and unreliable, might take foolish chances and look for
trouble, he would never abandon his old people.  It was not the Arapaho
Way.  If Marcus didn't visit the Depperts, it was because he
couldn't.

Father John picked up the receiver and tapped the number for Riverton
Memorial Hospital.  He had met the director a number of times, and he
asked to be put through to her office.  After a few seconds, she was on
the line and he asked whether Marcus Deppert had been treated during
the last week.  She put him on hold.  He waited to the purr of canned
music that made him long for an aria--for real music.  Finally she was
back: Sorry, Father.  No one by that name had been seen last week.

He hung up and tried the Lander Hospital where he knew one of the staff
doctors.  It was the same routine: question, canned music, answer.
Marcus had not been seen there either.

He replaced the receiver, feeling an odd mixture of relief and concern.
At least Marcus wasn't sick or hurt.  But where was he?  Maybe he'd
returned home, in which case Ike might have seen him.  The problem was,
Ike's house was not one of the few on the reservation that had a phone.
Father John called Jake Littlehorse's garage, then the gas station at
Fort Washakie, and the little coffee shop at Ethete, leaving messages
for Ike if he happened by.

Thirty minutes later, Ike returned the call.  Easter Egg Village was
nice and quiet, he reported.  First time in weeks he and his wife were
getting a good night's sleep.  As far as he was concerned, Marcus and
his drunken friends could stay away forever.

Father John replaced the receiver, the heavy feeling settling over his
shoulders like a leaden cloak.  Nobody had seen Marcus Deppert for more
than a week.  And there was the frozen, lonely body in the ditch. Until
Marcus showed up, or the body was found, Father John knew they would
remain connected in his head.  He wished he hadn't promised Joe and
Deborah he'd keep the police out of it, even though he understood their
worry.  The last time the police started looking into Marcus's life, he
went to jail for three years.

In midmorning, Father John pulled on his parka and cowboy hat and
walked outside.  Father Peter was just coming up the front stairs,
leaning onto the metal railing, setting one foot next to the other on
each stair.  The morning sun splashed across the mission grounds and
warmed the air.  On the western horizon, the Wind River Mountains stood
out in relief against the light blue sky.  The sounds of children at
recess floated over from the schoolyard.

"There is, sir, an aery of children,"" the old priest said, grinning.

"A Midsummer Night's Dream," Father John said as he held the front door
open.  He pulled the guess off the top of his head.  Once in a while,
he guessed right.

Father Peter laughed out loud and shook his head.  "Oh, my, my," he
said when he reached the top stair.  "I'm afraid you must take your
place at the bottom of the class, my boy.  It is with despair I
contemplate your knowledge of the great hard."

Father John thought about asking where, in the mighty canon of
Shakespeare, the quote might be found, then dismissed the idea.  The
old priest, like any Jesuit teacher, would tell him to look it up.  "
"Tis not the will I lack," he said.

Father Peter patted his arm as he stepped inside.  "And that, my boy,
is not Shakespeare."

Father John sprinted down the stairs and out to Circle Drive.  He was
grateful to the old man who had welcomed him here after his career had
careened off track and no superior at any Jesuit high school or college
would return his call.  He had left Grace House with the memory of
whiskey still on his tongue and flown into Riverton, at the edge of the
world.  "You can begin again here," Father Peter had told him.

Close to where Circle Drive emptied into Seventeen Mile Road stood the
elementary school, a pile of cement blocks that probably resembled
every other BIA school on every reservation in the West.  Except for
the entry.  The Arapahos had insisted the entry resemble a tipi, with
the door facing the east and the rising sun, like the dwellings in the
Old Time.

He cut across the school grounds, following a path the kids had
probably trampled earlier.  It looked as if all the kids were on the
playground.  A group of boys, sixth-graders by the size of them, ran
back and forth along the mesh fence, kicking up clouds of snow.  One of
the boys, Howard Bushy, spun around and darted past the others.  A
successful feint.  He was hugging a basketball.

All of a sudden, he stopped.  "Hi, Father," he called, running toward
the fence.  The other boys followed.  They were all looking into the
far distance.  It was disrespectful for a child to look directly at an
adult.

"What're you playing?"  Father John crossed through the snow to the
fence.

"Basketball," Howard said.  His blue parka sported a gray iron-on patch
across the front.  Both sleeves were frayed.  He had pulled a knit cap
down around his ears, but his cheeks had turned rust in the outdoors.

"That a fact."  Father John smiled.  These Indian kids were great.  No
court, no hoops, just a basketball and a snow-packed playground.  They
couldn't dribble in the snow, but they could run and dodge and pass.

"Me and the other guys, we want to ask you some thin'."  Howard wrapped
one mittened hand through the wires, gripping the basketball with the
other.  His eyes looked beyond Father John.

"Shoot."

"Well, we was wonderin' ..."  Howard turned toward the other boys, as
if for confirmation.  They gathered closer, stomping their feet in the
snow, looking down.  "We was wonderin'," Howard plunged on, "if we
could use the old gym after school."

The old gym was in Eagle Hall.  Father John had kept it padlocked the
last couple of winters.  It was a struggle just to heat and electrify
the meeting rooms in Eagle Hall, as well as the church, offices, and
priests' residence.  Every month it was a toss-up which bills he paid.
This month he'd paid the telephone company.  Next month he hoped to pay
something on the heat and electric bill.

"We need a place to practice since they won't let us use the gym
anymore."  Howard tilted his head toward the school.

Father John got the picture.  The BIA had cut back on funds, and frills
such as after school activities for the kids were the first to go.  But
where would he find enough money to heat the gym even a few hours a
day?  And he couldn't turn a bunch of kids loose without supervision;
they would need a coach.  What's more, if they stayed after school to
play basketball, they would miss the bus, which meant he would have to
figure out some way to get them home.  The problems were mighty.

"Listen, kids ..."  he began haltingly, aware they were waiting for an
answer.  He hated to let them down.

Disappointment descended over the young faces like a roiling cloud of
dust.  It would be better to tell them the truth now, rather than
later, but a part of him persisted in believing in the little miracles
that sometimes occur when everything seems impossible.  He said, "Let
me see what I can work out.  Okay?"

"Okay."  Howard shrugged.  The kids turned back toward the schoolyard,
kicking at the slabs of snow.  A couple of them looked back and waved
as if to wave him away.

Father John followed the fence to the white stucco tipi, the laughing,
yelling voices of the children behind him.  Howard and the others
needed a place to play some real basketball and a coach to develop
their skills, get them ready for basketball at Indian High School in a
few years.  Of all the problems, finding a coach would be the
hardest.

For a second he flirted with the idea of coaching them himself.  He
liked coaching.  He did a pretty good job with the Eagles baseball
team, which went 22-3 last summer.  But basketball?  He'd only played
one year at Boston College Prep, after the coach, who was also the math
teacher, had pulled him aside and explained that any kid over six feet
tall had a duty to play basketball.  And if he didn't play, he could
expect an F in math.  It was another two years before Father John had
topped out at almost six-feet-four, but by then he'd proved his talent
on the pitcher's mound, and, he suspected, the baseball coach had
warned his colleague against any more creative recruiting.  Baseball
was his sport.  He could have pitched in the majors--that was a fantasy
he sometimes allowed himself.  But then, he wouldn't have been who he
was.

The irony struck him as he swung open the glass door of the tipi and
stepped onto the concrete floor.  He was trying to figure out how to
start a basketball program when, at the same time, two fancy suits were
plotting to shut down the mission.  He made his way along the empty
school corridor, between walls draped in papers covered with crayon
drawings and numbers and letters and gold stars.  There was a faint
odor of barbecue sauce.

The corridor led into the cafeteria, a spacious square with rows of tan
formica tables glowing under fluorescent lights.  Behind the metal
counter at the far end, Loretta Dolby was stirring something in a large
pot.  The smell of barbecue sauce was so thick he could almost taste
it.

"You're early for lunch," Loretta called as he walked to the counter.
She was probably in her forties, but she looked older, with dark,
sun-blotched skin and gray hair pulled into a knob at the base of her
neck.  She wore a light blue dress that hung loosely from her shoulders
and flowed around her like a nightgown.

Suddenly she set the long metal spoon on the counter and came toward
him.  "Heard about that body."

It was a statement, not a question.  Until the body received a proper
burial, it would be on everyone's mind--the lost spirit wandering the
earth, trying to find the afterworld.

"I seen it last night," she said.

"The body?"  For a moment, he wondered if it had been found and he
hadn't heard.

"The ghost."  Loretta smoothed back a strand of gray hair that had
fallen across her forehead.  "It was out in the field back of my house.
I heard it in the middle of the night, wailing like the wind.  I looked
out, and there it was, like a dust devil getting' madder and madder. 
The police don't find the body pretty soon, no tellin' what that
ghost's gonna do.  The Day of the Death's gonna go too long."

Father John nodded.  She meant the time the spirit spent on the earth
after death, before it was sent to the afterworld.  It was similar to
his idea of purgatory, except the Arapahos believed the Day of the
Death ended on the third day, when the body was buried.  It had been
almost two days now since he saw the corpse.

"Chief Banner's trying to find the body," Father John said, wondering
how to bring up the fact that Marcus Deppert seemed to be missing.  He
didn't want to alarm her by suggesting the lost, half-mad ghost she was
convinced she'd seen was Marcus.  It was bad enough for a ghost to be
anonymous.  Its fate would seem even more terrible if it acquired a
name.

"Where can I find Rich?"  Father John asked.

The atmosphere seemed to change between them, as if someone had opened
a door and let in a blast of cold air.  Loretta pulled herself upright,
squaring her shoulders and gazing steadily at him.  "Rich is on the
good road now.  He hasn't been in no trouble for a long time, I don't
care what nobody says."

"I'm looking for Marcus Deppert, and I was hoping Rich could help me
find him."  Father John kept his tone reassuring.

Loretta's eyes narrowed in thought.  "Only time Rich ever got into
trouble was with that no-good creep.  He don't see Marcus Deppert no
more, he promised me."

"He might have an idea of his whereabouts."

"Father John, I'm telling you, Rich don't have nothin' to do with him.
Rich's doin' good for himself now.  The first money he made on his new
job he brought straight to me.  Five new hundred-dollar bills.  He
said, "This is for you, Mom."  That's the kind of son Rich is."

"I know Rich is a good son," Father John said.  He meant he knew
Loretta believed Rich was a good son.  The only connection Rich ever
had to work, as far as he knew, was three years ago when he and Marcus
were peddling pot, an enterprise that earned them both a stay in
Leavenworth.  He wondered how Rich had come by five hundred dollars
cash.

"Sounds as if he has a good job," Father John said.  He was trolling
carefully.

"Darn right."  The woman's tone was defiant, but he sensed she'd taken
the bait.  "He drives Jeeps down to Denver for rich people.  They buy
'em here 'cause it's cheaper.  You know how rich people are.  Money
sticks to their hands, 'cause it's the most important thing in the
world to 'em.  He's drivin' a Jeep right now.  So how could he know
anything about Marcus Deppert or Annie Chambeau or the rest of that
lousy gang?"

The girl's name rang a bell.  Banner had said the Lander police broke
up a party Friday night at Annie Chambeau's apartment.  "Is she a
friend of Rich's?"  he asked.

Loretta laughed, a pinched, forced sound.  "That breed's nobody's
friend and everybody's friend, you know what I mean?  Says she's
Arapaho, but her daddy came from one of those traders in the Old Time.
I hear she's hangin' around Marcus Deppert now.  Birds of a feather."

Father John asked if she knew who Rich was working for, but she
shrugged, as if it didn't matter.  "All I know, it's a real good
job."

Father John tried to sort through what Loretta had said as he walked
back along Circle Drive.  She may wish her son had broken with Marcus
Deppert, but it looked as if the two young men had taken the same job.
Chances were, they had both gone to Denver.  But, then, why was there a
half-packed suitcase in Marcus's living room?  And who had hired them
to drive Jeeps to Denver?  Maybe the girl who had thrown the party, and
who seemed to know both Marcus and Rich, would have some answers.  He
decided to swing by the Grand Apartments in Lander this afternoon.

But first he intended to pay an unannounced visit to Eden Light foot,
the economic development director.  < 10 >

The afternoon sun slanted across the red bricks of the Arapaho tribal
headquarters at Ethete as Father John nosed the Toyota into the parking
lot.  He climbed out of the cab and crossed the snow-patched sidewalk
in a couple of steps.  Large black letters on the glass door spelled
the Arapaho word Ne:hi:zi, the Center.

A young woman with thick black hair that flowed like a shawl over her
shoulders looked up from the desk in the lobby.  "Well, hi, Father,"
she said, pedaling her chair back a few inches, as if to welcome a
conversation.

"Is Eden Light foot in?"  Father John asked.  Odors of perfume and
stale coffee permeated the air.  The building was designed in a V
shape, with the offices of the business councilmen down one corridor
and tribal offices down the other.  From somewhere came the muffled
sound of a ringing telephone.

"I'll tell him you're here."  The young woman pedaled back to the desk,
picked up the phone, and punched in a couple of numbers.  "Father
O'Malley to see you," she said.  There was a long pause, confusion and
surprise mingling on her face.  Then, "I'll tell him."

Cradling the receiver, embarrassment in her eyes, she said, "I'm
sorry, Father.  Mr.  Light foot is tied up.  He suggests you make an
appointment for later."

"Where will I find him?"

"Third door."  The woman nodded toward the left corridor.  "Only don't
tell him I..."

Father John started down the corridor.  Light from the intermittent
ceiling fixtures bounced off the beige walls and scattered over the
green tile floor.  He paused at the door with the small lettered sign
reading economic development director.  Tapping on the door and opening
it at the same time, he called, "Eden Light foot?"

A stocky man--probably Cheyenne, judging by the broad, flat face--not
more than thirty, rose slowly from the chair behind the oak desk.  He
was short, with a barrel chest and wide shoulders that seemed to
support his head without benefit of a neck.  He was wearing blue jeans
and a light blue, silky-looking shirt with a black leather bolo tie
clasped in silver.  The surprise on his face gave way to something
resembling confusion--a slip, perhaps.  Recovering quickly, he lifted a
pudgy hand and combed the fingers through his dark hair.  "This isn't
the best time, Father O'Malley."

"What is the 'best time' to discuss closing St.  Francis Mission?"
Father John said, shutting the door behind him.  The director stood in
front of a wide window that framed a view of the snow-packed plains.
Light glimmered off the top of the polished desk, which held a
telephone, computer keyboard, and monitor.  A series of sleek,
black-framed documents decorated the wall on the right.  In the center
was an oblong degree with the director's name sandwiched between the
words "Harvard University" and "Masters of Business Administration."  A
large multicolored map of Wind River Reservation sprawled across the
opposite wall.

Eden Light foot resumed his seat and began tapping the palm of one
hand against the desk.  It made a flat, hollow sound.  "We have every
intention of discussing the matter with you as soon as the plans become
definite.  This is very premature."

"We?"

The director shifted his bulky frame.  His hand went still.  "The Z
Group has created the opportunity of a lifetime.  Any Indian
reservation in the country would jump at it.  Surely you can understand
the importance of new jobs on the reservation."

The room felt stuffy and hot.  There was the soft swish of air
emanating from a vent somewhere.  "What I don't understand," Father
John said, "is why the Z Group wants to close a mission that has been
part of the Arapaho community since the last century."

Leaning back in the brown leather chair, Eden Light foot said, "You're
speaking of the past.  Your own people have taught me the past is dead.
We must live in the present and position ourselves to move into the
future.  Surely you can understand an enterprise that is no longer
profitable must give way ..."

"Profitable?  A mission?"

"Perhaps the better word is productive."

"St.  Francis is productive."

The director began tapping again.  In a good imitation of a Harvard
accent, he said, "We are speaking of economic considerations, are we
not?  The mission happens to lie at the edge of the reservation, close
to major thoroughfares.  It is the best location to attract large
numbers of outsiders without the disruption of bringing them into the
heart of our country."

Father John stepped over to the wall map.  Sunlight washed out the tiny
black letters of the northern Shoshone lands: Crow Heart and Burris
and Pavillion, Bushwhacker and Wild Licorice Road.  He waved one hand
in the sunlight.  "Somewhere up north would be better.  Tourists could
stop on their way to Yellowstone Park."  He moved his hand to the
southern part of the reservation, near the Popo Agie River and Highway
287.  "Even better.  Closer to the people in southern Wyoming and
Colorado."

"We don't agree on the best location," the director said.

"What about the Arapahos and the Shoshones?  Will they agree when you
get around to telling them?"  It rankled Father John that the plans had
been made in secret, that the mission would be sold before anyone
realized what was going on.

"The matter will be presented to the Arapaho business council at next
week's meeting," Eden Light foot said.  "Make no mistake, Father
O'Malley, it will be approved.  And since the site is located in the
Arapaho part of the reservation, the Shoshone council will rubber stamp
the approval."

Father John walked over to the door and laid one hand on the knob.
Turning toward the director, he said, "The general council will make
the final decision."  It was a bluff.  There was no guarantee the
Arapaho elders would call a general council, but at the back of his
mind was something Thomas Spotted Horse, one of the four holy men, had
once told him: The Hinono eino rule themselves.  No matter what the
business council decided, the elders might summon the people, just as
in the Old Time, when the people had traveled across the plains to come
together and decide the best road to follow.

The director got to his feet.  A blood vessel pulsated in the center
of his forehead.  "Ridiculous," he said, sprinkling little dots of
saliva over the desk top.  "The business council has been elected to
make economic decisions based on the advice and expertise of
professionals.  This is not a matter for a general council and the
maunderings of traditional old men.  I'd advise you not to attempt to
involve the elders."

Father John let himself out of the claustrophobic office and retraced
his steps down the hallway.  The receptionist glanced up, an expectant
look about her, as if she'd been waiting to hear how the meeting went.
Ignoring her, he strode out the front door and got into the Toyota. The
pickup shot across the parking lot and out onto Ethete Road.

Even if a general council were called, he was thinking, there was a
chance the people would vote for the recreation center and the promise
of jobs.  In that case, he would have to pack his bags and move on to
another assignment, wherever that might be.  He didn't want to think
about it.  He wanted to believe the Arapahos would vote for the
mission, if they had the choice.

Eden Light foot obviously thought so.  It was obvious the director
didn't want a general council.  But that depended upon the elders.
Father John resolved to swing by Thomas Spotted Horse's ranch the first
chance he got.  < 11 >

The Toyota shuddered through the icy slush that lay over the streets of
Lander.  The Grand Apartments, two piles of yellow bricks, three
stories high, straddled a half block at the northern edge of town.  A
narrow alley ran between the buildings, while a small convenience store
had been jammed against one corner.  Sometime during the fifties, with
uranium and iron ore mines at full blast, the Grand Apartments had
sheltered mining engineers and their families, middle-class, white. 
Now they were home to white and Indian alike, old and young, most on
welfare.

Father John wheeled the Toyota close to the curb and walked up the
sidewalk.  Jagged cracks of cement popped through the hard-packed snow.
He had been here many times--to talk somebody into entering alcohol
rehab, to visit the parents of a teenaged boy killed in a car crash, to
try to convince some high school kid to stay in school.  The people at
the Grand Apartments were struggling.

The front door, gray and flimsy-looking, stood slightly ajar, its
hinges loose.  Inside the small entry was another door, propped open
with a cement block.  A tangle of wires poked from the stucco wall.
Sometime in its history, the Grand Apartments had boasted an
intercom.

He stepped around the cement block.  The hallway was seedier than he
remembered, with its trail of crumpled paper, fast food containers, and
cigarette butts.  A stairway hugged the wall on the right, while
several doors marched down the left wall.  He knocked at the first
door.  It opened slightly, and a shadow moved fleetingly past the
crack.  Then the door slammed shut.  He knocked again and waited, but
it was obvious the person behind the door had no intention of opening
it again.  Glancing down the dim hall, he counted eight doors. Assuming
the same number on each floor in two buildings, Annie Chambeau might
live in any one of forty-eight apartments.

He sighed and started down the hall.  Before he reached the next door,
he heard the scratching sound of the first door's knob turning.

"Who are you?"  It sounded like an elderly woman.

"Father O'Malley from St.  Francis Mission," he said, retracing his
steps.  The door stood open about three inches, the length of the guard
chain.  A small, white haired woman in a print dress peered at him,
blue eyes watery and outsized behind her bottle-thick glasses.
Arthritic fingers gripped the door edge.

"I heard of you," the old woman said.  "You that Indian priest.  Why'd
you come here?"

"I'm looking for Annie Chambeau.  Can you tell me where she lives?"

The old woman leaned into the crack.  "I'm a respectable widow," she
began.  Father John waited.  Old people liked to work up to the point,
clarify matters before confiding relevant information.  "When I first
come here," she was saying, "this was a good place.  Then those people
come, and the place went to rack and ruin.  Loud parties, drinkin',
fightin' all the time.  I don't go outdoors no more, except to get
groceries.  I don't never open my door."

Curiosity probably compelled her to open the door often, Father John
thought.  Still, he could sense the old woman's fear.  It was real.  He
reminded her about Annie Chambeau.

"You tell those people to go back to the reservation where they belong,
will ya, Father?"  she said.  "You tell 'em they should keep with their
own.  Maybe they'll listen to you."  She drew herself up and peered at
him a moment.  "Three-F," she announced.  "You can take the front
stairs."

He thanked her and started up the stairs.  Before he'd gone halfway,
she called, "Be careful, Father."

The floors grew progressively dimmer as he ascended, and the third
floor was almost pitch dark.  Light bulbs dangled from cords along the
ceiling, but none was lit.  Gray daylight filtered through a dirty
window at the far end of the hall.  Father John stopped at the door
with the little strip of metal and two screws in the center, all that
was left of the letter F. He rapped a couple of times.

There was a scuffing noise inside, followed by a thump, as if a chair
had fallen onto a hard floor.  He knocked again, the old woman's
warning echoing in his ears.  Another scuffing noise, then the wham of
a door slamming.  The front stairs.  The old woman had told him to take
the front stairs.  Somebody--Annie, most likely--had just gone down the
back.

Father John ran to the far end of the hallway and tried a door that
probably led to the back stairway.  It was locked.  He sprinted back
the way he'd come and descended the front stairs two at a time.  The
old woman peered through the crack in her opened door as he passed.
Outside he cut across the snowy yard and turned into the narrow alley,
which lay in shadow, the air washed with ice.

A young woman was coming toward him, pulling a red coat around one
shoulder, jabbing her arm into the sleeve.  She looked up.  A mixture
of shock and fear crossed her face.  Suddenly she pivoted around and
stumbled, reaching out against the brick wall to catch herself.  Then
she took off running.

"Annie, wait," Father John called, but she had already disappeared
around the building.  By the time he emerged from the alley, she had
crossed the snow packed space in back and was attempting to pull
herself up a solid wood fence, her red coat dangling off one arm.

Father John stopped about ten feet from her.  "Don't be afraid," he
said calmly.

"Leave me alone," she screamed, whirling around, like a cornered
animal, eyes darting for some way out.  Her breath came in jabs, as if
she couldn't catch it.  She was shaking.

He said, "I'm Father O'Malley from the reservation.  I didn't mean to
frighten you.  I'm looking for Marcus Deppert, and I thought maybe you
could tell me where I might find him."

An expression of relief came into the young woman's dark eyes.  She
swallowed hard and began tugging the coat around her thin shoulders
while shoving an arm into the empty sleeve.  He wanted to help her, but
he kept his place.  He didn't want to frighten her again.

"Everybody's lookin' for Marcus," she said, gripping the coat around
her.  "I'm freezin' to death.  Could we get a cup of coffee or
something'?"

Annie Chambeau had stopped shaking, but there was a little tremor in
her hands as she clasped the mug of coffee and dipped her head to take
a sip.  She sat hunched under the red coat, which draped around her
shoulders like a ceremonial cape.  She wasn't more than twenty, Father
John decided, and she could have been beautiful.  She had the green
eyes and light complexion of some distant white man who had probably
come to the plains to trade whiskey and guns.  From the Arapaho came
the coal-black hair and high cheekbones, the graceful nose with the
little arch near the top.  But over it all was the gray pallor, the
emaciated look of the alcoholic.  He could recognize it a mile away.

They sat at a small table, next to the plate-glass window, the only
people in the convenience store besides the woman behind the counter.
Father John took a long pull from his mug, then asked if she knew where
he could find Marcus Deppert.

"Do I look like his keeper?"  the girl asked.  "Some blond guy showed
up at my place Saturday night lookin' for him.  I thought you was him,
the blond guy.  He just pushed his way in.  Where's Marcus, he says.
Hell, how do I know, I say.  So he pushes me down on the couch and
starts tearin' my place apart.  Tears stuff off the bed, pulls my
clothes out of the closet, and then goes to the kitchen and takes his
arm like this--" She made a sweeping motion over the white Formica
tabletop.  "Throws dishes and stuff all over.  Crazy-like, 'cause.I
didn't know where Marcus was."

The girl looked out the window.  After a moment she picked up the mug
again.  The trembling had increased.

"Did he hurt you?"  Father John asked.

Annie shook her head.  "Just ruined a lot of my stuff.  It might've
been him come back yesterday, but I ran out the back and got away."

It might have been Mike Osgood, Father John was thinking.  The FBI
agent had said he would talk to the girl about what happened at Friday
night's party.  On the other hand, Annie could be right; it might have
been the blond man again.

"What did he say while he was tearing up your apartment?"

The girl made a low hmmmmp sound.  "Said I should tell Marcus he's a
dead man."

Father John took a long breath.  Marcus was in trouble, all right. "Did
you call the police?"  He knew she hadn't, even before the look of
incredulity swept over her face, as if she were trying to figure out
what planet he existed on.  People like Annie Chambeau and Marcus
Deppert never thought the police were on their side.

"What're they gonna do?  Nothin'.  Reason I know is that old witch down
on the first floor called 'em.  She's always callin' the police.  She
called 'em Friday night, too, just 'cause me and some friends was
havin' a good time.  I wish she would've called 'em faster Saturday
night.  Maybe they would've got that bastard before he took off."

"When's the last time you saw Marcus?"  Father John heard the pinched
tone in his voice.  He didn't like the thought crowding at the edges of
his mind: Did the man who wrecked Annie's apartment find Marcus and
kill him?  Was it Marcus's body in the ditch?

The young woman took another long sip from her mug.  "Friday night,"
she said after a moment.  "After not callin' or comin' around for a
month, all of a slidden he comes to my party.  I thought..."  Annie
stopped.  She traced the rim of the mug with one finger.  "I thought he
come back.  Only he didn't.  He just run in and look around like he was
lookin' for somebody.  I said, how you been?  What you come here for?
He shook me off, like I wasn't nobody, like we didn't live in that
apartment together all last year."  Annie tucked her head down, and
Father John saw she was crying.

The girl's pain filled the space between them, and he looked away,
giving her a moment.  Cold air moved through the window.  The sun had
dropped behind the mountains, making the afternoon seem flat and gray.
It looked as if it might snow again.  A green truck slid to a stop at
the intersection and flicked on its headlights.  Was it a Dodge?  He
couldn't tell for sure.  Everybody drove a truck around here.  A lot of
them were green.

Annie cleared her throat and said, "We was good together.  I mean,
Marcus stayed clean all year, and I stopped drinkin'.  We was talkin'
about getting' married.  Then he went and got mixed up with that white
chick and tells me it's just not workin', me and him.  It was working
fine 'til he met her.  I just lost it, you know what I mean?"

Father John looked back at her.  "I know."

Annie picked up the mug and slammed it down, sloshing coffee over the
table.  "You don't say that, you hear me?"  she shouted.  The attendant
leaned over the counter and stared at them.  "What do you know about
what I'm talkin' about?"  It was familiar.  The alcoholic's quick anger
at the misperceived words, the lack of understanding and sympathy. 
He'd flared out like that once at his own mother, and at his superior
and the counselors at Grace House more times than he wanted to
remember. What did they know about the terrible thirst that controlled
his life?

"Would you like to get drunk right now?"  he asked.

The girl seemed to lift herself a fraction off her chair, then slumped
back, regarding him, as if trying to make out whether he was taunting
her or issuing an invitation.

"So would I," he said.

She continued to study him.  He sensed her wariness, the way she was
groping to assimilate contradictory kinds of information.

"They say it's one day at a time," Father John said softly.  "That's
not true, Annie.  It's one moment."

The girl gulped a breath.  "I didn't start drinkin' again 'til Marcus
moved out.  When I come home and saw all his stuff gone, I went and got
a bottle of whiskey ..."  Her voice trailed off a moment.  "I just felt
so alone."

Father John fished through the inside pocket of his parka and withdrew
a small spiral notebook and a ballpoint pen.  "We have a good group at
the AA meetings at St.  Francis," he said, flipping back the notebook
cover and jotting down the information.  "Thursdays.  Seven P.M. You
would be welcome, Annie."  He ripped off the sheet and pushed it across
the table.

She looked at it a moment before stuffing it in her pocket.  He saw the
halfheartedness in the gesture: the alcoholic wanting to toss it on the
floor; the Arapaho too polite to do so.

"I'm sorry to ask you this," he said, "but Marcus could be in trouble.
Do you know the name of the white girl?"

Annie swallowed hard.  "Jennifer somebody.  I heard she's new around
here.  Lives over in Riverton somewhere."

White woman.  Named Jennifer.  Lives in Riverton.  There could be a
couple dozen.  Father John felt as if he were slogging uphill in a
blizzard with the trail disappearing in the snow.

"One more thing, Annie," Father John said.  "Did Marcus happen to
mention a new job?"

The girl's eyes widened.  "A job?  That'd be the day."

Her answer didn't surprise him.  Marcus and Rich driving Jeeps to
Denver, the large amount of cash Rich had on hand--this new job of
theirs was probably anything but legal.

He regarded the girl a moment.  From his own experience, he knew what
she needed now was a friend.  And it was possible the blond man would
return.  If he had found Marcus, he might start thinking about the fact
that Annie could identify him.  "Do you have anyone you could stay
with?  It might be a good idea for you to leave the apartment for a
while."

Fear shone in the girl's eyes, as if she'd come to the same idea.  "My
grandmother in Rawlins," she said, then stopped.  "Only she don't let
me come around when I'm drinkin'.  But my girlfriend's got a place over
on Sweetwater.  I guess I can go there."

Father John got to his feet, but Annie remained seated, huddled under
the red coat, looking small and fragile.  "Come on," he said, pulling
on his parka.  "Get some things together.  I'll take you to your
girlfriend's."

He held the door and followed her outside as a gust of wind swirled
across the front of the store, showering them with snow.  The
temperature was making its usual late-afternoon descent.

While she went back to her apartment, he started up the Toyota, pushing
the heat lever on high.  Gradually the cold began to recede.  After
about ten minutes, Annie appeared, gripping the handles of two plastic
grocery bags that bulged with whatever clothes she had decided to
bring.

Father John leaned across the seat and opened the passenger door.  As
she crawled inside and settled the bags on her lap, she directed him to
take Fourth and turn right onto Sweetwater, assuring him the girlfriend
would be home.  "With two kids, where else she gonna be?"

He stopped in the driveway next to the small duplex, and Annie stepped
out, clutching the plastic bags against the front of her coat.  A young
Indian with a baby slung on one hip and another child gripping her leg
had already opened the front door and was waving.

"Soon's you find Marcus, you tell him something for me, okay?"  Annie
said, leaning back into the cab.  "You tell him he messed up my goddamn
life."  She kicked the pickup door shut.

If I find him, Father John thought, backing out of the driveway.  < 12
>

Vicky stuffed several folders into the open briefcase on top of the
file cabinet.  The street lights below shimmered against the darkened
window.  It looked heavy and still outside, and snow was falling
lightly.  She didn't like the idea of driving up Sage Canyon in a
snowstorm.

She sighed as she laid another folder on the bulging stack.  How much
work would she get done tonight?  She was hopelessly behind.  After
she'd gotten back from Lean Bear's ranch this morning, she'd spent the
rest of the day trying to catch up, disoriented, Susan hovering in her
mind.  It was after five now, almost time to leave.  She had told the
man at the ranch she would be back at 6:30, and she meant to be on
time.  The office was quiet.  Ginger had left fifteen minutes ago.  As
Vicky closed the briefcase, she heard the soft crush of footsteps in
the waiting room.  She whirled around.

A man filled up the doorway, in a navy blue parka and jeans, his arms
at his sides, his left hand gripping the crown of a brown felt cowboy
hat.  "I wasn't sure you were still here," Father John said.

Vicky exhaled a deep breath.  "John O'Malley.  You scared me to
death."

"I seem to be good at that today--scaring women to death."

Vicky sank into the leather chair behind her desk and motioned him to
one of the barrel-shaped chairs on the other side.  "I tried to get
back to you this afternoon," she said.  And here he was, as if summoned
by a phone ringing into the emptiness of his office across the
reservation.  She was immensely glad to see him.  Father John stepped
into the office and took the chair, anchoring his cowboy hat on one
knee the way her grandfather used to do.  His hair was a rusty color,
with a touch of gray at the temples.  His eyes were pale blue, shot
through with lights, and he had little laugh lines at the outer edges.
He smiled easily, which made him seem even more handsome.  He was
smiling now, and she had to remind herself once again that he was a
priest.

"I understand you've found another body in a ditch," Vicky said.

"Only one, as far as I know."

"You found Walks-on," she reminded him.

Father John's smile widened.  "Oh, yeah.  But he wasn't dead."

"More dead than alive.  If you hadn't gotten him to the vet as fast as
you did, he'd be chasing Frisbees with his ancestors.  Has he noticed
yet he has only three legs?"  "He hasn't mentioned it."

Vicky leaned into the soft back cushion of her chair, the polite
exchange of pleasantries over.  Now for the purpose of his visit.  He
never called unless it was important, unless someone was in trouble.
She was certain this had something to do with the body on Rendezvous
Road.  She asked, "Have the police found the body?"

Father John thumped the fingers of one hand against the crown of his
hat.  "Not yet.  And it seems Marcus Deppert is missing."

Vicky clasped her hands over the blue mat that occupied the center of
her desk.  It didn't surprise her, Marcus Deppert being in trouble. "Is
there a connection?"

"I hope not," Father John said.  "But I'm not having much luck tracking
him down."  He told her about the white man who had gone to Annie
Chambeau's looking for Marcus and about the jobs Marcus and Rich Dolby
had supposedly taken, driving Jeeps to Denver.

Vicky was quiet a moment.  She had never heard of anyone ferrying
vehicles out of the area.  "I suppose Marcus's grandparents don't want
the police involved."  She saw by the look of surprise in Father John's
eyes she'd guessed right.  He was the only one looking for the
Arapaho.

Ordinarily she didn't have much sympathy for people like Marcus Deppert
who raised hell, made drunken spectacles of themselves, and generally
confirmed all the stereotypes she and every other Indian had to fight
everyday.  It was the great white denial that every group had its
Marcus Depperts, that all Indians weren't like him.  But this white man
didn't see a disreputable Indian.  He saw somebody in trouble, who
might need help, who might be dead.  She found her own attitude toward
the young Arapaho softening.

"I can ask around," she said.  "See if anyone knows anything."

"Good."  Father John nodded.

She held his eyes a moment, wanting to tell him about Susan, but she
sensed there was something else he was worried about.  She waited.

After a few seconds, he said, "St.  Francis Mission is about to be
sold."

She moved forward in her chair, a reflex.  "You must be joking."  She
saw immediately he'd never been more serious.

"The Z Group from California intends to develop the mission into a
recreation center.  Movies, bowling alleys, something for everybody."

"I can't believe the Jesuits would sell the mission," Vicky said.  It
was unthinkable.  Wind River Reservation without St.  Francis?  It was
her own great-grandfather, Chief Black Night, who had marked out the
land for the mission, who had ridden all the way to Omaha to ask the
Jesuits to come and teach the people.

Vicky saw the anger in Father John's eyes.  This had hit him even
harder than it hit her.  She said, "I haven't heard a word.  Not one
bleep on the moccasin telegraph."

"It's the new economic development director who's behind it," Father
John said.  "He would like to sign, seal, and deliver the deal before
anyone finds out."

"It's a matter for all the people," she said.  She knew the truth of
this in the smallest fiber of her being.

Father John nodded.  "I intend to talk to Thomas Spotted Horse about
the possibility of calling a general council."

Vicky leaned back against the soft cushion, the shock of the news still
reverberating through her.  At least this was a man who would not pack
his bags and move on, not without putting up a good fight.  But it
would be tough.  A recreation center meant jobs, and God knew the
reservation needed jobs.  But the price?  What price were the people
willing to pay?

She pulled a yellow legal pad out of the drawer and flopped it onto
the desk.  Removing the pen from the bubble-like wooden holder she'd
bought for herself when she graduated from law school, she started
writing.  "Z Group, out of California," she said.  "I'll see what I can
find out.  And one of my law school friends worked with Eden Light foot
at the Cheyenne agency before he came here.  She may have some insights
into our new director of development.  I'll also call a couple friends
on the business council to see what they think about this."

Glancing up, Vicky caught the flicker of hope in Father John's eyes.
"It may not help."

"It can't hurt," he said, getting to his feet.

A kind of heaviness came over her as she saw him turn to leave.  She
stood up, pushing back her chair.  The gliders screeched against the
plastic mat that protected the carpet.  "Susan's back," she blurted.

He turned and faced her again.  He didn't say anything.

"She's staying with three white men at Lean Bear's ranch where we used
to live."  Vicky stopped, then hurried on, telescoping a part of her
life she didn't like to think about.  "She's been here a couple weeks,
and I just found out."

Father John never took his eyes off her.  "Is she okay?"

"I don't know.  I drove up there this morning, but she wasn't around,
or so one of the men told me.  I informed him I'd be back at 6:30
sharp."  She glanced at her wrist watch--a white habit she'd acquired,
which she hated.  She would have to drive like Mario Andretti to make
it.

"Would you like me to go with you?"  he asked, his voice calm,
strong.

Vicky turned the offer over in her mind.  Yes, she would like him to
go with her.  She shook her head.  "This is something Susan's father
and I have to handle."  Father John smiled, and she sensed his
disappointment, his understanding that this was a family matter in
which he had no part.

Vicky had buttoned her brown wool coat, flung a scarf around her neck,
and switched off the light when she remembered her briefcase.  She
stepped in the darkness to the file cabinet.  Grabbing the briefcase
off the top, she glanced out the window just as Father John walked
under the streetlight toward the red Toyota pickup, his cowboy hat
pulled forward.  Tiny dots of snow, like a light rain, fluttered around
him.  He looked so alone she could have wept.

She watched until he disappeared inside the cab.  Until the Toyota
nosed away from the curb and drove into the shadows of the street.
Suddenly headlights flipped on at the corner.  A green truck churned
through a U-turn and accelerated after the Toyota.  13

f now swept lightly across the Bronco's hood and glistened in the
headlights, and the wipers swung in intermittent half-circles to brush
away the flakes.  Vicky tried to shake off the notion that the green
truck was following Father John by concentrating on the road climbing
ahead.  Crazy, she thought.  Who would be following him?  Anybody who
wanted to talk to Father John O'Malley could find him at St.  Francis
Mission any day of the week.  But for how long, how long?

The Bronco swung into the long curve before the turnoff into Lean
Bear's ranch.  Vicky tapped on the brake pedal, scanning the road for
the black faces of ice that showed here and there through the snow. She
turned right, then stopped at the metal gate, glancing at the little
green light on the dashboard.  Six-twenty-nine.  The bozo from this
morning knew she'd be back and had made sure the gate was closed. She
switched off the ignition, grabbed the floppy black bag next to her,
and slid into the icy outdoors.  Moonlight filtered through the clouds,
casting gray shadows over the snow.  She heard the soft swish of the
wind in the ponderosas.  She pulled the wool scarf under her chin, set
the strap of her bag firmly over one shoulder, and trudged to the
gate.  The chain was thick enough to discourage a herd of buffalo from
attempting to break through.  Fresh tracks packed the snow on the other
side, and a dim light glowed from the house.

Suddenly Vicky had a sense of someone watching her, as if she were
surrounded by ghosts.  She glanced about, silencing her own breathing,
half expecting the white man to step out from the trees.  No one.  She
turned back to the gate.  About a foot and a half separated each of the
three horizontal bars.  She had climbed hundreds of gates like this,
sat on the top rail for hours watching her father and grandfather brand
the new calves, slid off the rail onto the back of her own pony, and
raced across the earth.  But not in a suit, coat, hose, and dressy
leather boots.

She tossed her bag over, then grabbed the middle bar and scrunched
down, pulling her upper body through the narrow space.  She twisted
around to bring her right leg over the lower bar, then the left.  Snow
slid inside her boots; she felt as if she'd waded into ice water.  She
picked up the bag and started down the driveway, walking in the
hard-packed tracks.

A wave of memories washed over her as she approached the house.  She
remembered the plywood siding she and Ben had installed one summer and
painted the color of green apples.  The old pickup she had loaded the
kids into the day she had decided to leave.  And the memory she hadn't
experienced, only imagined: Ben coming through the front door and
finding her and the kids gone.  The pictures dissolved into a jumble of
black and-white images, like an old movie reeling itself out.

She pounded hard on the front door, her glove muffling the sound.  She
yanked it off and pounded again.  The static noise of a television
mingled with the hiss of the wind.  She waited a moment, tried the
doorknob, and was surprised when it turned in her hand.  "Susan," she
called, stepping into the small living room.  The odors of cigarettes
and stale food met her.

The room was a contrast of light and shadow: the shaft of light from
the kitchen; the greenish light flickering off a television set; the
shadows everywhere else.  Slowly a figure began to uncurl from the sofa
against the opposite wall.  "Mom?  What're you doin' here?"

Vicky set the door in place, a mixture of relief and terror welling
inside her.  This child-woman in rumpled sweats with long black hair
plastered to the sides of her head, with circles under her eyes so dark
even the dim light couldn't conceal them--this was her beautiful
daughter.

Susan stretched one hand toward a small table, groping among empty beer
bottles, ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts, and Styrofoam fast
food boxes.  She fingered a pair of glasses and slipped them on.  Her
eyes loomed large and accusing behind the wire-framed lenses.

"Are you okay, honey?"  Vicky's voice rose over the noise of the
television.  "... your question, please.  Would you care to guess? 
..." Jeopardy.  She crossed the room and lowered herself onto the sofa,
close to her daughter.  The old black-and-white TV, the table, the
sofa--all as she remembered, smaller, perhaps, more haggard-looking.
The detritus of her old life.

"Yeah, I'm okay."  Susan flopped both bare feet onto the linoleum floor
and attempted to sit up, then slouched against the back cushion.  "I
was takin' a nap."  Her words came slowly, as if she had formed them
through wired jaws.

Vicky's stomach twisted into knots.  The signs loomed like billboards
on the interstate.  Not just the lethargy and fogginess of marijuana,
but something else--another kind of drug, which she was at a loss to
identify.

"I was surprised to hear you'd come back," she managed.

"Yeah, well, I was gonna call you, but... no phone.  Didn't we used to
have a phone here?  Yeah, it was on the kitchen counter next to the
toaster.  You used to talk to Grandmother while you smeared jelly on
our toast.  See, I remember."  Susan brought one hand up to her
forehead.  "Did you take the phone?"

"Susan, you're sick.  Let me help you."

Her daughter shook her head, like a child in a temper.  "No, Mom.  I'm
tellin' you, I'm fine."  She pushed herself to her feet.  "Look, you
want some coffee or something?"

Vicky nodded and followed her daughter into the kitchen.  Dirty plastic
dishes, more empty beer bottles and Styrofoam boxes, papers, and stacks
of catalogues spread over the countertops and the yellow Formica table.
A door on the left opened onto a dark hallway that led to the two
bedrooms.  The house felt hot and close, as if there were a shortage of
air.  She dropped her bag onto the clutter on the table and unbuttoned
her coat, letting it slide back loosely around her shoulders.

Susan mechanically filled two mugs with tap water and shuffled along
the counter.  Stopping in front of a cluster of jars, she opened one
and spilled instant coffee crystals into the mugs.  Vicky pushed some
papers and dirty dishes out of the way so Susan could set the mugs on
the table.  Tiny black specks floated in the brownish liquid.

"I didn't come here to argue," Vicky said, taking one of the two chairs
at the table.  Susan slid onto the other.  "So why'd you come?"

Vicky began again.  "Your father said you and three men plan to start
some kind of crafts business.  If I can help you--"

"You can't."  Susan's eyes blinked behind her glasses.

"We've got things figured out, okay?  We're gonna get the moccasins
and beaded stuff that people make around here.  And we're gonna
advertise in catalogues."  She drew a catalogue from a pile and set it
next to an open Styrofoam box with pieces of wilting lettuce still
clinging to the sides.  "Everybody wants Indian stuff.  We're gonna
make a lot of money."

Vicky took a sip of coffee.  It was tepid and bitter.  This idea
sounded so good, so possible, except that Susan was stoned on
something.  Her hand shook as she lifted her mug.  "Your friends are
from Los Angeles?"

"You mean, are they white?  Yeah, so what?"  After a moment, Susan
added, "My friends know all about starting a business.  One's a real
professor."  Still the shaking.  Little drops of coffee ran down the
sides of her mug.

"So why do you need them?"  Vicky asked.  "You're the one Our People
will trust.  You're the one who can go to their homes and contract for
the crafts.  You could run the business yourself."  Then she added,
"Once you were clean."

"Don't bug me, Mom."  Susan got to her feet, gripping the edge of the
table so hard her knuckles blanched.  "Maybe you better go away and
leave me alone.  You're real good at that."

Here it was, the blow Vicky realized she had been waiting for.  Susan
and Lucas never forgot she had left them, even though no one else on
the reservation ever mentioned it.  It was traditional for Arapaho
grandparents to help raise the grandchildren.  What had kept the
moccasin telegraph buzzing for years was that she'd left Ben.  And for
what?  To go to school and become a white woman, to become
Hisei:d':nihi, Woman Alone.

Vicky pushed her chair back and walked around the table.  She placed an
arm around Susan's thin shoulders.

"Please come home with me.  Just for a few days.  You can clean up,
get some food in you.  You'll feel better.  I'll bring you back."

The girl shrugged off Vicky's arm.  "I don't need your help.  I got Ty.
He's here for me, and I can count on him.  Me and Ty, we're gonna get
married.  So, please, just go."

"You heard what she said, Mom."  The male voice came from the living
room, and Vicky swung around as the man she'd met earlier came through
the kitchen doorway.  He seemed larger here than he'd appeared
outdoors: six feet tall, with a thick neck, and shoulders and forearms
that filled out the sleeves of his down jacket.  His blond curly hair
was matted in places, as if he'd just removed the knit cap he held in
one gloved hand.  A light stubble covered his cheeks and chin like a
rash.  He was about Susan's age.

Two other men followed him into the kitchen and lined up next to the
counter.  One was also in his twenties, thin and dark-haired, in blue
jeans and a thick jean jacket.  Susan sidled toward him, and he draped
one arm over her shoulders, a gesture of ownership.  The other man was
short and heavyset, with a round face partly hidden by a dark beard
streaked with silver.  He had brown curly hair and pebble-like eyes
that looked out from plastic-rimmed glasses.  He could be her own
age-forty-two--too old to be hanging out with kids.

"Who are you?"  Vicky demanded.

"This is Ty," Susan said.  Then, nodding toward the blond, she added,
"This here's Gary."  Another nod.  "And that's the professor I told you
about."  "What'd ya tell her?"  Gary said, his tone sharp.

"Nothin'."  Susan leaned into the dark-haired man.

Vicky stepped between Gary and the couple her daughter had become.
"Susan, please come with me."

"She said no, Mom."  This from Gary behind her.  "So I'll just walk
you out to your Bronco."

Vicky sensed that even if Susan wanted to leave, Gary would not allow
it.  Her daughter was a prisoner.  The question mark was the
dark-haired man with his arm slung over Susan's shoulder.  How did he
fit in?  "I'll be back," Vicky said, not taking her eyes off Susan's.
Did she imagine it, or was there the smallest flicker of gratitude?

Vicky edged past Gary and the professor.  Grabbing her bag off the
table, she strode to the front door.  There were footsteps behind her.
"I don't want your company," she said, letting herself out.  She
hurried across the yard and down the road, aware of Gary's boots
crunching the snow.  She made herself breathe deeply.  The bastard was
trying to scare her.  When she reached the gate, the footsteps
stopped.

Vicky glanced back.  "Are you going to open this, or do I have to crawl
over?"

Gary stood about ten feet away, arms folded, a dark shadow in the
moonlight.  He didn't move.

She tossed her bag between the top and middle rails, then leaned down,
grabbed the middle bar and propelled herself to the other side more
quickly and easily than before.  Retrieving the bag from the snow, she
straightened upright and walked to the Bronco.

She got in quickly and turned on the ignition, sending the wheels into
a whining spin.  Framed in the rearview mirror was the white man,
leaning over the gate, raising one hand and saluting her.  The old
guilt tightened its grip, like some creature attempting to drag her
into its dark hiding place.  She was leaving Susan again.  Oh, God, who
was she leaving her with this time?  !/,>

Vicky drove down the canyon and across the reservation to the Arapaho
ranch, scarcely aware of the falling snow, as if she were outside of
time.  She parked in front of the massive log cabin and ran up the
stairs to the porch that extended along the front.  Snow piled over the
folded aluminum chairs stacked next to the wood railing.  Here was
where the cowboys sat on summer evenings, smoking and rocking back on
the thin chair legs, boots propped on the railing.

She pounded on the wood door.  In a moment it swung open and canned
television laughter, mixed with the guffaws of male voices, floated
toward her.  In the doorway, silhouetted by the light indoors, stood
Ben's cousin, Nate Holden, shorter than Ben and broader, dressed in
blue jeans and a plaid shirt.  "What do you want?"

"I'm looking for Ben," Vicky said.

Nate stepped back, bringing the door with him.  He didn't ask her in.
Behind him was the cavern like main room with log walls two stories
high, the upstairs balcony that led to the bunk rooms the sloping wood
ceiling, and the plank floors strewn with faded Navajo rugs.  There was
a wedge of shiny pine cabinets visible from the kitchen.

She stepped sideways to get a view of the living area.  Three Arapaho
men sat on a Naugahyde sofa, arms folded, legs outstretched, boots dug
into a rug.  A couple of other Arapahos occupied two upholstered
chairs.  There was a vacant chair, its seat crinkled and sunken,
probably from the weight of Nate Holden.  A television rested on a
metal cart against the wall, and a cloud of cigarette smoke hung in the
air.  She felt a kind of longing; she could use a cigarette right now
herself.  "You satisfied?"  Nate said, watching her.  "Ben ain't
here."

The others had turned toward her, as if Ben Holden's ex-wife showing up
at the Arapaho ranch at 9 p.m. promised more entertainment than any
MASH rerun.

Vicky said, "Where can I find him?"

"He want to see you?"  Nate's hostility was so thick she could almost
touch it.  Ben's family had never forgiven her.  It was a wife's duty
to stay by her husband.

"Ben's watchin' a couple sick calves at the upper range," volunteered
one of the Indians on the sofa.  He looked about twenty.  Perhaps he'd
grown up with Susan and Lucas.

Of course.  On more than one occasion, Ben had stayed up two nights
running to tend a sick animal.  "Thanks," she called out as she turned
and started down the porch stairs.  The young man hollered, "His
cabin's up the road about six miles.  Can't miss it."

Little eddies of snow scudded into the headlights, and Vicky gripped
the wheel as the Bronco climbed through a tunnel of cedars and aspens.
She had never been to the upper pasture of the Arapaho ranch.  She
hoped it existed, that the young Arapaho hadn't done Nate a favor by
sending her up a mountain in what could turn into a blizzard.  She
shook off the thought.

As the Bronco came out of a long curve, she saw light flickering like
a campfire through the cedars.  After another half mile she spotted the
cabin itself, a smaller version of the bunkhouse she'd just left, with
light glowing in the windows.  Beyond the cabin loomed the shadow of a
barn.  As she pulled up, she heard a door slam.  A figure emerged from
the darkness into the stream of her headlights.  She knew by his walk
it was Ben.

"Never thought I'd see this night," he said, opening her door.  He wore
the sheepskin coat and tan cowboy hat she remembered from the night
before.  A line of snow lay along the brim.

"Ben, we've got to talk about Susan."

"Too damn cold to talk outside," he said.  She felt the pressure of his
gloved hand on her arm as he guided her out of the Bronco and toward
the cabin.  He walked a little ahead, his boots packing the snow.
Stepping onto the wooden stoop, he bent down to grip the metal handle
set low on the door for people in the Old Time, shorter people.  He
motioned her inside.  "This is where I've been hanging my hat lately,"
he said.

Vicky took in the cabin at a glance: combination stove, sink,
refrigerator, and cabinet against one wall; card table and two folding
chairs in the center of the plank floor; two chairs with wads of gray
stuffing poking from the cushions; cast-iron stove that gave off a
hissing, crackling noise and flooded the room with warmth.  The bed
stood against the far wall.  Spread across the top was the
blue-and-white star quilt Ben's grandmother had given them on their
wedding day.

She stared at it with a kind of shock, as if she had unwittingly
touched an electric wire.  The star quilt: No true Arapaho home could
be without one.  Its lines and circles and stars were a reminder that
all creation is alive, even the sky and the earth, and that all
creatures are meant to live in harmony.  She swallowed hard against the
sense of the past welling inside her.

Crossing the room, Ben lifted a log out of a wood box, opened the
stove's little metal door, and tossed the log onto the fire.  "That
should keep us plenty warm."  Then, glancing back at her he asked, "You
had supper yet?"

Vicky shook her head.  She'd intended to get a bite before driving out
to Lean Bear's ranch, but she hadn't had time after John O'Malley's
visit.  She laid her coat and bag over one of the chairs, suddenly
aware of the hollow feeling in her stomach.

Ben shucked off the sheepskin coat and hung it over a wooden peg on one
wall.  He set his hat on top.  In two steps he was at the stove,
flicking a match while pressing one of the small black knobs on the
stove front, lighting the burner under a metal coffee pot.  Then he lit
the burner under a large pan.  "How about some stew?"  he asked.

"Your recipe?"  Vicky asked.

Ben laughed.  Plunging a spoon into the stew, he said, "The cook down
at the bunkhouse sent it up.  Didn't want it on her conscience, my
starving to death.  I've had a couple of sick calves on my hands.
Haven't had a chance to eat yet."  Still stirring the stew, he looked
at her and smiled.  "Must've been waiting for you."

"Ben .. ."

He nodded.  "This is about Susan.  But we can get some grub in us
first."  He ladled the stew into two pottery bowls and placed them on
the table.  Then he filled two mugs with coffee and set them next to
the bowls.  In an instant he produced plastic spoons and knives, half a
loaf of bread in a plastic bag, and a tub of margarine.

Nokooho.  The word sprang into Vicky's mind as she sat down.  Out of
the natural order.  In the eleven years she'd been married to Ben, he
had never waited on her.  Warriors did not wait upon women.  Warriors
rode out and slaughtered the buffalo, and brought the carcasses back to
the village for the women to butcher and preserve and tan and dry, to
cook and to serve.  Warriors did not perform the undignified tasks of
women.

"Surprised you, huh?"  Ben took the folding chair across from her,
looking pleased.  He could always read her thoughts, sometimes even
before she had them in focus.  But he hadn't read her intention to
leave him, hadn't even suspected.

Steam curled out of her bowl, which was filled with lumps of meat,
potatoes, and carrots in brown gravy.  It smelled of sage.  After the
first few bites, she began to feel warmer, calmer.  Ben was eating,
too, and she was aware he hadn't taken his eyes off her.  "You saw
Susan?"  he said finally.  The time was ready.

Vicky set her spoon next to the almost empty bowl.  "She's on drugs
again, but I don't know what she's using."

Ben seemed to consider this as he spread a yellowish glob of margarine
onto a slice of bread.  After a moment, he said, "Stop blaming
yourself.  If Susan's got herself screwed up again with drugs, it's not
just your fault."  He laid the knife across the top of the opened
margarine tub and regarded her a long moment.  "It's my fault, too,
Vicky."

Vicky heard the catch in her own breath.  She could hardly believe what
she had just heard.  She had been carrying the guilt alone, a heavy
burden.  And now he had stepped up to shoulder his share.  She felt the
years fall away, and in the forty-six-year-old man with gray mingled
in the black of his hair she glimpsed the young warrior with soft black
eyes, so handsome she hadn't dared hope he could ever notice her, the
man she had crawled out of her bedroom window on summer nights to meet,
the man she had run away with and married.

Vicky switched her eyes away.  The cabin felt smaller, the heat from
the stove oppressive.  She would not be drawn into the circle of his
charm.  She forced herself to focus on the present.  "Discussing who's
at fault won't help Susan.  We have to get her away from Lean Bear's
ranch."

"Are you suggesting we kidnap her?"  Ben set the slice of bread on the
table.

"You could evict the white men."

Ben shrugged.  "On what grounds?  They've paid six months' rent.  In
any case, they would have thirty days to leave.  Longer, if they took
the eviction notice to tribal court.  You know that.  You're the
lawyer.  And what if they did leave?  Susan might go with them."

Vicky sipped at the coffee still hot in her mug.  Probably so.  In any
case, evicting the lot of them wouldn't get Susan into drug rehab,
which was what she needed.  "Your turn," she said, setting the mug
down.

"Susan told me they're going to start a business.  It could work for
her.  I say let her have her chance."

"Business?  Don't make me laugh.  Where do you think she's getting
whatever drug she's on?  Those three men haven't come here to sell
Indian crafts.  They're here to sell drugs."

Ben said, "We both know Susan would never bring drug dealers to her
people."

Vicky pushed her chair back and got to her feet.  She turned and stared
at the window, watching the flakes chain along the edges.  What was she
thinking?  Just be cause Susan had slipped back onto drugs out of her
own pain didn't mean her three friends were drug dealers.  Where was
the evidence?  She was jumping to conclusions.  She almost laughed out
loud thinking of the way an opposing attorney would tear something like
this to shreds in a courtroom.

"Don't worry so much, honey," Ben said.  There was the sound of chair
legs scraping the plank floor and footsteps.  In a heartbeat, he was
behind her, slipping his arms around her waist, his breath warm on her
neck.  A rush of remembered feelings came over her: the comfort and
excitement of the man who had been her husband.  She tried to push them
away.  They belonged in the past, not in the Time Being.

"Don't, Ben," she said, turning within the little circle he'd made.
Instantly his mouth was on hers, searching as if he would devour her.

She pushed against his chest as hard as she could, and he stepped back,
a mixture of anger and bewilderment on his face.  "You want me just as
much as I want you," he said.  "You want us back together."

Vicky slid sideways toward the kitchen stove, feeling the knobs against
the small of her back.  She didn't trust herself to move, didn't trust
her loneliness.  If he came toward her again, if he touched her, she
might go willingly with him, just as she'd done all those years ago,
and the woman she had become would no longer exist.

"I want you back, Vicky," he was saying.  "Any way you can come back to
me, I want you to come.  You tell me how it has to be, and that's the
way it'll be.  Hell, I'll serve you supper every night."  He nodded
toward the card table.  "You know you want to come back.  That's why
you came here tonight."

"This isn't about us," Vicky said.  The strength in her own voice
surprised her.  "It's about our daughter.  We have to find some way to
help her."

"That's right."  Ben raised his voice.  "The only reason Susan's got
problems is because we had problems--I had a problem.  But I'm not
drinking anymore.  Soon as we're okay, Susan's going to be okay.  Once
her parents are back together, she'll be able to help herself."

Vicky let his words hang in the air without a reply.  It was clear to
her now, his view of the world.  He'd seized the chance to tell her
about Susan last night, knowing she would race out to Lean Bear's ranch
today, find Susan in trouble, and come here this evening.  Who else
could she turn to except Susan's father?  Who would arrange to be at
the cabin in the upper pasture alone, would have the cook send up the
stew.  And everything in his world would be set right.  They would get
back together; Susan's problems would disappear.  It would be as if the
past had never existed.

She stepped around him, by the little card table with the empty bowls
and mugs, the margarine-coated bread, and slipped into her coat.  "I
know you love Susan," she said.  "But this isn't the answer.  The past
is what it is."

A blast of cold air hit her as she opened the front door and stepped
outside.  "Don't go," Ben said.  She pulled the door behind her,
feeling as if she had stepped back from the edge of a precipice.

Vicky, drove through a white world.  Whiteness drifted in the air,
piled onto the hood, clung to the windshield and fell away at the
whoosh of the wipers.  She sat hunched over the steering wheel, feeling
alone and scared for Susan, willing the Bronco across the white
stretches of Wind River Reservation, down Highway 789, through the
snow-shrouded streets of Lander.

How easy it would be to do what Ben and his family and all the
grandmothers, even her own family, would celebrate--going back to Ben.
She thought about what Grandfather had once told her: "We are edge
people.  We live at the edge of two worlds, white and Arapaho.  It is
hard to remember who we are when we dwell in the edge space."  Ah,
Grandfather.  You don't know.  You don't know.

She parked in the driveway, aware of the tiredness seeping through her,
and walked across the snow to the porch.  The knob on the front door
spun in her gloved hand before she'd turned the key.  She stopped.  She
always locked the door here.  On the reservation, she had never locked
the door.  If someone came to take your material possessions, well,
that person must be in great need.  That was the Arapaho Way, but this
was the white world.

She had been so distracted this morning, she must have forgotten.  She
pushed the door open and stepped into the warmth.  Even before she had
snapped on the light switch, she sensed another presence, heard the
quiet sounds of breathing.  Her heart leaped against her ribs.

""Bout time you got home, Mom," Gary said.  He sat at the end of her
sofa, boots propped on the stack of magazines on her coffee table.
15

Father John saw the shadow dart through the trees.  He ran after it, up
the wooded hillside of Boston College, his heart pounding.  He was
close, but as soon as he reached for the shadow, it darted away.  The
sounds of traffic on Commonwealth Avenue, the clanging of a Green Line
trolley, filtered through the trees.  For a moment the ringing seemed a
continuation of the dream.  He sat up, disoriented.  Then he realized
it was the phone.  Marcus, he thought.  They've found Marcus.  It
struck him it was Marcus's shadow he'd been chasing --the ghost was
walking in his dreams.

He swung out of bed and made his way down the dim hallway.  The phone
perched on the stairway landing.  He always trailed the extension cord
up the stairs when he went to bed in case someone tried to reach him in
the middle of the night.  He went down on one knee, aware of the hard
wood floor biting into his kneecap as he lifted the receiver.

"Can you come over?"  It was Vicky.  He heard the terror in her
voice.

"Right away," he said.  As the buzzing noise sounded, the frantic
feeling of the dream washed over him.  This wasn't about some Indian
kid arrested for disturbing the peace or driving under the influence,
or about arranging an adoption or counseling somebody thinking of
divorce.  This was about Vicky.

He could hear Father Peter moving around inside his bedroom, and he
told the old man through the door he'd been called on an emergency.  In
a few minutes, he was dressed and out the front door.  The metal gears
screeched into the silence as the Toyota pickup lurched onto Circle
Drive.  It had stopped snowing, but a blanket of downy snow lay over
the earth.  Seventeen-Mile Road and Highway 789 blended into the white
open spaces.  The occasional track of a squirrel or coyote or red fox
dotted the snow.  The eastern sky was lit with bands of scarlet and
plum; the sun would be up soon.  He thought of what Thomas Spotted
Horse had once said: Each human being faces the rising sun and the day
that it brings alone.

Father John kept the gas pedal down, ignoring the occasional loss of
traction and sideways slip.  He could still hear the terror in Vicky's
voice, and he knew he was trying to outrun his own alarm as he raced to
Lander.

The Toyota slid against the curb in front of her house.  Light seeped
around the slats of the window blinds and fell in yellow stripes across
the snowy yard.  He jumped out and ran up the sidewalk.

"Thank God, you're here," Vicky said.  Her breath came quickly as if
she were sobbing.  She still had on the dark suit from yesterday, but
her hair hung loose, not clipped in back the way he was used to seeing
it.  There were black smudges under her eyes.  She turned abruptly and
walked over between the sofa and coffee table.  Magazines lay scattered
over the top, crowding the pottery bowl, which was filled with ashes
and butts.  A cigarette and matchbook lay to one side.  She picked up
the cigarettes and pulled one out.  After fumbling with the matches,
she finally managed to light up.

"I bought them yesterday, the cigarettes," she said as if he wouldn't
know what she was talking about.  After taking a long draw, she laid
the cigarette in the bowl and began combing her fingers through her
hair, pulling at it.  "What happened?"  Father John felt his heart
pounding against his ribs.  This was not the Vicky he knew.

"I was so worried about Susan," she began, and he realized with a kind
of shock she was still explaining the cigarettes.  She was hysterical.
"So after yesterday morning at the ranch, I bought them at the Seven
Eleven.  But when I stopped off at home, I threw them away.  I didn't
want to take them to the office.  I didn't want to start smoking again.
But last night, after he left, I dug them out of the bottom of the
wastepaper basket."

Father John was at her side in two steps.  He put his arms around her
and held her close, trying to comfort her, as he would have comforted
his own child perhaps, or his wife.  Her hair smelled faintly of sage,
and she was trembling.  "Who, Vicky?  Tell me.  What happened to
you?"

"He was here on the sofa.  Gary.  One of the white men with Susan.
Sitting right here, waiting for me.  I always lock the door.  I don't
know how he got in.  Maybe I forgot, or maybe he jimmied the lock
somehow."

"Did he hurt you?"  Father John wasn't sure what he would do, how he
would react, if this Gary had hurt her.  He could feel the anger
waiting to flood over him, an enormous black reservoir held in check by
such a thin membrane of rationality.  For an instant, he glimpsed the
force that might drive a man to kill another human being.

"He didn't touch me," Vicky said.  The trembling was quieter now, and
Father John let his arms relax around her.  His own relief was like
another presence in the room.  He wanted only good things for her,
prayed that only goodness would follow her.

She stepped back and sank into the middle cushion of the sofa. Reaching
toward the bowl, she crushed out the cigarette, keeping her eyes on the
little trail of blue smoke that floated upward.  Father John sat down
beside her.  "What did he want?"

"He said if I loved my daughter--" Vicky stopped a moment, then
continued, "if I loved Susan, I would leave her alone.  I would stay
away from the ranch.  He said Susan wanted him to tell me because she
didn't know how."  She paused, gathering strength for the dash into the
heart of it.  "He threatened to hurt her."

Father John felt the anger rising in his throat.  He swallowed hard, to
keep it under control.  "What did you do?"

Vicky moved to the edge of the cushion.  "The minute that bastard
walked out the door, I dialed 911, but I hung up.  Before I start
pressing charges, I have to get Susan away.  She's sick, John.  She's
using drugs again, and she needs treatment.  I have to make sure she's
safe before I nail Gary's hide to the wall."

Father John realized she'd probably walked the floor all night, turning
over all the options.  If she had Gary arrested now, she might alienate
her daughter.  Susan came first.  "I don't understand," he said.  "Why
would this goon show up here and threaten you?"

"Last night I tried talking Susan into coming home with me.  With a
little more time, I might've convinced her.  But Gary and another
man--Susan calls him 'the professor'--and Ty, the man she's involved
with, showed up.  It was pretty obvious Gary didn't want her to leave.
If I don't get her away from there .. ."  Vicky's voice was rising,
"... what will happen to her?"

"What about Ben?"  Father John wasn't sure why he'd asked, except that
yesterday she had made it clear anything having to do with Susan was
between her and Ben.  He did not want to trespass where he knew he
didn't belong--in her family.

Vicky got to her feet and began circling the room.  "Ben believes in
miracles.  Susan's problems will disappear if only--" She stopped and
looked at him.  "I can't count on Ben.  I never could.  All night I've
been trying to figure out how to get Susan out of the clutches of that
monster, and I think I've got it figured out."

"Then let's go get her," Father John said.  He was relieved she had
called him, but he was also certain that, had she not reached him, she
would have gone alone.

The sun hung low on the eastern horizon, like a laser shooting white
beams over the snowy earth.  Father John squinted against the glare as
they headed north on Highway 287.  Before they'd left, she had changed
into jeans, a bulky red sweater, and a jacket patterned like an Indian
blanket, while he'd invaded her kitchen and made himself a cup of
instant coffee.

Now she sat beside him, gripping a pair of binoculars, talking about
Susan.  He listened quietly, allowing her thoughts to take shape, a
habit of the confessional.  He heard how Susan would crawl out of bed
at night and crouch on the chest under the window to watch the stars,
and how Vicky would find her there when she went to check on the
children. How she would stay with her and hold her--Susan was so small
then.  And how they talked about Sister Moon and the Star Nations, the
Star Men who had brought the people the sacred gift of sage, a symbol
of the mysteries of the sky.  All the things her grandmother had told
her, she had tried to tell Susan.  "But there was so little time,"
Vicky said. "So little time together."

Father John glanced at the woman next to him.  She had the profile of
her people, the high cheekbones, the fine nose with just a hint of a
bump at the top, the dark, glistening eyes, the brown skin with the
trace of red on her lips, the shiny black hair pulled back now into a
beaded clasp.  She was beautiful.  "Susan will be all right," he said,
hoping she wouldn't sense his own misgivings.

After a few miles of silence, Vicky blurted out, "Gary and the others
are drug dealers.  I'm sure of it.  They're supplying Susan."

This could be, Father John thought.  The idea had already started to
play at the edges of his mind, but he hadn't wanted to acknowledge it.
He didn't like the logical conclusion--that Susan Holden had brought
drug dealers to the reservation.  He said nothing as the Toyota started
climbing up Sage Canyon, threading the narrow road between the
mountainside and the steep drop-off into the creek.  They'd gone about
five miles when Vicky asked him to slow down.  She had turned sideways
and was staring beyond him, out his window.  "There it is," she said.
"The old logging road."

Father John saw the narrow cut, like a wagon road nearly lost in snow
between the rock outcroppings.  Easing up on the accelerator, he turned
into the cut and started winding up the road.  The wheels munched the
snow, and the cedar branches scraped the roof.  He hoped the Toyota
wouldn't get stuck.

Vicky sat forward, one hand braced on the dashboard.  "Just ahead,"
she directed.

The pickup lurched upward through the trees, groaning into the mountain
stillness.  "This is it," Vicky said.  Before he had brought the pickup
to a full stop, she was out the passenger door.

He followed her around a pile of boulders, ducking past the cedars. The
wind sighed in the trees; snow sifted around them.  It felt ten degrees
colder.  Vicky stopped, peered through the binoculars a moment, then
started climbing the boulders.  Standing above him like a sentinel in
the Old Time, she raised the binoculars again.  "Perfect," she said.

He followed her up the boulders, so slick in the snow he had to grab a
branch to keep from sliding backward.  She handed him the binoculars,
and he bent toward her slightly to see around the branches.  A small
frame house with faded gray-green paint came into view.  The front end
of a truck was visible behind the house.

"See anyone?"

"Not a creature stirring."

"The truck's still there," Vicky said.  "If I'm right, they'll leave
any minute.  By the time I got here yesterday morning, the truck was
already gone.  If Gary hadn't come back, I might've been able to talk
to Susan then."

They handed the binoculars back and forth, stamping their feet,
clapping their gloved hands in the cold.  Father John's feet and hands
felt numb.  Suddenly Vicky leaned so far into the binoculars he was
afraid she might tumble down.  "The front door just opened," she said.
"Looks like the professor coming out.  And somebody behind him, but I
can't tell who.  He's got on a blue parka like the one Gary wore last
night, but his hat's pulled down too far to make him out.  They're
walking back to the truck," she said, handing him the binoculars.

Father John watched the cloud of blue exhaust burst alongside the
house.  Out of the cloud rolled a gray truck, which gathered speed then
stopped at the gate.  A tall man in a blue parka jumped from the
driver's side, fiddled with the gate, then swung it open.  The man
looked familiar.  He got back in, and the gray pickup spun out onto
Sage Canyon road.

"What does Gary look like?"  Father John asked.

Vicky shrugged.  "Like a white man.  Tall, muscular, blond hair,
stubbly face, as if he can't quite grow a beard.  Why?"

"Gary picked me up Sunday night on Rendezvous Road after I'd found the
body."  He didn't tell her Gary had come close to running him down
first and had then left him stranded in a blizzard at Jake
Littlehorse's garage.  Vicky was worried enough about Susan.

They picked their way down over the boulders and hurried to the Toyota.
Neither spoke.  Father John knew she was probably thinking what he was
thinking.  If it wasn't Gary in the pickup just now, he would still be
in the house with Susan.  < 16 >

Who ever the driver was, he'd left the gate open.  Father John drove
the Toyota past and stopped next \AJto the ranch house.  "Gary must
have thought he'd scared me off," Vicky said.

"He didn't know you."  Father John swung out of the pickup and followed
her to the front door.  She turned the knob and pushed the door open.
As they walked in, a tall, thin-shouldered young man with dark,
straggly hair lifted himself off the sofa and stumbled against the
small table, sending a couple of empty beer cans scuttling across the
top.  He looked as if he'd just awakened and the world wasn't yet in
focus.

"Susan's not up yet, Mrs.  Holden," he said, deference in his tone.  He
had on a red shirt, ragged at the elbows, with the collar partly turned
under and the V-neck exposing a dirty gray T-shirt.  His jeans were
smeared with grease, and he was in stockinged feet.  There were holes
in the toes of his black socks.

Vicky brushed past him and into the kitchen.  Father John followed,
watching her retreat down a dim hallway, then he stepped back to the
living room.  The young man looked about to go after her, but Father
John blocked the way.  "Are you Ty?"

"What're you doin' here?"  the young man asked.

Something about the question made Father John wonder if Ty knew who he
was.  He switched off the idea.  Even if Gary had mentioned giving
Father O'Malley a ride last Sunday night, how would Ty know he was
Father O'Malley?  He'd never seen this young man before.

"I've come with Mrs.  Holden.  I'm Father John O'Malley from St.
Francis."

"Oh, man, this is getting' really squirrely."  Ty staggered backward,
his eyes darting about as if he expected something to materialize.  He
shook his head, a frantic motion.  "Susan isn't leavin' here."

The jerky movements, the explosion about to erupt-Father John knew the
signs.  Drugs or alcohol, the behavior was the same.  There was a sense
of helplessness about the kid--he wasn't much more than a kid, probably
in his early twenties.  But the wrong word, the wrong tone, and anger
would burst forth like a bronco out of a chute.  He kept his voice
calm. "Susan belongs in treatment.  Her mother wants to help her."

"I been lookin' after her.  Me and Susan, we're gonna get married.  You
think I don't care what happens to her?"  The young man's tone rose;
his fists clenched at his sides.

"Of course I don't," Father John said.  "I'm sure you love her."

Ty's fists relaxed a little, and Father John felt the tension begin to
evaporate.

"I been helpin' her cut back, but last night, after her mom left, she
got pretty stoned, you know?  Like, man, she passed out on me.  I got
scared she was gonna stop breathin' or something, but she come out of
it, and this morning she wanted another hit 'cause, you know, she's
feelin' pretty sick.  I say, no way."

"What's she on?"  Father John decided to take a chance on the
dissolving tension.  Any information might prove helpful.

"Pot."  The young man shrugged.

"Anything else?"

Ty ran one hand through his hair.  "Just pot."

"Where does she get it?"

"Hey, man, what is this?"  The tension rolled back between them.  "You
think I'm her supplier?  She was smokin' out in L.A. before I met her.
She brought her stash with her.  I been tryin' to get her off it."

Sure, Father John thought.  You're on it yourself, whatever it is. Just
then a shuffling noise sounded, and Vicky came into the living room,
one arm around the thin shoulders of a young woman in green sweats, a
younger version of Vicky herself.  The girl looked dazed, as if it were
an effort to place one foot after the other.  The small suitcase in
Vicky's other hand scraped against the wall, and Father John took it
from her.

"You shouldn't be goin' nowhere, Susan," Ty said, a rising panic in his
tone.  "Gary's gonna go crazy if he finds you gone."

Susan turned blank eyes on the young man and leaned against her mother.
Father John slipped his free arm around the girl's waist to keep her
from listing sideways as they made their way to the front door.  He'd
seen enough drug overdoses in enough emergency rooms to know by the
raspy sound of her breathing that the girl was in trouble.  It would be
a race to the Lander hospital.

As he pulled the door shut, Father John caught a glimpse of Ty watching
them.  The young man was capable of serious resistance, yet he was
letting them take Susan away.  He must care for her, and Father John
was glad for that.  Not since he was a kid back in Boston had he had
to fight somebody off, and it wasn't something he wanted to do again.
But if Ty had tried to stop them, he would have had no choice.

Father John and Vicky sat on the small sofa outside the emergency room
of the Lander Community Hospital, waiting for the stocky, middle-aged
nurse to appear through the swinging door and deliver another of her
intermittent reports.  They'd given Susan a shot of Adrenalin.  They'd
taken a urine sample, but the lab report wouldn't be back for a day.
Susan claimed she only smoked some pot, but they knew that wasn't true.
The girl was scared.  A good sign.  A psychiatrist was on the way to
talk with her.  Maybe she'd tell the truth.  It would be easier to help
her if they knew the truth.

"What do you think it is?"  Vicky interrupted.

"The symptoms--respiratory depression, nausea, diarrhea --point to some
type of opiate."

"Opiate."  Vicky spit out the word.  "You mean heroin."

"I'm afraid so."  The nurse nodded before retreating behind the
swinging door.

Father John placed his arm around Vicky's shoulders.  The trembling was
there again.  He said, "If Gary and the others have brought heroin to
the reservation, Banner needs to know."  "What are you saying?"  Vicky
jerked away.  He was surprised at the intensity in her eyes.  "The
police would swarm all over Susan.  She's too sick to handle that
now."

"Vicky," Father John began, "this could be about more than drugs.  This
could be about murder.  There's a dead body out there someplace, and
Gary could be involved."

Vicky was shaking her head.  "You're saying Susan might know about a
murder?  No.  You're wrong.  I know my daughter.  She might use drugs,
she might even be on heroin...."  Her tone rose until she was almost
shouting.  "But she would never be involved in murder.  Don't you see,
those men have used her to get on the reservation.  She thinks they're
going to start a legitimate business.  She doesn't know anything about
what they're doing."

Father John leaned back against the sofa and regarded her.  This wasn't
the best time for logic.  She was too upset to think clearly.  He
reached out and took her hand.  "Okay," he said.

They waited, mostly in silence, until the nurse reappeared.  Susan's
heart rate and blood pressure were stabilizing, but they were going to
admit her to the psych unit for twenty-four-hour observation.  After
that, well, it depended upon whether she would agree to long-term
treatment.  Her mother could see her for a few minutes.

Vicky pushed herself up from the sofa.  Before she disappeared through
the swinging door, Father John took her hand again.  He extracted a
promise she would call 911 if she even felt Gary's presence nearby.
17

Highway 287 slid ahead like a conveyor belt, asphalt streaked where the
morning's traffic had worn away the snow.  Light gray clouds dipped
among the Wind River Mountains, but the stretch of milk white plains
glistened like fireflies in the sun.  Father John missed the sounds of
his favorite arias floating around him.  He would have liked La Boheme
now, or perhaps Faust.  He drove absently, one finger on the rim of the
steering wheel, his thoughts three years back when he'd looked up from
his desk one morning and saw Vicky in the doorway.

"You don't know me," she had said.  She was wrong.  He knew her
immediately, this striking Indian woman in a blue suit, holding a
briefcase.  The grandmothers had been clucking for weeks over the
return of the hu:xu'wa:ne'h, the lawyer.  They called her
Hisei:ci':nihi.  Woman Alone.

He had worked with her ever since, not for any grand notion of justice
on an Indian reservation, but for the occasional fragment of justice
for the man in the drunk tank, the kids lost in the bureaucratic maze
of social services, the girl injured by a drunk driver.  He had never
expected such a gift, to have a woman like her at the edge of his life.
Just to know she walked the earth at the same time and in the same
place as he did was enough for him, and he was grateful.  In different
circumstances -But he couldn't imagine that.  In different
circumstances, he would not be the man he was.

He hadn't expected the gift of his priesthood either.  It was an
unfolding that had begun when he was an altar boy serving the early
morning Mass at St.  Marys.  As the bell jangled through the apse at
the elevation of the host, the sense had come over him of God's
presence in the world, and of the priest, holding the host high,
witnessing that presence.  A "calling," the church called a vocation to
the priesthood.  He had tried to stop up his ears.  When he looked into
the future, he had seen himself with a wife and a bunch of kids.  He'd
had girlfriends from the age of twelve, most of whose names he'd
forgotten.  He'd never missed a prom or a frat party, and senior year
at Boston College he'd met Eileen.  The thought of her was still
charged with pain, not because he'd loved her, but because he'd allowed
her to love him when he knew he had been called elsewhere.  The day
he'd told her he was entering the Jesuit seminary, she'd become
hysterical, had begun pulling off her clothes and screaming he was a
fool.  He'd been in the seminary three months when she and his brother
Mike ran off to New York and got married.  He never thought of Eileen
without uttering a prayer for forgiveness.

Absorbed in his thoughts, Father John nearly missed the turn onto
Plunkett Road.  He hit the brake pedal, which sent the Toyota into a
skid.  Heading toward the ditch, he steered into the skid until the
pickup straightened itself.

At the top of a rise, he spotted Ike Yellow Calf's pickup backing out
of the Depperts' driveway, which meant Marcus was still missing.  It
was time to bring the police in on this.  Why was it every time he
mentioned the police to an Arapaho lately, he met a wall of resistance?
If the old people still resisted, he resolved to tell Banner himself
and take the responsibility.

Father John parked in the snow-packed tracks vacated by Ike's truck.
Newly chopped logs had been stacked against the fence and, most likely,
piled beside the old people's stove.  The kitchen cabinets were
probably full.  Ike was a good man, in the Arapaho Way.  He was
generous and thoughtful of others.  Inside, the house looked much the
same, with Deborah hovering around and Joe propped in the recliner, the
outsized casts pointing into the circle of heat.  Color had seeped into
the old man's face, but worry still lodged in his eyes.  In both old
people Father John sensed an attitude of resignation.  They'd heard
about the body by now.  They'd probably heard stories about the ghost
walking around.  They would have put two and two together.

When Father John told them it was time to notify the police, they
nodded, as if they'd already come to that conclusion.  As he stood to
leave, Joe grabbed him by the sleeve.  "It might be some time before
the police get around to lookin' for the boy.  You keep tryin' to find
him, okay?  His grandmother and me, we gotta know what happened to
him."

He had almost convinced himself he must be paranoid, thinking a green
Dodge truck was following him, but now he wasn't so sure.  There it was
in the rearview mirror, staying with him down Plunkett Road and through
the turn onto Ethete Road.  As far as he knew, the only man upset with
him right now might be Gary, the white man with the stubbly beard who
didn't want Susan Holden to leave the ranch.  But he and Vicky had
taken the girl only this morning, and the truck had been shadowing him
for two days now.  Besides, Gary drove a gray Chevy truck.

As he turned into the main street of Fort Washakie, the truck fell
back, and by the time he nosed the Toyota into the parking lot of the
Wind River Law Enforcement Center, it had disappeared.  He got out and
crossed the pavement, slick with melted snow that had reformed into
ice.  The sky had turned pale blue, with traces of snow clouds floating
past the early afternoon sun.

The lobby was almost empty: two Arapahos waiting on the metal chairs,
thumbing through magazines.  Father John caught the clerk's eye behind
the glass enclosure and mouthed "Chief Banner."  She nodded and
disappeared.  After a moment she opened the door, and he slipped past.
The corridor felt damp and smelled of wet wool and floor polish.
Banner's voice floated toward him.

Father John stopped at the open door, waiting for the chief to finish
his phone conversation.  "... Couple of DUIs, disorderly, the usual.
We'll fax over what we got," the chief said as he alternately picked up
and dropped a file folder on top of a stack of others on his desk.

Banner replaced the receiver and waved Father John to a chair.  "I've
been leaving messages all over the rez for you," he said.

The office felt warm and close as Father John sat down.  "You found the
body?"  Banner gave a little shake to his head.  "Almost three million
acres on the rez, all snowed under.  The fed says he needs an airplane
and infrared to search for the body, but nobody's got that kind of
budget.  That body's not gonna turn up 'til spring."

If not the body, then what was on the chief's mind?  Father John
shifted in the chair as Banner pulled a yellow pad from under the pile
of folders and clicked a ballpoint.  "I understand you talked to a girl
named Annie Chambeau yesterday."

Father John felt a flicker of surprise.  The moccasin telegraph often
turned out to be more efficient than he imagined.  Banner must have
heard Marcus was missing and had started looking for him.  He leaned
back, feeling a little more confident.  The bigger the team on the
playing field, the better the chance of finding the young man--or his
body.

"Homicide," Banner said, tapping the ballpoint on the yellow pad.

"What?"

"Annie Chambeau caught a .32 slug in the chest last night."  <18>

Coroner says victim was shot sometime between nine and midnight."
Banner had flipped open the folder ^and was scanning the top page.  It
looked like a fax.  "About eleven P.M."  victim left girlfriend's house
on Sweetwater Street and returned to the Grand Apartments, number
three-F, to retrieve personal items.  Victim did not make contact by
midnight, and girlfriend notified Lander police.  Call received at
12:06 a.m."  by which time a unit had already been dispatched in
response to a call at eleven fifty-five from Mrs.  Herbert Skinner,
resident of apartment one-A, reporting gunshots.  Unit arrived at 12:10
A.M. and located victim.  Perpetrator had evacuated premises.  Police
contact made with victim Friday night last.  Victim issued citation for
disturbing the peace.  Contact also made Saturday night.  Victim
reported intruder had broken into her apartment."

"Dear God."  Father John thumped his fist against the worn arm of the
chair, disbelief and anger careening through him like a heat-seeking
missile.  In his mind's eye, he saw the girl across the table from him,
hunched under a worn red coat, her hand trembling as she lifted the
coffee mug, her life tangled and confused.  No one had the right to
deprive her of the future or the redemption it might have held, to
efface her humanity, to reduce her to one among many inanimate
objects--victim, perpetrator, premises.

"Girlfriend says victim met with you yesterday," Banner was saying.
"Detective Loomis at the Lander PD asked me to find out what the
meeting was about."

Father John had come here to report Marcus Deppert missing.  That was
all.  He hadn't intended to tell Banner where to find the man who had
driven the Chevy pickup near Rendezvous Road Sunday night, not yet.  He
had decided to give Vicky a little time.  Now everything was changed.
Now a girl was murdered.  A girl connected to Marcus, whose body might
have been in the ditch.  And Gary might be responsible.  It could have
been Gary who ransacked Annie's apartment.

It was tenuous, this theory, full of holes.  He had no evidence, just
hunches.  He felt as if he'd walked onto the mound and suddenly found
out the game wasn't baseball.  He wasn't sure of the rules.  He drew in
a long breath, then started at the beginning, explaining how he'd
talked to Annie Chambeau on the chance she might know the whereabouts
of Marcus Deppert.

"Marcus Deppert missing?"  The chief looked up from the yellow pad.
"There's no missing person's report."  That led to a side explanation
on how the old people didn't want the police involved, to which Banner
nodded, as if he understood and would have done the same in their
position.  "That boy has a history of getting' himself into trouble. 
No tellin' what he's up to this time."  The chief's ballpoint pen made
little scratchy noises on the pad.

Father John continued.  The white man who had broken into Annie's
apartment Saturday night and ransacked the place had been looking for
Marcus.

Banner stopped writing and resumed tapping the pen on the pad, as if it
were a drum.  "You sayin' there's a connection?  Marcus missing. Victim
murdered."

Father John hesitated a moment.  "Marcus could have been murdered, too.
It could have been his body in the ditch."

The chief shifted forward.  "Couldn't be Marcus.  Ghost is always
opposite of the true person, you know.  This ghost is a hell raiser,
just like Marcus.  It's already caused a lot of trouble.  Six vehicular
accidents never should've happened--hell, one guy rolled his truck in
his own driveway.  Plus, Grandmother Petey slipped in her bathtub and
damn near drowned, and Herman Running Wolf walked into his barn and
dropped through the floor five feet.  Barn floor had been perfectly
good...."  He stopped for a moment and shook his head.  "Ghost that's
walkin' around now was a pussycat in true person."

Father John interrupted before the chief could recount any more ghost
stories.  "Let's suppose the man who forced his way into Annie's
apartment finally found Marcus.  Then who knows what happened?  Marcus
ends up dead, and the man dumps his body into the ditch.  The man then
murders Annie Chambeau before she can identify him."

Banner pursed his lips and squinted in thought.  "Makes sense."

Father John continued, "Suppose further that, after the man dumped
Marcus's body, he had second thoughts and decided to retrieve it. Maybe
he was afraid somebody might spot it, just as I actually did.  So he
was on his way back when I flagged him down."

Banner had swiveled sideways and was staring out the grimy window next
to the desk.  "All this supposes Marcus being dead, which we don't know
for a fact since we don't have a body.  And none of my boys has spotted
any white man driving a gray Chevy pickup on the rez.  Chances are the
guy blew out of here with the blizzard, which means it wasn't him that
murdered the girl."

Father John swallowed hard.  He had to thread his way carefully here.
"I think he's still here.  His name is Gary.  I don't know the last
name.  He and a couple of other white men are staying at Lean Bear's
ranch."

The chief swiveled back square with the desk.  His bushy black eyebrows
shot up.  "That so?  Ben Holden know about that?"

"He rented it to them."  Father John said nothing about Susan.  He
realized his instinct was to protect the girl as long as possible, just
as it was Vicky's.  There would be time for Banner to question her
later, after she felt better.  In the meantime, he could check out the
three men.  Maybe he'd find enough evidence to arrest them without the
girl's help.  He hoped so.  He would sleep a lot easier if Gary were
behind bars.

Banner laid the ballpoint pen across the yellow pad and leaned back,
lacing his hands behind his head.  "You got any evidence that the guy
in the Chevy pickup is the same guy who menaced the victim?"

Father John shook his head.  He had nothing.  Now it was his turn to
stare out the window.  The afternoon sky glinted like steel, and the
wind had started up, flicking a small branch against the window pane.
It made a tick tock sound, like an old clock.  He could be way off
base, in which case he had just implicated an innocent man in murder.
The realization did not sit well on his conscience.

He said, "It's just a hunch.  And there's something else.  I've heard
Marcus took a job driving Jeeps to Denver.  It's possible he could be
somewhere between here and there."  He realized a part of him was
unwilling to close the door on the young man's life.

"New Jeeps?  Used Jeeps?"  The chief started writing again.  "New, I
assume," Father John said.  He should have been more thorough in
gathering information.

"Every gas station in Wyoming has a Jeep or pickup for sale out back.
If Marcus is drivin' used Jeeps, could take us a while to track him
down.  But only a couple of dealers sell 'em new.  The dealer over in
Riverton is pretty small.  Big Phil's place in Lander probably does
most of the business in these parts.  Owned by Phil Beefer.  Remember
him?  He played center for the Denver Nuggets some years back.  Helluva
good man for a white man."  The chief glanced up.  "Sorry.  Sometimes I
forget about you being one of 'em."

Father John absentmindedly waved away the apology.  Phil Beefer's name
rang a faint bell, even though basketball went on around him, out there
somewhere.  Except for the national championships, which he usually
watched so he could discuss them with the kids at St.  Francis.

"Problem is," Banner was saying, "I can follow up leads on the rez,
check with the Depperts and Marcus's friends about his activities.  But
Lander isn't my turf.  Lander PD is handling the homicide
investigation. All I can do is give Detective Loomis this info."  The
chief stopped a moment, as if to underline the next point.  "If Loomis
agrees there's some connection between Annie Chambeau's homicide and
Marcus Deppert's disappearance, he'll make inquiries."

"And if not, he won't spend a lot of time looking for a missing
Indian?"

"Yep."

The tick-tock of the branch and the sound of a ringing telephone down
the corridor punctuated the quiet.  "There's nothing to keep me from
talking to the Jeep dealers," Father John said.

"I can't officially instruct you to do that.  "Course, if you do it on
your own, nothing I can do about it."  Banner grinned, as if they had
reached some kind of understanding.  Then, "Lean Bear's ranch is on my
turf.  I'll send a couple of my boys up the canyon to talk to this Gary
fellow.  You never know."  The chief shrugged.  "Your hunch could be
right."

Placing both hands on the arms of his chair, Banner leveraged himself
to his feet.  "I haven't had lunch yet today.  How about you?"

Father John had ignored the hollowness in his stomach all morning.  All
he'd had today was the cup of instant coffee in Vicky's kitchen.  "Name
the place," he said.

"Lana's."  Banner picked up the phone and tapped the buttons.  "Mind if
Patrick comes along?  I been wantin' you to talk to him."  < 19

Father John wasn't sure how it was that Banner arrived at the cafe
first.  The chief hadn't left the building before Father John drove out
of the parking lot.  Yet there was the white police car with the gold
BIA insignia on the front door parked in front of Lana's cafe as he
drove up the snow-rutted driveway.  The cafe, a one-story brick square,
nestled against the foothills on a bluff overlooking the white plains.
Dark skeletons of cottonwoods stood out against the horizon, and black
smoke curled from the chimneys of the ranch houses in the distance. The
afternoon sun hovered over the mountains, gripping the parking lot in
frigid shade.

The neon sign over the door spelled lana's in bright fluorescent green.
Father John stepped inside.  The smells of grease and fresh apple pie
enveloped him.  He waved to Turner, perched behind the counter.  Lana
cooked and waited tables; her husband collected the money and joked
with the tourists traveling through Indian country.  What's it like
being half of a movie star?  Better'n not being' none.  How come you
looked so glamorous up there on the screen?  Natural-born good looks.
Father John walked past the vacant booths along one wall, the tables
piled with dirty dishes.  Four men were still at lunch in one booth,
and behind them Art Banner sat across from a surly-looking young
Indian with black hair, green eyes, and a lighter complexion than that
of most Indians on the reservation.

"You remember Patrick here?"  Banner asked as Father John deposited his
parka and cowboy hat on a nearby coatrack and slid into the booth
beside him.

"Welcome home, Patrick."  Father John extended his hand toward the kid,
who looked about twenty-two years old.  He'd met Patrick once before,
when he'd been home on leave from the army.  His hair had been cropped
close to his skull then.  Now it hung almost to his shoulders.  Silver
earrings dangled from each ear, and a beaded medallion hung from a cord
around his neck.  He was wearing a black T-shirt with the sleeves
rolled up.

"Yeah," Patrick said.  "Like warriors get a real big welcome around
here."

"Our People honor warriors.  It's our tradition," Banner said, his tone
a mixture of patience and exasperation.

Lana appeared at the end of the table.  She was short and pear-shaped,
with white frizzy hair.  "What's this?  Some kind of special occasion?
Police chief, returning warrior, and pastor all at the same table?  I
think I'm gonna faint with excitement."

"Before you do, bring us three of your world-famous hamburgers and a
pot of coffee," Banner said.

"I got three pieces of famous apple pie, too."  Lowering her voice and
glancing toward the adjoining booth, Lana said, "You want I should save
'em for you?"

"Well, somebody's got to eat 'em, I guess."  Banner laughed.  Then, as
Lana walked away, he added, "That okay with you guys?"

"We don't get much choice, do we?"  Patrick shifted in his seat, as if
to locate the perfect position for the next volley.

Father John jumped in.  "Tell me, Patrick.  How'd an Indian kid like
you get saddled with an Irish name?"

Before the young man could answer, Banner said, "His great-grandfather
gave it to him.  Hell, we didn't even know Helen was expectin'.  One
day she was washin' clothes.  You remember that big scrub board your
mother used to set in the sink and wash the clothes on?"  Banner
glanced at his son, then turned back to Father John.  "She was
scrubbin' away when, all of a sudden, her great-grandfather, Patrick
O'Riley, was standin' in the kitchen.  Dead thirty years or more, he
was.  So he says he sure would be obliged if she named the child after
him."  Banner regarded his son again.  "Good thing you turned out to be
a boy."

Patrick rolled his eyes and gazed at the ceiling, as if he'd heard the
story so many times it had taken on a life of its own separate from
his.

"Arapahos aren't the only people that got ghost walkers."  Banner
laughed and nudged Father John's arm.

Father John shot the chief a look of mock surprise.  He couldn't deny
it.  As Lana delivered the hamburgers and coffee, his memory slipped to
the long-ago night his Uncle Daniel came to him in a dream, tall and
handsome, a black Irishman with black hair and laughing blue eyes, not
a responsible bone in his body, and an endless supply of funny stories
and songs.  Uncle Daniel could make the sun dance a jig.  He was
dressed in white--suit, hat, shoes, a white coat neatly folded over one
arm as if he were about to embark on a cruise.  He had come to say
good-bye.  Father John was ten years old.  He sprang awake, jumped out
of the foldaway bed in the living room he shared with his older
brother, Mike, and padded down the hallway to his parents' bedroom.
His father's head was nestled against his mother's shoulder.  He
tapped his mother gently.  "Uncle Daniel's dead."

Both parents sat straight up in bed.  "What're you talkin' about, boy?"
his father said.

Thinking about it now, it was what his parents didn't say that seemed
odd.  They didn't say, "That's silly, ridiculous, irrational.  Go back
to sleep."  They got up and sat in the living room, his mother wrapped
in a flower-printed robe, his father's white legs visible beneath his
flannel robe.  When the phone rang, his mother said, "Well, that's it,
then."

No, Father John couldn't deny his people's ghosts.  He had never been
convinced that everything could be explained.  He picked up the large
hamburger in both hands and bit into it.  It was juicy and delicious
and made him realize how hungry he was.  The young man kept his eyes
down, working his way through his hamburger and ignoring both his
father and Father John.  Banner was right.  It wouldn't be easy for
Patrick to make the transition back to the reservation.  He recalled
what Vicky had once said.  "It's hard to be one of the edge people." He
understood because he also dwelled in the edge space.

"Any job prospects?"  Father John asked.  He was afraid he already knew
the answer, but he hoped something might have turned up.

Patrick shook his head, eyes still downcast.  "Maybe in the spring. BIA
police say they'll have a couple openings."

"He'd be a good cop," Banner said, as if the young man weren't sitting
across from them, silently chewing a hamburger and washing it down with
coffee.  "Trouble is, he doesn't want to take something 'til then."

"He thinks I should be a waiter over in Riverton."  Patrick rolled his
eyes again.

"Oh, yeah, I keep forgetting," Banner said.  "Being a waiter isn't
dignified enough for warriors and basketball stars.  So you're just
gonna sit around 'til spring, contemplating your warrior exploits and
all the basketballs you dunked back in high school."

Father John set the rest of his hamburger down on the plate.  Here it
was, a little miracle.  He'd forgotten Patrick Banner had played
basketball for Indian High School during the long run when the Indian
kids had shellacked every basketball team in the state.  He'd been an
all-star senior the first year Father John had spent at St.  Francis,
but he didn't know Banner or his son then.

He wanted to grab the kid and haul him over to St.  Francis right away.
He took a long sip of coffee, weighing his options.  Patrick needed
something to do until spring.  The kids needed a basketball coach.  But
he had no idea how he'd come up with the money to heat the gym and pay
a coach.  And who knew whether St.  Francis would still exist come
spring?

"Look, Patrick," he said, plunging in anyway, "what would you think
about coaching some kids over at St.  Francis every day after
school?"

"You kidding me?"  For the first time, Patrick's face broke into a
grin.

The wind sent little puffs of snow scudding over the highway ahead.
Orange and scarlet clouds floated across the western sky and dipped
around the white peaks of the mountains.  It was midafternoon, but
there was the hint of dusk coming on.  Father John was thinking it
would take a large miracle to make the school's basketball team happen.
Those two clowns--Nick Sheldon and Clifford Keating--had set the wheels
in motion to close down the mission.  Make that four clowns counting
the bishop and the Provincial.  And he had been so busy the last couple
of days, he hadn't gotten out to Thomas Spotted Horse's ranch yet to
find out if the elders might call a general council so the people could
vote on whether to close St.  Francis mission.

He swung right onto Plunkett Road, the two-lane trail cut by the people
in the Old Time that uncoiled across the top of a ridge like a
rattlesnake, snow banked in the ditches.  As he started into an easy
curve, he glanced at the rearview mirror.  The green Dodge truck was
coming up fast again.  < 20 >

The truck was on his rear bumper.  Father John stomped on the gas pedal
as he rounded the curve.  The engine shuddered, and snow blew back
alongside the cab.  He didn't want to lose control, not with the
snow-drifted ditches falling away on both sides.  They were the only
vehicles on the road.  This was no drunk behind him.  This was somebody
who, cold sober, wanted to see him in the ditch.

The truck was still there as Father John fishtailed onto Seventeen-Mile
Road.  He saw the truck make the turn and start to gain on him.  It
looked like the same driver he'd seen behind the wheel the first time:
aviator glasses, hat pulled down on the forehead.  He still couldn't
tell if it was a man or a woman.

Another truck appeared in the distance behind, and Father John let up a
little on the accelerator.  Aviator glasses wouldn't put him in the
ditch with a witness close by.  The truck also slowed, keeping the same
distance behind.  They passed Givens Road, Arapaho Road, Blue Cloud
Road.  The sign for St.  Francis Mission loomed ahead.  Suddenly the
truck was coming fast, the grille gleaming in the mirror.  Just as
Father John began to turn onto Circle Drive, he felt a hard thump and
heard a long scratching noise as his head whipped backward.  He
skidded to a stop in a flurry of snow and jumped out.  The Dodge truck
flashed past the spiky cottonwoods lining Seventeen-Mile Road.

Father John inspected the Toyota's tailgate.  It looked as if it had
caught a fast pitch from a concrete ball.  The left side was punched in
and smeared with green paint.  The top of the T was gone.  He took off
his hat and ran his hand through his hair.  This didn't make sense.  If
Aviator Glasses had wanted to run him into the ditch, he could have
done so on Plunkett Road.  Why had he followed him to the mission
turnoff and rammed the Toyota just enough to dent it?  A warning?  Is
that what the driver had delivered?  A warning against what?

He got back into the cab, uneasiness gripping him.  His neck felt as if
it were locked in a vise.  He was grateful the Dodge hadn't run him off
the road.  The Toyota wrecked .. . the idea made him shudder.

He parked in front of the administration building and climbed the
cement steps, part of which showed patches of snow.  He made a mental
note to ask Leonard, the caretaker, to take another swipe at them.  The
details of running the mission, he realized, were getting away from
him.

Inside, the dim light from the ancient glass fixtures along the ceiling
washed over the corridor, illuminating the portraits of the Jesuits of
St.  Francis past that lined the walls.  A mixture of kindliness and
cruelty, generosity and greed, all the human conundrums, shone out from
eyes framed by little round glasses.  A musty odor mingled with a faint
smell, like that of burning oil, and the soft hum of the furnace in the
basement seeped up through the wood floor.  From further down the
corridor came the tap-tap tap sounds of Father Peter at his old
Smith-Corona typewriter.  Before Father John could hang up his parka in
his of The Ghost Walker 139

fice, the tapping stopped, and the old priest stood in the doorway.
"The messages accumulate throughout the day.  "Double, double, toil and
trouble .. .""

Father John threw up both hands, palms outward, in the Arapaho sign of
peace.  "Any word from the Provincial?"  he asked, taking his chair.
Stacks of papers, unopened mail, and messages toppled across the
desk.

"The Provincial?"  Surprise crossed Father Peter's face.  "You expected
a call?  Well, it would be welcome evidence he is aware of St.  Francis
Mission."

"He's aware, all right," Father John said.  "He's about to confine it
to the Jesuit archives.  Students will research how once upon a time
the Society of Jesus worked with the Arapahos.  Some enterprising young
seminarian will probably write a dissertation."

The old man slumped against the doorjamb.  ""Can such things be, and
overcome us like a summer's cloud, without our special wonder?""

Father John was thumbing through the stack of telephone messages.  He
stopped at one with Urgent scribbled across the top in Father Peter's
wobbly handwriting.  "Nick Sheldon called?"

"Further bad news, I fear.  He was quite annoyed not to find you in
your office.  I believe his exact words were you should call him
immediately."

"If not sooner," Father John said, flipping through the rest of the
stack.  Another message caught his attention.  "Thomas Spotted Horse
came by?"

Father Peter stared at him, remembrance in his eyes.  "We're old
friends, you know, so naturally I thought he'd come to see me. However,
it was you he wanted to see.  Disappointed you weren't here. Thomas
wonders if you might find time to stop out at the ranch tomorrow.  You
know the humble and polite way of the Arapahos.

Never would he say it was urgent, but if he drove all the way over
here in that old truck of his when he can hardly see through those
thick glasses, well, I would suggest to you it is urgent."

Father John set the message to one side.  "Did Vicky Holden call?"
There was nothing to indicate she had.

The old priest shook his head and stepped back into the corridor.  Then
he reappeared around the doorjamb.  "You haven't forgotten about the
meetings tonight?"  "No," Father John said, although he had.

"I intend to take the liturgy committee," Father Peter said as he
started down the corridor.  The old floor creaked under his steps.

That left Father John with the two other meetings jotted on his
calendar: the high school religious instruction committee and AA.  He
didn't want to miss either.  He saw himself darting between the meeting
rooms at Eagle Hall, a juggler with two glass balls in the air, both of
which would shatter if he didn't do something to save St.  Francis.

Sighing, he lifted the receiver and punched in Vicky's office number.
The secretary informed him crisply that Ms.  Holden was out.  She
couldn't say when she might return.  She hoped it would be soon since
the pile of work, the depositions, the clients were waiting.  Father
John broke off the conversation, wondering what it was about his voice
that inspired these uninvited confidences.  Pushing back the cuff of
his flannel shirt, he checked his watch.  He had a little more than two
hours before the meetings got underway.  < 21 >

The elevator bell rang into the hospital silence.  Father

John stepped between the parting doors onto the third floor of the
hospital.  Light from the recessed ceiling fixtures gleamed on the
turquoise vinyl floor, and odors of disinfectant and floor polish
wafted toward him as he started down the corridor.  From somewhere came
the clanking sound of a dinner trolley, but no one was in sight.  Even
the nurses' station ahead was empty.

A couple of computer screens on the low counter blinked into the
void.

The door across from the station opened, and Vicky slipped past.
Keeping one hand on the knob, she closed the door silently behind her.
She looked like a teenager in the bulky red sweater and blue jeans. Her
black hair shone almost silver under the light.  Surprise crossed her
face as she turned toward Father John.  "Susan's sleeping," she
whispered.

"How is she?"

"She has some tough days ahead.  If we hadn't brought her in ..." Vicky
lowered her face into her hands, and for a moment he thought she was
going to cry.

He stepped toward her and placed one hand on her shoulder to reassure
her.  "Susan's going to be okay now," he said.

Vicky looked up and stared at him a moment as if willing herself to
believe what he had just said.  Then she slipped one hand into the
front pocket of her jeans and withdrew a folded piece of white paper.
"Hoho'u h:3tone'3en," she said, handing it to him.  "I am thanking
you."

"What's this?"

"I had some time while they got Susan settled in the room.  I called my
law school friend.  That's the unofficial version of why Eden Light
foot left the Cheyenne Agency and is now conferring the Harvard method
of economic development upon us.  You are up against one smart Indian,
educated in one of your best schools."

Father John unfolded the paper.  It was filled with lines of clear,
precise penmanship, the kind some scholarly old Jesuit had insisted
upon thirty years ago at the St.  Francis school.  "All t's crossed and
z's dotted."  He slipped the paper past his parka and into his shirt
pocket.  He would study it later.

"As for the 7. Group,"--Vicky gave her shoulders a little
shrug--"zilch."

"What do you mean?"

"I had Ginger call the California Secretary of State's office.  The Z
Group is listed as an assumed name under which a partnership called the
Paulson Company does business in California."

"Who owns the Paulson Company?"  Father John felt the sense of
excitement of the researcher about to close in on a critical piece of
information.

"That's just it," Vicky said.  "The state has no record of any company
with that name.  End of paper trail."

He leaned against the wall.  Nothing but shadows,
specters--ghosts--everywhere he turned.  "How can that be?"

"A couple of reasons," Vicky said, locked in her lawyer tone now. "The
company may simply have failed to file the correct documents, or they
could be lost in the computer.  The clerk promised to check further and
get back to us."

"In the meantime, we know nothing about Nick Sheldon's client."

"Not true," Vicky said.  "We know it is a development company capable
of building anywhere, simply by the fact it selected this area.  We
know the people have done their homework--drawn up all the graphs and
charts, put all the numbers through a dance.  They can probably project
profits over the next couple of decades down to a few dollars.  Profits
are what count for them--we know that."

Father John stared past her down the quiet corridor a moment.  Enough
profits, he wondered, to try to scare him away from interfering with
their plans?

"More bad news, I'm afraid," Vicky said after a moment.  "I talked with
two members of the business council.  In the last couple of days, Eden
Light foot has met personally with each member to explain the Z Group's
proposal.  Lobbying, I'd call it.  Anyway, the council is pretty
excited about the recreation center.  My friends say--" She stopped,
worry in her eyes.  "It looks like a go."

Father John blew out a puff of air.  She had confirmed his worst fears:
a major development company with the financial resources,
determination, and political savvy to put St.  Francis out of business.
It was bad news, all right, and he hadn't yet gotten to the bad news
he'd come to tell her.  "Vicky," he said, "there's something else we
have to talk about."

They sat at a square table in the far corner of the hospital cafeteria
under fluorescent bulbs that flooded the tables with a white light.
Except for another couple, heads together, whispering, at a table
across the room, they were the only ones there.  A muffled shout from
the kitchen, the clank-clank sound of dishes, the swish of double steel
doors opening and closing sounded through the almost empty space.  It
smelled of onions and chicken broth.

Father John crumpled some saltines into his bowl of chicken soup, the
way his father had always done.  Vicky was sipping at hers.  The time
was not yet right to talk.  After a moment she set her spoon down.
"Does this have to do with the white men at the ranch?"

"It's possible."  Father John kept his eyes on hers.  "A girl named
Annie Chambeau, Marcus Deppert's old girlfriend, was murdered last
night."

Vicky leaned back against the metal chair.  "I overheard the emergency
room nurses talking about a gunshot victim."  She shook her head.  "The
poor girl.  There aren't many Chambeaus left.  Just her grandmother.
She was Maisie Birdsong.  She married Alfred Chambeau, the grandson of
Charles Chambeau, one of the French traders in the Old Time."  Vicky
paused.  "Sorry.  You don't want to hear another Arapaho genealogy."

Father John smiled.  Arapahos were connected through the years, through
the generations, their identities woven by strong, invisible ties.

"What does the girl's murder have to do with ..."  Vicky paused, as if
she'd answered her own question.  She looked stricken.

He hurried to remind her about the body in the ditch, Gary near
Rendezvous Road.  The white man who went to Annie Chambeau's looking
for Marcus.  It could all be connected.

Vicky was shaking her head, and Father John saw the resistance in her
eyes.  His theory led to Susan, to the possibility Susan could be
involved.  How could she accept such a theory?  "Do you know for a fact
it was Gary who went to the girl's apartment?  Did she tell you?  What
proof is there Marcus Deppert has been murdered or that the body was
his?  What proof do you have of any connection between the body and the
murdered girl?"

Silence filtered into the space between them.  He had no proof.  After
a moment he said, "I hope I'm wrong.  But if I'm right, you and Susan
are in danger.  Gary has already threatened you.  When Susan is
released tomorrow, you can take her to the guest house at St.  Francis.
I'll leave the key under the rock by the front door and have Elena lay
in some food--"

"John," Vicky interrupted, impatience in her voice.  "Gary didn't want
Susan to leave the ranch.  Now it's a moot point.  She's gone, and
there's nothing he can do about it.  Besides, I'm hoping Susan is
scared enough to agree to go into treatment tomorrow."

Father John reached into his parka pocket and brought out his small
spiral notebook and ballpoint pen.  "One of my friends--a former
Jesuit--runs a drug treatment center in Denver," he said, scribbling on
the paper.  "This is his number."  He tore off the sheet and handed it
to her.  "It's best you both leave the area until Banner can put
together enough evidence to arrest Gary."

"What?"  Vicky let the sheet of paper flutter onto the table.  "What
are you saying?  Have you already passed this bizarre theory on to
Banner?"

He was surprised at the anger in her voice.  "A girl has been murdered,
Vicky.  A young man is missing."

The chair screeched against the floor as she got to her feet and leaned
over the table toward him.  "Oh, I concede these men are probably here
to deal drugs.  Maybe they're involved in murder, I don't know. And
neither does Susan.  She is not involved."

Keeping his tone calm, rational, Father John said, "She may know
something that could help the police."

"No."  It was like a slap.  "Don't you understand how sick she is?  She
almost overdosed last night.  She could have died.  She can't handle a
police investigation right now."  Vicky straightened herself.  "I
thought you were on my side.  I thought you cared about me and Susan,
but obviously I was wrong," she said, slamming the chair into the table
and wheeling around.

He watched her cross the cafeteria, dodging the rows of empty tables
and brushing past the doorway.  He was still watching as she
disappeared into the elevator.  Then he got slowly to his feet,
relieved to see she had taken the paper with the Denver number.

He drove north on Rendezvous Road through the silver glow of evening.
It might snow again tonight; the air felt heavy.  In his mind he
replayed their conversation.  Why hadn't he seen the raw emotional
space he had blundered into?  He knew the force of her love for
Susan--charged with guilt and regret and sadness.  Why hadn't he
handled things differently?  He had wanted to warn Vicky, to protect
her, but somehow he had succeeded only in pushing her away.  It had
happened so easily he was shocked.

At least she had taken the note he'd scribbled.  If she wouldn't go to
the guest house, maybe she would take Susan to Denver.  As long as Gary
was free they were in danger; he felt sure of it.

He glanced at his watch.  The religious education meeting would be
winding up soon, but the AA meeting would go on for a while.  He would
be late.  It seemed to be a recurring theme in his life--missing
appointments, showing up late--like the motif of an aria.

As he slowed the Toyota around Circle Drive, Father John saw the
commotion in front of the priests' residence.  He pulled in beside two
vans with channel 7 cheyenne emblazoned on the sides.  What looked like
a tripod stood on the sidewalk, spindly black legs under a gigantic
spotlight.  Snow fluttered into the white light.  Father Peter, hands
bunched in the pockets of his black coat, stood in the circle of light
while two men trained boxlike cameras on him and a woman shoved a
microphone in his face.

Father John swung out of the cab.  Suddenly he was in the circle of
light himself, a silvery object now waving in his face, a woman walking
toward him.  "Here's the pastor now.  Tell us, Father O'Malley, how
does it feel to be the last pastor of St.  Francis Mission?"  < 22 >

The woman moved closer, looking at Father John expectantly.  She was
bundled in a black fur coat, but her head was bare.  She raised a
gloved hand and brushed the snowflakes from her eyes and cheeks.  Snow
clung to her short blond hair.  Father John recognized her as the
anchorwoman on the ten o'clock news, where, he suspected, St.  Francis
Mission was about to become tonight's lead story.

"No comment," he said, hurrying past her up the sidewalk toward Father
Peter.  He took the old man's arm and gently turned him toward the
front steps.

"Is it true you oppose the creation of jobs on Wind River Reservation?"
The voice was shrill as the anchorwoman saw her story about to
disappear into the priests' residence.  "Father O'Malley, can you
explain to our viewing audience why you would stand in the way of jobs
for the Indians?"

He was in a surreal world, caught in blinding light with blackness
beyond, searching his pockets for the front door key.  Father Peter
waited on the step below, a shadow at the edge of the light as Father
John fingered the key and jammed it into the keyhole.

"Could it be you are only protecting your own job, Father O'Malley?
Isn't it true that, given your back ground, it would be difficult for
your order, the Society of Jesus, to place you elsewhere?"

"That is an egregious calumny," the old priest shouted.

Turning around, Father John saw the confusion and discomfort in the
young woman's face.  She started to speak, faltered.  "Could you
explain for our viewing audience?"

"I'll explain for you," said Father Peter impatiently, as if
reprimanding a particularly dim student.  "It's a damn lie."

The young woman blinked.  "I beg your pardon, Father, but--"

The old priest cut her off.  "Father O'Malley is a highly trained
historian.  He would be in demand at any of the fine educational
establishments the Society of Jesus operates.  He would have his choice
of positions as chief executive at any of the Society's missions around
the world.  Choice of positions, young lady."

"Isn't it true Father O'Malley is an alcoholic?"  Panic tinged the
young woman's voice.

Father John heard Father Peter draw in his breath, as he took the old
man's elbow again and ushered him to the top step.  Then Father John
turned back to the anchorwoman.  "I am a recovering alcoholic," he
said.

The old priest jerked his arm away and squared his shoulders.  "As are
many of your colleagues, young lady.  Perhaps some of your friends.
Perhaps members of your family."

The woman gasped.  A stricken look came over her face as if she had
been personally insulted and wasn't sure how to respond.  Gently and
firmly Father John steered the old priest into the front hall and
closed the door behind them.  "Thanks for the vote of confidence," he
said, helping Father Peter out of his long coat.

The sounds of car doors banging, metal clanking against metal, and
engines turning over filtered inside as Father John hung the coat and
his own parka on the rack.  Then he followed the old man into the study
and slumped into the worn leather chair behind his desk.

Father Peter had taken one of the blue wingback chairs on the other
side.  In a voice still trembling with emotion, he said, "We are up
against street fighters, my boy."

Father John smiled at him.  He'd always felt he could fight his own
battles, and it had been a long time since anyone had stepped up to the
bat for him.  "What questions did she ask before I got here?"

"Questions that beg the issue.  A common tactic when one's premise is
fallacious."  Father Peter rested his head against the chair and closed
his eyes a moment.  There were moments when he seemed very ancient.

"And what did you tell her?"

"Macbeth.  Act five, scene five.  "Blow Wind!  Come, wrack!  At least
we'll die with harness on our back."  The Bard never fails me."

"You quoted Shakespeare to them?"  Father John threw his head back and
laughed.  The old man was beautiful.  Then it hit him: All of Wyoming
was about to get a good look at the priests of St.  Francis Mission,
one in his dotage, the other a selfish, alcoholic obstructionist.

A gurgling pipe somewhere, air swishing through a vent--the sounds
floated through the silence in the house.  Father John thought the old
man had fallen asleep.  Suddenly Father Peter's head jerked forward,
his eyes opened.  He looked startled.

"I find it interesting," Father John began, testing his own thoughts
out loud.  "The plan to sell the mission has been kept top secret.  Not
a word leaked onto the moccasin telegraph.  Yet now it's about to be
announced on the ten o'clock news."

"They have made the first strike, my boy, before you could develop any
opposition.  The Provincial also hopes to obtain your acquiescence by
bringing public pressure to bear.  Certainly he may sell the mission
without your blessing, but it would look as if he were abandoning the
people here.  It would be what is known today as a public relations
disaster."

Father John swiveled around and stared out the window at the falling
snow.  Pale moonlight glinted on the glass.  Clever, he thought. People
across the state would support anything that promised jobs on the
reservation.  Even the Arapahos might choose jobs over St.  Francis. He
pulled the yellow paper out of his shirt pocket and unfolded it. The
neat, precise handwriting gave him a start.  They had still been
friends, he and Vicky, when she'd gotten this information for him.  The
information was elliptical: Eden Light foot; Harvard MBA; brought four
companies to Cheyenne Agency; rumors of commissions from companies; no
proof, but left agency under cloud; investigation pending.

Father John laid the paper on the desk.  It didn't surprise him.  He'd
already guessed Nick Sheldon had the economic development director in
his pocket.  "Tomorrow I'll drive out to see Thomas Spotted Horse," he
said.

""Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow .. ."" The old priest got to his
feet.  It was a kind of unfolding: First his head rose, then his back,
then his legs.  "Tonight we must attend our meetings."

Father John checked his watch again.  The religious education meeting
had ended, but AA was probably still going on.  He lifted himself out
of the leather chair.  It was beginning to feel like a charade, going
through the ordinary routines of St.  Francis as if the mission would
exist forever.

The AA meeting was almost over when he slipped past the door into the
small room in Eagle Hall.  Ten or twelve people, a mix of men and
women, occupied the folding chairs arranged in a circle.  He saw a
couple of new faces.  Every week brought changes.  People recovering
for years fell off the wagon and no longer came to the meetings; people
who had been drunk for years decided to climb on the wagon and join AA.
His thoughts went to Annie Chambeau.  What would she have done had she
lived?

He helped himself to a cup of coffee from the metal pot on a side table
then took a vacant chair.  The others smiled at him before turning
their attention back to Clarence Little Bear, who sat forward on the
edge of his chair, elbows dug into his knees.  "I was like the body on
Rendezvous Road," he was saying.  "Hell, I was like the ghost wanderin'
around, not knowin' where I was goin', only I was still alive.  Barely
alive," he added, emitting a short laugh.  " "Til I come here to the
mission, I didn't think there was no hope for me."

"Yeah."  Another man spoke up.  "Every time I drove down Seventeen-Mile
Road and seen the church tower through the trees, I'd think this ain't
no good for me or the family.  I gotta do better.  So one day I pulled
in to the mission and took the pledge."

Father John sipped at his coffee as the testimonials went on.  The
words varied, but the meaning was the same.  Here at St.  Francis, they
had found hope.  Dear God, he prayed silently, help me to find the way
to help the mission.  < 23 >

His boots scattered the snow as Father John walked along Circle Drive.
The powder rose light as air, then settled into little piles.  Tiny
flakes floated downward, spaced far apart, like miniature white birds
circling a nest.  The sky was lighter in the east where the sun glowed
behind the clouds.  The east: one of the four sacred directions, the
symbol of hope.  Despite the beauty around him, he didn't feel hopeful.
Everything was spiraling downward.  The murdered girl.  Marcus missing.
Vicky angry at him.  The mission about to pass into history.  He
couldn't shake the feeling he had let them all down.

A stream of pickups pulled into the parking lot behind the elementary
school, and Father John followed, spotting Loretta about to enter the
back door.  He called out, and the woman turned around, shoulders
slouched.  She dropped the mesh bag she was carrying.  It crumpled in
the snow at her feet.  She was bundled in a long gray coat with a red
scarf wrapped around her head, covering part of her face.  For a moment
he wasn't sure he'd hailed the right person.

"I'm still looking for Marcus Deppert," Father John said when he
reached her.

Annoyance and disapproval flashed in the woman's eyes.  "I told you,
Father, me and Rich don't know nothin' about Marcus Deppert.  He was
nothin' but trouble for my boy.  Rich is a lot better off now that he
broke with him."

"Is Rich back from his trip?"

"Tomorrow," she said hurriedly.  "He'll be home tomorrow for sure."

"You've heard from him, then?"

Loretta's eyes followed a couple of pickups pulling into the parking
lot.  "Not exactly.  He said he'd be home Saturday, but he didn't show
up last weekend, so I figured he must've meant this comin' Saturday.  I
was the one confused, is all.  He'll be here day after tomorrow."

"Ask him to get in touch with me, will you?"

"Father, I told you a hundred times now--"

"Please, Loretta," Father John interrupted.  "It's very important."

The woman shrugged and started toward the door, dragging the mesh bag
along the snow.  It made a soft, squishy noise.

"Are you okay, Loretta?"  Father John asked.

She looked back.  "Soon's they get that body buried proper like, I'll
be okay.  Ghost comes every night and wakes me up.  It can be calm
everywhere, but out back in the field, it's blowin' like fury, 'cause
ghost's there.  I went over and talked to my grandfather yesterday.
He's gonna come out and bless the field this weekend, maybe give ghost
some peace 'til they find his body.  You oughtta come out and bless the
field, too."

"Good idea," he said.  The earth was sacred; all created things were
sacred.  What harm could there be in standing in the middle of a field
to acknowledge the sacredness and give thanks to the Creator?  Besides,
saying a few prayers and sprinkling holy water around might give the
poor woman some peace.

The Ghost Walker 155

After trekking back along Circle Drive to the administration building,
Father John spent some time at his desk, which overflowed with notes of
calls to return, meetings to arrange, and letters to answer.  One of
the religious ed teachers had taken a job at the Holiday Inn in
Riverton, which meant Father John had to find someone else to teach the
tenth-grade religion class this evening.  Within a few phone calls he
had found a replacement.  The generosity of Arapahos always amazed him.
They gave what they had.  Usually all they had was time.

He returned two calls, both of which turned out to be from Arapahos
wanting to know if St.  Francis was really closing.  Then he stacked
the rest into a pile and set it aside.  What could he tell people? Yes,
it's true, unless a miracle happens?  Pray for a miracle?

He punched in the numbers of the law enforcement center.  Within
seconds, Banner was on the line.  "Just about to call you," he said.
"My boys paid a visit to Lean Bear's ranch yesterday.  Made contact
with three whites: Gary Rollins, Ty Jones, and Morrissey Porter field."
It sounded as if the line had gone dead.  Then Banner's voice again.
"And white people think Indians have funny names.  Anyway, looks like
we got some weirdos wanna play Indian on the rez.  No crime in being
weird."

"What about Annie Chambeau?"

"Said they never heard of her.  Gary Rollins swore up and down he
wasn't anywhere near Rendezvous Road last Sunday night when you say he
gave you a ride.  The other two back him up.  Claim they were all at
the ranch watching TV."

"You believe that?"

"Hell, no, I wouldn't believe 'em if they told me my own name.  Trouble
is, we don't have proof they're up to anything.  Just a feeling in the
gut.  Another thing, John.  My boys didn't see any sign of drugs.
"Course, we'd need a warrant to search the place, but we need some
evidence to get a warrant."

Susan might be able to provide it, Father John thought.  If she would.
If her mother were willing to entertain the idea.  He had to try
talking to Vicky again.  He said, "What now?"

"All we can do is keep an eye on the weirdos.  I passed our report on
to Loomis at the Lander PD.  He's gonna interview Gary Rollins based on
your belief he's the guy that threatened the Chambeau woman."

The Chambeau woman.  At least she had been upgraded from victim-object
to human being.  Father John replaced the receiver, a heaviness
weighing on him.  Now Gary knew the police were suspicious.  The next
move would be his.  What would it be?  To make sure no one could tie
him to Annie Chambeau?  To make sure Susan Holden didn't talk to the
police?

The ringing phone startled him out of his thoughts.  It was Nick
Sheldon.  Father John detected the imperious tone of a man used to
being obeyed even before the lawyer identified himself.  "I've been
trying to reach you, Father O'Malley.  I have something you will want
to see.  Are you free this afternoon?"

"I can be."

"One-thirty, then," said the lawyer.

Father John jotted down the address.  It was in a residential
neighborhood in Lander.  The vultures, he thought, are circling for the
kill.  Next to call him would probably be the Provincial.  He decided
to leave before the phone rang again.

Grabbing his parka off the coatrack, he strode down the corridor and
looked in on Father Peter's office.  The old man was slumped in the
chair at his desk, softly snoring.  He let him sleep.  < 24 >

Hhead of him the Wind River Mountains shouldered into the clouds, their
great blocks of granite, their ponderosas and lodgepole pines swept
with white powder.  Snow was falling lightly over Seventeen-Mile Road.
He would miss this sacred space, the Middle Earth, a gift to the
Arapaho people from Shining Man Above.

Father John turned onto a narrow road and headed north alongside the
mountains for several miles, snow glancing off the Toyota's hood.  Just
as the road veered west, he swung into the drive to Thomas Spotted
Horse's ranch.  The white, two-story house and the unpainted barn stood
among a cluster of cottonwoods, like the tip is in the Old Time.  He
parked in the wide clearing between the barn and the house and walked
around to the front.  Wind whistled thrbugh the leafless branches as he
rapped on the door.

From inside he heard a scraping sound.  Then the door swung open, and
Mardell Spotted Horse stood in front of him.  She was somewhere in her
seventies, in a blue dress with a yellow apron tied around her wide
waist, with black oxfords and brown stockings rolled at her ankles. 
Her gray hair was parted in the middle and braided into two ropes that
hung over her ample bosom.

"I knew you'd be along, Father," she said.  "So I baked up a batch of
cinnamon rolls.  Come on in.  You and me and the old man gotta eat
'em."

Removing his cowboy hat, Father John stepped into the living room
filled with the moist, sweet odors of a bakery.

"How'd you know I like cinnamon rolls?"

""Cause you're a man."  Mardell led the way past the sofa with a star
quilt spread over the cushions, the twin easy chairs, the television on
a wood table.  He set his hat on top of the television and followed the
old woman into the kitchen.

She pulled a chair away from a round oak table.  "Sit here," she
instructed.  "You looked mighty handsome on television last night.  And
Father Peter talkin' his gibberish sure got those white people confused
before you showed up.  We was lovin' it."  The old woman let out a
hearty laugh.  Then a kind of sadness came over her, like a curtain
slowly falling.  "It's a no-good thing, this closing down St.
Francis."

He hung his parka over the back of the chair and took his seat.
Cabinets ringed the walls, and the counters overflowed with bowls and
spoons, jars of flour and sugar.  A percolator sat on the stove.  Over
the sink, a block of windows faced the barn and the back fields.  He
guessed that the door a few feet from the sink led onto a porch.

Mardell was at the window.  "Here comes the old man now.  Must've heard
your truck."  She gave a little shake of her head.  "Much slower and
he's gonna be walkin' backwards."

They heard the loud bang of an outside door closing, followed by a
clumping noise on the porch.  Then the kitchen door opened, and Thomas
Spotted Horse came in leaning on a wooden cane.  He stood six feet
tall, weighed probably three hundred pounds, and wore blue jeans, a
tan canvas jacket, and a black knit cap.  He hooked the cane on the
counter then yanked off the cap and turned toward Father John.  The old
man's eyes bulged behind his thick glasses.

Father John got to his feet in a gesture of respect.  Thomas belonged
to the Big Lodge People, those entrusted to care for the sacred
objects, including the sacred pipe.  They were the most revered people
of the Arapahos.  "How are you, Grandfather?"

"Ah, be:hi':hehi':nino.  I am an old man.  But for a three-legged, I am
excellent."  Thomas shuffled across the kitchen and sat down heavily in
the chair on the other side of the table.  Mardell leaned over and
began helping him withdraw his massive arms from the jacket, which she
then cushioned between him and the chair.

"See that Japanese tin can of yours got a new name, toyota."  Thomas
laughed.  It was a large bellow that filled the kitchen.  "There's a
can of white paint out in the barn, if you wanna get the old name back.
But if I was you, I'd get some rich white friends to buy me a good
American truck."

Father John laughed as he resumed his own seat.  His friends seemed
fewer and fewer these days.  Nobody was rich.

Mardell swung the percolator from the stove and filled three mugs with
coffee.  She set the mugs in front of them, then placed a pan of
cinnamon rolls and a stack of napkins on the table.  After layering out
three portions of rolls, she sat down next to her husband.

The warm brown sugar and frosting ran along his fingers as Father John
bit into his roll.  It took him back for a moment to his own home, when
he was a boy.  He grabbed a napkin and mopped his hands.  "Thank you,
Grandmother," he said.  The old woman beamed.

Eat first, then talk; that was the Arapaho Way.  Any other sequence was
impolite.  When they had finished a couple of rolls each, Thomas
cleared his throat.  "My grandson Lester," he began, then drew in a
long breath.  "Whites'll say Lester's my brother's grandson."

Father John gave a nod of understanding.  There was no concept of aunt,
uncle, or cousin on the reservation.  Your brother's child was your
child.  Thomas and Mardell had no children of their own, but they were
not childless.

"You remember Lester got himself elected to the business council last
fall?"  Thomas's gray eyebrows shot up.  "Well, he come to see me
yesterday to tell me outsiders wanna close down the mission.  That's
before we heard it on the television.  Lester says that economic
development fellow the council hired has been workin' with the
outsiders and getting' the plans together real secret like The council
just found out, but the whole matter's gonna be brought up at next
Tuesday's meeting.  Eden Light foot's got a majority of councilmen
lined up behind it on account of new jobs."

Father John was aware of the knobby slats of the chair against his
back.  Sheldon and Keating held all the aces.  Now they were about to
play them.  What councilman wanted to take a stand against jobs?
MardelPs chair scraped across the linoleum as she got to her feet.  She
grabbed the coffeepot and refilled their mugs.  "You ask me, not all
them council members wanna see the mission disappear.  Lester, for one.
When Eden Light foot come to him to line up his vote, he got real mad.
He went to school at St.  Francis.  He's got good memories."

Thomas regarded his wife a moment before shifting his gaze back to
Father John.  "Lots of folks got good memories.  So if anybody asks
'em, they're gonna say they want the mission here.  Trouble is, this
deal's goin' through before anybody asks 'em."

Father John picked up his mug and took another sip of coffee.  He said,
"What about a general council, Grandfather?"

The old man was quiet a moment.  "Lester says some folks'll be
agitatin' for the recreation center 'cause they think it might mean
something' else down the road."

"He's got that bull by the horns," Mardell said as she slid back into
her chair.  "Folks that go on the powwow highway up to South Dakota and
down to Arizona and places like that see all them fancy casinos and a
lot of Indians getting' rich.  They come back here and say, "What are
we, a bunch of dumb Indians 'cause we ain't getting' rich?""

Father John set his mug down hard.  "What are you saying?  The
recreation center is the first step to a casino?"  It was hard to
believe.  The business council had turned down plans for a casino two
years ago, after the elders had called the people to Blue Sky Hall and
Great Plains Hall and reminded them of the Arapaho Way.  Casinos were
not the Arapaho Way.

Sadness showed in the old man's watery eyes.  "There's Indians been
tryin' to get gamblin' here.  So here come these outsiders.  Say
they're gonna build this here recreation center.  Promise all kinds of
jobs, and the business council gives the okay.  They put up a big
building, just right for gamblin' tables and slot machines, then they
tell the business council: Our figuring must've been wrong.  This here
recreation center's not gonna get enough business.  If we want jobs, we
gotta turn it into a casino and make us a lot of money to boot."

Father John placed both elbows on the table, made a double fist, and
blew into it.  A new picture was coming into focus.  Why St.  Francis?
he'd asked himself a hundred times.  There was nothing but open space
here, miles and miles of it.  The recreation center could be built
anywhere, but the Z Group had targeted the mission, and now he saw why.
Sheldon and his bosses didn't want just to operate a casino on an
Indian reservation --a casino owned by the Arapahos.  They wanted to
own the casino.  But reservation land couldn't be purchased by
non-Indians.  Except for St.  Francis Mission.  It was the only land
here already owned by outsiders, and it could be sold to outsiders.

Father John wanted to laugh.  He'd give anything to see the faces of
the Provincial and the bishop when they realized they'd traded St.
Francis Mission for a casino.  He didn't laugh.  The odds against the
mission were escalating.  "There's always the get-rich-quick people,"
Thomas said.  "They're gonna show up at a general council and shout for
a recreation center, thinkin' someday it'll be a casino."  The old man
shook his head and exhaled a long breath.  "I been out in the barn
feedin' the horses and running all this through my mind.  The Hinono
eino shouldn't turn into a bunch of gamblers.  Us old men gotta think
about the children.  We gotta take the chance and call a general
council.  We gotta try talkin' sense to the people."

Father John locked eyes with the old man a long moment.  He knew Thomas
was thinking the same thing he was thinking: The last thing Sheldon or
Light foot wanted was a council where the elders could influence the
people.  They hadn't come this far to be stopped by some old Indians.
Still a general council was risky, and it could be dangerous.  25

|owny snow sculptured the Lander streets and [weighted down the
branches of the box elders at the curbs.  Father John peered through
thin gray film deposited by the windshield wipers.  The address Nick
Sheldon had given him was on Martin Drive in a neighborhood of
sprawling brick houses.  He stopped in front of a two-story, red brick
house with a portico that arched over the side driveway.  Under the
portico stood a white Cadillac.

Nick Sheldon opened the glass-paned front door and extended a fleshy
hand.  He had a strong grip.  He was wearing navy sweatpants and
matching shirt; the sleeves were pushed up around his forearms, which
looked tan and muscular, like those of a man who knew how to relax and
work hard at the same time.  What passed for a smile crossed his
face.

"Good to see you again," Sheldon said, leading Father John into the
living room.  Its decor gave it the soulless feeling of a department
store: plump white sofa, black easy chairs, ornate wood desk pushed
against the far wall, a couple of small wood tables with polished tops.
The air smelled of some kind of chemical and stale cigarette smoke. And
whiskey.  He could have identified that in a field of sage.

Sheldon said, "Apologies for last night, all those TV people
descending upon you.  I had no idea Channel 7 was on to the story."

Father John nodded noncommittally.  Sheldon was lying.  The television
news announcement had been perfectly planned.  Enough time before next
week's business council meeting to rally supporters behind the
recreation center, but not enough time for much opposition to develop.
Sheldon and the Z Group had hit a homer and were rounding the bases
before the outfielders even saw the ball.

Sheldon had started toward the L-shaped dining area that extended off
the living room, and Father John followed.  "Take a look at this
beauty," the lawyer said, placing one palm on a large Plexiglas case
that sat on the oblong dining table.

Just yesterday Eden Light foot had assured him the plans weren't final,
but here, in miniature, crawling over the grounds of St.  Francis
Mission, was the recreation center.  The contour of the land, the open
spaces and arroyos, the knoll that held the cemetery, the Little Wind
River winding along the southern edge, and the cottonwood trees on the
riverbank where Chief Black Night had brought his people a hundred
years ago were all captured in the model.

The mission buildings were gone.  St.  Francis Church, the
administration building, the school, Eagle Hall, the guest house and
priests' residence, even the old school, were all replaced by an
enormous building that crept across Circle Drive.  The perfect casino,
Father John thought.  He said, "Bowling alleys, movie theaters, gyms,
restaurants, and everything else in one building?"

"Efficiency."  Sheldon slapped the top of the Plexiglas case.  It made
a hollow sound.  "Mom bowls while Dad works out and the kids play
miniature golf in the same building.  No sweating in the summer or
freezing to death in the winter going from place to place."  He stopped
and drew in a long breath.  "A boon to everybody in the whole area,
but, of course, the Arapahos will benefit most.  The center will
provide jobs and good, clean family fun.  It will help to ameliorate
some of the problems here, problems I understand, you're personally
familiar with.  Why, I heard you brought some poor drugged-out Indian
girl to the hospital just yesterday."

Father John allowed the comment to float in the air, but it bothered
him.  How did this outsider know about Susan?  He let the question
drift away.  He'd been here long enough not to underestimate the random
wires of the moccasin telegraph system.

"I don't believe the Arapahos want this," Father John said.

"Don't want jobs?  You must be joking."

"Now that the news is out, the people will want a say in the matter."

Sheldon smiled indulgently.  "Ah, yes.  Eden Light foot has informed me
of your hopes for a general council.  He assures me he has already
spoken with some of the elders.  They only wish to maintain the
traditional Arapaho beliefs.  They have no interest or, may I say,
understanding of modern economics.  Eden has assured me they will leave
this matter in the hands of the business council, unless of course
someone like you should insist they become involved.  That would be
unfortunate.  Of course, any opposition on the part of the elders would
eventually be overcome.  But naturally the Z Group is anxious to avoid
costly delays."

"I can't tell the elders what to do," Father John said, starting into
the living room.

"Father O'Malley."  The lawyer's voice behind him sounded calm,
friendly.  Surprised, Father John turned back.  Sheldon had folded his
suntanned arms and was rocking on his heels.  "We're both men of the
world here, even though you happen to be a priest.  Let me be candid.
In what way might the Z Group make your life more comfortable?  Perhaps
an extended vacation?  A sabbatical, isn't that what you Jesuits call
it?  Relax on a warm, sunny beach somewhere.  I know a great spot in
Antigua.  Stay as long as you like.  And you could certainly use decent
wheels for your next assignment.  Maybe a little sporty job.  I'm sure
you've seen the Lexus SE 400 coupe?  Beautiful."

Father John thrust his hands into the pockets of his parka.  "And what
do you want for all this bounty, Sheldon?"

"Well, of course, it would be nice if you could support the recreation
center.  But I respect you, Father O'Malley.  I realize that isn't
possible.  We will content ourselves with the support of the Jesuit
Provincial.  All I ask of you is--how shall I put it--your
noninvolvement.  You simply do nothing."

"All of that to do nothing?"  Father John smiled.  "It's not enough,
Sheldon."

Just as Father John was about to let himself out the front door, the
lawyer said, "Let me emphasize something, Father O'Malley."  A lawyer's
tone now, taut, precise.  "It would be most unwise of you to encourage
the elders to interrupt the normal processes of this matter.  Do I make
myself clear?"

Outside, the cold air slapped at Father John's face.  He brought the
brim of his cowboy hat forward as he cut across the snowy front yard
to the Toyota.  There was a lot of money riding on this deal, probably
more than he had realized.  The Z Group didn't want any interference,
and Sheldon's job was to ensure there wouldn't be any.

He'd been warned.  He didn't like warnings.  < 26 >

Three men stood on the cement bay in front of Big Phil's Backcountry
Wheels.  Shoulders hunched, hands jammed into the pockets of tweed
overcoats, the salesmen exuded the confidence of those who work for a
thriving dealership located at the busiest intersection in town.  As
Father John slipped out of his Toyota, another salesman wheeled
alongside him in a large blue van with BIG phil's splashed in red
letters across the side.

He slid off the seat and started toward the Toyota, his boots scraping
the snow-packed asphalt.  Perhaps thirty years old, with his blond
goatee and mustache he looked like a cowboy dressed up for the city.
"Afternoon, there.  You lookin' to replace that pickup, today's your
day.  We got some fine deals.  Couple of pickups"-he gestured toward
the rows of trucks, vans, and Jeeps stretching around them--"Big Phil's
in a piss-hurry to move out, make room for new models comin'."

The salesman ran a gloved hand over the Toyota's tailgate, the way he
might appraise a horse.  "Whoa.  Somebody clipped you real good.  Major
dent here.  Paint damaged."

"Is Big Phil in?"  Father John asked.

"You here to see the big man himself?"  The salesman's face lit up as
if he'd encountered some kind of V.I.P without knowing it.  "Follow
me." He led the way up the concrete stairs edged with metal bars, past
a wall of windows, through the double glass showroom doors.  They
crossed the green-and-white-tiled floor, threading a path between a
shiny black pickup and a red Jeep.  Two men hovered over the Jeep,
their voices floating through the nearly empty showroom.

The salesman paused at the doorway to a glass cubicle.  "Somebody to
see you," he called before heading back across the showroom.

Phil Beefer unfolded his lanky frame from the leather chair behind the
desk, rising half a head above Father John, and extended a hand easily
large enough to palm a basketball.  Father John looked up into a long
face with concave cheeks, a chin that jutted forward, dark eyes behind
clear, plastic-framed glasses, a thatch of gray hair.

"You must be Father O'Malley.  Saw you on television last evening," the
dealer said.  "Shame they're gonna be closin' down St.  Francis
Mission.  Wife and I been to Mass there a few times.  Pretty little
church."  Beefer craned sideways and looked out the front plate glass.
"Looks like you could use a new pickup."

"That Toyota and I are stuck with, each other for a long while," Father
John said as he took one of the twin black leather chairs Beefer
indicated.  Alongside the desk stood a narrow table devoted to a
computer, monitor, and keyboard.  Silver-framed photos lined the walls:
Beefer and a plump, smiling woman surrounded by children dressed for
the sixties, seventies, eighties.  Basketball teams posed for the
publicity camera; young Phil Beefer stealing the ball, going for a
lay-up, racing down court.

Folding himself back into his chair, the dealer said, "If I can't sell
you a new truck, what can I do for you?"

"A young man on the reservation is missing," Father John said,
unsnapping his parka and placing his cowboy hat on one knee.  Warm air
from the overhead vent swept across his head and face.  "His name is
Marcus Deppert.  He's taken a job delivering Jeeps to Denver.  I was
wondering if he's been working for you."

Beefer's head was shaking.  "We don't make deliveries out of state."
Suddenly he swirled sideways and began tapping the keyboard.  Tiny
yellow letters and lines appeared on the black monitor.  "No customers
by that name."

Father John fought back his disappointment.  He was about to get to his
feet when the big man, still bent toward the monitor, tapping an arrow
key, said, "Hold on a minute.  He might've been one of those Indian
guys that picked up a couple Jeeps for a customer a while back.  What
did you say the name was?"

"Marcus Deppert."  Father John settled back in the chair and allowed
himself to feel a flicker of hope.

The dealer peered at the scrolling screen.  After a moment, the yellow
letters stood still.  "Here we go," Beefer said.  "I remember now.
Outfit called High Country Tours bought two red Jeeps last November.
Sent two guys for 'em.  Rich Dolby was one.  The other was your man."

High Country Tours didn't ring any bells.  "Any names with that
business?"  Father John asked.

"Says here the owner's name is Steve Nichols."  Beefer swirled back,
facing Father John.  "Unusual deal.  This Steve Nichols called up, said
he was starting a tour business in Lander, and placed the order.
Everything was done by phone.  Courier delivered a certified check, and
Nichols sent two Indians to pick up the Jeeps."  The big man shifted
in his chair, as if uncomfortable with the memory.  "Tell you the
truth, Father O'Malley, I wasn't keen on releasing 'em.  Those Indians
looked like a couple losers.  Giant hangover types, you know what I
mean?  I wouldn't want 'em drivin' any vehicle I owned, but they had
notarized letters saying we should give 'em the Jeeps."

"Any address?"  Father John heard the excitement in his own voice.
Maybe the Depperts and Loretta Dolby had been right; maybe Marcus and
Rich were delivering Jeeps, if not for a dealer, for some private
party.

Beefer turned back to the monitor.  "Post office box downtown."

"Post office box."  Father John felt as if he were back in his
dream--watching a shadow disappearing ahead, always out of reach.  He
was chasing ghosts.

Big Phil had flipped open a phone book and was running one finger down
a white page.  "No Steve Nichols listed."  He turned to the yellow
pages.  "No High Country Tours either.  A guy starting a new business
oughtta get listed in the telephone book first thing."  He shut the
book and clasped his hands on the top.  "Strange deal, start to finish.
You think something might've happened to this Indian kid?"

Father John heard the parent's concern in the man's voice.  "I hope
not," he said.  "I hear nobody's found that body you saw.  Hope it's
not one of those two Indians.  They looked like trouble for sure, but
you hate to see anything bad happen to 'em.  You always hope they're
gonna straighten out."  The big man leaned back in his chair, staring
at some point beyond Father John.  After a moment, he said, "Come to
think of it, there was a white girl with 'em.

Nice lookin', too.  I remember wonderin' what she was doin' hanging
around two guys like that."

"White girl?"  Father John felt another surge of hope.  Annie Chambeau
had said Marcus left her for a white girl.

Beefer rose out of his chair and, looming over the desk, waved toward
the plate glass window.  Before he could refold himself, the cowboy
salesman was back in the doorway.

"You remember those two Indians picked up the red Jeeps a few weeks
ago?"  Beefer asked.

The salesman's face looked blank for a few seconds before comprehension
crept into his eyes.  "Yeah, I think so."

"Father O'Malley here would like to talk to the white girl with 'em.
Dark hair.  Kind of tall with a great figure.  Real pretty.  You paid
her a lot of attention while I was squaring things away with the
Indians.  You just hittin' on her, or she a friend of yours?"

The salesman's eyes darted from Beefer to Father John, as if this was
some kind of test and he wasn't sure of the correct answer.  "I seen
her a few times over in Riverton at Herb's place.  Jennifer something'
or-other."

"There you have it," Beefer said, turning his eyes on Father John as he
waved the salesman away.  "Anything else I can help you with?"

Father John glanced at the basketball photos on the wall behind the car
dealer's desk.  "As a matter of fact..."

"Say no more."  The dealer sat back at his desk, pulled out the center
drawer, and extracted a checkbook.  Grabbing a ballpoint pen from a
stand that looked like a miniature basketball, he began scribbling.
"I'm happy to make a donation.  Might show how folks around here
appreciate St.  Francis Mission.  How about a couple hundred?"

"I could use a thousand," Father John said.

The dealer stopped scribbling and looked up, surprise and amusement in
his eyes.  "That's a lot of appreciation."

Father John began explaining.  The mission had sixth grade boys who
could shoot a basket across the schoolyard.  They had talent and
potential, but no gym to play in and no coach to bring them along.  St.
Francis had the gym, but no money to heat it and no money to pay a
coach.

"You gonna be the coach?"  Beefer asked, ballpoint poised over the
check.

Father John laughed.  "I've lined up somebody who knows the game.
Patrick Banner."

Beefer dropped the pen and swirled around.  Reaching up a long arm, he
plucked one of the photos from the wall as if he were snatching a
rebound.  "See that kid there?  My youngest.  Best damn center in the
state.  You know who stopped him from being' high school All American?
Patrick Banner.  Every match-up between Lander and Indian High School,
Banner'd block him so hard he'd only get a few shots, and they were
off.  Or that Indian kid would steal the ball and rack up points
himself.  And you expect me to help pay his coachin' salary?"

"The kids would appreciate it."

Beefer leaned back and laughed, a large, raspy sound.  Then he lifted
his glasses and rubbed his eyes.  "Patrick Banner, huh?  You got him
for sure?"

"He's just out of the army.  Hasn't connected with a job yet."

Grabbing the ballpoint pen, the dealer resumed scribbling.  He tore
off the check and handed it across the desk.  "I expect him to teach
those kids every damn thing he knows."

Father John reached out to shake Reefer's hand as they both got to
their feet.  "The kids and I thank you," he said.  "You realize they'll
be outscoring Lander High School in a few years."

"I'll be there to see it," Beefer said.  ""Course, I'm not gonna like
it much."

As Father John started across the showroom, he spotted the blue van at
the edge of the bay.  "One more thing," he said, stepping back into the
cubicle.  "Since the kids will miss the school bus, I'll have to get
them home after practice."

Big Phil looked across the showroom toward the expanse of plate glass
and folded his arms across his chest.  "Okay, you got the van.  But
only on loan for basketball season.  I'll have somebody bring it over
to the mission."

Father John started to thank him again, but the car dealer held up one
hand, like a policeman stopping traffic.  "You ever decide on another
line of work, Father O'Malley," he said, "come see me.  I can always
use a damn good salesman."

The cowboy salesman walked over as Father John was about to back the
Toyota away from the bay.  He rolled down the window, and the goatee
and mustache came toward him, along with the stale odor of cigarettes
and garlic.  "Say, Father, I been thinkin'.  I could stop in at Herb's
place and get that waitress's last name and telephone number.  Talk to
her for ya, if you want."

"No, thanks," Father John said, his boot resting lightly on the gas
pedal.  The Toyota began rolling backward.  He would talk to her
himself.  27

Vicky fed a quarter into one of the phones lining the wall at the end
of the hospital corridor and tapped out the number to the Arapaho
ranch.  The hospital was shrouded in silence.  A lone nurse sat at the
station, her head barely visible above the counter.  "Pick up," Vicky
said under her breath to the electronic ring.  She'd been trying to
reach Ben all day.  He had the right to know about Susan.

Suddenly the ringing stopped.  "Yeah?"  It was a man's voice.

Drawing in a long breath, Vicky asked to speak to Ben.

The line went quiet for a few seconds.  Then, "This his wife?"

"Former wife.  It's important I reach him."

"He ain't here no more."

"What do you mean?"  Ben was the ranch foreman.  It was a good job, a
natural for him.  He wouldn't just leave.

"Ain't you heard?"  Again, the silence.  Vicky knew what he would say
before he said it.  "Ben took sick."

Sick.  Why was it so hard for her people to speak the words?  Ben was
drinking again.  He'd been sober six long years, and now .. . She felt
her stomach curling into knots.  "Where is he?"

"Don't know.  His cousin's tryin' to find him.  You ask me--"

Vicky replaced the receiver.  She didn't care to hear what he and the
other cowboys thought about her visit the other night.  They would
blame her.  Maybe she was to blame.  She leaned onto the phone, trying
to recover her own bearings.  She had a sick, drug-addicted daughter to
look after, and she could not depend upon her child's father.  She had
thought she could depend upon John O'Malley, but now .. . Now she was
alone.  Woman Alone was the name the grandmothers had given her, and
she realized it was a gift, a prayer-wish that she would have the
strength to live her new life.  She ran a finger under her eyes to stop
the tears and walked down the antiseptic corridor to Susan's room.

The girl stood at the bed, stuffing a small bag with things Vicky had
brought her--a couple of pairs of jeans, two sweaters, some underwear,
shampoo and a hairbrush, a pale pink lipstick.  The lipstick was still
wrapped in plastic.  Susan looked thin and fragile.  Red circled her
eyes, but her face no longer had a pasty look.  A little while ago, she
had agreed to enter treatment again, and Vicky had made the
arrangements.

They would fly to Denver tomorrow.  The place Father John had
recommended was far enough away to give Susan some time--at least a few
days--before she would have to talk to the police.  She would feel
better then, stronger.  And who knew what might happen in the meantime?
If the white men were linked to murder --even the thought made Vicky
wince--Banner might find enough cause to arrest them without Susan's
help.

Besides, Vicky wasn't sure how much help Susan could be.  Susan
claimed she didn't know Ty and his friends were selling drugs.  But she
admitted Ty had started her smoking a new drug, although she wasn't
sure what it was.

"Heroin?"  Vicky had asked.

Susan had shrugged.  All she knew was that it didn't take much to get
that floating feeling.  Why had she started again?  She didn't know.
She'd met Ty, and they got high together, and he loved her.

Vicky sat down on the edge of the bed.  Her shoulders sagged.  This
drug, whatever it was, could have killed Susan.  Thank God she was
alive and starting treatment tomorrow.  And their evening together
stretched ahead.  Maybe they'd watch some TV, if Susan felt up to it.

"You talk to Daddy?"  the girl asked.

Vicky moved slightly on the bed, considering her answer.  She could
cover up for Ben.  She'd done that for years.  Don't be afraid.
Everything's okay.  Daddy's just sick right now.  Codependency, the
psychologists called it.  They had that right.  Ben had been dependent
on alcohol, and she'd been dependent on him.  But half of the equation
had changed.  She was aware of Susan staring at her.

"He's not at the ranch," Vicky said.

Understanding shot across Susan's face, and she grabbed the little
suitcase and tossed it off the bed.  It made a harrumph noise as it
slid over the floor.  She started sobbing.  "Why am I goin' into
treatment, then?  I'm gonna come out and go right back on drugs.  Just
like Daddy.  What's the point?  I should just die now."

Vicky placed both arms around her and reined her close.  If that
happened, she thought, then she must die, too.  She said, "Susan, I
love you.  Your daddy loves you.

You are very important.  You are necessary."  She kissed the girl's
forehead.  It was moist and cool.  They sat in silence a few moments.
Then Vicky said, "We should go now."

The nurse insisted Susan ride in a wheelchair.  Susan looked like a
child with the small suitcase in her lap and the nurse stationed beside
her.  Vicky left them inside the front door of the hospital while she
crossed the parking lot to the Bronco.  As she drove down the row of
cars and trucks, she spotted a gray Chevy truck at the end.  Her breath
stopped.  Then she saw its cab was empty.  She had to get a grip on
herself.  Weren't there dozens of Chevy trucks that color in Lander?

She set Susan's suitcase in back through the open tailgate and tossed
her black bag on top as the girl climbed onto the front seat.  Before
she got in, Vicky glanced toward the truck again.  It looked like any
other vehicle in the lot.  Harmless.  Not until she pulled out onto
Bishop Randall Drive did she see it start to move.  It turned onto the
street after her.

Vicky stepped on the gas.  Her heart was racing, and she forced herself
to take a deep breath.  She had to stay calm for Susan's sake.  She
debated driving back to the hospital, but thought of the small,
gray-haired woman at the receptionist's desk and the otherwise empty
lobby.  She continued north into downtown.

The truck stayed close behind.  She could make out that the driver was
Gary.  She had an advantage over him--she knew Lander.  She approached
an intersection and, glancing quickly around, stomped on the gas,
zooming through the yellow light.  The truck came through on the red.
Midblock, she jerked the steering wheel right and peeled into a narrow
alley that bisected two large brick buildings.  Snow and slush washed
over the windshield.

"Mom.  What're you doin'?"  Susan cried.

In the rearview mirror, Vicky saw the pickup pass the alley entrance.
Another few seconds and it was backing into view, starting down the
narrow passage, tires squealing.  Susan looked back.  "Oh, God," she
said, slumping into the seat.

Vicky prayed no one stepped off the sidewalk as the Bronco shot out of
the alley and wheeled right.  At the intersection, she took another
right and glanced out Susan's window.  The pickup was emerging from the
alley.  Gary would have seen the turn.

Her speedometer hit fifty, fifty-five.  She was on Main Street now,
weaving through traffic, the pickup still behind her.  Horns honked,
and people stopped on the sidewalks and stared.  "Where are the
police?"  she said out loud.  Susan gasped.

Another right turn, then down another alley.  Coming out of it, she
swerved into an office parking lot and cut across the block to the next
street.  The pickup was no longer in the rearview mirror.  She'd lost
it, but there weren't many blocks in Lander.  The odds were great Gary
would spot her again.  She rolled into another alley.  Halfway down,
she pulled in alongside a garage and nosed the Bronco against a high
wooden fence.  She cut the engine.  Either the Bronco was hidden from
the street, or they were trapped here.

Vicky kept her eyes on the rearview mirror, forcing herself to breathe
slowly, half expecting the pickup to pull in behind them.  What if Gary
broke the window and tried to drag Susan out?  What would she do?  She
had nothing to protect them with.  She had a jack.  But she would have
to open the tailgate and dig it out of its compartment, and if Gary
happened down one of the streets at the ends of the alley, he'd spot
her for sure.  Then she remembered the flashlight.  She groped under
the seat until she found the round, hard plastic.

"Why's Gary after me?"  Susan said.  "I don't know anything about what
they're doing.  Me and Ty, we just wanted to get our business going so
we could get married.  I wish he never brought those guys here.  They
ruined everything."

Vicky said nothing.  They'd gone over this earlier, after she'd told
Susan about Father John's hunch--that Gary may have murdered Marcus
Deppert, then murdered the girl who could identify him.  Susan had been
shocked.  Slack-jawed.  She had sworn by the spirits of her grandmother
and grandfather, by all their ancestors, that she knew nothing about
any murders.  Vicky believed her.

They waited in silence.  Five minutes.  Ten.  Fifteen.  Finally Vicky
started the engine.  The roar sounded like an approaching jet.  She
backed into the alley and slowly started toward the street, her eyes on
the rearview mirror.

She zigzagged through the neighborhoods, not daring to drive one street
for long.  She could not go home; he would be waiting.  At the edge of
town, she made a dash for the entrance to Highway 789 and sped north.
There was no sign of the pickup.

"Where we goin'?"  Susan asked.

"Trust me," Vicky said.  The irony hit her.  Why should Susan trust
her?  They wouldn't be in this position had she been a different kind
of mother.

The highway lay open ahead, the asphalt streaked with snow.  At one
point Vicky glimpsed what looked like a gray truck behind.  She
tightened her grip on the steering wheel as the truck swerved into the
oncoming lane and passed.  It was the color of honey.

She turned left onto Seventeen-Mile Road, and, just past St.  Francis
cemetery, made another left onto Circle Drive.  She could sense her
pulse slowing.

Easing up on the gas, she turned the Bronco down the snow-rutted road
that ran alongside the administration building and Eagle Hall.  A
quarter mile farther was the guest house.  She parked on the far side,
out of view from Seventeen-Mile Road.  They were safe here.

As she and Susan got out, Walks-on came loping down the road, a red
Frisbee in his mouth.  Susan patted her thighs, calling the dog over.
"Oh, how cute you are," she said, crouching down and rubbing his head.
"What happened to you?"

Vicky explained about Walks-on as she grabbed Susan's suitcase and her
own bag out of the tailgate.  Her mind was on the key.  What had John
said about a key?  Had he given her one?  She riffled through her bag,
searching for a small piece of metal.  No, he'd given her the piece of
paper with the information about the treatment center.  He'd said he
would leave the key under the rock by the door.  Please be here, she
said to herself, stooping over to lift the large rock.  The silver
metal glimmered in the moist dirt.  She jiggled the lock a few times
before the front door swung loose.

"He looks happy," Susan said, stepping inside.  Vicky had to refocus
her thoughts to realize Susan was still talking about the dog, who
didn't look so happy as Vicky slammed the door.  She threw the bolt.
The house was one room containing a bed, a sagging sofa, and an old
upholstered chair.  Lined against the far wall were a small stove, a
refrigerator, sink, one cabinet, a small wood table, and two chairs.

Vicky dropped the suitcase and her bag on the bed.  After removing her
coat, she checked the cabinet.  A box of crackers, a box of Cherries,
two cans of chicken noodle soup, a can of tuna, a jar of peanut butter,
a tin of coffee.  Inside the refrigerator were a six-pack of Coke, some
milk, orange juice, bread, a hunk of cheese, a dozen eggs.  A wave of
gratitude washed over her.  A man she could count on, who spoke the
truth, who stood by his word--she wasn't accustomed to this, and she
had lashed out at him, treated him as if he were like Ben.

She pulled out two Cokes and handed one to Susan, who had already
settled onto the sofa, her jacket thrown over the back cushions.
Sitting down next to her daughter, Vicky said, "We've got to go over
everything again, Susan.  You must know something important, something
you don't realize you know.  Otherwise Gary wouldn't be after you."
<28>

Amid the bars and package stores along Highway 789 about a mile south
of Riverton sat Herb's Place, a one-story rectangle, plastered with
green asbestos siding, listing toward the snow-packed parking lot.  A
spotlight fastened at the front corner carved a small circle of light
in the darkness.  Two or three trucks and a few sedans straddled the
snow and ice.  Father John parked the Toyota next to a brown truck
outside the rim of light, in case somebody from the reservation
happened down the highway.  The mission pickup parked at Herb's place
would set the moccasin telegraph humming for weeks.

He stepped out into the frigid air and started toward the front door as
an eighteen-wheeler roared past.  Behind the truck was a dark pickup.
Was it green?  He couldn't tell for sure.  He was beginning to see
green pickups everywhere.  In any case, Nick Sheldon had already
delivered the warning.  Why would he still have him followed if indeed
Sheldon had ordered someone to try to scare him off?

As Father John pulled the front door open, it gave out a loud screech
on the cement slab.  Smoke hung inside like a gray cloud.  A few
patrons sat in the booths that marched down the left wall: a man and
woman side by side, a couple of cowboys, four or five people crowded
into the end booth.  A middle-aged couple occupied one of the tables in
the center.  In the room that opened off the right, two cowboys were
shooting pool.

He made his way past the tables to the bar on the opposite wall and
slid onto a stool, shoving his cowboy hat back.  It had been a long
time since he'd sat at a bar, but it seemed like yesterday.  The slick,
polished wood, the little rings of moisture, the smell of beer and
whiskey and cigarettes were all so familiar.  His eyes stung, and his
throat muscles constricted.

The bartender was busy mixing drinks, his back turned.  Three cowboys
straddled stools at the far end of the bar, their hands wrapped around
beer bottles, voices sharp against the din of other conversations.  A
waitress stood apart from them, tapping long red nails on a round tray.
Catching Father John's eye, she sidled toward him, scooting the tray
along the bar.  "Well, hello there," she said.  "Haven't seen you in
here before,"

She was tall, with long blond hair and dark eyes.  Her smile revealed
almost perfect teeth, except for the tiny space in front that, oddly
enough, made her seem prettier.  But there was an unfinished sense
about her, a false note of bravado in the short, skin-tight black
leather skirt, the pink sweater with shiny beads at the top, the
scooped neckline that revealed the graceful arch of her shoulders, the
bulge of her breasts.  The pungent, sugary sweet smell of her perfume
wafted toward him.

"Are you Jennifer?"

"I'm Marcy," she said.  The breasts moved closer.

He tried to ignore them.  "What time does Jennifer come in?"

The bartender set two whiskey sours on the tray.  "Nobody here by that
name," he said, his eyes fixed on the waitress.  He was six feet tall
with the neck and shoulders of a bull and a forehead that sloped upward
into a receding hairline.  Father John guessed his age to be about
forty.

"Take it easy, Herb," the waitress said.  Picking up the tray, she
pivoted on her high heels, leaning toward Father John.  "Catch you
later," she whispered before moving away.

The bartender swished a white cloth over the bar, mopping up the
moisture rings.  "So, what's it gonna be?"

"Coffee," Father John said.

"Irish coffee?"

"Nope."

Stepping sideways, the bartender picked up a glass coffee pot from a
hot plate and poured steaming brown liquid into a mug.  He walked back
and set it down.  "I thought I knew all the cops around here."

"I'm a priest."

Inflating both cheeks, the bartender blew out a stream of air.  "You
don't say.  That's how come you look familiar.  You're that priest I
seen on TV works with them Indians over on the reservation."

That was right.  Father John asked where Jennifer was working now.

The bartender shook his head.  "How would I know?  Never heard of
her."

"How about Marcus Deppert," Father John said.  "You heard of him?"

"This ain't no Indian bar.  You must be lookin' for that place up the
highway, the Get-Along.  That's where them Indians hang out."  The
bartender walked down the bar toward the cowboys, who, Father John
noticed, had stopped talking and were looking his way.

Father John took a drink of coffee.  How did the bartender know Marcus
was an Indian?  The bartender was lying.  People lied for many reasons:
to hide something, to protect themselves, to hurt someone, or just out
of sheer perversity.  What was Herb's reason?

Whatever the reason, Father John knew he wasn't going to get any
information at the bar.  He stood up, fished some coins out of the
front pocket of his blue jeans, and set them next to the coffee mug.
The cowboys swiveled around almost in unison, watching him.  He felt
their eyes on his back as he strolled to the pool room.

The pool table took up most of the space, allowing barely enough room
for a small table at the far end.  Cues rested in a rack hung on the
wall, and a black-and white television blared a hockey game from an
overhead shelf in one corner.  Cheers went up as the puck sailed past
the goalie.  Rangers, two; Sabres, zip.

The two cowboys playing pool ignored the television, their attention on
the pool table.  They looked like brothers, medium height, wiry, with
brown hair combed straight back, pink cheeks, little mustaches.  They
both wore cowboy boots, blue jeans, and long sleeved western
shirts--one red, the other blue--like a hundred other cowboys from
ranches nearby.

Red Shirt stretched low over the table, sighting the cue.  Then his arm
pulled back and quickly sprang forward in a smooth stroke.  The loud
whack gave way to the clack-clack sound of balls shooting over the
table.  The four ball and six ball spun into the side pockets.  He took
another shot and two more balls pocketed.  He circled the table,
studying the lays, calling each shot before sinking the balls.  The
last was the eight ball, which rolled into the corner pocket as he had
predicted.  He straightened from the table, a wide grin creasing his
face.

"Jesus.  You lucky son of bitch," said Blue Shirt.

"Pay up."

Turning sideways, away from the bar, the cowboys leaned together, hands
touching briefly.  Then Red Shirt whirled around.  "You wanna shoot?"

Father John shook his head.  "I'm looking for someone.  A girl named
Jennifer.  She used to work here."

The cowboys exchanged a quick glance.

"Why you lookin' for her?"

"She knows a friend of mine.  Marcus Deppert."

Blue Shirt laughed.  "You must be one of them guys loves Indians. Yeah,
I can tell by lookin'.  One of them do-good, liberal types. Traitor to
his own race."

"Do you know her?"

They both shook their heads, and Red Shirt turned his attention to
chalking his cue.

Father John took off his parka, tossed it onto the small table, and
lifted a cue out of the rack.  Poking his index finger and thumb into
the little pocket of his jeans, he extracted a folded bill.  Ten
dollars.  It was the last money he had.  He set it on the rim of the
pool table.  "If you win," he said to Red Shirt, "it's yours.  If I
win, you tell me what you know about Jennifer."

The cowboys stared at each other, a mixture of amusement and challenge
in their faces.  Then Red Shirt said, "Deal."

Father John chalked his cue, trying to remember the last time he'd
played pool.  Grace House.  There had been a pool table in the rec
room.  But had he played?  Much of his time in treatment was a blur.
Before Grace House, he'd played at the prep school where he had taught.
He liked to challenge the kids once in a while, and sometimes he got
beaten, but not often.  Before that, his uncle's saloon on the street
level of the apartments where he'd grown up.  He and Mike would wander
in and shoot pool in the afternoons waiting for their mother to finish
work--she had been the cook in the saloon.  He had learned to play pool
from the best sharks in Boston.

Red Shirt tossed a coin.

"Heads," Father John said.

"Too bad."  The cowboy quickly pocketed the coin.  He racked up the
balls.  Stretching his lanky body along the cue, he took a long stroke
that blasted the balls across the table.  The three ball banked off the
rails before dropping into a corner pocket.  He put a lot of English on
the next shot--a beauty.  Two balls in the side pockets.

Father John stood quietly watching.  The cowboy could shoot the eyes
off a ball.  He was going to walk out of here with the ten dollars and
anything he might know about Jennifer.

The next shot was easy.  Red Shirt looked up and smiled as he drew back
the cue.  A mistake, Father John thought.  The cowboy was showing off.
You couldn't get cocky at pool.  You had to stay focused.

The sharp clack of the balls sounded.  The two ball spun toward the
side pocket, caught the edge of the bumper, and jumped back.  Too much
draw.

Now it was Father John's turn.  He walked along the table, eyeing the
best shot.  Red Shirt had left a bad lay.  Finally Father John spotted
the shot.  He pointed to the pockets he intended to hit and leaned
over.  The heft of the cue felt natural, his swing loose and fluid, as
if his muscles remembered what his mind had forgotten.  There was the
whack and the clickety-clack of tumbling balls.  The ten ball found
its pocket, then the thirteen went down.

He felt his confidence returning, the familiar focus and intent of all
the times he had stood on the pitcher's mound, as if the game were all.
He couldn't make any mistakes.  If Red Shirt got back in, he'd clear
the table.  He called the next shot, then sank the fourteen ball,
leaving a good lay for a double.  Another stroke put two more balls in.
Then he sank the nine ball.

Only the twelve ball remained--a tough shot.  He would have to bank off
the cushion to put on just the right amount of speed.  Too much and the
ball would spin off course.  Not enough, it would stop short.

The cowboys were quiet.  Cheers went up on the TV.  Father John closed
off the sounds and nodded to the pocket.  Whummp.  The twelve ball took
the hit and careened sideways before dropping in.  Now the eight ball.
He indicated the center pocket and sank the ball.  An easy shot.

Father John picked up the ten-dollar bill and stuffed it back into his
jeans pocket.  "What's Jennifer's last name?"  He kept his voice low.

Red Shirt removed a cigarette package from his shirt pocket, shook one
out, and stuck it in his mouth.  "Smith."

"Smith?"

"Hell, that's what she said."  The cowboy in blue shrugged.  "She was a
drifter.  Drifted up here from Cheyenne following the cowboys after
Frontier Days."

"Yeah," Red Shirt said.  He had lit the cigarette, and smoke curled out
of his nostrils.  "Us cowboys got groupies just like rock stars."

"Where does she live?"

"She never took me home with her."  Red Shirt faced his partner.  "How
about you?  You get lucky?"

"Yeah.  In my dreams."

"What happened to her?"  Father John asked.

"Up and gone one day."  The cowboy in red threw back his head and took
another drag from the cigarette.  "About two weeks ago.  Maybe old Herb
out there tried to get inside her little panties.  Wouldn't blame him
none.  She had one tight little ass on her."

"Not to mention a couple of gorgeous bazooms."  His partner cupped both
hands on his chest and did a little jig.  His boots snapped against the
tile floor.

"Ever see her boyfriend around?"  Father John asked.

The room was silent except for the static noise on the TV and a woman's
laughter floating in from the bar.  A curtain began to descend over the
cowboys' eyes.  The one in red stepped back, stubbed out the cigarette
on the floor.  "The deal was the girl.  Debt's paid.  Interview's over.
Time for a beer."  Swinging around, the two cowboys started for the
bar.  Father John threw on his parka and followed.  Silence fell over
the bar as he threaded his way past the tables, almost all of which
were now occupied.  Outside, the cold air smelled new and clean.  He
took a deep breath.  Innuendo, sly exchanges, and a lot of theory,
that's all he had.  He was getting nowhere.  The police would have to
find Marcus.  But would they?  In the meantime the Depperts, old and
alone, were waiting, fearing the worst.  He had to keep on.  Before
Sheldon succeeded in closing down St.  Francis, he had to find out what
had happened to Marcus Deppert.  The problem was, he didn't know where
to turn next.  He was about to get into the Toyota when, out of the
corner of his eye, he saw a shadow flit across the side of the
building.  He spun around, adrenaline pumping, expecting a couple of
cowboys to be on him.  The figure darted in front of the pickup.  It
was the waitress.  He felt his muscles relax.

"Wait," she called, picking her way toward him over the ice and snow,
coat less hunched forward, hugging her arms.  "I heard Herb say you're
that priest that works with the Indians."  She moved close to him. "I'm
sorry about in there."  She nodded toward the bar.  "You know, my
comin' on to you like that.  I didn't know you was a priest.  I mean,
you just look like this sexy guy."  Gone was the shaky confidence.  In
its place, fear.  He could sense it.

"That Indian guy you're lookin' for,"--she dropped her voice to a
whisper, even though they were the only ones in the parking lot--"he
might be dead."

Father John felt his heart sink.  "What are you talking about?"

"Those cowboys at the bar, they beat him up real bad."  The girl was
shivering so hard, her teeth were chattering.  Father John took off his
parka and placed it around her shoulders.  "Tell me about it."

"A couple weeks age, Marcus come to pick up Jennifer, just like usual.
They were .. . together, you know.  Well, the guys inside was waitin'
when him and Jennifer come out, and they grabbed him and took him over
there."  The girl's head flipped toward the back of the building.
"Jennifer come runnin' back in screamin' for me to call the police, but
Herb said if I did, I'd get the same.  Then he pushed us out here and
made us watch.  Said that's what happens to Indians that sleep with
white girls.  After they got done, they tossed him in his truck.  Herb
told Jennifer never to come back.  I'd have left too, if I didn't need
this fuckin' job."

She glanced toward the front door, the spotlight reflecting in her
eyes.  They had the look of a deer caught in the sights of a rifle. She
went on, "I shouldn't be talkin' to you, but I been so stressed out.  I
can't stop thinkin' about it, like maybe I'm some kind of witness to
murder."

"Where does Jennifer live?"  Father John asked.

The girl shook her head.  It was like a shudder.  "An old place over on
Locust Street near Tenth.  It's got a black picket fence in front. Only
she's not there no more.  I been by a couple times.  I think she
must've took off."  Slinging the parka around, she handed it to him. 
"I gotta get back before Herb sees me gone."  She turned and started
running, the high heels skidding on the ice.

Father John sat in the Toyota thinking a minute.  It was the worst he'd
feared.  Marcus was dead.  But it hadn't happened the way he'd figured.
He'd had it all wrong.  The elaborate scheme involving Susan and the
three white men--they had nothing to do with it.  No wonder Vicky had
gotten so angry.  She'd had every right.  Marcus had been beaten to
death in the parking lot of Herb's Place.  Dear Lord.

But then what?  Had Jennifer panicked?  Tried to dispose of the body in
the ditch on Rendezvous Road, then returned for it?  That didn't make
sense.  Why would the girl protect the thugs in the bar?  Why hadn't
she taken Marcus to the hospital?  Neither hospital had any record of
Marcus Deppert.

Father John flipped on the ignition.  The engine whined as he turned
onto Highway 789.  Traffic was light.  A couple of trucks and a semi
thundered past, shooting snow and ice into the air.  He drove north
with the traffic, praying silently for the soul of Marcus Deppert,
hoping the young man had lost consciousness early and hadn't suffered.
There was nothing else Father John could do now, except notify Banner,
who would notify the Riverton police and hope they followed up.

But first he intended to check Jennifer's house, on the chance she
might be around.  He wanted to know about Marcus's last moments in case
the old people asked him.  He found Locust Street and drove north to
Tenth, not wanting to admit it was probably a wild goose chase.  The
waitress said Jennifer had taken off, and the cowboys had called her a
drifter.  She had probably drifted on, like a storm that blew across
the plains.

The street lights formed a corridor of light ahead, making the black
fence easy to spot.  He pulled in next to the curb.  The house was
dark, except for a trace of light around the curtain at the front
window.  He might be in luck.  He walked up the snow-bordered sidewalk,
his boots creaking against the black ice.  A storm door stood slightly
ajar.  He pulled it open and knocked on the inner door.  It was quiet
inside, the quiet, Father John thought, of a still, human presence.  He
waited before knocking again.  Slowly the door opened the width of a
chain, creating a long sliver of half-light.  A young woman's face
peered cautiously around the edge.  "Who are you?"  Her voice was
high-pitched, like a child's.

"Father O'Malley," he said.  Then he explained he was a friend of
Marcus Deppert's.  ,

"You got the wrong place."  The door started to shut.

"Let him in."  The male voice came from somewhere inside.

There was a moment with the door closed, with the muffled sound of a
chain rattling.  Then the door swung open.  Beyond the girl stood
Marcus Deppert.  <29>

father John stepped into the room.  There was a loud thud as the girl
slammed the door.  A lopsided lamp next to the sofa cast a dim light
over the cushions, the wood block table, the dark upholstered chair,
and brown vinyl floor.  The odors of stale food and perspiration --the
smell of fear--floated toward him.

Marcus looked as if he'd just gotten out of the chair.  He wore a
wrinkled blue-and-white-striped shirt, the cuffs of which hung loose
around his wrists, blue jeans with the silver image of a buffalo at the
belt buckle, and cowboy boots with scraped toes.  Father John felt like
a parent; he didn't know whether to hug the young man--he was so glad
to find him alive--or throttle him for causing so much worry.

He'd already been throttled.  The dark bruise along his jaw and across
one cheek, the abrasions around his mouth, and the blood-red whites of
his eyes were evidence of that.  "Are you okay, Marcus?"  Father John
asked.

Confusion came over the Arapaho's face a moment.  Then he raised one
hand and patted his jaw.  "Some white sons-of-bitches worked me over.
Messed up my face.  Cracked a couple ribs.  Nothin' fatal.  Lucky I was
wasted."  He shrugged, and Father John sensed it wasn't the beating
that kept Marcus prisoner in this cavelike bungalow.

"Meet Jennifer," Marcus said as the girl sidled over and took his hand,
lacing white fingers among the brown.  She was almost as tall as
Marcus--about six feet--and dressed in tight blue jeans and a black
sweater that clung to the contours of her breasts.  She was barefoot.
Tossing back her long brown hair, she stared at Father John out of
dark, scared eyes.

He said to Marcus, "Your grandparents have been worried."

The young man looked away, shifting from one foot to the other.  "I
been tryin' to figure a way to go see 'em, make sure they're okay, but
I couldn't risk it.  They're lookin' all over the rez for me."

"Who?  Tell me, Marcus.  Maybe I can help you."

"Nobody can help.  I seen what they did to Rich.  They're gonna do the
same to me."  There was a catch in the young man's voice.  He sank down
into the chair, pulling the girl onto his lap.  She curled her body
along his.

Father John perched on the edge of the wood block table.  "Start at the
beginning," he said.

Marcus kept his voice low, almost a whisper.  Rich Dolby came to him
with a deal.  Just like Rich, always lookin' to score.  Last time Rich
got one of his big ideas, Marcus went to Leavenworth for three years.
He should've told Rich to get lost, but he got sucked in.  Besides, he
wasn't up to any other kind of work 'cause of the fuckin' broken ribs.
So what the hell.  All he had to do was drive brand-new Jeeps to Denver
and back for some nice money.

Father John interrupted.  "Who hired Rich?"  Marcus shook his head. 
"He got orders from two white guys.  Gary and Ty, he called 'em.  I
don't know last names."

Father John drew in his breath.  Whatever trouble Marcus and Rich were
in, Susan's friends were involved up to their eyeballs.

Marcus went on.  "They gave Rich a certified check, and we went over
and picked up a couple new Jeeps at Big Phil's.  We drove 'em back to
Rich's house."

Jennifer nodded to confirm this fact.

"A few days later, Rich comes over, says the Jeeps are ready, and we
gotta go."  Marcus emitted a small, scared laugh.  "I swear, Father, I
thought maybe we was gonna drive some big shots to Denver or
something', but there was nobody but us.  Soon's we got to Denver, we
went to some warehouse by the railroad tracks and parked inside.  All
of a sudden guys come from everywhere and start crawling' all over the
Jeeps, pulling out packages.  There was packages everyplace--under the
carpet and dashboard, taped in the compartment with the spare
tire--real neat and tidy-like.  I was totally shocked."

"You didn't know you were delivering drugs?"  Father John found that
hard to believe, given Marcus's history.

"I swear by my grandfather," the young man said, a solemn look in his
eyes.  "I was mad as hell.  I wanted to kill Rich myself for handin' me
a one-way trip back to Leavenworth.  Then these guys at the warehouse
throw in three big suitcases, make us sign for 'em, and we take off for
the rez.  We don't stop for nothin', not even gas, 'til we get to
Cheyenne, and I say to Rich, What the hell's goin' on?  Don't worry, he
says.  It's a real cushy deal.  Gary and Ty produce the stuff, and all
we gotta do is drive nice new Jeeps to Denver every week, and the boys
in Denver ship the stuff around the country.  Rich says Gary and Ty got
the risk, but I figure, no way, we got the risk.  Police stop us, we
got the stuff.  I say I'm out, but Rich says, oh no, you're in.  "Cause
I've already made a delivery."

Father John removed his cowboy hat and ran his hand through his hair,
mentally filling in the blanks.  Gary and Ty and Morrissey Porterfield,
the man Vicky called "the professor," were operating a drug lab
somewhere on Wind River Reservation.  But where?  Not at the ranch
house.  There had been no sign of anything like that.  That meant the
lab could be anywhere in about four thousand square miles--in some
abandoned barn, in an arroyo, a cave in the mountains.  Without the lab
there was no proof, only the story of a convicted felon.

"What kind of drug are they manufacturing?"

"Heroin," Marcus said.

Father John blew into one fist a moment.  That fit.  It was probably
heroin Susan was on.  But heroin was a different matter from the kinds
of drugs--the pot and amphetamines--that Marcus and Rich had been mixed
up with in the past.  Heroin was a big-ticket drug, controlled by
outsiders, by powerful forces.  Father John felt as if the air had been
sucked out of the room.  Who was Susan Holden involved with?

"Where are they processing it?"

Marcus was shaking his head.  "Not processing.  They're making it.
Leastways, it's the same as heroin.  Rich called it fentanyl.  Users
don't know the difference.  The beauty is, it's cheaper to produce than
heroin, but costs the same on the street.  So the profits are way up
there.  "Course, you gotta have a brain that knows how to make the
stuff."

"That would be the professor," Father John said.  The pieces were
clicking into place, like pool balls dropping into the pockets.

Marcus looked startled.  "You know the professor?"

Father John ignored the question.  "Where's the lab, Marcus?"

The Arapaho let out a loud snort.  "Like they're gonna tell us?  Me and
Rich, we was flunkies.  All we know was what they wanted us to know."

That was probably true.  Get two Indians with experience in peddling
drugs to be the errand boys.  "What happened after you got back from
Denver?"

"We parked the Jeeps at Rich's, and I got the hell out of there.  A
couple hours later, he comes to my place over in Easter Egg Village and
hands me a thousand dollars.  A thousand dollars for twenty-four hours'
work!"

"How many deliveries did you make?"

Marcus shifted in the chair, and Jennifer traced one finger along the
side of his face.  "Go on, tell him," she said in the little-girl
voice.

"One more.  Last week.  Same thing as before.  We deliver the packages
to the warehouse and load up some suitcases.  Only when we stop for
gas, Rich don't shut up about those suitcases being filled with cash.
Jesus, I told him.  Keep it down.  We'll have every cowboy in Wyoming
after us.  I should've known he'd pull some thin' stupid."

Marcus glanced at the girl, then continued.  "Like before, we take the
Jeeps to Rich's, and I go home to wait.  Only this time Rich don't come
over.  I'm thinkin' he stiffed me.  So I go lookin' for him.  I check
out a couple parties, but he ain't there.  I go back to his house.  Out
in front are two pickups.  Somethin' about 'em made me kinda uneasy, so
I parked my truck down the road a ways, and circled back along the
creek bed  Soon's I snuck up to the back, I hear shoutin' inside, and
Rich, like, he's cryin'.  I slide open the kitchen window just enough
so I can see straight into the living room."  Marcus blinked, as if he
were seeing it still.

After a few seconds, he went on.  "There were these two white guys.
One's got brown hair; the other's kinda blond with this stubbly beard.
They got Rich tied to a chair, and they're hittin' him.  The blond guy,
he says they're gonna teach him what's his and what ain't.  Rich is
cryin' hard.  He's got on that necklace he always wore, and the blond
guy starts twisting it around his neck.  When he let go, Rich is
coughin' like he's dyin'.  He tells 'em to go look on the closet shelf.
The guy with brown hair goes into the bedroom and comes back with a
box.  "Half of it's here," he says.  The blond guy yells at Rich, "You
motherfucker!""

Marcus stopped talking and stared off into space, as if he were
watching a movie.  "Rich yells out, "Marcus got the rest!"  and that's
when hell really breaks loose.  The blond guy grabs a star quilt off
the sofa--Rich's mom made it for him--and throws it over Rich's head. 
Then he pushes a pistol, against Rich's head, like this."  Marcus bent
his head toward Jennifer.  "The other guy's yellin', "No, man.  Don't
shoot him!"  Jesus, I knew what was comin' down, but I was frozen
stjff.  I couldn't do nothin'."  Marcus dropped his head into his
hands, and the girl slipped both arms around him, hugging him close.

After a few seconds, Marcus looked up.  "I got the hell outta there.  I
must've run down the creek bed a couple miles.  Then I circled back and
got in my truck.  But no way was I goin' home, 'cause they'd be
waitin'.  That bastard Rich told 'em I got the other half.  He must've
hid it somewhere, thinkin' if they got half of it, they'd come after
me for the rest and leave him alone.  So I drove over here.  Next thing
I hear, my old girlfriend's been killed.  Jesus!  What'd she ever do to
them?  She didn't know nothin' about it."

Father John could hear his own breathing, mingled with that of the
couple scrunched together in the chair.  Somewhere a faucet was
dripping.  His theory was almost right.  The blond guy who had gone to
Annie Chambeau's was Gary.  He'd been looking for Marcus, hoping Marcus
would lead him to Rich.  Somehow he had found Rich, killed him, dumped
his body on Rendezvous Road, and then retrieved it.  And he was still
looking for Marcus.

"What kind of pickups were in Rich's driveway?"  Father John asked.
"What?"  Marcus blinked.  "Just pickups.  I don't remember."  "Think,
Marcus.  It's important."

"You said one was gray, right?"  Jennifer said softly.

"Yeah, a gray Chevy."

"The other?"

"I guess it was a Dodge.  Yeah.  A green Dodge."

Father John placed his palms together, as if in prayer.  Dear Lord.  Ty
had been following him since Monday, ever since he'd gone to Easter Egg
Village looking for Marcus.  Ty must have been watching Marcus's house.
He must have decided to follow the red Toyota pickup, hoping that
sooner or later whoever had come looking for Marcus would know where to
find him.  But why had Ty rammed the Toyota on Seventeen-Mile Road? 
Out of frustration?  Or had that been an accident?  Had he just gotten
so close, he'd slid into the tailgate when Father John had slowed
down?

The next time he had spotted the green truck, it had stayed a good
distance behind, as if the driver wanted to remain inconspicuous.  Like
tonight, when the truck rolled north past Herb's Place.  Had Ty
backtracked, come through an alley, and parked where he could see the
parking lot?  Had Ty waited and followed him here?  Was he outside
now?

"We've got to call the police," Father John said.

"I thought you was gonna help us," Jennifer said, a whine in her voice.
"And besides, I don't exactly have a phone."

"No way."  Marcus managed to liberate himself and was on his feet,
leaving the girl propped in the chair alone, like a mannequin. "They'll
send me back to prison.  I'd rather be dead."

Father John stared at the young man a moment.  Nothing was worse for an
Arapaho than to be locked up, confined to a small space.  It was like
death.  Being alive meant being free to walk the earth, breathe the
fresh air, and feel the wind sweeping over you.  "A lawyer might be
able to get you some kind of deal," he said finally.

Marcus emitted another tight, hopeless snort.  "Last time some lawyer
got me a deal, I went down for three years.  I don't want no lawyers.
You talk to Chief Banner for me, Father, okay?"

Father John's instinct was to insist they go to Fort Washakie right
away, to insist on driving them there.  But he knew that would lead to
an argument, and there wasn't time to argue.  Not when Ty might be
waiting outside.  He'd probably already called Gary, who might burst
through the door at any moment.

Father John said, "You both have to leave this house now."

"Nobody knows Marcus is here," said Jennifer.  "We hid his truck in
the garage out back."

Father John ignored her.  He was thinking where to send them.  The
guest house was a possibility, but he had already told Vicky to take
Susan there.  He prayed Vicky had taken his advice.

Suddenly the girl blurted out, "That's how come you want to know about
the trucks.  You seen them.  They followed you here, didn't they?"  She
sprang to her feet, gripping Marcus's arm.  He looked stunned, as if
he'd had the air knocked out of him.

"We gotta get out of here," the girl said.  "We can go back to the
motel."  She took a deep breath and said, "We was hiding at that motel
out north on the highway after those cowboys beat him up, in case they
came lookin' for us."

Father John got to his feet.  His legs felt cramped and stiff.  "You
leave first.  Go out the back door.  They're watching for me to come
out the front.  I'll wait until you drive away before I leave.  I'll
call you at the motel as soon as I talk to Chief Banner."

Jennifer darted across the room and disappeared through a doorway.
Marcus followed her.  After a minute, they were back, wearing their
parkas.  The girl had one boot on and was hopping around as she pulled
on the other, grasping a little pile of clothes under her arm.

Father John let them out the back door and watched as they disappeared
around the dark hump of a garage.  After a moment, a truck, headlights
off, slid down the alley.  He shut the back door quietly and waited
about five minutes before going out the front.  The street was clear,
with tiny specks of snow fluttering in the hollow glow of the
streetlights.  < 30

The Toyota crept through the streets of Riverton, empty except for the
4x4s and sedans parked alongside the curb.  Almost invisible
snowflakes, like dots of rain, touched the windshield.  The clouds were
breaking up.  It might stop snowing soon.  Father John kept one eye on
the rearview mirror--nothing but darkness.  He began to breathe a
little easier as he swung out onto the highway and headed south.  It
was possible Ty had passed Herb's place earlier without seeing the
Toyota pull into the parking lot.

Suddenly headlights appeared behind him.  He pulled out to pass a semi,
watching to see if the headlights also pulled out.  They stayed back.
Just short of Arapaho Junction, he turned onto Seventeen-Mile Road,
darkness swallowing the space in the rearView mirror.  Another mile and
he wheeled into the mission.  The grounds glistened with new snow, and
the buildings stood out in ghostly relief against the faint
moonlight.

He parked in front of the priests' residence and hurried inside.  The
hallway stretched ahead, silent and gloomy in the darkness.  Somewhere
beneath the floorboards the furnace was hissing, but the house felt
almost as cold as outdoors.

He flipped the wall switch in his office, strode over to the phone on
his desk, and punched in 911.  He waited, thumping his fist against the
desk top.  The instant the operator came on the line, he said, "This is
Father O'Malley.  Put me through to Chief Banner."

The operator began explaining that the chief was off duty.  "This is an
emergency," Father John interrupted.  He could almost taste his own
impatience.

The line went dead for a couple of minutes.  Then he heard, "Jesus H.
Christ, John.  It's past midnight.  Don't you priests ever sleep?"

Father John sank into the familiar chair behind his desk and related
everything Marcus had told him.  He had the chief's attention--he
sensed the intensity in the silence at the other end of the line.

"Where's Marcus now?"  Banner asked.

"He wants to come in, but he needs some assurance he won't go back to
prison."

"He's violated probation, for Chrissake.  The feds are probably gonna
drop him down the prison hole and leave him there," the chief said.
"But that kid doesn't have a choice.  He can't hide forever.  Those
white men will find him eventually.  If he wants to save his lousy
skin, he's gotta get himself over to Fort Washakie."

"He won't do it, Banner.  You know Marcus.  He'll take his chances.
Soon as he figures out how to leave the old people so they'll be okay,
he'll take off."  Father John felt certain of this.  Otherwise Marcus
would have been gone by now.  There was good in him.  "You need him,
Banner.  There are murderers and a synthetic heroin lab on the
reservation."

Father John could hear the chief take in a couple of deep breaths
before telling him, "I'll get back to you first thing tomorrow."  "What
about tonight, Banner?"

"Jesus, John.  Give me a break."

There was a click, followed by the dial tone, and Father John pushed in
Vicky's number.  He let it ring a long time, his anxiety growing.
Finally he slammed down the receiver, pulled on his parka, and strode
back into the frigid night.  Crossing the center of the mission, he
followed the rutted road toward the guest house.  "Please be here," he
said out loud into the cold air.

The small house looked as if 't had drifted with the snow into the
clump of cottonwoods, the leafless branches laced together above the
peaked roof.  There was no sign of Vicky's Bronco.  He could hear his
heart pounding.  She wasn't at home.  She wasn't here.  Where was
she?

As he got closer, he saw the churned snow outside the front door, the
tire tracks running toward the far side of the house, and the glint of
the rear bumper just past the corner.  Thank God, Vicky's rational side
had won out.  He was about to knock, then decided against it.  Vicky
and Susan both needed their rest.  First thing tomorrow, he would try
talking to Vicky again.  He had to convince her that Susan should go to
the police, for her own safety.

The house where the Jesuits of St; Francis Mission had lived for more
than a century groaned in the quiet.  Father Peter was asleep upstairs,
Walks-on in the corner of the kitchen.  A few minutes ago the dog had
pattered down the hallway, toenails clicking against the linoleum, and
stuck his head through the doorway.  Then he had pattered back, a
sentry assured all was well.

Father John stood at the window in his study, sipping hot coffee and
waiting for Banner's call.  The moonlight outlined the humps and
swales of the white landscape, while, in the distance, the black mass
of the Wind River Mountains rose into the silver sky.  He was trying to
figure out the missing part of the syllogism.  Locate the missing part
and the conclusion is obvious, he used to tell his students.  Somewhere
on the reservation three white men had set up a laboratory to produce a
drug called fentanyl, a synthetic heroin.  They had hired two Indians
to deliver the drug to Denver, from where it could be transported
across the country.

Who had the capability to produce and distribute synthetic heroin
nationwide?  A drug cartel?  The thought of a drug cartel moving onto
the reservation sent an involuntary shiver down his spine.  Yet it made
sense.  A drug cartel could handle the entire operation.  And it would
know how to handle the profits--run the cash through offshore banks,
launder it through legitimate businesses.  What was it, then, that
bothered him?

He whirled around, spilling coffee onto the carpet, and started pacing
in front of the desk.  Marcus had said he and Rich brought the cash
back to the reservation.  Suitcases full of cash!  That was it--the
missing piece he hadn't been able to locate.  How could anybody dispose
of that kind of cash in the middle of Wyoming?  Deposit it?  Maybe, but
banks would report any amount above ten thousand dollars.  And a
constant influx of large deposits into the area's small banks would
attract a lot of attention.  No, banks were too risky.

Maybe the cartel intended to ship the profits back to Denver or to Los
Angeles.  He imagined large semis stashed with money rolling down the
highway.  But if that were the case, why bring the cash back to the
reservation?  Unless .. .

Father John stopped pacing and stared out the window again.  He could
hardly believe what he was thinking; it was preposterous, but it could
work.  The cartel intended to launder the drug money right here by
constructing a large recreation center that would eventually
metamorphose into a casino.  It would be a closed system on an Indian
reservation--production, distribution, and money laundering.  He'd
heard about something like this on the big Navajo reservation a few
years ago.  He'd never imagined it would happen at Wind River.

Father John drained the last of the coffee and stared into the night.
Maybe he was grasping at straws, hitching onto some outlandish theory
to save St.  Francis Mission.  So far he'd batted .500 with his
theories.  It wasn't Marcus Deppert's body in the ditch; it was Rich
Dolby's.  But Gary was the killer; he had been right about that.

If this new theory came close to the mark, it meant Nick Sheldon, the
Los Angeles lawyer, dispatched here to buy St.  Francis Mission and
build a recreation center, was in charge of the entire operation.  He
had purchased the two Jeeps under the name of Steve Nichols, his own
initials reversed.  And Sheldon answered to the cartel-the Z Group.

Father John debated about returning to the guest house to wake Vicky.
He wanted her to Icnow they were up against an organization more
powerful and deadly than either could have imagined.  Rich Dolby and
Annie Chambeau had gotten in the way and had paid with their lives. The
people who worked for the Z Group wouldn't hesitate to kill again.

He pulled back his cuff and checked his watch.  Ten minutes past two.
He'd wait until daylight.  If he woke Vicky now, she'd spend the rest
of the night worrying.  Besides, it was still just a theory.  He had no
proof.

The jangling telephone broke into his thoughts.  He crossed back to
the desk and picked up the receiver, hoping the ringing hadn't awakened
Father Peter.  He knew the old man had taken the hall phone up the
stairs with him when he went to bed.

"John, you there?"  It was Banner.

"Yes."  Father John was surprised.  He'd hoped Banner would contact the
FBI agent right away, but he'd been prepared to wait until morning.

"Radio call just came in from the Riverton police."

Father John closed his eyes, afraid of what Banner would say.

"They got a double homicide.  Indian man, white woman, both about
twenty-five.  Night clerk at the Buffalo Motel on the north side heard
the shots about thirty minutes ago and called the police.  Looks like a
real professional job.  Perpetrator's long gone, as you might expect.
No positive IDs on the bodies yet."

Father John's mouth went dry.  His breath came in quick, burning gulps.
"Marcus and a woman named Jennifer Smith," he managed.

"That's what I was afraid of," Banner said.  "That poor son-of-a-bitch.
He should've gotten his ass over to Fort Washakie like I told ya."

"I'm going to the motel."

Banner said, "Yeah.  I thought you might want to do that."  31

Four black-and-white police cars stood at odd angles in the
snow-shrouded parking lot, circles of red and blue lights flashing into
the gray night.  Yellow tape enclosed most of the lot.  A neon sign
blinked buffalo MOTEL, except the u was dark.  White doors looking like
tombstones lined the side of the low brick building, with knots of
people huddled on the sidewalk, parkas flung over their pajamas.  A
couple of uniformed police officers stood guard outside the center
door.

Father John nosed the Toyota into the yellow tape and slammed out of
the cab.  Stepping over the tape, he walked toward the policemen, one
of whom came to meet him.  He identified himself, and the policeman
waved him on.  Another opened the door, and he stepped into the
brightly lit room filled with uniformed officers, two detectives in
suits, and a photographer who was weaving about.  Everybody seemed to
be talking at once, a chorus of rising and falling voices.  Light from
the large lamp in one corner streamed like sunshine over the two bodies
on the bed.

"Father John O'Malley," he said to one of the suits as he stepped
through the crowd.  The room went quiet.  He had been to murder scenes
before, but had seen nothing like this.  Marcus and Jennifer lay side
by side, naked, the white female body curled gently toward the slim,
brown, male body, in the same attitude they'd taken in the chair a few
hours earlier.  Part of Jennifer's face was gone, as was the top of
Marcus's head.  Redblack blood as thick as jelly pooled around their
heads and under their shoulders.  She had a look of peace about her.
Marcus's eyes were open, frozen in death.  He must have heard the
killer burst through the door.

Father John made the sign of the cross over the bodies.  "May the Lord
preserve you and lift you up," he said out loud.  "May the Lord forgive
you and show you His mercy and compassion and hold you in His arms. 
May you live forever in the House of the Lord."

"Amen."  The voices were soft and reverent.  Silence settled a moment.
Then, "Is this Marcus Deppert?"  a detective asked.

"Yes," Father John said.

"How about the woman?"

Father John told him what he knew: her name; that she had worked at
Herb's Place; that she came from somewhere else, possibly Cheyenne.  He
was thinking she had a little girl's voice, and she and Marcus had been
alive a short time ago.

A gust of wind swirled about, pelting the parking lot with little
kernels of snow.  Just as Father John was about to get into the Toyota,
a white BIA police car skidded to a stop a few feet away.  The driver's
door flung open, and Banner jumped out.  "The old people gotta be
told," he said, his forehead creased in worry.  "You wanna take care of
that?"

"I don't think so," Father John said, sliding inside the cab and
slamming the door.

The Ghost Walker 211

The Toyota bumped over the ridge of ice at the edge of the parking lot.
Father John hunched his shoulders against the cold and stared past the
shimmering headlights into the darkness.  How could he tell Joseph and
Deborah Deppert he'd led Marcus's killers straight to him?  That the
Dodge pickup had followed him all week looking for Marcus?  That he'd
seen it earlier tonight and should have known it was hiding in the
shadows, waiting, waiting.  That he'd done exactly what the killers had
hoped?  How could he ever explain?

He was shivering inside his parka; his hands were shaking, even though
hot air poured from under the dashboard.  How could this have happened?
If he hadn't been so worried about losing the mission, maybe he would
have realized Marcus had to be in serious trouble to disappear the way
he did.  Maybe he would have tried harder to find him.  And when he did
find him, why hadn't he insisted Marcus go directly to Fort Washakie?
Why hadn't he taken him?

The snow and ice and asphalt blurred in the headlights, and Father John
ran one gloved hand across his eyes, wiping away the moisture.  The
highway skirted the edge of Riverton, past the ghostlike garages and
restaurants, the automobile parts store, the supermarket.  Everything
seemed to be dropping away, leaving him alone with the thirst that
burned inside like a laser beam.  It was all he could think about.

He passed Herb's Place, his eyes searching for the brown frame building
set back about fifty feet from the highway.  After another half-mile he
spotted the lighted sign between two posts close to the curb.
friendly

LIQUOR STORE.  24-HOUR DRIVE-THROUGH.  WE NEVER

CLOSE.

Father John took a sharp left, crossing in front of an oncoming truck
that came out of nowhere.  He pushed hard on the gas pedal--a
reflex--as a horn bleeped into the early-morning stillness.  The Toyota
jumped the curb, barely missing the lighted sign.  Easing on the
brakes, he managed to wheel into the driveway and stop at a glass box
that glowed like a Christmas ornament on the side of the building.  He
rolled down his window at the same time the Arapaho woman inside the
box slid back a glass panel and leaned onto a tiny counter.  "That you,
Father John?"

He must know her, this Arapaho woman selling alcohol to her people.
Well, it was a job.  He couldn't recall her name, his mind had
collapsed into the burning light inside, the tremendous craving.  He
stretched back against his seat to extract the ten-dollar bill from the
pocket of his blue jeans.  Reaching through his opened window, he
flattened the bill on the counter.  "A bottle of whiskey," he said,
dimly aware of the hoarseness in his voice.

The woman stared at the bill.  "You sure, Father?"

"Just get whatever it buys."

She picked up the bill and disappeared into the dimly lit interior.
Wind gusted between the building and the Toyota, blowing snow against
his face.  He concentrated on the woman's return.  She was taking
forever.  Finally she stepped back into the glass box and set a bottle
in a brown bag on the counter.  She held out the change.  He waved it
away and grabbed the bag.

The weight of the whiskey bottle on the front seat beside him felt
light and cool against his thigh as the Toyota followed the curve of
the driveway around the building and pulled out onto the highway.  32
>

father John drove through the grounds of St.  Francis Mission, past the
school and the administration building, past Eagle Hall and the guest
house.  He drove on, the Toyota rocking over the ice-rutted road until
it ran into a wedge of snow.  The tires churned and strained before
finally grinding to a stop.

He turned off the engine and flipped off the headlights.  Easing the
bottle out of the paper bag, he twisted off the cap.  The smell of
whiskey floated around him as he stepped out into the gray moonlight.
Cottonwoods loomed overhead, a ghostly presence with snow tracing the
leafless branches.  Dipping his chin into his parka and pulling his
cowboy hat forward, he started walking through the wind-sculptured
snow, bending his knees with each step, as if he were climbing a steep
mountain.  The whiskey sloshed out of the bottle and bored little holes
into the snow as he went.

He reached the bank of the Little Wind River and lowered himself onto
the trunk of a fallen cottonwood.  The soft swish-swish of the wind in
the trees mingled with the sounds of water gurgling over the blue-gray
ice.  The river was streaked in moonlight.

It appealed to his sense of irony to get drunk here.  The last pastor
of St.  Francis Mission would admit his utter failure at the exact
place to which the first pastor had come: Black Night's camp.  It was
to this place the Arapaho bands had straggled from across the plains
when they had nowhere else to go.

Father John glanced around him.  The village was here among the
cottonwoods: the tip is arranged in a circle, the campfire burning in
the center, the pony herd corralled off in the clearings.  He could
almost hear the sounds of ponies neighing, women keening over all they
had lost, children coughing and crying.

Come and help us, Chief Black Night had pleaded with the Jesuits.
Father John repeated the words out loud: "Help us.  Help us find the
future."  It was a request of hope, an affirmation that there would be
a future.  And the first pastor had come by train part of the way, the
rest of the way on horseback, guided by the warriors.  He had said Mass
on the banks of the river, had consecrated the bread, raising it toward
heaven: the body of Christ, the presence of God in the word.  In hope,
he had prayed.

Father John set the bottle into the snow next to his boot and dropped
his head into both hands.  He heard the sounds of his own sobbing as he
prayed.  "O God of abundance and mercy, forgive me, forgive me.  Give
me the grace to hope."

Straightening his shoulders, he gulped in the icy air, feeling it crimp
his lungs.  Then he reached down, grabbed the neck of the bottle, and
tipped it sideways, watching as the whiskey carved a brown trench into
the snow.  The fumes wafted upward, engulfing him.  He got to his feet
and walked to the edge of the river, where he stood a long while,
watching the water cut its narrow channel through the ice.  Finally he
walked back, picked up the bottle, and threw it as hard as he'd ever
thrown a baseball.  His shoulder muscles burned as the bottle sailed
through the cottonwood branches out over the river, into the
darkness.

He retraced his footsteps through the snow until he realized he had
walked to the river in circles, and now sighted a more direct path.  As
he neared the Toyota, he spotted a slight, dark figure coming down the
road.  He knew it was Vicky.  He went to meet her.

"I heard an engine," she said.  Her breath came in frozen clouds.  "It
woke me.  I looked out and saw the Toyota headed down here.  Are you
okay?"

Father John said nothing.  He put an arm around her shoulders and
guided her back to the Toyota.  He could feel her shivering through the
downy layers of her parka.

He let her in the passenger side, then tramped through the snow and
slid in behind the wheel.  "You'll be warm in a minute," he said,
turning on the engine and pushing up the heat lever.  He knew it would
take a few minutes before the old engine began cranking out any heat.

"It smells like a bar in here."

"Don't ask," he said, staring past the windshield at the cottonwood
branches tangled against the gray sky.  He could feel her watching
him.

Vicky was quiet for a moment.  Then she said, "Ben has started drinking
again."

"I'm sorry," he said.  "It can happen."

"But you didn't start."  Her voice was low.

Father John was aware of the hint of warm air starting out of the vents
now, the soft shuddering of the motor, the silence between them.  He
turned toward her.  "Not this time."

"Tell me what's happened.  What sent you here?"

"Marcus Deppert was murdered a couple hours ago," he said softly.  "He
and a white girl.  At the Buffalo Motel."  He drew in a long breath,
then began relating everything, letting it all come out: the drug lab,
Gary and Ty, the murders of Rich Dolby and Annie Chambeau.  He stopped
at relating his latest theory about Nick Sheldon and the plans to close
St.  Francis Mission and build a so-called recreation center.  It was
enough to comprehend just the facts.  The hardest fact was the murder
of Marcus and the girl, the murders he might have prevented.

Vicky hadn't taken her eyes away.  "You mustn't blame yourself, John."
She reached out and laid a hand on his arm.  "They would've found
Marcus eventually.  It was a question of time."

"I should have taken him to Fort Washakie."

"Yes," Vicky said sarcastically.  "You should have hog-tied him and
thrown him in the back of your pickup.  Because that's the only way he
would've gone.  He was a stubborn Indian."  Vicky paused a moment. 
Then she whispered, "We don't control everything, and everything isn't
the way we want it to be.  I've had to learn that."

Father John felt the pressure of her fingers through his parka.  The
Arapahos believed there was a healing grace in the touch of human
fingers.  He knew the truth of it.

After a moment Vicky took her hand away and looked out her window.  "If
anything, I should have listened to you and had Gary arrested for
menacing and trespassing.  He was waiting for us outside the hospital
this afternoon, but I was able to lose him.  That's why we came to St.
Francis."

Father John said nothing.  It was some consolation.  At least he had
told her about the guest house.

"And I shouldn't have been so stubborn," Vicky said, sadness in her
voice.  "Of course you were right.  I should have tried to convince
Susan to go to the police."

"It's not too late," Father John said.  "Maybe she knows something that
will help."

Vicky turned back to him.  Moonlight washed across her face, and he saw
the worry in her eyes.  "What can that be?  Susan and I have gone over
everything.  She swears she doesn't know what Ty and the others are up
to.  They kept her drugged, fed her a story about starting a business.
Some business."  Vicky shook her head.  "Anyway, Banner and the feds
have enough for a search warrant based on what Marcus told you. They're
probably all over Lean Bear's ranch right now."  "They have to find the
lab, Vicky.  There's no proof, nothing to tie the white men to Marcus
without the lab."

Vicky stared out her window again.  After a few seconds she said, "The
lab is not in the house or in any of the barns out in the pastures.
That would be too risky.  Ben could show up at any time and discover
it. It would be like him--when he isn't drinking--to check on how
they're taking care of things.  He's a stickler for keeping everything
in tip-top shape.  No, the lab is somewhere else, somewhere not Ben or
anyone else would think of going to, especially in the winter."

Suddenly Vicky laid her head back on the top of the seat.  "Oh, my
God," she said, drawing out the words.  "I know where it is."  <33>

father John kept his eyes on the Indian woman beside him, staring up at
the roof of the cab, a smile playing at her mouth.  The last piece of
the puzzle, and she had figured it out.  "Where?"  he asked.

Vicky raised her head and turned toward him.  "Last Tuesday," she
began, "when I drove up to the ranch to see Susan, the gate was closed.
I was about to climb over when Gary came barreling down the mountain in
a Chevy pickup.  Down the mountain!  I wondered at the time. There's
nothing at the end of the road except the top of the mountain and
probably twenty feet of snow.  But about three miles up is the turnoff
to the upper pasture.  It's secluded, surrounded by mountain peaks. 
There's a barn and a couple of small buildings.  The lab must be in one
of them.  That's where Gary had been.  He must've come back to the
ranch for something; maybe he forgot something.  Anyway, he found
me."

It could be, Father John was thinking.  But how would Gary and the
others know about the upper pasture?

As if she had caught the drift of his thoughts, Vicky said, "It was one
of Susan's favorite places.  It was where she learned to ride the
gelding her father gave her on her eighth birthday.  She probably told
Ty all kinds of things about growing up on the reservation.  She was in
love with him, John.  Women tell those things to the men they love.
Unfortunately Susan fell in love with the wrong man."  Vicky looked
away again.  "She's not the first woman to do that."

Father John leaned one shoulder into the window, took a deep breath,
and blew it out.  "Then it's over," he said.  "Banner and the feds will
find the lab."

"No," Vicky said, jerking upright.  "They won't find it.  It's not part
of Lean Bear's ranch.  It's a separate forty acres Ben inherited from
his grandfather.  A high mountain meadow good only for pasturing sheep
in the summers.  It was beautiful in the summers, filled with lupin and
wild roses.  We used to camp up there sometimes" Her voice trailed off.
"No one would know to look there.  And anyway, a warrant for the ranch
wouldn't cover the upper pasture."

"Banner has to be told," Father John said, jamming the gear into
reverse.  The tires screamed as they dug into the frozen earth.  He
shifted into forward, then into reverse again, rocking the Toyota free
from the wedge of snow.  As they began backing through the ridged
tracks, he rolled down his window and stuck out his head to keep the
Toyota in the narrow road.  He backed all the way to the guest house.
,

"I'll call Banner and arrange to bring Susan in.  She and I are
supposed to fly out of here in the afternoon."  Vicky grasped the door
handle, then hesitated.  "I called that Jesuit friend of yours who runs
the rehab hospital in Denver, Jim McCarthy.  Only I spoke with his
wife.  She said they had a long waiting list.  When I mentioned your
name, she agreed to admit Susan right away.  Tell me, how is it Father
Jim McCarthy has a wife?"

Father John was quiet a moment.  Then he said, "Jim was laicized.  I
guess he met someone he wanted to spend the rest of his life with."

"I see," Vicky said, opening the door and sliding out.

No, she didn't see, Father John thought, watching her disappear into
the guest house.  Jim McCarthy could no longer be a priest.

Father John punched in Banner's numbers again, trying to ignore the
sounds of metal pans banging and cabinet doors slamming in the kitchen.
Elena had arrived and was obviously registering her displeasure over
the fact that he had trespassed on her domain to brew himself some
coffee.  He took another sip from the mug as the disembodied female
voice on the other end of the line solemnly assured him the chief would
return his call the minute he came in.  She had said the same thing an
hour ago.

He slammed down the receiver and glanced up from the desk, startled at
the silent specter in the doorway: Father Peter in the oversized black
coat that trailed along the tops of his boots, his black fedora
squashed into the rim of fuzzy white hair.  Just returned from saying
Mass for the old faithfuls.  He looked stricken.

"Leonard Bizzel, a reliable source of information, informed me about
Marcus Deppert and the young woman.  I offered the Mass for the repose
of their souls.  "Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!  Most
sacrilegious murder .. .""

Father John took another pull of the coffee.  The gray light of morning
filtered through the window, creating patterns of shadows over the
walls and carpet, the wingback chairs.  He had no patience for
Shakespeare right now; he wanted Banner to call.

"Macbeth, act two, scene one," Father Peter said, sadness in his
tone.

The jangling phone mingled with the sound of the old man's footsteps
shuffling down the hallway.  Father John pounced on the receiver.
"Banner!  What's happened?"  He wasn't sure it was the chief until he
heard the voice hoarse with tiredness.  "Listen, John," Banner said,
"we've checked out Lean Bear's ranch.  House, barn,
outbuildings--totally clean.  We didn't find a crystal of fentanyl,
heroin, or anything else."

"What about the men?"

"Gone."

Father John felt his heart sinking.  "What do you mean?"

"Cleared out.  No sign of them.  We've got an all points out. Meantime,
the feds are runnin' the names through the computers, lookin' for
priors.  We're gonna get these dudes, don't worry."

It wasn't reassuring, Father John thought.  The police hadn't ever
located the gray Chevy truck after he had found the body--Rich Dolby's
body--on Rendezvous Road.

"What about the buildings in the upper pasture?"

There was a pause on the line.  "What upper pasture?  What're you
talkin' about?"

"The forty acres up the mountain."

"Jesus.  You mean where Ben Holden used to pasture his sheep years
ago?"

"That's where they're manufacturing fentanyl."

Father John heard the sharp jabs of breath.  "You know that for sure?
You seen it yourself?  You know somebody who's seen it?  You got any
proof?"  Anger mixed with incredulity in the chief's voice.

Father John admitted he hadn't seen it.  There were no eyewitnesses,
nothing except Vicky's hunch.

"Vicky and Ben been divorced a long time," the chief said.  "What's she
got to do with this?"

Father John ignored the question.  Vicky would be bringing Susan in
soon.  She could explain it herself.  He said, "It's there, Banner.  Go
back.  You'll find it."

"What you're sayin' is the fed and I gotta go see the magistrate in
Lander, who's real happy with us right now 'cause we roused him out of
bed before dawn to get a search warrant which turned up nothing.
Absolutely nothing.  And now you're suggesting we ask him for another
warrant?  And on what evidence?  That you know somebody who's got a
hunch the drug lab's there."

"Trust me, Banner.  I'm sure Vicky's right about this."

"Well, it's like this, John.  We got a big problem.  The magistrate was
real reluctant to give us warrant number one.  It's not like we had
hard evidence to connect three white guys with last night's homicides.
All we had was what Marcus told you--hearsay.  And Marcus, poor
son-of-a-bitch, wasn't the most reliable Indian in the world.  However,
because of the homicides, the magistrate went out on a limb and gave us
the warrant, along with a little warning against racial harassment."

"What?"

"Harassing three white guys on an Indian reservation.  After my boys
went out there this week and had a discussion with Gary Rollins about
where he was Sunday night when you spotted the body, he called an
attorney and complained about harassment.  And the attorney called the
federal magistrate and said we were harassing whites for no reason. So,
like I say, we were lucky to get one search warrant, and the
magistrate's not gonna give us another without some hard evidence."

"Who is the attorney?"  Father John stared out the window at the snowy
grounds glistening in the morning light.  He knew the answer.  He was
waiting for the confirmation.

"Some big shot out of Los Angeles.  Just the kind liable to file a big
harassment case against the tribe.  Shaffer, Shelby."  "Sheldon?"

"Yeah.  You know him?"

Father John's hand tightened on the receiver.  The wild supposition,
the preposterous theory--it was right.  "Listen, Banner, the three men
could be at Nick Sheldon's place in Lander.  It's the large red brick
house on the north end of Martin Drive."

The chief was quiet a moment.  "This another one of your hunches?"  he
asked, then, hurriedly, "Okay.  I'll put in a call to Detective Loomis
in Lander, ask him to check it out.  Soon's we get a chance to question
those guys, one of 'em might decide to tell us about the lab.  Then
we'll have something to take to the magistrate."

Yeah, Father John thought as he replaced the receiver.  And if no one
talks, you'll have nothing to take to the magistrate.  ,

He was struggling into his parka when Elena came down the hallway, the
laces of her black shoes flapping against the linoleum floor.  "I got
your breakfast ready."

"Sorry," he said, brushing past the old woman.  He hurried out the door
down the sidewalk, into the rays of sun breaking through the cold air.
<34>

The Canyon was divided into sun and shadow under the pale blue sky.
Shadow washed over the snow-crested boulders on the mountainside, while
sunlight danced in the abyss above the creek.  The snow had not yet
started to soften on the asphalt, and Father John could feel the rear
tires slipping.  He tried to concentrate on the road winding upward,
but his thoughts were on Banner.  He was a good policeman.  He wouldn't
sleep until he had closed down the drug lab and arrested the murderers.
Eventually he would nail them.  In the meantime In the meantime,
Sheldon and the men he was paying were looking for Susan, and
eventually they would find her.  They might even trace her in Denver. 
As long as they were free, the girl and Vicky were in a kind of prison
with no hope of release.

The mountainside sloped into a snow-covered valley as he passed Lean
Bear's ranch.  The gate stood open.  Tire tracks cut through the snow
to the house, but no vehicles were about.  The house looked deserted,
suspended in the white landscape.  He glanced at the mileage.  Three
miles farther, Vicky had said.

The road narrowed as the Toyota climbed higher, skidding slightly
around the sharp curves.  He spotted the turnoff and wheeled toward it,
but the Toyota balked and slid sideways.  Suddenly he was spinning
across the road in slow motion, making wide loops toward the rocks and
trees, then out to the edge of the road.  He pumped the brakes and
turned the steering wheel into the spin.  The rear tires shuddered as
they sought a purchase in the snow.  Finally they began to grip.  The
Toyota stopped.  He rolled down his window and looked out.  The
tailgate hung over the abyss of the canyon.

He eased on the gas, willing the truck from the edge.  Gradually it
started across the road and up the narrow trail.  It climbed through
the shadows of ponderosas laden with snow, churning through tire tracks
left by somebody else.  About a mile and a half up, the road burst out
of the trees into a wide clearing--the upper pasture.  A blanket of
white spread into the distances, surrounded by the snow-girded peaks of
the Wind River Mountains.

Two small buildings stood off to the right.  A rancher might care for
orphaned ewes in one; a family could spend the cool summer nights in
the other.  Beyond the buildings, close to the rim of the trees, stood
a barn.  It had been painted at one time, and traces of green showed on
the wood.  Parked alongside it were three vehicles: the gray Chevy
pickup, the green Dodge pickup, and a red Jeep.

Father John let out a low whistle.  The lab was here, all right, and so
were Gary and Ty when he'd just sent Banner and the Lander police to
Sheldon's house.  There was always the possibility Banner would find
some excuse to check out the upper pasture, but he couldn't count on
it.  He threw the Toyota into reverse and started backing down,
rounding a curve out of sight of the barn.  He rammed the Toyota into a
windswept clearing in the trees.  The wind sighed in the branches and
peppered his face with snow as he hiked back up the mountain, staying
among trees, his boots sinking into the powder.

At the edge of the pasture, he heard loud, angry voices mingling with
the wind that swished across the open spaces and a slow humming noise
he couldn't identify.  He moved sideways, staying close to the trees,
then darted to the back of the barn and inched toward the small window.
It was painted black inside, and he caught a glimpse of his own face.
It surprised him: the prickly, unshaven chin, the flecks of
perspiration on his forehead, his cowboy hat set back.  Below the
window stood a generator that emitted a sound like a hive full of bees.
A faint antiseptic smell hung in the air.

"No murder!"  a man shouted as Father John moved along the side of the
barn toward the front.  He heard another voice, low and calm, saying,
"Unexpected problem .. . deal with it."  It was Sheldon's.

Father John came around the corner.  The barn door stood partly open.
"You had no right to involve me in murder."  The first voice again. The
quiet, reasonable voice of the lawyer responded, "You have no reason to
worry."

Father John moved slowly along the front, then bent toward the opening.
The smells of chemicals--alcohol and ether and ammonia--stung his
nostrils.  The opening offered a clear view of half the barn.  Long
fluorescent bulbs dangled on black cords from the ceiling; light
reflected off the stainless-steel table against the wall.  Plastic and
glass bottles, small glass dishes, flasks, and glass containers filled
with liquids of various colors lined the tables, while the shelves
above sagged under the clutter of boxes, packages, and bottles.  On
each bottle were white labels with large black letters that spelled out
the words "Flammable" and "Explosive."  At the far end of the barn
stood a steel cabinet with glass doors.  Behind the doors were still
more bottles, all with black lettered warning labels.  Someone had
stuck a red sign at the top of one door: danger.  keep sparks and fire
away.  The cabinet itself seemed to fold upward into a hood, like a
metal tipi, that, Father John figured, vented fumes from the bottled
solvents to the outside.

Across from the cabinet stood a closet, its door padlocked, and on the
floor next to it was some kind of fan encased in metal.  It made a soft
whirring noise.  Father John had seen other barns on the reservation
with this kind of rigged-up heating system, only here the boiler was
locked in the closet away from the chemicals.  He could feel the thin
stream of warm air blowing across the barn.

Close to the fan stood Nick Sheldon, hands thrust into the pockets of
his gray overcoat, black boots sunk into the red carpet spread across
the dirt floor.  He faced a stocky middle-aged man wearing a
long-sleeved white shirt that strained against its buttons and blue
jeans that sagged below his belly.  A black beard wrapped around his
chin and mingled with his curly dark hair.  "Murder wasn't part of our
contract, you SOB.," he shouted, reaching up a pudgy hand to push his
plastic-rimmed glasses into place.

Sheldon bent toward him.  "For a professor you can be very dense,
Morrissey.  I've explained that whatever happens outside this lab is no
concern of yours.  You do your job; we take care of ours."  The man
with the beard reared backward, fists clenched.  Father John thought he
might slug the lawyer.  Sheldon must have thought so, too, because he
stepped back and took his hands out of his pockets.  The professor
whirled around and brought both fists down hard on the stainless-steel
table, sending a glass flask rolling toward the edge.  He grabbed it,
set it upright.  Keeping his eyes on the flask, he said, "This was
supposed to be a well-organized business enterprise.

You were supposed to be businessmen.  Instead I find you are nothing
but a bunch of bungling murderers."  He turned back slowly, fists still
clenched.  "Well, I'm leaving here.  Go find yourself another
genius."

"You don't mean that, Morrissey."  Sheldon placed one hand on the
professor's shoulder.  "Where would you go?  Back to some dead-end job
in some podunk college where no one appreciates you?  This is your
dream.  A lab equipped to your exact specifications.  Anything you
want, we provide, just so you can work your wonders with no
interference. Just to show you how much we appreciate your genius,
Morrissey, I've been authorized to double the amount we originally
agreed to pay you."

The professor seemed to relax; his shoulders rounded, he looked as if
he might cave forward.  Father John stepped quickly around the corner
and darted again for the trees.  He'd seen enough, heard enough, for
Banner to get the warrant.  He ran downslope a short way, then angled
toward the road where he could make better time.  He had to drive out
of here before Sheldon started back.  Most likely the lawyer had driven
up here in the Jeep.  And while the police were looking for the two
pickups, Gary and Ty were probably using the other Jeep.  But where
were they?  How long before Gary figured out where Vicky had taken
Susan?

Just as Father John came around the curve, a gust of wind whipped the
snow off the trees, engulfing him in a white cloud.  He ran through it,
then stopped in his tracks.  Standing in the road ahead was Ty, wearing
a dark parka, a knit cap pulled low around his face, and aviator
sunglasses.  He raised the blue-black barrel of a shotgun.  "Turn
around and keep walkin', Father," he said.  "We gotta go see Mr.
Sheldon."  <35>

father John didn't move.  "You don't want to do that, Ty.  It would
blow the only chance you've got."  It was a gamble.  He detected a hint
of deference about the young man, even while his hands twitched on the
gun, which was waving back and forth.  "What d'ya mean?"

"The police know about the lab.  They're on their way here now."  That
was probably a lie, although Father John was praying Banner would find
some excuse to get up here.  He took a gulp of air and went on.  "Four
people have been murdered, Ty, and you're involved."

The young man's eyes v/idened; his head began shaking.  "I ain't no
murderer.  I didn't kill nobody.  I didn't even know about that Indian
girl in Lander 'til after Gary shot her.  Hell, I tried to stop him
from shootin' Rich Dolby.  And Mr.  Sheldon just told me to find Marcus
Deppert, and that's what I did.  You was a big help."  Father John felt
his stomach muscles constrict, as if he'd been hit with a fastball. The
gun jerked upward, and the young man went on: Having figured that
sooner or later Father John would lead him to the Indian, he had
followed the Toyota.  Last night he followed it to Herb's Place and
then to the house.  He was parked around the corner when Marcus and the
girl drove out of the alley.

He followed them to the motel and called Sheldon.  "I done my job,
that's all.  I ain't responsible for what happened next."  Ty shifted
from one foot to the other.

"Sorry," Father John said.  "That's not how it works.  You're an
accessory to murder, and you're looking at spending the rest of your
life in prison.  But if you turn yourself in, things might go easier
for you.  We can drive to Fort Washakie right now.  It's your only
chance."

Ty's whole body began to shake.  The shotgun moved back and forth
erratically.  "Nice try, Father.  But I got other plans.  I'm gonna
collect what Mr.  Sheldon owes me and, soon's Susan gets here, me and
her are gonna cut out."

Father John made an effort to keep his voice calm.  "What are you
saying?"

A kind of smile crept into the young man's eyes.  "Mr.  Sheldon figured
out you'd be hidin' Susan and her mom.  So he sent Gary over to the
mission to get 'em.  He's bringin' 'em up here right now.  And Mr.
Sheldon's not gonna like you snoopin' around the lab.  So start
walkin', Father."

"Ty, don't you get it?"  Father John heard himself shouting against the
mountain stillness.  "They're going to kill Susan and her mother."

The young man came forward jerkily, raising the barrel until it was
pointed at Father John's head.  "Don't try trickin' me.  Mr.  Sheldon
ain't gonna kill my girlfriend.  He knows we're gonna get married. 
Turn around and walk, or I swear I'm gonna have to shoot you.  I don't
want to, Father, so don't make me do it."

Father John turned slowly and started up the road, the muzzle hard
against his back.  Their boots scrunched the snow as they crossed the
open space in front of the barn, and Father John heard the voices
inside.  Their tones were calm now, like those of two businessmen
discussing shipments and packages.  Ty kicked the door wide open, and
he and Father John stepped inside.  The voices went quiet as Sheldon
and the professor whirled about.  "My God," the professor yelled.  "Get
that gun out of here.  This is a laboratory, you fool.  There are
highly volatile chemicals here.  What are you trying to do, blow us to
pieces?"

Sheldon seemed unfazed as he nodded toward Ty.  "Wait outside," he
said.

"I need my money, Mr.  Sheldon."

"Get out!  Get out!"  The professor threw both hands into the air.  His
face had turned the color of rust, and his glasses slipped down his
nose.

The lawyer stepped forward.  "Wait outside," he ordered Ty.  "We'll
discuss the matter later."

Ty started backing up, eyes darting between Sheldon and the professor.
His arms shook, and the shotgun danced in his hands.  The professor
watched him leave, then sank against the edge of the table.  Extracting
a folded white handkerchief from the back pocket of his jeans, he began
mopping his forehead.  "Idiot," he said, spitting out the word.

Sheldon turned toward Father John.  "Well, Father O'Malley," he said.
"I wondered how, long it would take you to find our lab.  The girl told
you, right?"  The lawyer shrugged.  "That's unfortunate.  And
everything could have been so simple.  You could be looking at a nice
vacation on a white sandy beach in Antigua if you hadn't insisted upon
meddling.  I regret very much that matters have reached this stage."
"Here they come," Ty shouted from outside.

"Listen, Sheldon, Susan doesn't know what you're up to.  Her mother is
taking her to Denver this afternoon so the girl can enter treatment.
None of this is any concern of theirs.  Do something decent, and tell
Gary to take them back to the mission."

"Decent?"  The lawyer's eyebrows shot up in mock surprise.  "I'll leave
that to you, Father O'Malley.  It's somewhat late for me," he said.

Father John heard the rustle of footsteps and turned around just as
Vicky and Susan stepped through the opened door, Gary behind them.  The
girl's eyes had a dazed look behind her glasses, as if she were having
trouble making sense of things, but Vicky's eyes flashed with rage.
Then he realized Gary had a pistol jammed into her back.  "Here they
are, Mr.  Sheldon," he said.  "Just like you ordered.  Anything you
want, you can count on me."

"Shut up," Sheldon said.  Gary's head snapped backward, as if he'd been
struck.  The professor flinched, one hand grabbing the edge of the
table.  "If it hadn't been for your stupidity," the lawyer went on, his
eyes riveted on Gary, "we wouldn't have this problem.  With hundreds of
miles around here, you dump Dolby's body where any fool can find it,
then you blow away a girl in her apartment, and shoot two people in a
motel, for God's sake.  Now we've got the FBI and the police swarming
everywhere."

"Sheldon?"  Vicky turned toward Father John, and he saw all the pieces
come together in her eyes.  She had grasped the whole picture.  He shot
her a warning look: Don't say anything.  Don't let them know what you
know.  She stepped closer to Susan, as if to protect her, and Gary
followed, the gun still in Vicky's back.

The professor inched forward, one hand outstretched.  "Is that a gun?
My God, another gun?  Get out, you fool, you stupid bloody fool."

The lawyer ignored him and advanced on Gary, driving a fist into his
arm.  "You now have the chance to redeem yourself."  He glanced around
at Father John.  "You like that, Father?  Redemption?  That's what
life's all about, right?"  Turning his attention back to Gary, he said,
"You have created this problem, and you are going to take care of it.
All three of these people will disappear out there in all that space.
And nobody's going to stumble on the bodies.  Not ever.  Do you
understand?"

Suddenly the professor bolted toward the doorway.  He was nearly
outside when Gary yanked him back with one hand, sending him sprawling
onto the carpet, his chubby legs peddling the air.  His glasses flew
under the table.  Slowly he twisted his bulky body around, crawled over
and picked up the glasses, then got to his feet.  He extracted the
white handkerchief again and mopped his forehead.  "I don't want to
know what you're going to do," he said, looking from Sheldon to Gary,
as if expecting to be thrown again on the carpet.

Susan started to cry, and Vicky slipped an arm around her shoulders.
Father John stepped between them and the lawyer.  "Let them go," he
said.

"Now why would I do that?"  There was amusement in Sheldon's eyes.

"I'll speak to the elders and the business council on behalf of the
recreation center.  The Arapahos will think that the Jesuits--that
I--have abandoned them, and it will make it easier for them to accept
your proposal.  The Z Group should appreciate that, after all the
problems you've had."  Father John saw in the lawyer's expression he'd
hit the bull's-eye.

Sheldon stared at him a moment.  "I'd be a fool to accept your
conditions.  There won't be any opposition to closing St.  Francis
Mission after the pastor disappears, along with his lady friend and
her daughter.  Run off together.  Oh, my, the scandal."  The lawyer
straightened his shoulders and nodded to Gary.  "Take them outside.
Walk them over to that gorge where you brought Dolby's body."

"Listen to me, Sheldon," Father John said.  "The police know about the
lab.  They're on their way here now."  He was stalling; the chances of
Banner showing up were becoming more and more remote.

The lawyer let out a loud guffaw.  "If that were the case, Father
O'Malley, you wouldn't have come here."

"Let's go," Gary said, stepping behind Father John and pushing the
pistol hard against his back.  He followed the two women through the
doorway.

"Not Susan."  Ty's voice came like a blast of cold air.  He moved into
the doorway, blocking Gary.  "Mr.  Sheldon, you promised me nothin'
would happen to Susan if we brought you to the reservation.  You said
she wouldn't never know what we was doin'."

"Get out of the way, Ty."  Sheldon's voice came from inside.

"I told ya, not Susan," Ty shouted.  Father John glanced around just as
the young man raised the shotgun and leveled it through the doorway.
Gary was coming toward him, arms extended, pistol aimed.

"Run," Father John shouted, stepping between the women, grabbing them
around the waist and propelling them toward the trees.  The frantic,
hysterical voice of the professor pierced the air, like the wail of a
wild animal.  "Don't shoot!"

Father John flung the women in front and pushed them down, throwing
himself on top, cradling Vicky's head under his right arm.  There was a
sharp, sporadic popping noise and then the roar of explosion, of wood
and glass shattering, of metal shredding.  He felt the ground tremble,
the blast of hot air rush over him, and something as hard as a baseball
thud against his arm.  The noise reverberated through the air, as if
they were inside a barrel.  Then there was the sound of fire and the
putrid, acrid smell of smoke.  Someone was screaming--a woman.  The
sound was muffled in the snow, and from somewhere, floating as if in a
dream, came the sound of sirens.

He struggled to get to his feet.  It was as if they'd been welded
together, he and Vicky and Susan.  Chunks of wood and stainless steel
and glass, pieces of plastic bottles, lay strewn in the snow around
them.  A thick beam lay a few inches from where his arm had sheltered
Vicky's head.  Then he saw the red streak, like a ribbon in Vicky's
hair.

"Oh, God, no!"  he heard himself shouting.  He laid the palm of his
left hand flat against her neck.  He could feel her pulse, or was he
imagining it?  "Vicky, Vicky," he said.

She began moving beneath his hand.  Slowly she turned her head and
stared at him, shock and fear in her eyes.  "I think I'm okay," she
said, her voice hoarse as she tried to sit up.  He placed his left arm
around her waist and pulled her away from Susan, who was also starting
to move.  She was crying softly.

The sirens seemed louder as he helped them both to their feet, aware he
could only use one arm, aware of the pain spreading like acid up his
right arm, across his shoulder and chest.  The sleeve of his parka was
soaking up blood.  Susan was weaving, and Vitky kept one arm around the
girl's waist.  He kept his good arm around Vicky's as they started for
the road.  The barn lay flattened, as if it had been pulled into a
crater with wooden planks strewn around the edge.  Flames leapt from
the center, expelling a cloud of blue black smoke.  Suddenly sirens
drifted off into the air, and two police cars and a dark 4x4 jerked to
a stop in the middle of the road.  Banner slammed out of the lead car
and ran toward them.  There was the dark blur of other policemen, of a
man in a topcoat running behind him, and then someone was guiding him
into the front seat of a police car.  He didn't resist.  He knew he was
losing a lot of blood.

He sat sideways with the door flung open, his boots planted in the
snow.  One of the policemen had attached a kind of splint to his arm
and wrapped it with tape to keep it from moving.  He couldn't move it
anyway, but the gauze stuffed around the splint seemed to stanch the
bleeding.  He could see Vicky and Susan over by the body sprawled in
the snow--Ty's body.  Susan knelt beside it, and Vicky stood over her,
a hand on the girl's shoulder.

Banner and the man in the topcoat leaned over the door.  Father John
recognized Mike Osgood, the FBI agent he'd met in Banner's office last
Monday.  It seemed like a year ago.  The agent started firing
questions: How many in the lab?  How'd you and the women get out?  What
the hell happened?

Father John fielded them one at a time.  Three in the lab, one outside.
He listed the names, and both Banner and the agent nodded their heads,
as if they had already figured that much.  He wasn't sure why he and
Vicky and Susan were still alive.  They wouldn't be, if Ty hadn't
stepped into the doorway, between them and Gary.  What happened?  A
falling out of crooks.  Glancing from the agent to the police chief, he
asked, "How did you get the warrant?"

"Warrant?"  Banner stepped back and stuffed his hands into the pockets
of his parka.  "Turns out we didn't need one.  Soon's we got the FBI
report on the names you gave us, we headed up here.  There was nothing
on Nick Sheldon, other than he got himself disbarred in California a
couple times.  Nothing outstanding on Gary Rollins and Ty Jones, even
though they got records from here to Lander.  But Morrissey Porterfield
..."  The chief shook his head.

"A true genius," Osgood said.  "One of the few chemists capable of
producing fentanyl in a lab like this.  We've been looking all over the
country for him, ever since the L.A. agents raided a lab out in the San
Bernardino valley.  He was slippery.  He managed to crawl through a
window as the agents came through the front and back doors."

"And the Z Group?"

A sadness came into the agent's eyes.  "We have an idea of who it might
be.  Unfortunately we can't confirm it.  All our sources are dead."

Banner leaned over the door again.  "One thing you don't have to worry
about.  The Z Group won't be closing down the mission."

Grabbing the door handle, Father John began leveraging himself to his
feet.  "You better stay put," the chief said as Father John walked past
him and the agent and started for the body in the snow.  He took a deep
breath to steady himself.  His legs felt a little wobbly.  The acrid
smell was still in the air, flames still lapped at the rubble of the
barn, and in the distance the sound of another siren was coming up the
mountain.

He knelt down beside Susan, aware of the girl's soft sobbing.  Taking
her hand in his, he said, "I'm sorry."

"I really loved him," she said.

"I think he loved you very much," Father John said.  There was no
greater love--the young man had given his life.  He made the sign of
the cross on Ty's forehead.  Then he said the ancient prayers out loud:
"Protect him, Dear Lord Jesus; raise him up; show him Your mercy which
is all encompassing, which you offer to us all."

He got to his feet, and Vicky walked beside him toward the road.  The
ambulance skirted around the police cars, stopping not far from them.
The moment the siren cut off, there was only the soft crackling noise
of the flames, the faint shushing of the wind.  <}6

Howard Bushy was a natural, but so was Scott Nathan.  Howard snatched
the basketball and sprinted downcourt for a dunk, with Scott right
behind, barely missing the block.  Father John jumped up from the bench
along the cement wall.  Pain traveled along his arm, into his hand, to
the tips of his fingers.  He had to remember to move more slowly, with
patience.  It wasn't easy.  The cast ran from his elbow to his wrist, a
dead weight.  His arm itched, and he wanted to rip off the cast and
fling it into the winds.  He forced himself to concentrate on the
game.

Patrick had divided the kids into the Indians and the Warriors.  They
kept coming, always running, playing quick transition games.  The
Warriors had already run up a ten-point lead, but the Indians would
never admit defeat.  Howard made a three-pointer, and Scott took the
inbound pass and headed downcourt looking for an opening, dribbling,
one arm extended.  The Indians moved in for an attempted steal.

"Where's the defense?"  Father John yelled, jumping forward.  He
realized he had stepped onto the court.

The whistle screeched across the gym.  The boys held their places, eyes
on the coach, who came down the sidelines.  "Father, do you mind?"
Patrick said.  "We're working out some tactical plays here."

"Oh, sorry," Father John said, backing off the court.  It was hard to
restrain himself.  He loved coaching kids.  He couldn't wait until
spring when baseball season started and the Eagles suited up, but that
was still three months away.  He leaned against the cement wall,
resolved just to watch.  Patrick was doing a fantastic job.

Another field goal attempt by the Warriors.  Then a turnover, and the
Indians exploded downcourt.  As Howard sank the ball, Father John heard
a motor outside.  He slipped through the door, wondering who the
visitor might be.  Not many visitors turned onto the narrow road that
ran past Eagle Hall.

Reds, oranges, and pinks flamed across the western sky as the afternoon
sun hovered above the dark ridge of the mountains.  A Bronco stood in
the middle of the road, silhouetted in the sunlight, and Vicky was
walking toward him.  She carried a package.  He was surprised to see
her-she had been in Denver the last couple of weeks.

"Father Peter advised me to look for you here," Vicky said as she came
closer.  Her brown coat flowed over the tops of her boots.  The sun
shimmered in her black hair.

"How's Susan?"

Vicky smiled.  "That friend of yours and his wife run a very good
clinic.  I think Susan will make it this time, but..."

"It will always be a struggle."  He finished her sentence.  It wasn't
just Susan he was thinking about.  He was still struggling with the
general anesthetic they'd given him to set his arm around a steel rod.
The anesthetic had only whetted the thirst.  It was like pouring
gasoline onto a flame.

"It's over," Vicky said.

They were quiet a moment, then she went on, "It made the front page of
the Denver Post.  It looks as if you helped to thwart the plans of a
major drug cartel."

Father John raised his good hand and pushed his cowboy hat back.  "All
the plans hinged on the mission, which, it turns out, the Jesuits never
intended to sell."

"According to your Provincial?"

"According to some Scholastic in the outer office."  Vicky shook her
head and laughed.  "May the next economic development director work to
preserve our traditions, instead of trying to destroy them.  Eden Light
foot had everything upside-down.  Jobs rated first with him, no matter
the cost.  And he wasn't averse to accepting bribes along the way. 
He'll be facing charges at the Cheyenne Agency as well as here."

Father John drew in his lower lip.  He had thought a lot about the
economic development director.  So much potential, so much waste.

Vicky was quiet, and he sensed something else on her mind.  Finally she
said, "I can't help thinking if I hadn't been so stubborn, if I had
tried to convince Susan to go to the police right away, maybe she could
have told them something that would have changed things.  Maybe Marcus
and the girl would be alive.  Ty, also."

"Oh, Vicky," Father John said.  "The world is full of maybes.  Let's
try not to torture ourselves.  God is forgiving."  "Yes," Vicky said,
but he knew she wouldn't let herself off easily.  "It must be hard on
the Depperts, and poor Loretta ..."  Vicky's voice trailed off.

Father John told her how he had been spending as much time as possible
with the old couple, how the Arapahos had rallied around, and how Ike
Yellow Calf had made it his business to look after them.  In some ways,
it might be easier for them than for Loretta.  For her, it was very
hard.

"At least her son has been properly buried now," Vicky said.  "His
ghost can be at rest."

Father John believed that was true.  There had been the wake for both
Rich and Marcus, and Thomas Spotted Horse had painted the bodies with
the sacred red paint that would identify them to their ancestors.
Father John had said the funeral Mass and blessed the graves at the St.
Francis cemetery.  And as the caskets were lowered, the elders had
raised their voices in prayer, and the drums had pounded, the low,
heavy sounds reverberating through the air, accompanying the ghosts to
the spirit world where they would be at rest.

Vicky held out the package she was carrying.  "This is for you. Because
you kept the plank from striking my head and probably saved my life. 
And now you have that horrible cast on your pitching arm."  He smiled
as he took the package.  It looked like a birthday present, wrapped in
yellow paper flecked with red balloons and tied with red ribbon.  She
had to help him undo it.  They almost dropped the whole thing in the
snow, but he made a quick one-handed recovery.  "This isn't necessary,"
he said.

"Yes, it is," she said as he pulled back the last of the paper and read
the black letters on the box: Stereo Cassette Player.

He felt like a kid, deliciously happy with an unexpected gift.  Now he
could listen to his opera tapes as he drove across the reservation.  He
couldn't imagine which opera he would listen to first.  La Boheme,
perhaps.  Puccini, certainly.  "You're right.  This is absolutely
necessary.  Hoho'u ho:3tone'3en."

Vicky threw her head back and laughed.  "Oh, goodness," she said after
a moment.  "Arapaho is the most beautiful language in the world, but I
wouldn't believe it listening to you.  You mustn't let the elders hear
you trying to speak it."

They walked the short distance to the Bronco, and he shut the door
after she had slipped inside.  Whatever had made him cradle her head
against the explosion, he thanked God he had done so.  He watched until
the Bronco backed all the way to Circle Drive and began moving around
the corner of the administration building.  Until it disappeared into
the sun.

MARGARET COEL is the New York Times Best-selling award-winning author
of The Spirit Woman, the Lost Bird, The Story Teller, The Dream
Stalker, The Ghost Walker, The Eagle Catcher, and several works of
nonfiction.  A native of Colorado, she resides in Boulder.  Her Web
site address is http://www.margaretcoel.com/dreamstalker.