The Man Who Fell from the Sky

by Margaret Coel

  Father John skimmed the following page on how Butch had tried to leave the outlaw life behind. Petitioned the Wyoming governor for a pardon on the condition that he would join the Rough Riders and go to Cuba to fight in the Spanish-American War. The governor refused. Still other attempts to clear his record and live a lawful life. A possible deal with the Union Pacific. In exchange for a pardon, he would work for the railroad and provide security against outlaws like himself. But negotiations went no further, and in 1900, Cassidy and the gang robbed another Union Pacific train west of Rawlins.

  Cassidy’s friends in the Lander area claimed that Butch and Sundance were tired of being hunted and eager to start a different life. In 1901, they went to South America, where they reside today. However, they remain outlaws in the United States and should they return, they will still face justice.

  Father John went back to the front of the book and read: Printed 1907. New York City.

  He closed the book, set it back on the shelf, and went into the kitchen. The old wooden floors sighed under his boots. He made a pot of fresh coffee, measuring out the grounds, pouring in the water, his thoughts with the man looking out of the sepia photo. Smiling and friendly, well liked in these parts, generous with whatever money he had. The book confirmed—at least it didn’t deny—everything he’d heard so far. Butch had helped local ranchers, and they helped him. Provided safe places for him to hide after the robberies.

  He filled the dog’s water bowl—the tap of paws coming down the hall breaking into his thoughts. Walks-On looked sleepy, a little disoriented as he lapped up the water. Father John poured himself some coffee, stirred in a little milk, and went back to the study.

  It took a moment for the laptop to find its bearings and click into life. Eventually Web sites on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid materialized. He glanced down the first couple of screens and clicked on the headline: Did Butch and Sundance Die in Bolivia?

  Generally historians accept that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had robbed the Aramayo mine payroll in Bolivia on November 4, 1908, and fled to the small town of San Vicente. A small military detachment surrounded the house where they were hiding. The shoot-out lasted for hours, and when it ended, two bodies were found inside the house, mortally wounded. The bodies were buried in unmarked graves.

  The end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? Wyoming friends of Butch Cassidy who had known him well do not believe that he died in Bolivia. In the 1920s and 1930s, these friends maintain that Butch visited the area several times. He went by the name William T. Phillips, but the people around Lander and the Wind River Reservation recognized their old friend, whom they had known as George Cassidy, and who had, at long last, made a life on the right side of the law in Spokane, Washington. On one visit, Butch and a group of friends took a camping trip into the mountains, where Butch spent several days looking for treasure he had buried after the Wilcox train robbery.

  Historians argue about the accuracy of such stories. Many believe that Butch and Sundance could not have escaped the hail of bullets they encountered in Bolivia and that the Wyoming visitor was an impostor. But Butch’s friends in Wyoming never faltered in their belief that their old friend had returned. Indeed, their stories raise the question: could an impostor convince a dozen or more people he was someone they had known well?

  Reports of the Sundance Kid in Mexico after 1908 suggest that he also survived. But there are no reports of him in Wyoming.

  So what is the truth? Did Butch Cassidy return to Wyoming, as his friends said, or did he and Sundance die in Bolivia? Perhaps the point is that the past yields only some of its secrets, never all.

  Father John closed the site, then opened several others. On two sites, Butch Cassidy smiled out at him again from the same sepia photograph, but now something new in the deep-set eyes that Father John hadn’t detected before, a mocking look. Find me, if you dare.

  The other sites reiterated the information: the shoot-out in Bolivia, the emergence of a man who visited Butch’s old friends in Wyoming. And in the third site, a mention of Mary Boyd:

  Butch Cassidy courted any number of women in Wyoming, but he seemed most attached to Mary Boyd, who was half Indian. In 1892 she gave birth to a daughter. Unmarried and unable to care for the infant, Mary placed her with an Arapaho family on the Wind River Reservation. Some historians believe the child was Butch Cassidy’s and that Mary hoped he would marry her and take care of her and the child. Instead Butch was arrested for horse stealing and sentenced to prison. After his release, he left the area. Mary married a rancher named Jesse Lyons. They did not have children. Mary never publicly named the father of her daughter.

  Father John shut down the computer and watched the screen go dark. Walks-On was dreaming, making little mewling noises. The internet sites confirmed the stories, the pieces of the past he had heard. Eldon Lone Bear had said that if Butch Cassidy left behind a map, there was only one person he would have left it with: Mary Boyd. One of her descendants was still on the rez. Living at the White Pines Nursing Home. And her name was Julia Marks. The generations of stories she must have heard about Butch and Mary and a map, all of it locked in her mind.

  19

  THE NOISE CAME from a far distance. Clanging and incessant. Vicky fought her way upward to the surface of wakefulness. It took a moment before she realized the phone was ringing. She reached toward the bedside table, pawed past the clock radio, the lamp, and gripped the receiver. The ringing stopped. She pushed herself upright on the pillows and tried to concentrate. The yellow numbers on the clock read 2:18.

  “Vicky Holden,” she said. Her voice sounded scratchy and sleep-logged. She squinted at the ID: R. Walking Bear.

  A long sob came over the line, followed by gasps of breath, followed by coughing. Finally, Ruth’s voice, the words jumbled. “I can’t believe what they did to me. It’s terrible.” She started gasping again, coughing.

  “Ruth, are you hurt?”

  “Robert’s dead, and I don’t have anyone. They’re all against me.” She was crying hard, sputtering and sobbing. “They want me dead.”

  “Are you hurt? Do you need help?”

  “Nobody can help me now.”

  “Are you at home?” She could be anywhere, Vicky was thinking, calling on a cell.

  “What’s left of it,” Ruth said.

  “I’m on my way.”

  * * *

  VICKY DROVE OUT from the streetlights of Lander and plunged into the darkness of the reservation. The sky was overcast, a dark veil drawn over the stars that usually shimmered like a field of diamonds. Lights twinkled in a few of the small houses set back from the highway. A pickup came toward her, headlights bucking, then passed. She was alone, following the beams of her own headlights through the darkness. She kept going until the houses began to fall away, and she was plunging through wide, dark spaces of pastures and barns and ranch houses. She turned into Arapahoe. The Walking Bear place was ahead, lit up like a carnival.

  They want me dead! The words kept looping through her mind, and with them, the sense that something terrible had happened.

  Vicky parked near the front stoop, slammed her door, and ran up the steps. She knocked on the door, then tried the knob. The door sprang open into the living room: chairs upended, chest overturned, and drawers thrown on the floor, papers and broken pottery and glass everywhere, sofa cushions ripped open with the foam shooting out.

  “Ruth! Where are you?” She stepped through the debris to the kitchen, looking around, half expecting someone to jump out. Her heart pounded in her ears. “Ruth!” she called again. The kitchen looked like the living room; cabinet doors flung open, and dishes, pans, cans of food, and boxes of cereal scattered over the floor.

  She heard the whimpering then, like an animal in pain, and she picked up a knife and started down the hall to the bedrooms. A pair of bedrooms across from each other, doors open, and everything inside tossed abou
t: clothes, bedding, chairs. Mattresses pulled off the beds. The whimpering noise came again, and Vicky followed it to the bedroom at the end of the hall.

  Ruth sat cross-legged on the floor, leaning into a pillow stuffed in her lap, surrounded by piles of clothes and towels and broken bottles. The air reeked of perfumes and lotions. Vicky went down on her knees, set the knife on the floor, and grasped the woman by the shoulders. “Are you hurt?”

  Ruth lifted her eyes and blinked, as if she couldn’t bring anything into focus. Reddish hair loose, flying about in curly chunks, lipstick smeared, lines of black mascara running down her cheeks. “Vicky?” she managed.

  “Look at me,” Vicky said as the woman’s eyes trailed off to some vacant space. “Tell me if they hurt you.”

  A series of thoughts seemed to flitter through the woman’s expression before she finally fastened on to one. An odor of whiskey drifted about her. “This is how it was when I got home. Everything ripped apart and trashed, like they wanted to kill me. If I had been here, they would have killed me.”

  Vicky felt herself relax, the tension in her muscles letting go. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go into the kitchen. I’ll make coffee and you can start at the beginning.” She got to her feet, took Ruth’s arm, and tried to steer her upward, but the woman was like dead weight, her legs dragging over the clothes and blankets. She was in shock, sunk into the chaos that was her home, unable to lift herself out of it. It took all of her strength to guide Ruth down the hall and into the kitchen.

  She had to clear a chair for Ruth to sit down, then she located a can of coffee and a metal coffeepot in opposite corners of the kitchen. She rooted through a pile of dishes before she found the black cord. After pushing several cans to one side on the counter, she filled the pot with water, measured out the coffee, and plugged in the cord. Eventually she found two serviceable mugs, one with a handle broken. She pushed the papers off the chair across from Ruth and sat down.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  Ruth seemed to be waking up, struggling toward a semblance of calm. Tears bunched in the corners of her eyes. “It’s all I have left, this house,” she said. “Why’d they have to trash it?”

  “Where were you?” The smell of fresh coffee blended with the odor of whiskey.

  “Bernie, Robert’s cousin, said we should go out. You know, have a girls night out, let down our hair. I never should’ve trusted her. All she wanted was for me to get out of the house so that no-good husband of hers could trash it. So we went to a couple of bars in Riverton. Danced a little with a cowboy. It was fun, getting away from everything, forgetting for a while. We went back to Bernie’s place and had a nightcap. Pretty soon, Big Man came home, after he finished wrecking my house, and drove me home. Dropped me off and drove away. Just drove away and let me find what he’d done all by myself.”

  “What makes you think Big Man did this?” Of course it was Big Man, Vicky was thinking. Bernie and Big Man determined to get their hands on Robert’s map. They must have concluded that Gianelli had returned Robert’s things, and the map was somewhere in the house. A map that was in pieces, blown in the winds, burned. Which meant Big Man knew Robert had had the map the day he died. But, even if he had been at the lake, he didn’t know that someone had destroyed the map. She felt a chill run through her, as if a blast of cold had burst into the house. How many people had watched Robert die?

  “They hate me, that’s the reason. Robert’s cousins hate me.” She waved a hand at the debris on the floor, the mess in the living room. “They didn’t want me to marry Robert, thought I wasn’t good enough. Only one that’s been decent is Cutter.” She stopped and looked around, as if Cutter might step out of the shadows. “Where is he? He said he’d be right over when I called.”

  “I’m sure he’s on the way.” Vicky sipped at the hot coffee. Always on the way, Cutter. Always ready to help out. “Have you called the police?” She knew the answer. Ruth had called her and Cutter, and probably Cutter first. No one else. Ruth was an outsider, in a way, with all of her own people gone. She didn’t belong anymore. Funny, when she thought about it. Ruth, Cutter, and herself, all outsiders in different ways.

  “What will the police do?”

  “You can tell them your suspicions about Bernie and Big Man. They’ll talk to them.”

  Ruth took a drink of coffee. “It’ll just make people hate me more.”

  “I think you should talk to Gianelli.”

  “What?” Ruth stared at her over the rim of the mug.

  “It’s possible Bernie and her husband were looking for the map.”

  Ruth gave a shout of laughter. The mug shook in her hands and she set it down firmly, taking a moment to make sure it had connected with the table. “Always the map! The famous map! If Bernie wants a map she should go buy one.”

  “But it wouldn’t be the map from Butch Cassidy himself.”

  “If you believe that, you’re as big a fool as the rest of the people on the rez. Always looking to get rich quick. That was Robert. Traipsing all over the mountains with a piece of paper, thinking he was going to dig up a fortune.” She took another sip of coffee, set the mug down, and pulled herself upright, as if she had entered a new space. “Oh my God. I get it now. You think Big Man killed Robert for the map, but he didn’t find it. So he came here looking for it. They’ll come after me next, make me tell them where it is.” She started to tremble, her hands shaking against the table.

  “Gianelli will want to know that someone ransacked your house. I’ll go with you in the morning. Now you need to call the tribal police and get this on record.”

  Ruth had retreated into herself again, staring out into the distance, defeated. “What difference does it make?”

  “What difference does what make?” A man’s voice, behind them.

  Vicky jumped up, adrenaline pumping through her. When had Cutter come in, walked through the living room, planted himself in the doorway? How long had he been there?

  “Cutter!” Ruth was on her feet, flinging herself into the man’s arms. “You see what they did? Big Man and Bernie? They’re trying to destroy me. What took you so long?”

  “Why would they do this?” Cutter said, ignoring the question, holding her close.

  “Vicky says they’re looking for Robert’s map.”

  “It’s possible the map no longer exists,” Vicky said. “I found a torn piece of a map at the lake.”

  Cutter lifted an eyebrow. “You didn’t tell me about that. Why would anyone tear up a treasure map?” He left the question unanswered and walked Ruth over to her chair. “Vicky’s right. You should notify the police. Big Man and Bernie shouldn’t get away with this. Go see Gianelli if you like, but you ask me, it won’t change anything. The fed and the coroner refuse to believe that Robert’s death was what it was—an accident. All of this”—he threw a glance around the kitchen—“is about greed and jealousy over the fact you and Robert lived better than the cousins. Wouldn’t surprise me if Big Man thought he could scare you off the rez.”

  “What am I going to do?” Ruth ran her fingers through her hair, pushing back the curls, tidying up. She gave Cutter a weak smile mixed with hope and dread.

  “I’m going to help you clean up this mess, and you’re going to do whatever you like. Don’t you worry. Bernie and Big Man aren’t the only cousins. You got me and Spotted Deer.”

  Vicky stood up. Things seemed to be under control, with Cutter here. He would call the tribal police, help Ruth clean up the house. He was capable, decisive, comforting in the way he took charge. She could see Cutter’s calmness taking root in Ruth, the regular rhythm of her breathing, the way she settled into her chair and took a sip of coffee. “Shall I meet you at Gianelli’s office tomorrow at ten o’clock?”

  Ruth nodded, as if everything were all right now, everything settled.

  Vicky headed back through the debris-strewn livin
g room and started to let herself out the front door. “Thanks for coming.” Cutter’s voice in her ear, startling her. “Ruth needs friends. I’m trying to be a friend to her.”

  “It’s good of you.” Vicky stepped out onto the stoop, conscious of the weight of Cutter’s hand on her arm.

  “That’s all it is, you know,” Cutter said. “She’s my cousin’s wife, and she needs friends. You . . .”

  Vicky waved off the rest of it and hurried down the steps to the Ford. Back on the highway, the darkness dissipating, a few stars twinkling in a sky that had turned mossy gray. More pickups and cars coming and going, lights shining in the windows of more houses, the reservation starting to come to life. Something that Cutter said had stopped her, dug into her mind. Why would anyone tear up a treasure map?

  Why indeed. Unless the map was no longer needed. Unless the treasure had been found.

  20

  THE WOMAN ON the other side of the desk was small, barely taking up half of the chair. Probably in her fifties, with thin blond hair and large eyes set in a narrow, reddened face that tapered to a pointed chin. She smiled often—smile lines appeared at the sides of her mouth—exposing a row of white teeth too large for her face. “I’m Charlotte Hanson,” she had said when she walked into the office, hand outstretched. “Julia’s daughter.” The sounds of Pagliacci drifted through the air.

  Father John had risen to his feet, walked around the desk, and taken her hand. The strong, forceful grip of a woman accustomed to hard work, mostly in the outdoors. He offered her a glass of iced tea, and when she said that sounded good, he went into the closet-kitchen off the back hall, poured two glasses of tea from the pitcher he kept in the under-the-counter refrigerator, and dropped in chunks of ice. He handed her a glass and sat down in the swivel chair behind the desk.