The Man Who Fell from the Sky

by Margaret Coel

  “I hear you stopped by to see my mother. Sorry she wasn’t having a good day.” Charlotte Hanson talked with her hands; the ice in her glass clinked over the notes of “O Colombina.” “Sharp as a tack some days, remembers every detail. She can tell a thousand stories. Of course I never know which ones she’s made up.” She laughed. She was used to laughing, Father John thought.

  “I was hoping she might remember family stories about Butch Cassidy.”

  The woman nodded. “I stopped by the site on the river where they’re filming. The security guard wouldn’t let me get very close, but I saw Butch himself riding into a camp. Takes you back in time. Made me feel like I was there, the way Butch lit up the scene and made everything seem exciting. I imagine that’s the way my great-grandmother Mary must have felt when he came around.”

  “I’ve heard he hid out with Mary and her husband after a train robbery.”

  “The Wilcox robbery. Mom’s told me about it a thousand times. Famous robbery in Western lore. Took place down on the Wyoming border. Stopped a Union Pacific train, blew up the mail car and the safe after the express agent refused to open the doors. The gang made off with sacks of money.” She was shaking her head, smiling, as if she were recalling an event she had witnessed herself. “The way Mom figured it, if the agent had opened the doors, the railroad would have blamed him for not protecting his precious cargo and deducted the stolen amount from his paycheck, which would have put him in hock the rest of his life. Anyway, the railroad had the memory of an elephant. They never forgot Butch Cassidy or the Sundance Kid, either. From then on, they only wanted one thing: to see them dead.”

  She leaned forward. “Mom told me Butch didn’t actually take part in the robbery. Had he been there, she said, the gang wouldn’t have set explosives on a car with the agent inside. Butch didn’t go for violence. Oh, he was the brains behind the robbery. And he met up with the gang to divide the loot before they got away. Oh yes.” She stared off into space, as if the gang were riding away in front of her eyes. “I can imagine how excited Mary was when Butch and Sundance rode up after the robbery. She knew Butch quite well, you know. In the biblical sense, you could say. About 1890 Butch was running a ranch out by Dubois, and Mary Boyd caught his eye. She was real pretty. Petite with long black hair. She was a half-breed from the rez.”

  The woman sat back in the chair, considering. He could see the conflict moving like a storm over her face. Eventually she said, “I don’t know if Mom would want this known. There’s no evidence, no historical proof. Just a story handed down in our family.”

  “I won’t say anything.”

  She shrugged. “What does it matter? It happened a hundred and twenty-five years ago, so who cares? Correct?”

  Father John nodded. She was probably more correct than she imagined. So many things that had happened last year, last week, yesterday, were already forgotten. When he was a kid in Boston, adults were always talking about something important. All forgotten now, like dust blown in the wind.

  “They planned to marry, Butch and Mary,” Charlotte went on. “But he got arrested for stealing a horse and was sent to prison in Laramie.” She was smiling again. “Seems he just couldn’t go straight, hard as he tried. Well, Mary found out she was pregnant. Imagine a woman with no husband, pregnant, in the 1890s. Lucky she was from the rez, because an Arapaho family took her in and welcomed her baby girl, who was also named Mary. The child grew up with the Arapahos. Mary found work wherever she could on the ranches in the area. I mean, she had to support herself. That’s how she met Jesse Lyons and married him.”

  “What became of her child?”

  The woman was still smiling at the memories. “She married a man from Riverton named Edward Levelts. Mom was their only child. She was still a baby when her mother died, so we don’t know my grandmother’s story. But Mom always said we were descended from Butch Cassidy. There’s no proof. Only an old family story.” She paused before she said, “Mom grew up in Cheyenne with her father’s family. Later she came back here—something about this place that draws people back—and married my father. I was born on their ranch across the border from the rez, same ranch Mary and Jesse had owned a long time ago. Of course it had gone through several owners after the bank repossessed it.”

  Father John sat back. What a tangled web, the past. Lives lived in the midst of heartache and loss. Somehow the hard times—leaving a child, losing a ranch—often turned into the stories that were passed down. But what about the joyous times, the moments of sunshine and lightness? Surely they also existed. Moments of hope and love that Mary must have felt for a man she knew as George Cassidy, and that he had felt for her.

  “Have you ever heard . . .” he began, picking his way. “Whether Butch Cassidy gave your great-grandmother a map that showed where he had hidden money from the train robbery?”

  “The old map story.” Charlotte shook her head, looked away, and gave a different smile, quiet and inward, as if she were contemplating something impossible to understand. “Everybody around here believes Butch left behind a map. Folks have been hiking through the mountains the last hundred years with a version of the so-called original in their hands, sure they were about to strike it rich. It’s like gold fever. Rumors of gold brought thousands of people out West. Some actually struck it rich, so their stories kept people coming.”

  Father John smiled. “Anybody strike it rich with Butch Cassidy’s map?”

  She let out a snort of laughter. “That never kept people from trying. In fact, it encouraged them. Nobody has found Butch Cassidy’s treasure yet, so it must still be there, waiting for them. Greed,” she said, allowing the word to hang in the air. “It never changes. I heard Robert Walking Bear was looking for the treasure when he died.” She paused, forehead wrinkled in a new thought. “I’ve heard rumors he was murdered.”

  “As far as I know, the FBI hasn’t concluded the investigation.”

  “I suppose he had one of those bogus maps.”

  Father John shrugged. “He believed it was the original, according to his wife.”

  “There was no such thing.” Charlotte Hanson took a long drink of tea, then examined the glass a moment. “If Butch Cassidy did draw a map, would he have given it to anyone? I didn’t think so. Why would he do that? Then I thought, if he got caught and the posse found the map on him, they would steal his treasure. So it makes sense that he might have given a map to someone he trusted.”

  “Such as your great-grandmother.” Father John could hear Eldon Lone Bear’s voice in his head: If Butch gave a map to anybody, it would have been Mary.

  Charlotte shook her head and sipped more tea. “Logical, I suppose. The only problem is, logic can be wrong. Mom has never mentioned a map, not in all the stories she’s told through the years. Oh, Butch and the Sundance Kid hid out for a while with Mary and Jesse after the train robbery and helped out on the ranch. Butch may even have given Mary the money to keep the bank from foreclosing.” She gave a quick shrug. “The hard times came soon enough. Jesse died, the bank eventually foreclosed, and Mary was left alone with no way to take care of herself or her little girl, even if she had wanted to take her child from the only family she had ever known.”

  “You’re saying that if Butch had given her a map, she would have used it.” The woman across from him was nodding, as if they had circled to the same place. “If she’d had the money, she could have saved the ranch and made a home for her little girl.”

  “Logical,” Charlotte Hanson said again. “Butch would have wanted her to find the treasure if she needed it. But she had no idea where to find it.” She set the glass on the floor and laced her fingers together in her lap. “Butch came back in 1934, you know. Despite what the history books say. A lot of people here knew George Cassidy, and they welcomed him back. They spent days with him, reliving old times, reconnecting.”

  “It was thirty-five years later. Some historians belie
ve Butch’s friends were mistaken.”

  “Folks around here? They never forget people. Butch and his friends went on a camping trip in the mountains. You ask me, Butch was hoping to find his treasure.” She looked at a point across the office. “Mary went along. She was living in Riverton then. She’d married a rancher after Jesse died, but her second husband had also died, and she was alone again. She and Butch were reunited on that camping trip. If she had kept a map all those years, never using it to help herself, wouldn’t she have given it to him? He was old then, probably could have used the money. After that trip, Butch sent Mary a beautiful ring. You must’ve seen it. Mom never takes it off. It is the only thing she has of her grandmother’s.”

  Father John didn’t say anything. He tried to picture Julia, slumped in the chair, lost somewhere inside her own mind, gaze fixed on the flickering black-and-white images of an old movie, clasping her hands together and perhaps . . . Was he imagining it now? Had she been running a finger over the ring on her left hand?

  Charlotte was saying something about the ring being a sign that Butch had always loved her. “He never forgot her,” she said, “and she hadn’t forgotten him. Don’t you think she would have known if he weren’t Butch Cassidy?” She lifted herself to her feet, the matter settled. “I’ll be in touch if Mom has a good day. I’m sure she would like to relive the old times for you.”

  Father John stood up and walked the woman out into the corridor. She barely came to his shoulder; her boots made a soft clicking noise on the wood floor. “Do you think Julia might be willing to relive the old days for the film?” He pulled open the heavy door and waited as Charlotte brushed past and stepped out onto the stoop.

  “Are you kidding?” she said, turning back. “My mother has always wanted to be in the movies.”

  21

  THE PHONE WAS ringing. Before Father John could locate the receiver under the piles of papers on his desk, the bishop had picked up. “Yes, yes, hold on a moment.” The old man’s voice drifted down the corridor.

  Father John got up from his desk and hurried toward the back office before the bishop could head his way to tell him he was wanted on the phone. He found the old man working his way upward out of his chair. Throwing Father John a grateful look, he sank back down. “The man on the phone sounded as if you were expecting his call. I’m afraid he has hung up.”

  I wasn’t expecting any call, Father John thought as he retraced his steps down the corridor to his own desk. People called and dropped in unexpectedly. Every day a surprise. The phone had started ringing again, and this time he located it under the papers. “Father John,” he said.

  A clicking noise sounded on the other end, as if the caller were grinding his teeth. Father John could sense the concentration, the effort. “How can I help you?”

  “I’m a dead man.”

  The statement demanded respect. Father John took a moment before he said, “What is your name?”

  “It don’t matter. I don’t want to die.” He sounded Arapaho, the cadence of his words.

  “I understand. What can I do?”

  “He’ll listen to you, a priest. You tell the fed that Robert’s death was no accident. I seen him murdered. I told the Rap lawyer . . .”

  “Vicky Holden.”

  “I told her twice now. She’s a lawyer; she knows Agent Gianelli. She’s always talking to him. I figured he’d believe her. Oh yeah, he acted like he did, went around talking to the same folks he’d talked to before. Didn’t learn anything new. He’s overlooking the most obvious thing. The map. I told her, he finds out what happened to the map, he’ll find the killer.”

  So this was where the rumor that Robert had been murdered started, Father John thought. Someone on the rez claiming he’d seen the murder. Someone seeking attention, like people who confess to murders they’ve read about in the newspapers. Imagining things, telling stories.

  But he didn’t believe the caller was making up a story. He’d heard confessions now for nearly twenty years; he could hear the truth beneath the camouflage of words, the sense of desperation, the shades of fear. “Why don’t you start at the beginning. What did you see? Tell me what happened.”

  “You’re like that lawyer. You want all I got, but you offer me nothing. I give you the . . .” He struggled with the rest of it. “I give you the details, I’m the one that goes to jail. The fed will say, ‘How’s he know that? He must be the murderer. Nobody else would know.’”

  “And now you believe you’re in danger.”

  “You bet I’m in danger. The killer’s coming after me next.”

  “I can go to Agent Gianelli with you. I can tell him your fears about coming forward. He’ll under . . .”

  The laughter came like the blast of a horn. It was a moment before the caller said, “I’m begging you, Father. I went to school at the mission. I wish I could’ve played on your baseball team. What is it, the Eagles? There wasn’t any team then. I’ve come to your games though. Yeah, saw the Eagles beat the Rangers. Not having the best season so far.”

  It was true, Father John was thinking, but there was every reason to believe the team would start winning. He’d had to miss the practices this week, and one of the team mothers, Marcy Hawk, had been coaching the team, and she was a better coach than he was.

  Father John leaned into the receiver. “Let me help you. Tell me the name of the killer.” He was speaking into a vacuum. Nothing on the line, no human presence; then, the electronic beep of the disconnect signal.

  He pressed the numbers for Vicky’s office, aware of his heart thudding in his ears. Annie answered—calm and controlled, businesslike: “Holden Law Offices.”

  “This is Father John. I have to speak to Vicky.”

  “Sorry, Father. She’s on the rez, but I can try to reach her. I’ll give her the message.”

  He thanked her and hung up, then he flipped through the Rolodex until he found the number for the local FBI office. In a moment, another cool, controlled voice came on. He told the voice who he was and said he had to speak to Ted Gianelli about Robert Walking Bear’s death. Gianelli would return his call, the voice said, still unperturbed. Another death to investigate; there were so many.

  He hung up and went over to the window. The wind had picked up; a cottonwood branch knocked against the side of the building. The other branches stayed in perpetual motion, white billowy clouds moved across the blue sky. The caller’s words kept running in his head. I’m a dead man. I’m a dead man. If he had told the truth, if he had witnessed a murder, it was only a matter of time before the killer would come for him. Dear Lord, the caller could be a walking dead man. He stepped back to the desk and checked the caller ID; the last call had come from Unknown. A pay phone, most likely on the reservation. He had no way to trace the call, no way to help the man.

  He sat back down and thumbed through the papers until he found the budget he’d been working on. He pushed it aside. I’m a dead man kept drumming in his brain.

  Father John grabbed his cowboy hat, went down the corridor, and told the bishop he was going to take a walk. Send any calls to his cell.

  A hot, dry wind pressed against his shirt and tugged at the brim of his hat as he started for the alley that separated the administration building from the church. At the far end of the alley, a path ran through a grove of cottonwoods to the Little Wind River where the Arapahos had camped when they first came to the reservation. It was cool and quiet there, a good place to walk and think. The spirits of the ancestors gathered there, the elders said, and the place had a holy, set-apart feel that was hard to fit into any logical syllogism.

  He was about to turn into the alley when he noticed the pickup in front of the old school building that was now the Arapaho Museum. Visitors came throughout the day; more visitors in the summer, with the tourists. And this pickup belonged to a tourist, judging by the Texas license plate. A tall man in cowboy hat and
blue jeans came through the front door and stepped onto the porch that stretched across the front of the museum. Probably in his forties and agile, the way he hooked an arm around the post and glided down the steps. “Hello!” he called. “Father John?”

  Father John started over. The man was already coming along Circle Drive, gravel spitting under his boots, a wide smile on his face. An Indian, possibly an Arapaho, with the high cheekbones and hooked nose, dark complexion. A large turquoise-and-silver bracelet gleamed on his wrist. “I was hoping you’d be here.” He stretched out the hand with the bracelet. “Cutter Walking Bear. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  Father John shook the man’s hand and tried to place the name. He had it: Ruth had mentioned Robert’s cousin Cutter recently moved back to the rez. The man was saying something about having come home after a long time away.

  “Ruth mentioned you had moved back.”

  “What a tragedy.” Cutter shook his head and lifted his gaze toward the foothills, still hazy and indistinct. “I was just beginning to get to know my cousin again after thirty-five years when he had the accident. I blame myself.”

  Accident? The word reverberated through Father John’s mind. An anonymous caller claimed he had seen Robert murdered. I’m a dead man.

  “Can’t help thinking,” Cutter was saying, “if I’d been there, I could have prevented it somehow. Kept him from going near the lake. He could be unsteady on his feet sometimes.” He nodded in emphasis. Ruth hadn’t mentioned anything about that, Father John thought. He wondered if she had realized it. “Oh yes,” Cutter went on. “Surprised me, Rap like Robert, ranching and breaking horses, outdoors every day, a little unsteady at times. Loved the Wind Rivers though. Nothing could keep him from searching for buried treasure.” He tipped his head back and laughed at the sky. “I have some good memories of us hiking together.”

  “You went with him?” Robert always went alone, Ruth had said.

  “Sure did. I was planning to go with him the day he died, but I had a job interview in Casper.” He paused and glanced around the mission. “Robert was showing me around the rez, helping me get my bearings. We had plans to come to the mission, you know, relive old times. Well, I decided to come here on my own.”