The Man Who Fell from the Sky

by Margaret Coel

  * * *

  THE APARTMENT WAS hot and stuffy, even though someone had opened a window and the curtains were blowing in a hot wind. They sat around the coffee table, Vicky on the sofa, John and Roger across from her. Annie bustled about the kitchen and from time to time brought the coffeepot over and refilled their mugs. They weren’t leaving, they had told her at least a dozen times. Not until Cutter was in custody. She watched the way their eyes kept sliding toward the door, as if they half expected Cutter to burst in.

  She had told them everything she had told John O’Malley. They all knew what had happened; she had come to the conclusion that everyone should know that Cutter was an impostor. He was a killer. The news would spread over the moccasin telegraph, and he wouldn’t be able to stop it. He couldn’t kill everyone on the rez.

  They had gone over and over it, trying to find a logical sequence that would explain what had happened. The more they talked, the more she felt like herself. A lawyer, examining the evidence, the anonymous voice on the phone saying he had witnessed a murder, the killer’s own account of the murder.

  A cell phone rang. “Yes?” John had put the cell phone on speaker, and Annie hurried over and perched on the armrest of Roger’s chair. All of them, Vicky thought, hypnotized by the small rectangular object in John’s hand. Gianelli’s voice echoed around them, as if he were speaking from inside a metal chamber. “Cutter Walking Bear is dead. We found his body near the shore of the lake with a bullet wound to the head. Looks like he shot himself.” There was a pause before he said, “I’m going to need statements from both you and Vicky.”

  Father John told him they were at her apartment, then ended the call and set the cell on the table. Still staring at it, all of them. Vicky felt a deep sense of relief wash over her, and something else, harder to grasp: a sense of sadness at the madness of it all.

  She held John O’Malley’s eyes for a long moment. “It’s over,” he said.

  34

  A SMALL GROUP of people had gathered in the far corner of St. Francis cemetery when Vicky turned onto the dirt road and parked behind a line of vehicles. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, the sun stationary in a glass-blue sky. On the graves, yellow, red, and white plastic flowers swayed and bent in the breeze. She made her way down a path of trampled grass to the open grave with the wooden casket suspended above it and took a place in the back, behind the other mourners. John O’Malley walked along the edge of the grave and sprinkled holy water from the pottery bowl he held in one hand.

  She had meant to come to the funeral Mass for Robert, but Luke had stopped by the office with his son, Sam. The hearing had been rescheduled for last Monday, and the judge had agreed that there was not enough evidence to support a petition of neglect and dependency. He had reestablished the visitation orders that had been issued at the time of the divorce. An energetic child, Sam, smiling and scampering about while Luke talked about the plans he had made. Camping trips, powwows, rodeos. Every other weekend would be their weekend, he and Sam, and he intended to show his son the world. At least his part of the world. By the time they had left, she knew Mass would be over. It looked as if the burial was almost over.

  Ruth stood in front, not far from the opening. Bernie on one side of her and Big Man on the other, holding her upright as if she might topple into the grave herself. The red hair had been pushed and prodded into place, except for a few curls that sprang loose on each side; the back of her neck looked pink in the sun. She wore a blue dress that pulled across her hips. Sobs and gasps of air mixed with the sound of the wind.

  The uneasy feeling that Vicky had struggled with since the day at the lake still gripped her. It was over, John O’Malley had said, and yet something continued to nag at her. She had lain awake nights trying to assemble the pieces, but the picture eluded her. She tried to shrug away the unsatisfied feeling. Not all the truth could be known. It was enough to focus on the facts: an Arapaho from Oklahoma named Mike Nighthorse had assumed another man’s identity, ingratiated himself with the Walking Bear cousins, located a treasure, and killed two men before he had killed himself. It made sense. And yet, the sense of a missing piece rankled like a burr under her skin.

  John O’Malley had stepped back now, and Eldon Lone Bear moved toward the grave. Lifting both hands toward the sky, he began to pray: Ha, hedenieaunin nenetejenuu nau neja vedawune. Hevedathuwin nenaidenu jethaujene. Hethete hevedathuwin nehathe Ichjevaneatha haeain ichjeva.

  The words floated into her mind—so many funerals, so many elders beseeching the Creator to remember his creature who was returning to his true home. She wasn’t sure if she understood the words or if the meaning had been imprinted on her heart over the years. Our bodies die and return into dust. Our souls live forever. Good souls go to God, to our home on high.

  The mourners remained still, heads bowed. Even John O’Malley, bowing, in respect for other ways. There is only one God, Grandfather said, and many ways to pray. Vicky bowed her own head and tried to put away the image of Robert Walking Bear going underwater, struggling to come up, and being pushed back. He was at peace now with the Creator and the ancestors. And the man who said he was Cutter? Where was his soul? She squeezed her eyes shut against the glare of the sun and the dark figures around the grave. Let the elders and John O’Malley’s theologians grapple with the answer. The man’s body lay in the morgue in the basement of the courthouse in Lander while Gianelli tried to locate a near relative. Even James Walking Bear’s father had offered to look through his son’s things on the off chance there was a mention of Nighthorse’s family. It was the humane thing to do, he had told John O’Malley, even if the man had killed his own son. There must be someone who would want to know what happened to him.

  The prayer ended, and two musicians seated at the foot of the grave began pounding the drum. The thuds reverberated around the cemetery, rising into the heavens, beseeching the Creator himself. Someone had begun turning the wheel that lowered the coffin into the grave, and the squealing noise mingled with the drumbeats.

  “No! No!” Ruth twisted and pulled against the efforts of Bernie and Big Man. “Robert! Come back. Come back.” Then John O’Malley was beside her, bent close, saying something that Vicky knew would be comforting. He was a priest; he understood grief.

  Finally the little crowd started to break up. One by one walking up to Ruth, taking her hand, giving her a hug, kissing her cheek, then walking back to the road, grass blowing about their ankles. Lone Bear stopped to talk for a moment before he nodded and moved on. Pickups belched into life and started toward Seventeen-Mile Road. Ruth’s hands rested in John O’Malley’s. She should feel free to come to the mission any time she needed to talk, he was saying as Vicky walked up.

  Ruth yanked herself free and pulled herself to her full height, like a drunk trying to pretend she was sober. Her face was strained and tear-smudged. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “I’m sorry I was late.”

  “You had better tell me, Vicky. I have a right to the truth.”

  Vicky sensed the uneasiness falling over her again, pinning her to the ground. “I don’t understand.”

  “If you think you’re going to get away with it, you couldn’t be more wrong. I will follow you to the ends of the earth. I will have what belongs to me.”

  John O’Malley stepped closer to Vicky, as if he might shield her from a breaking storm. “What are you talking about?”

  “You know where he hid the treasure, don’t you?” For a moment Vicky thought the woman was referring to Butch Cassidy. “He told you how he killed Robert and that traitor, Dallas, so I figure he told you the rest of it.”

  “What makes you so sure he found the treasure?” Vicky was beginning to understand, as if a shadow had moved past, leaving her in the sunlight.

  “Cutter told me he found the treasure. Oh, Robert was close, but it was Cutter who could read the map.” She tossed her head sideways an
d laughed, and in that instant, Vicky understood. The pieces fell into place, the picture now as clear as if she were staring at a photograph. She exchanged a quick glance with John O’Malley, and in his eyes she saw a new understanding take shape.

  Vicky kept her gaze on the redheaded woman, anger flashing in her dark eyes. “Is that what you told Cutter? Robert was close to finding the treasure? Did you encourage him to find a way to go with Robert? Convince Robert they’d have a better chance of success together? And what about Dallas? Did Robert ask Dallas to come along in case they found the treasure and a cousin they hadn’t seen in years tried anything? Was that how it went?”

  Ruth took a step backward, as if she could escape the questions. Her features were like stone, not a muscle flinching, a nerve pulsing. Her eyes as dark as the color of dead leaves. “Twenty years listening to how Robert was going to dig up a treasure box and make us rich. One day he told me he was getting close to where it was buried. The next time he came back from the mountains, he said he was getting closer. It was by Bull Lake, he said. All he had to do was get the right orientation. I believed him. I started making plans to go to L.A. and start beauty school and get me a new life. Robert told me to forget it. He said the treasure was going to buy him a big ranch; he had his eye on a spread in the red hills. There wasn’t going to be any share for me. I could move onto his fancy new ranch or not, it didn’t matter to him. Then Cutter came around, and I fell for him, just like he fell for me. He said he’d see I got my share of the treasure. Funny, isn’t it?” She tilted her head back, looked up at the sky, and laughed. “Now the treasure is mine. All I have to do is find it. Where did he hide it, Vicky?”

  “Cutter lied about a lot of things.”

  “He told me he loved me, and he didn’t lie about that. He took care of me. Came over to the house, fixed things. Looked out for me.”

  And bided his time, Vicky was thinking. Waiting until he could leave with a box of gold coins and old banknotes, disappear and become someone else in a faraway place where nobody had heard of Cutter Walking Bear or Butch Cassidy’s buried treasure. Vicky swallowed back the acid rising in her throat. She had to turn away. Ruth had believed in the man, and so had she. Missing all the signs, the phony, helpful, on-the-spot man trying to reconnect with his roots because she had wanted to believe. My God, what a fool she had been.

  “You won’t get away with it.” Ruth’s voice was low, infused with contempt. “The fed’s looking everywhere. Safety deposit boxes, the house Cutter was renting. The cops tore out the walls, lifted the floorboards. But Cutter was too smart to leave the treasure in any obvious place. He buried it, didn’t he? The way I figure, he buried it in the same place where he’d found it and destroyed the map. He was the only one who knew where the treasure was.”

  “If he had told me,” Vicky said, “I would have told Gianelli.”

  Ruth shook her head. “You’re biding your time, like Cutter did. Waiting to go up there and dig it up yourself. Well, you won’t find it. I looked at that map enough times to memorize it. I know where he hid that treasure, and I will find it.” She pivoted about and started off, arms pumping in the wind, the blue dress wrapping around her legs. She reached a pickup, flung herself inside, and drove off, clouds of dust rising around the wheels.

  They were alone, she and John O’Malley, the empty space and sky, the whole reservation and open plains stretching around them. Vicky turned toward him, but before she could say anything—as if he could read her thoughts—he said, “The man was good at what he did, Vicky.”

  She started walking, aware of John O’Malley beside her. Two vehicles parked at the side of the road now, the Ford and the old red pickup. They were almost to the road when she said, “Do you believe Ruth is right? Cutter reburied the treasure and burned the map?”

  “It’s possible.” John O’Malley was quiet a moment. Finally he said, “It would have given Cutter another reason to kill Dallas Spotted Deer, if he thought Dallas might remember the location.”

  All of it making sense now, Vicky thought. “Even if Dallas had never made the phone calls,” she said, “he was a dead man. Cutter had been waiting for the right time, but that’s what he did best. Lure people in, wait for the right time to do what he wanted.”

  John O’Malley didn’t say anything, but she could feel the warmth of his hand on her back. Then he stopped and turned her toward him. “I have something for you,” he said, holding out a ticket. “It’s for Rigoletto at the Central City Opera House outside Denver in August.”

  “Opera?” Vicky took the ticket and stared at it. She had never attended an opera, and the thought of all that music and story unfolding on a stage made her feel like a kid about to open a package.

  “Maris Reynolds gave me two tickets,” John O’Malley was saying. “I think you’d enjoy seeing an opera.”

  Vicky looked up at him, then went back to staring at the ticket in her hand. “Denver.” So far away, a different world. She lifted her eyes to his again. “I’ve promised Lucas I would spend a week with him this summer. I’ll schedule my visit around the opera. How wonderful.”

  “You should take this,” he said, holding out the other ticket. “For Lucas.”

  Vicky laughed and shook her head. “Oh no, John. No one will enjoy the opera as much as you. And I’ll need you to explain it to me. Thank you.”

  They started walking, and she said: “There’s something else I want to thank you for. Coming to Bull Lake after me.”

  “You already thanked me.”

  “If you had gotten to the lake, Cutter would have killed us both.”

  “Don’t think about it, Vicky.” They reached her Ford. John O’Malley took her hand and reined her to a stop beside him. “We’re here, aren’t we? We’re still here.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction, although I have endeavored to convey a sense of Butch Cassidy from the research I did into his life and times. With few exceptions, Butch’s story conveyed here is drawn from historical sources. For the purposes of the plot, I have taken the following detours from the historical record:

  Butch is believed to have buried a part of his stolen treasure near South Pass City in the Wind River range, southeast of Lander. For the purposes of the plot, I had him bury the treasure near Bull Lake on the Wind River Reservation. In my story, he left behind a map, but there is no record that he may have done so.

  Mary Boyd is a historical figure who had an ongoing relationship with Butch Cassidy in the early 1890s. At one point she referred to herself as Butch’s “commons-law-wife” [sic]. She was half white and half Indian, from the Wind River Reservation, although the historical record is not clear whether she was Shoshone or Arapaho. She may have been both. She gave birth to a daughter in 1892 and gave the child to an Arapaho family to raise. Since she was involved with Butch at the time the child was conceived, Butch may have been the father. But he never recognized the child, and it is possible that Mary never told him about the child. Instead, she named an anonymous man in Lander as the father. Mary married a rancher by the name of Ol. E. Rhodes (a name that would fit in a Western cartoon.) Again, for the purposes of the story, I have given Mary a fictitious first husband—Jesse Lyons, who exists only in my imagination. Which is also the case for Charlotte Hanson and Julia Marks.

  As far as I know, no one has ever found Butch’s buried treasure, which doesn’t keep people from looking.

  Whether Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were gunned down in Bolivia has been argued by historians since 1908 when the shoot-out occurred in the small town of San Vicente. The Pinkerton Agency, which prided itself on always getting their man, had followed Butch and Sundance all the way to Bolivia. The agency did not believe the outlaws died there, and they never closed the case. People who knew Butch well during his sojourn in the area of the Wind River Reservation believed that he returned several times in the 1920s and 1930s to visit old f
riends. In 1934 he took a camping trip into the mountains with several close friends, including Mary Boyd, then a widow. It is hard to imagine that folks who had been close to Butch—and in Mary’s case, had had an intimate relationship with him—over a period of years could have been taken in by an impostor.

  On the other hand, it is hard to let go of our legends. We want them to live on. And Butch Cassidy was a legend.

  * * *

  THERE ARE DOZENS of books and hundreds of articles on Butch Cassidy. I read as many as possible. The books I found most helpful were: The Last Outlaws, by Thom Hatch; In Search of Butch Cassidy, by Larry Pointer; Butch Cassidy, My Uncle, by Bill Betenson; Butch Cassidy, A Biography, by Richard Patterson; Butch Cassidy in Fremont County, by A. F. C. Greene; and the especially helpful Butch Cassidy: Beyond the Grave, by W. C. Jameson.

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