Buffalo Bill's Dead Now (A Wind River Mystery)

by Margaret Coel

  Sonny dodged past a group of children who pointed and smiled, stretching small white hands toward his brown hands. The buzz of voices, punctuated by shouts of laughter and exclamations of surprise, filled the air. Through the crowds moving like a white cloud along the grassy path between the rows of tipis, he could see Black Heart’s tipi. The flap was closed. Flaps on other tipis had been thrown open so the visitors could see inside. Beds of baled hay covered with buffalo robes, sling-back chairs made from wood and bone and decorated with glass beads, big, black cooking pots hanging on tripods over the fires laid in pits.

  Black Heart was usually out and about before the performances, chatting with the visitors. The leader of the Arapahos. Wherever the exhibition went, visitors wanted to see the chief. Pawing at his red, white, and blue flag shirt, leaning in close, smiles frozen, waiting for the photographer to jam a glass plate into a box camera mounted on a tripod and duck under a black cloth. Black Heart had the patience of the plains. Still and watchful as a deer.

  The chief appeared on posters plastered on fences, walls, and lampposts across Berlin. But this morning, when the parade had wound toward the arena, the posters were nowhere to be seen. News had flashed through the village that the posters had been stripped away, and Buffalo Bill had called the cast together. Arapahos, Sioux, and Cheyennes, dozens of cowboys, stagehands, wranglers, cooks. BB mounted a wood stage, white jacket opened over a black shirt, the sun glinting in the silver strands of his dark hair. His voice rang as clear as one of the bells that had tolled in a church as the parade passed. “You all know our interpreter, Herman Marks,” BB said. “He’s talked to the officials here. Seems they didn’t like our posters splashed everywhere. Said they wanted Berlin clean and uncluttered. Turns out the metal, cone-shaped structures we passed are the place for posters and such.”

  Sonny had stifled a laugh at the image of Germans lifting their noses and shaking their weighty heads at the sight of Wild West posters decorating walls and fences.

  “We hope folks that saw the parade will come to the performance this afternoon.” Worry had worked through BB’s voice. He always sent men ahead to put up the posters days before the show came to town. “They are sure to tell their friends. I expect a full arena for the evening’s performance.”

  Nothing to worry about, Sonny thought now, judging by the crowds pouring through the Indian village, making their way toward the arena entrance. Every city the same. Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Barcelona, Florence, Milan, Naples, Rome, Dresden, Bologna, dozens of strange cities and thousands and thousands of people crowding the arenas, the air strung with excitement. Everything had been bigger and grander than he could have imagined that day at the agency in Oklahoma when Black Heart told him that Colonel William F. Cody, Buffalo Bill himself, was coming to hire Indians for the next Wild West Show in Europe. Black Heart had gone to England with the show three years before. He never stopped talking about the people and things he had seen.

  Sonny had been nervous, legs wobbly, sweat cold on his forehead. Riding on a boat across the never-ending waters! It was beyond his mind. Still he had joined the other warriors who crowded in front of the agency building waiting for Buffalo Bill to step onto the porch. Black Heart and the other older men respected Buffalo Bill. Scout, buffalo hunter, warrior who had fought Sonny’s people but had kept the warrior’s code: fight fairly, fight to win. And there he was. Calm and unflappable as he was today. He didn’t speak. Just stood there and looked about at the faces in front of him, as if he were reading the terrain, sensing the location of the buffalo herd. It was as if he could sense the Indians he wanted in the Wild West, and he had chosen Black Heart and dozens of other Arapahos. He had chosen him, simply waved his hand where Sonny stood.

  From twenty feet away, Sonny heard the angry voices in Black Heart’s tipi. He broke into a run, threw back the flap, and ducked inside. The angry voices stopped. Black Heart stood directly across from the flap, a dark figure against the light glowing through the canvas walls and pouring down from the top where the tipi poles were tied together. The chief was a big man, wide in the shoulders, well filled out in the arms and legs. Features sculptured out of granite: the high, rounded cheekbones that cast deep shadows on his cheeks, long nose, and wide mouth. His eyes were wide set, his gaze fixed and steady on the man in front of him.

  Herman Marks swung about. “Nobody wants you here,” he said. He was a child-sized man, small and delicate looking, with brown hair that stood up like grass around his head, and gray eyes that had a fixed, dead look in them. A small brown goatee pushed up against his lower lip. “This is between me and Black Heart.”

  Sonny didn’t say anything. The chief’s eagle-feathered headdress, bone-pipe breastplate, beaded cuffs and leggings lay on the cot along the wall of the tipi. Next to the cot was the black leather satchel where Black Heart kept his regalia in between performances. Sonny moved past the white man and planted himself behind the chief. He would die for Black Heart. Plant his own staff in the ground and tie himself down to divert the enemy so that Black Heart could escape. The chief and One-Moon, his wife, had become his parents. Adopted him in the Arapaho Way—the way a man and his wife took in the young who needed help—after Sonny had walked away from the Carlisle School in Pennsylvania. Just set off walking toward the sunset every day, sleeping in the forests and the ditch banks, snaring rabbits and catching fish with his hands. Walking. Walking. Walking. He had walked to Oklahoma and made his way to the agency. Feet bloody stumps wrapped in bark. His boots had peeled away long before. Black Heart had taken him to his own tipi and told him that his parents had died while he was at the Indian school. Orphaned, skin hanging off his bones, nothing in his stomach for so long that he got sick when he tried to eat from a bowl of meat and vegetables. “You will be our son now,” Black Heart had said. One-Moon had rubbed his feet with grease she made from plants she gathered along the streams. She held the bowl of dark broth for him to drink until he was strong enough to take the bowl into his own hands. Their son, he learned later, had left the agency to go after a stray calf the year before. A white settler had killed him.

  “We’re done talking,” Black Heart said. “Go stay with your white brothers.”

  “You are a bigger fool than I took you for.” The white man leaned sideways and spit a wad of yellow phlegm onto the grass floor. “The kind of money I’m talking about, you can be a free man. No more living on a miserable reservation. Live where you want.”

  “I want to live on the prairie,” Black Heart said.

  “You saw Paris. They loved you Indians there. You’d be a celebrity. Get invited to fancy parties, everybody wanting to be friends with a real Indian. Barcelona? You like Barcelona? Okay, there was bad sickness there, made some Indians sick.”

  “The typhoid killed four Indians.”

  Marks shrugged. “Never happen again. Rome? Pope loved you Indians in Rome. You could make the rounds, city to city, stay until you get bored. Never have to dress up and prance around an arena pretending to be the kind of Indian you used to be. Now’s your chance to be somebody.”

  “Go buy some other Indian’s stuff,” Black Heart said.

  “Relics,” Marks said. “What my business associates want are relics. Authentic pieces from the plains. Got history all over them. You got the oldest relics here. You think collectors want the cheap headdresses and breastplates BB made up for some Indians?”

  Sonny kept his face quiet, but inside he felt the barb, as if the white man had hurled a shaft at him. He wore new regalia BB had hired Arapaho women to make. His father’s regalia as well as his grandfather’s had disappeared by the time he returned from Carlisle, vanished into the dust where his family was buried.

  “Talk to your old man, here,” Marks said, and Sonny realized he was directing the command to him. “This is the best offer he’s ever going to get. I’ll bet you wouldn’t mind spending time in Paris and Rome with them beautiful damsels throwing themselves at Indians. Lots of beef and wine. What do you cal
l it? Fire water? Make you feel warm inside. No need to freeze to death in some tipi out on the prairie.”

  “Get out before I throw you out.” Black Heart took a step toward the white man, and Marks stood his ground a moment before he hauled himself around and stomped out.

  Black Heart walked over and lifted the feathered headdress. “My father wore this when he fought Custer at Little Big Horn.” His voice was as calm as a memory. “Rode away from the battlefield with the other Arapahos that went with Crazy Horse, bursting with pride. Indians defeated the biggest white man of all. He knew it wouldn’t be the end. All the Indians knew they had won the battle but the war wouldn’t stop until the people were killed or run onto reservations.” He held out the headdress and ran his gaze across the eagle feathers, still straight and forceful looking, the red felt of the band covered in red, blue, yellow, and black beads. “At Little Big Horn, the warriors stood up for what was ours. What happened back then is part of Grandfather’s headdress. It can never be sold. It must stay with our people. It is a sign of who we are and what we have done.”

  Sonny went to the opened flap and looked out. Marks had moved a good thirty feet away. He stood talking to two white men, probably business associates. The crowd flowed like water around them. Marks turned partway back, lifted a fist, and punched the air in the direction of Black Heart’s tipi, his face a hard mask.

  “He won’t give up,” Sonny said, stepping back inside. “He’ll try to take what he can’t buy. He might come back tonight after the show and steal everything you have.” He tilted his head toward the satchel. “We can move the regalia to my tipi tonight,” he said. “Even Marks won’t be fool enough to rob a tipi near BB’s.”

  Sonny realized that the noise of the crowd outside, the whish of movement and undercurrent of voices had died back. The performance would start soon. “We must get ready,” he said.

  6

  MID-DAY QUIET LAY over the rez. The sun a diffused yellow ball high overhead, the sky the glassy blue of a mountain lake. The wind moved across the wild brush like an army of spirits, and the heat shimmered on Seventeen-Mile Road. Father John kept the Toyota pickup a short distance behind the empty school bus that crawled ahead. When the bus lumbered into a right turn toward Ethete, he stepped on the accelerator. The pickup jumped forward, like a racehorse given slack. He had left Bishop Harry manning the phone, which had rung all day. People wanting to know about the artifacts. How could they be gone? Who could have done this? Always the faint hope ringing in their voices that whoever stole the artifacts would bring them back. He had wanted to reassure the callers. Anything was possible. He didn’t say he doubted the thieves would have a change of heart. “Quello che tacete” rose out of the CD player on the passenger seat.

  He swung left onto Blue Sky Highway and after a few miles took a right onto a narrow dirt road that meandered like a cow path toward the brown-shouldered foothills of the Wind River range. The white house with the sloping gray roof stood up ahead in a clump of cottonwoods. He made another right across the cattle guard and bounced along the hard, dry ridges that crisscrossed the driveway. In the corral next to the house, a tall, skinny Indian in blue jeans and light blue Western shirt was brushing an Appaloosa. The Indian looked up from under the rim of a tan cowboy hat, brush balanced over the horse’s spotted rump. Then he swung over the fence and landed on the other side. Puffs of dust shot up from his boots. He waved toward an empty space next to the fence, as if this were a busy parking lot. Except for a black truck parked in back, almost hidden by the house, there were no other vehicles around.

  Father John switched off the CD player and got out of the pickup. The wind blew tumbleweeds against the corral. Mickey Tallman, Bernard’s grandson, extended a ropy, muscular arm. Ten years ago, Mickey had come out for the Eagles baseball team that Father John had started that first summer at St. Francis. That would make him about twenty-four now, and the last Father John heard, Mickey had been in Afghanistan; a warrior, like his ancestors.

  “Hey, Father,” he said. His grip was strong and confident. “Long time no see. Grandfather’s been waiting all day for good news.” He turned toward the house and motioned Father John alongside. “He’s been taking the theft pretty hard. He was really looking forward to Black Heart’s things coming home where they belong.” He stopped and gave a moment’s stare across the corral. “Seemed like something was finally coming around the way it oughtta be.”

  Mickey opened the screened door and ushered Father John into a small living room. Shadows floated down the walls and across the sofa and worn overstuffed chairs that sagged under the imprints of countless bodies. Across the room the old man struggled to get out of a recliner.

  “Don’t get up, Grandfather.” Father John went over and placed a hand on Bernard’s knobby shoulder. Then he pulled up a footstool and perched on the edge. “How are you today?” It was never polite to launch into the reason for the visit without the usual preliminaries.

  Feeling pretty good, the old man said, now that Mickey was home safe from Afghanistan. Gonna be better soon as Black Heart’s regalia was found.

  Father John told him about Gianelli’s visit, how the artifacts had arrived in New York, how they had spent several hours in warehouses before the cartons arrived in Riverton. “It’s possible the artifacts were stolen en route,” he said.

  Mickey had pulled a chair from the kitchen and straddled it backward. He wrapped his arms across the top and gave a loud snort. “How long were the cartons at the Riverton airport?”

  “About sixteen hours.”

  Mickey shifted sideways to face his grandfather. “That’s when the stuff was stolen, you ask me. That was more than Cam Merryman needed. He could’ve pulled off the theft in ten minutes. Ripped open the cartons, took the artifacts, taped the cartons back up so nobody’d notice. He’s been waiting for this. The big score.”

  Bernard Tallman lifted a hand and pushed at the air, as if he could push away Mickey’s words, drive them back to wherever they had come from. “None of this”—he hesitated, then spit out the word—“speculation, is gonna do good or bring back Black Heart’s things. Trevor said lots of people could want the artifacts. Collectors with big money to spend on real Indian stuff from Buffalo Bill’s show. Just ’cause you think—”

  “Know, Grandfather.” Mickey was on his feet, circling the kitchen chair, slapping his palms together. “What I know is Cam Merryman hates us. He’s been waiting to get even for what happened back then.”

  “What happened?” Father John said.

  Mickey shot him a look of incredulity, as if it weren’t possible for anyone not to know the obvious. “Sonny Yellow Robe was Cam’s great-great-uncle. Black Heart did everything for Sonny, made him his own son, seen that Buffalo Bill chose him for the show. Black Heart trusted him. Might’ve given him all the regalia, you ask me. Wouldn’t have surprised me none if Black Heart gave it to him instead of his own daughter.” He glanced over at the old man. “Sorry, Grandfather. Your mother might not have gotten the stuff.” He shrugged. “The way things were back then, girls weren’t important.” He shrugged and turned back to Father John. “You ask me, Sonny got greedy. Didn’t want to wait until Black Heart died to get the stuff. So he took it—feathered headdress, vest, moccasins—all of it. Sold it in Germany. Oh, I’ve read how the Show Indians got all excited about the things they could buy in Germany. Warm wool coats, leather bags, fine shoes and suits. Lots of ways to spend money.”

  The old man was shaking his head. “I’ve told you what my mother told me. Black Heart came home, but not Sonny. He disappeared. It was real hard on Black Heart.”

  “Disappeared!” Mickey gave a hard, forced laugh. “People over there loved Show Indians, treated them like celebrities, big Indian heroes. I mean, not long before, some of those warriors had defeated the greatest Army the U.S. put together, led by none other than General George Armstrong Custer. Left him and his men lying in their own blood on the hillsides over the Little Big Horn River. So
me Arapahos were there fighting with the Sioux. Black Heart’s father was there in his headdress and vest and moccasins. That made his stuff even more valuable, ’cause it had been in the battle. Oh, I can almost understand.” Mickey folded his arms across his chest, walked over to the window and leaned forward, staring past the filmy white curtains. The sky had turned hazy, the sun a blurred white ball. “Arapaho with no reason to come home. An older sister, but she had her own family here on the Wind River. Nobody cared about Sonny.”

  “Black Heart cared,” Bernard said. “It’s bad enough Sonny went missing, never showed up at the dock the day they was supposed to board the ship. Black Heart’s things was gone, too. We had the chance to get them back, and now they’re missing again. Breaks my heart, same as it broke Black Heart’s.”

  Mickey lifted his left hand as if he were weighing an invisible ball. “Black Heart here,” he said. He lifted the right hand. “Over here all the money Sonny needed for the rest of his life, living it up in Berlin or Paris or wherever he landed. Wouldn’t surprise me none if he married some French girl, started a family. Descendants probably still there. Bottom line is, Black Heart came home, and Sonny Yellow Robe didn’t. Made his sister mad. Her own brother didn’t care enough about the people and the Arapaho Way to come home. Made them ashamed, too, is what I think. Funny thing, nobody expected Black Heart’s stuff to show up in a basement after all this time. Cam Merryman heard about it. Everybody heard about the artifacts. How they were gonna come back to the people where they belong. Cam seen his way—”