Winter's Child
Man Who Fell from Sky
Night of the White Buffalo
Killing Custer
Buffalo Bill's Dead Now
The Perfect Suspect
The Spider's Web
Silent Spirit
Blood Memory
Girl w/ Braided Hair
Drowning Man
Eye of the Wolf
Wife of Moon
Killing Raven
Shadow Dancer
Thunder Keeper
Spirit Woman
Lost Bird
Story Teller
Dream Stalker
Ghost Walker
Eagle Catcher
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The Drowning Man: Prologue
Now something wasn't right.
Brian Little Wolf squinted past the pock-marked windshield at the mountain
rising over the road and tried to put his finger on what was different.
Something out of kilter, he could feel it in his gut. Red Cliff Canyon
looked the samethe road snaking ahead around a hump of mountain, the sun
beating down through a sky as blue and clear as glass. He adjusted his
spine against the hard seat of the pickup and squinted into the sun that
glistened in the streams of runoff tracing the road. He had the odd sense
that he'd never driven up this road before, never been in this canyon.
Well, that was ridiculous. True, Red Cliff Canyon was a sacred place, which
always filled him with awe, as if, in the midst of the vast isolation and
silence, he was not alone. Spirits dwelled in the canyon, and that was a
fact. They had carved their own images on the boulders that jutted out of
the mountain as proof of their presence, so the people would know they were
always with them. They had watched over the canyon, the elders said, from
the beginning of time when the Creator made the Arapahosbefore He made the
other human beings. Every time Brian Little Wolf drove through the canyon,
he looked for the images, comforted by the flash of light-colored figures
carved into the rocks. He'd always felt safe in the canyon, comforted. Not
like today, when he felt bereft, alone in a strange and lonely place.
He'd been driving through Red Cliff Canyon since the summer he was thirteen
years old, hired on as a junior wrangler up at the Hidden Lake Dude Ranch
where the road narrowed into two-tracks that loped into the Shoshone
National Forest. The foreman had tossed him the keys and said, "Kid, go down
to the Taylor Ranch and get a couple extra bales of hay for the horses," and
he'd said, "Yessir," and jumped into the old black pickup, this very pickup
he was driving now, half-sitting and half-standing, hauling himself upright
over the steering wheel so that he could see the road. He'd turned the key
in the ignition and stomped on the gas pedal, the way he'd seen the cowboys
do, and bumped across the field, hoping he'd make it to the road before the
foreman realized he'd never driven before and called him back. He'd driven
down the canyon, picked up the hay, and headed back to the dude ranch,
fighting the steering wheel all the way to keep from plunging down the
mountain into the creek.
That was ten years ago, and ever since, he'd been in Red Cliff Canyon so
many times that he could find his way blindfolded. In the summers, as soon
as the tourists arrived, he stayed up at the dude ranch, looked after the
horses, took the guests out on trail rides. Sometimes a whole week went by
before he drove down the canyon. But during the winter, he'd drive up to
the ranch two or three times to knock the snow off the roofs so they
wouldn't collapse, fix the fences around the corral. A thousand tasks, just
to keep the place from being swallowed in the Wyoming blizzards.
He knew this canyon, he told himself. He'd seen it in all kinds of weather,
from a hundred different vantage points. Why did he feel as if he were
seeing it for the first time?
He pulled himself over the steering wheel and scanned the boulder-strewn
slope. Ah, there was a petroglyph, and another right beside it. And up
ahead, as the road started to curveyes, there it was, the long wall of
carved pictures that looked like humans with square-shaped heads and rounded
eyes and short, stick-like legs, and arms and fingers that looked like twigs
floating in the water.
Water. That was it!
He hadn't seen the image of the Drowning Man. It was always the first
petroglyph that came into view, looming over the road not more than thirty
feet up the slope. The guardian of the canyon, welcoming visitors into the
sacred place of the spirits. The image gave permission to proceed, and one
shouldn't proceed without permission. Yet somehow he'd driven right past.
He hadn't paid the proper respect. It explained why he felt so uneasy.
He pressed hard on the accelerator . The tires squealed into the silence as
he drove around the curve, keeping his eyes glued on the road for the
turnout ahead. He had to go back and pay his respects, ask the spirit to
grant him a safe passage through the canyon.
He pulled into the turnout, an apron of land that jutted over the steep drop
off into the creek below. Moving the gearreverse, forwardhe carved out a
half turn until he was back onto the road heading downhill. Calmness began
to settle over him. The other spirits had shown themselvesthat was true,
wasn't it? He hadn't just imagined them, or seen the figures that his eyes
had seen so many times he'd assumed his eyes were seeing them again. Yet he
had failed to see the Drowning Man.
He came around another curve near the mouth of the canyon, crossed the lane
and bumped to a stop. This was the place. The pickup tilted sideways
toward the barrow ditch. He got out and started up the slope. No sign of
the image.
He bent forward and kept going. There was a steep pitch to the slope, and he
had to dig the heels of his boots into the soft earth, still moist from the
snow that had covered the ground all winter. He could see the road unwinding
below. The petroglyph had to be here somewhere. He kept climbing,
struggling to fight off the panic that grabbed at him, like the branches
plucking at his arms and pant legs. Why would the spirit refuse to show its
image?
It was then that he saw the rock where the image should have been. His
breath knotted in his throat. The face was a raw wound with pink and white
stripes running like blood and water through the stone. The edges were
jagged, broken by the deep thrusts of some kind of weapon. Beyond the rock
was nothing but piles of other rocks wedged among the scraggly brush and
pines. There was a hollow sound in the breeze sweeping through the
canyon.
The Drowning Man was gone.
Excerpt: Chapter 1
He wasn't sure how long the gray sedan had been behind him. Somewhere along
Seventeen-Mile Road, Father John Aloysius O'Malley had glanced in the rear
view mirror and seen the vehicle hugging his bumper. He'd turned right
onto Blue Sky Highway, the sedan following, then pressed down on the
accelerator and lurched ahead. The sedan had dropped back before sprinting
for his bumper again. The noise of tires beating against asphalt drifted
past Father John's half-opened windows. He could see the driver clearly in
the mirror: dark eyes that flashed in a square, brown face and black hair
cut long, tangled around the collar of a reddish shirt. There was
something determined and fierce in his expression.
Father John held the old red Toyota pickup steady at about forty miles an
hour and kept driving north. Turandot blared from the tape player on the
seat beside him, mingling with the rush of wind through the cab. He'd just
visited Hiram Whitebird, who had gotten out of the hospital yesterday. And
he'd promised Mickey and Irene Wolf he'd stopped by to see their new son
this afternoon. He glanced at his watch: almost five o'clock. He didn't
have time for the gray sedan.
They were the only vehicles on the road. Outside his window was a stretch
of scrub brush that bumped into the barren foothills of the Wind River
Range, and on the other side, nothing but the flat, open plains of the Wind
River Reservation melting into the blue sky on the horizon. It was the last
Monday in June, the Moon When the Hot Weather Begins, in the way that the
Arapahos kept track of the passing time, and the wild grass that checkered
the plains looked green against the brown earth. Houses were scattered
about, set back from the road with rounded white propane tanks, pickups and
old cars dropped onto the bare-dirt. An assortment of clothes and towels
flapped on lines strung between poles.
The roofs of Ethete flashed ahead, and Father John started to ease on the
brake pedal. The sedan stayed with him, the driver grimacing into the
specks of sun that danced on his windshield. He was Indian, Father John was
sure, but no one he recognized. No one from the reservation. He considered
pulling over to let the pickup shoot ahead, then thought better of it.
There was a chance the vehicle might put him in the ditch. He could almost
feel the resolve andthat was it, the angerbehind the grimace.
Anything could have triggered the anger. Father John had been the pastor of
St. Francis Mission on the reservation now for almost nine years. Nine
years of counseling parishioners, listening to a hundred different
problemsthe alcoholism and abuse, the break-ups and divorces, the lost
jobs and rebellious teenagers, the lingering despair. And he, a white man,
trying to talk Arapahos through to the other side where there was hope.
But there was always the risk that when someone found the way to go forward,
someone else was left behind, someone who blamed the pastor and decided to
look for revenge.
He followed the road through the outskirts of Ethete, mountain peaks
floating into the sky on the west. The sedan was still on his tail. Ford,
with an out-of-state license plate. A couple of houses passed outside his
window, kids playing in the yards. A truck was stopped at the light
swinging over the intersection ahead.
Father John made a sharp left turn across the highway and into the parking
lot of the gas station and convenience store on the corner, the sedan right
behind. He skidded to a stop at the curb that ran alongside the sidewalk in
front of the store, got out and walked around to the car drawing into the
next slot. The license plate was from Colorado.
"What do you want?" he said as the Indian lifted himself out of the front
seat.
© Margaret Coel
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