Reason To Believe (22 page)

"Sitanka, yeah. And Maziyapa was my great-grandfather, Iron Hammer." Staring into the fire, he blew a long breath, shook his head, and thought for a moment. "I don't know. I think he might be losin' it."

"He is not," Clara averred adamantly. "He's a very spiritual man. I wouldn't doubt that he
is
talking to those men."

"This from the woman who does not believe in ghosts," Ben told the group.

"Well, not in the usual sense, but from your father's perspective—"

"What does that mean? You don't believe in ghosts in the
usual
sense? What's the
usual
kind of ghost?"

"The kind that haunts houses."

"Or motels?" He cocked his eyebrow pointedly.

"The kind that most people mean when they talk about ghosts," she insisted, ignoring his reference. "I don't believe in the Hollywood kind of ghost."

"Who does? Me?" Ben laughed. "Hollywood ghosts, huh? What's my dad's kind of ghost then?"

"Well, Ben..." She gestured impatiently. "He's a spiritual man, which is pretty unusual in this day and age. I mean a
truly
spiritual man."

"And he ain't deaf!" Dewey shouted from his bed inside the tipi.

All eyes widened, some shifting left, some shifting right. Ben snickered and shook his head. "I'm in for it now," he said quietly.

"You think you'll take his place as pipe carrier?" Howard whispered.

Ben shook his head. He offered no explanation. He simply stared into the fire. For Howard, that was enough.

Ben turned to Clara. "You guys have everything you need?"

"Little camp cots, foam bedroll, space-age sleeping bags..."

"Make sure you check the mattress for peas." He raised his voice a notch and threw it toward the tipi. "If the ol' man gets to coughin', he's goin' in the house. I don't give a good goddamn how spiritual he is. I need some sleep if I'm gonna be herdin' greenhorns around all day tomorrow."

"Then quit your bullshittin'," came the suggestion from inside.

"I think it went pretty well today," Clara told Ben. She stretched her legs out in front of her, soles of her boots toward the fire. "I'm hardly sore at all. Our only crisis was a splinter in Anna's thumb, which—"

"I took care of it. I keep tellin' you, Clara, all you have to do is—"

Before he knew it, he'd taken her hand in his and started rubbing his thumb against hers to demonstrate his technique. But the friction soon begat awareness, and she looked up, her eyes silently questioning his. The witnesses remained quiet. The fire crackled.

The pale blond needlegrass and the darker bluestem were feathered with morning frost. The crisp air pumped the horses with enough sass to keep the riders busy in the corrals and cut the morning coffee short. Anna needed her father's help with her saddle, but Clara had hers under control. She'd slept surprisingly well in her cozy cocoon of a sleeping bag with Anna by her side. Getting dressed had been the challenging part, but she'd met the challenge within the warm confines of her sleeping bag. The Jacksons had offered the women the use of their bathroom, an opportunity not to be taken for granted for the next two weeks.

Something in the sound of Dewey's voice made Ben feel uneasy during the daybreak prayer. He turned his collar up, telling himself the chill that started in the back of his neck and shimmied down his spine had nothing to do with his father. The old man always sounded like somebody hanging his head in a barrel when he prayed first thing in the morning.

But he hadn't sounded too good last night, and it wasn't the cough so much as the way his breath seemed to get hung up in his chest. Ben hadn't said anything about it. Hadn't dared. Told himself maybe his ears were playing tricks on him, then and now. He was a great one for hearing things that weren't there. Maybe one of Clara's Hollywood ghosts, the kind she didn't believe in.

Dewey finally proclaimed,
"Mitakuye oyasin." All my relatives.
Ben echoed the words gratefully and wheeled his gelding toward the pasture gate.

Alta Two Bear was sitting opposite the gate in her green pickup, waiting for her son to ride through. Toby admitted to feeling pretty sore this morning, and he wasn't sure he wanted to ride that "dumb ol' pony" again. But when he saw his mother wave the eagle feather she'd brought for him, Toby squared his shoulders and trotted right up to her.

"I noticed yesterday that different ones had eagle feathers," she explained to Ben, who was ready to close the gate. She tied her gift to Toby's bridle. "You're probably supposed to give it at the end, but I thought my boy might need it sooner."

"He needed it yesterday," Ben allowed, giving the boy a conspiratorial wink. "Today's gonna be better. Right, Toby?"

The way to Wounded Knee took the form of a snakelike gravel road that undulated over endless prairie. The morning sun spread its warmth like honey, and the leaders tried to hold a steady pace. But green horses and greener horsemen continued to disturb the peace. One of the younger riders let her horse's nose get too close to Howard White Calf's green-broke mount's tail.

Howard's bronky dun suddenly kicked its back hoofs at heaven, and Howard went flying.

He lay perfectly still, facedown in the grass. His scruffy dun sniffed at his shoulder. Several riders stopped, a few paused, but no one dropped to the ground right away. They approached him tentatively, like the dun horse.

"Howard?" Clara decided it was her move. But Ben's hold-off gesture forestalled her when the man on the ground stirred.

"Knocked you out of wind?" Ben asked.

Howard grunted and slowly pushed himself up.

"Ain't a cowboy can't be throwed," Ben quipped as he swung down in a leisurely dismount. He grabbed the loose mount's trailing reins, then leaned down and swept a pair of battered wire-rims out of the grass. "Well, the tape held," he observed, carefully straightening the bows. "How bad are your eyes, Howard? You still got one good lens here. You need to see out of more than one eye?"

Hands braced on his thighs, Howard poked his lips in his horse's direction. "Not if this guy would use his."

"Medic!" came the call from one of the half-dozen horsemen who'd gathered around.

"Medicine man!" someone echoed. "Warrior eatin' trail dust back here!"

Howard stood up, brushed himself off, and grinned. "Looks like that horse don't wanna go to Wounded Knee."

"Where'd you get him?" Ben asked.

"Borrowed him from my father-in-law."

Ben chuckled. "Looks like your ol' lady don't want
you
goin' to Wounded Knee."

"Somebody puttin' on a rodeo back here?" Elliot Plume asked, reining his horse in. "Thought you hung up your buckin' strap, Ben."

"Howard was trying to liven things up for us. Judge says he took a 'no time.'"

Elliot laughed. "Missed him out, Howard?"

"Hell, some of these kids..." Chagrined, Howard claimed his mount. "I know I've got a bronc here, but some of these kids need a little tuning up in the horsemanship department."

"I been thinkin' the same," Ben said.

"Hey, teacher," Howard said, recovering his easy smile. "We need you to discipline these kids."

"He's asking for it now," Clara told Ben.

But during the course of the morning it was Ben who gave the lessons. He wasn't much for disciplining other people's kids, but when two of the youngsters came galloping up from behind and went racing past Toby Two Bear, Ben helped Toby bring his Shetland under control, then caught up to the race jockeys and gave them a terse warning.

When bus driver Sheila Bird took a tumble, landing in the grass right next to her saddle, Ben told her that her horse was playing tricks on her. "Always check your cinch," he advised. He pulled the strap as tight as he could and buckled it. "Is that tight now?"

She showed him she couldn't wedge her gloved hand between the strap and the horse's belly.

"Lead him around once," Ben instructed, and Sheila obliged. "Now check it again," he said, and she discovered inches of slack. "He's holdin' his breath on you, just like an ornery kid. He'll do it every time now that he knows how good it works, so you need to remember every time you saddle up." He offered an artful wink as cushion for any hurt feelings he might cause. "Gotta be smarter than the horse you're ridin', Sheila."

Ben wasn't the only born-to-ride horseman on the journey, but there was none better. Elliot Plume did his share of troubleshooting, along with hefty, jovial Cheppa Four Dog. This was the first full day, and the leadership roles fell into the fittest hands as the mishaps continued to occur. Marvin Cutler and his big gelding both took a somersault when the horse stepped in a gopher hole. Cheppa caught the horse as Marvin emerged from the grass, rubbing his shiny forehead. "Did he kick you?"

"Think I hit that fence post." Marvin laughed uneasily as he pointed out the culprit. "Guess I skinned up my old bald head."

"You get dizzy or anything, you let us know," Cheppa said.

"I ain't dizzy." He took a couple of experimental steps. "Nope. See any blood?"

From his elevated perspective Cheppa examined the top of Marvin's head. "Jeez. Never seen anything like it."

"What? Do I need stitches?" Marvin checked his hand for evidence.

"Hard to tell. The glare's blinding me." Cheppa grinned, his smooth round cheeks as shiny as any bald head. "Just a few scratches is all."

Despite mishaps, the main body of riders kept the pace, and those who fell back had to catch up. Ben was glad his wife and daughter were well mounted, because too many others were not. He'd started a mental list of riders to keep track of. Not that there weren't plenty of other eyes watching. As long as the route followed the gravel road, there were photographers waiting around every bend. Pesky, nosy, in-your-face camera jockeys. One of the few forms of life Ben regarded with contempt, and it wasn't only because there was one in particular who had a real penchant for snapping Clara's picture. Probably didn't think her husband would notice. Well, Cady the cagey shaman had another goddamn think coming.

"Ben? Hey, Ben?"

"What's up, Toby?"

The boy was bouncing easier at the trot, but his face looked seriously distressed. "My feather came off. The one my mom gave me this morning."

"Eagle feather?" Ben recalled. Toby nodded. "Got a cigarette on you?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind," Ben said with a smile as he wheeled his horse and started backtracking. He was glad for the distraction. "I got you covered on that score. We've gotta find it and ask Tunkasila to let you take it from the earth again."

"Will he let me?"

"Never know. He might take your feather back again if you don't take care of it."

"It wasn't my fault. My mom tied it onto the bridle, and this horse is bouncin' around so much."

Ben dismounted when he spotted the feather lying in the grass. Toby followed suit, but he didn't pick it up. He'd seen feathers fall off costumes at powwows, and he knew it wasn't that simple.

"I don't know why your mom gave you this, Toby, but she must have had a good reason." Ben took a cigarette from his pocket and broke it in half. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed the gathering of camera-faces. He pretended to ignore the clicks, but he kicked his lesson into high gear. "This is an honor for you. It came from the earth, and for some reason it went back to the earth. So now—" he took Toby's hands and formed them into a cup, which he filled with the tobacco from his cigarette "—you have to make a trade. This tobacco for the feather."

Cradling the offering, Toby looked up at his newfound mentor, eyes brimming with esteem.

With a quick chin jerk Ben redirected the boy's worshipful attention. "On the ground." Then an over-the-shoulder aside. "Hey, Cady, you lookin' to get kicked?"

"I was just..." Cady lowered his camera and blinked his baby blues, perplexed. "You said when your father was doing a ceremony, or when the pipe was—"

"That's not a threat. It's a warning." Ben laughed. He nodded toward his big gelding, whose flank was inches from Cady's silver head. "This horse doesn't give a damn what you were in a past life. You stand behind him, he's liable to boot you into the next one."

"Oh." Cady moved quickly, then scowled. Toby had already made his offering. "Now I missed my shot."

Ben ignored the complaint. "Now you can pick up the feather and offer it to the four directions.
Mitakuye oyasin"
Ben said with a nod as Toby followed instructions. The camera clicked and whirred when the boy repeated in Lakota the prayerful acknowledgment, "All my relatives."

"Now, you tie it on there good, because if it comes off, we stop and do this again. Out of respect."

"How come you didn't do that when Howard fell?"

"Because Howard's got legs. Besides, the earth isn't ready to take him back." Chuckling, Ben remounted. "She'd probably give
us
tobacco just to keep him out of her hair a while longer."