The Spirit Woman (10 page)

Laura closed her eyes a moment. The images of Sacajawea blazed in her mind: a young woman, the fringed, deerskin dress, the moccasins, the black hair clipped in back, the bundle on her back, disappearing ahead, always ahead, into the wilderness.

The sound of the stapler biting into a stack of paper filled the quiet. Laura sighed. There was nothing new in the files. No sign of an old notebook—the kind in which the agent's wife would have recorded Sacajawea's memoirs. And the director had assured her she'd never heard that the memoirs had escaped the agency fire, and there was no one on the reservation named Toussaint. She was running into brick walls. Without the memoirs, she could never finish the biography.

Laura picked up her bag and went outside for a cigarette. She huddled for warmth under the eaves at the front door, cursing herself for leaving her coat on the chair. Billows of clouds rolled overhead, forming and re-forming against a sky that was dull and flat in the fading daylight. The air was cold and the mixture of ice and smoke stung her throat. She let her gaze roam over the tribal compound at Fort Washakie—a collection of modern brick buildings and century-old, white-frame bungalows that housed the tribal offices, the Wind River Police Department, the BIA agency. Next to the agency was the vacant site where Sacajawea's small log cabin had stood: one room above, one room below, a shed attached to the side. They had found her one morning, dead in her shakedown of buffalo robes.

Laura stubbed out the cigarette and flipped it into a tangle of scrub brush. The sense of desperation seemed less acute. She'd confirmed that the memoirs were
not
at the cultural center. That was valuable. And she knew where they were, had known from the moment she'd arrived. Wrapped in brown paper or in a parfleche, stashed in a trunk, forgotten in a closet in one of the little houses scattered about the reservation. She would find them. Lindy Meadows was checking the old letters at the Arapaho Museum. Who knew what information might be in them? And on Thursday, she'd talk to Theresa Redwing.

She'd made the appointment last night, after Vicky had called to tell her that Theresa would see her. The woman's granddaughter would be there. That could be a problem. Laura hadn't counted on a Shoshone graduate student writing a dissertation on Sacajawea. Still, if Theresa knew who Toussaint was . . . That was all that mattered. She could convince the man that the memoirs should be in the hands of a professional historian, not a graduate student. They should be part of Sacajawea's definitive biography.

Hugging herself against the cold, Laura went back inside and climbed the stairs to the library. A man about six feet tall was leaning over the director's desk, his voice low and confidential, as if he were telling an off-color story. He must have come in through the back door. His sheepskin coat hung open over a white shirt and blue jeans; a white Stetson dangled from one hand. He slapped the hat against his thigh and gave out a laugh that rumbled across the plank floor. Phyllis Manley tilted her face upward, eyes shining, a ripple of laughter joining his.

Laura recognized the man: Robert Crow Wolf, Shoshone, historian at the University of Wyoming. She'd heard a paper he'd delivered two years ago at the Western History Association, something about the cultural impact of trading posts on the Plains Indians. She'd been impressed by the depth of his research, the new insights into old material. She walked over.

“I'm going to need everything you have on the early agriculture on the res,” he told the director.

Phyllis Manley started to lift herself out of her chair. “It'll a take a while to pull out the files.”

“Better get to it.” He waved the Stetson, as if he were shooing a stray calf into the corral. The director was smiling as she stepped backward, then disappeared through one of the doors to the archives.

“Robert Crow Wolf,” Laura said.

The man swung around. Everything about him spoke of a warrior's strength and alertness, from the broad shoulders to the way he planted his boots on the floor, his dark eyes traveling over her. His hair was black, parted in the middle and combed back from a dark, sculptured face with a firmly set jaw and full lips that parted in a half smile of appreciation. She was suddenly conscious of being a woman in the presence of an assured and handsome man. “Laura Simmons, University of Colorado, I believe.” He stepped forward and gripped her palm against the roughness of his suede glove. The odor of coffee and aftershave floated between them. “What brings you here?”

“I'm working on a biography of Sacajawea,” Laura explained.

The Indian threw back his head and gave a snort of laughter. “Another one?” He ushered her over to the chair she'd left a few moments ago, one hand on her elbow. She had the sense that she had his full attention. “Tell me,” he said, pulling out a chair and sitting down beside her, “what could you possibly write that hasn't already been written?”

Laura flinched. She could expect Crow Wolf's reaction from all her colleagues unless she found the memoirs. “I believe there's evidence that has never been published,” she said, hearing the tenseness in her voice.

The man shrugged. “You're not the first historian to come here looking for new evidence.” He leaned close. The odor of coffee was strong on his breath. “You after the papers that were buried with Bazil? Fact is, they disintegrated. Poof!” The gloved hands clapped together. “Nothing but ashes in the wind. How about the Jefferson Medal Clark supposedly gave to Sacajawea?” He smiled; the white teeth gleamed in his brown face and flecks of light danced in the black eyes.

“The medal would suffice.” Laura forced a lightness into her tone. Careful, she thought. She'd already said too much. If Robert Crow Wolf had any idea that the evidence was Sacajawea's memoirs, he would find them himself and publish them first. She said, “I'm completing the biography that another historian, Charlotte Allen, started. I've edited the manuscript and I've been rechecking the sources she listed in the journal she kept while she was on the reservation.”

“You don't say.” The Indian let his gaze roam over the stacks of papers arranged on the table, as if one of them might be the manuscript. A look of disappointment came into the black eyes. “This Charlotte Allen”—the name rolled slowly off his tongue, as if he were trying to place it with a face—“gave you her work?”

“Her mother asked me to complete the biography,” Laura said. “Charlotte disappeared twenty years ago while she was hiking near Sacajawea Ridge. Perhaps you met her?”

“Twenty years ago I was in grad school in Berkeley.” He glanced around at the director, and Laura realized the woman had materialized from the archives and was standing at the table behind them, a large cardboard box in her arms. “You meet a historian named Charlotte Allen about twenty years ago?”

A pink blush came into the woman's cheeks, like that of a schoolgirl who'd found herself under the scrutiny of the most popular boy in the class. Phyllis bumped against the table and lowered the box. AGRICULTURAL FILES was printed on the side. “I'm afraid that was before my time.” She shivered and threw a glance at the window and the light slipping into grayness beyond. “Imagine getting lost in the mountains in the winter.”

“Happens all the time.” Robert Crow Wolf turned back to Laura. “How can I help a fellow historian?”

Laura felt herself beginning to relax. The man had his own projects; she was being silly to think he would want to take hers. “Would you happen to know someone named Toussaint?” she asked.

The Indian's eyes went to the window a moment, then he turned in his chair and faced the director. “Phyllis, see if you can get old Willie Silver on the phone.”

“He must be related to James Silver,” Laura said in a voice thin with excitement. Charlotte had interviewed James Silver.

“One and only son of,” Crow Wolf said.

As the director started for the desk, he brought his gaze back to Laura. She felt a stab of pleasure at the acute masculine power in the man's black eyes. “Old Willie might be able to help you out,” he said. “He's a proud descendant of Toussaint and Sacajawea.” There was a faint
tap-tap
noise as the director dialed the number.

“I envy you, you know,” Robert Crow Wolf went on. “Researching a mystery like Sacajawea, and I'm stuck with delivering a paper next month on how the Indians took to farming.”

“Willie's on the line.” Phyllis held up the phone, stretching the knotted cord over the desk.

Crow Wolf got up, took the receiver, and sat on the edge of the desk. “Willie, old boy. How the hell are you?” There was a half second of silence. Crow Wolf rolled his eyes to the ceiling. Finally he said, “Got a nice lady here wants to talk to you. Teacher down in Colorado writing a book about your famous ancestor.” Another silence. “No, not Jim Bridger. Since when you related to that old trader? The lady here wants to talk to you about Toussaint. You gonna be around tomorrow? Earlier the better? Got ya, old boy.”

Crow Wolf replaced the receiver. Leaning back onto the desk, he found a Post-it pad and a pen among the stacks of stapled pages and began writing something down. Then he tore off the top page and, handing it to Laura, said, “Here's the directions to Willie's ranch up on Sacajawea Ridge. I suggest you get out there before noon, while he's still sober.” He tapped the pen against the tiny pad. “You've got me interested in this project of yours, Laura. I'll see if I can convince some of the other elders that you're an honest white woman and they oughta talk to you. Where you staying?”

She gave him the address of the Mountain House. She had the distinct feeling that her luck was about to change.

 

Laura worked through the rest of the afternoon, reading the oral histories again, story after story told by an old woman about the scarcity of food when the expedition crossed the Rocky Mountains; the roots she had dug to help feed the soldiers; the rough waters that had tossed the boats about at the mouth of the Columbia; and the fish that had washed out of the ocean which was, she said, as long as from the door of her log cabin to the hitching rack outside. Laura studied each story, searching for some clue, some small piece of information that could have sent Charlotte Allen to the man she'd called Toussaint. At one point she realized that Robert Crow Wolf had left, and she and the director were alone. Darkness was lapping at the window.

She returned the oral histories to the carton, then gathered up her notepad and bag and slipped into her coat. She thanked the director on the way out.

 

Highway 287 shone white in the headlights ahead as Laura drove south across the reservation. Except for the few stars twinkling overhead and the smudge of moonlight, the sky was black. After several miles, the lights of Lander flashed on the horizon. Another couple of miles and the neon lights of convenience stores and gas stations were passing outside her window. She turned into a fast-food drive-in and ordered a hamburger, then continued east into a neighborhood of houses from another era, a quieter, less stressful time, she thought. At a white Victorian on the corner, she slowed into the driveway and parked next to the garage in back. Clinging to the brick wall was an outside stairway that led to the rooms perched above, like an afterthought.

Tense with cold, she hurried up the stairs, holding the hamburger bag in one hand, fumbling in her purse for the key with the other. Her fingers curled around the cold metal, and she jammed the key into the lock and pushed open the door.

The instant she found the switch, the light from a faux Tiffany fixture flooded the round table near the window. Charlotte Allen's manuscript sat in a neat stack, just as she had left it. In the shadows beyond the table stood an upholstered chair and a dresser with a television perched on top. Most of the room was taken up by a double bed, the flowered comforter trailing onto the worn green carpet. Against the far wall, next to the door that led to the bathroom, was a closet-sized kitchen.

She dropped the hamburger on the table and tossed her coat and purse onto the bed. After she'd retrieved a soda from the miniature refrigerator, she turned on the TV and sat down at the table, angling the chair so that she had a straight view of the nightly news. A feeling of sadness hit her like a blast of cold air as she opened the bag and took a bite of the hamburger. Was this the way it would be? She, always alone?

She forced herself to concentrate on what the beautiful blond newscaster, cloned from a hundred others, was saying. The FBI was close to an identity of the skeleton found last week near St. Francis Mission on the Wind River Reservation. According to a spokesman, the skeleton was not ancient, as was originally suggested by tribal elders. Lab reports confirmed that the skeleton was a Caucasian female around thirty years old who was buried about twenty years ago. The death had been ruled a homicide.

Laura set the hamburger down, staring at the screen, all of her senses on alert. A familiar feeling washed over her—the feeling that often came when she was doing research and had picked up strands of information that suddenly came together. Charlotte Allen was in her early thirties; she'd disappeared twenty years ago. Could it possibly be?

She shrugged the notion away. Charlotte had disappeared in the mountains, miles from St. Francis Mission. It couldn't be Charlotte.

Laura was about to take another bite of the lukewarm meat when the footsteps sounded on the stairs—a slow, steady ascent. She sat motionless, wondering if the sound came from the television. There was a loud, firm knocking. She mentally ticked off the people who knew she was here. Only a few. She wasn't expecting any of them.

The knocking came again, impatient now, crashing over the television noise. Laura got to her feet and pushed back the flimsy white curtain at the window. On the stairway landing was the large, shadowy figure of a man.