“There were only thirty-five of us, but Old Nana had once terrorized all of the Southwest with only ten Apaches. We were Comanche, better than Apache. We were very brave, very young. So we prepared our raid. The old men were against us, but they were afraid to stop us, or even talk against us. Many of them were as foolish as we were. All but one old chief. In Council he stood up and spoke against us-we were fools, children; our weapons were useless; we hadn’t fought in our lives; our whole small tribe hadn’t fought for twenty years; we didn’t know how to fight, or what war was like; the soldiers at Fort Johns were veterans; we wouldn’t even get near the Fort unseen; the only way for our tribe to survive was to keep our ways and bide our time and stay away from the white man until there was a new day. That was what he said.
“And he said that if the Council did not stop us, he would do it alone. The Council failed to agree. The raid was to go on. That one old man got on his horse and started for Fort Johns. He told us that he would warn the soldiers. He rode off alone, so we killed him. Ten of us rode after him and killed him.
“That old man was my grandfather.”
20
“The raid failed, of course, we were all killed or captured after a few shots. We went to prison, our tribe was severely punished, almost broken, and we have been poor and weak and forgotten here ever since. But that is not my story.”
He was an artist in his way, that old man-an artist with words, the oral tradition of literature. In that hogan he had us all mesmerized, hanging on every word: Felicia, Paul Two Bears, myself. He spoke as a master writer writes, satisfying our simple need to know the end, to know what had happened, and then sweeping it away while holding us for his real story.
“My story,” he said, “is honest anger turned to black rage. We young men had an honest anger then, but we let it become a dishonest rage inside us that let me kill my own grandfather. My son, He Who Walked A Black Wind, was the same in his time. He was a boy of honest anger, good for himself and the tribe, but the white man is intelligent, he knows by intuition how to dominate, enslave, weaken. The white man sent my son to war in Korea, took his anger and made it into a rage-a rage first against strangers, then against his own family, and then against life itself. Indians are communal, one with the land. White men are not, and my son in his rage lost the land and his past and became white. He took the ways of white men, the values, and it doomed him to his fate.”
The old man made a sound in the hogan, maybe it was a sigh, I couldn’t really tell. He had me paralyzed with the force of his flowing words. But he made some sound, and his voice became sad, almost tired.
“My son wanted to build among us, live with us with his wife. When she did not want this, his rage made him do the act that lost him his work with the land, and so lost him his life. A man’s work is his soul. When I came from prison in my time, I too walked far from here. But I learned that you cannot defeat people by becoming as they are. I learned that my grandfather had been wise, and I came home to wait for bur time, to keep our ways ready. My son came from prison a white man, driftwood on an empty river.”
A master, the old man, bringing us all back into the hogan and the present by his change of voice, his own return to a tone that was tired and normal and in the present.
I said, “But he is alive? Somewhere?”
“He still walks,” the old man said. “I don’t know where.”
“You told Francesca that?”
“Her other grandfather had already told her. A letter from my son had come to him years ago. The white grandfather perhaps liked my son, he did not tell what he knew.”
“But he told Francesca, and she came here. What did you tell her?”
“That my son did not die from that prison. Many months after, he came here. The police had been here, had looked, and had not found him. He was a man who knew the land and the wind. He came home without being seen by anyone, but he did not stay. He knew he could not stay here. He left in the night as he had come. Once he wrote from Los Angeles, and once from the place of a man he had known in the army.”
“Harmon Dunstan? His captain?”
“That was the man.”
“This was all fifteen years ago?”
He nodded. “Later, the money began. It came without words or name, but I knew he sent it. A lot of money each time. The money has been good, but granddaughters are better. I found two new granddaughters. I am glad.”
The old man stood up, almost without effort, and walked out of the hogan. No one followed him. I heard a horse walk slowly away toward the higher mesas. He was a strong old man. I looked at the young Indian, Paul Two Bears.
“Harmon Dunstan, and L.A., that’s all she knew?”
“That’s all we know here,” Paul Two Bears said.
“What about that money?”
Felicia said, “It came at irregular intervals. The first time in October 1957. Maybe fifteen times since. A lot of money, at least five thousand dollars each time. No pattern.”
“But no more letters. As if he was making money, but was ashamed of it, or afraid to reveal himself to anyone?”
“I don’t know why,” Felicia said.
“He’d murdered a prison guard, Felicia,” I said, “and he was supposed to be dead. He had to hide. But his people here wouldn’t have told on him. So why not write?”
She was silent. I thought about it. A whole new identity, maybe, and afraid to risk even a letter to Pine River? The date of that first letter with money crawled in my mind-October 1957. Where had I heard it? Then it came to me-Carl Gans! The bouncer’s dying words-October, fifty-seven. Over and over.
“How long have you been here, Felicia?” I asked.
“Since the night I saw you. They wouldn’t talk to me at first, until I proved who I was.”
“You’ve been here ever since?”
Paul Two Bears said, “She has been here. She didn’t leave.”
He had guessed why I wanted to know even though I hadn’t mentioned Abram Zaremba or Carl Gans yet. But what did it prove? That they would lie for her, or that it was true, take your pick.
“I like it here,” Felicia said. “I feel at home.”
“Francesca told you she liked it here, but she left.”
Paul Two Bears said, “Francesca was more restless, she had to find her father. We told her that my uncle was a lost man, that he wouldn’t even want her to find him. She had to look.”
“You don’t, Felicia?” I said.
“I don’t know. It’s not so important to me, I guess. Fran felt more rejected by Mother than I did, more lost in Dresden.”
“How much do you know about what happened in Dresden eighteen years ago? When your father came for all of you?”
“Only what they know here. Tell me, Mr. Fortune.”
I told her. I also told her about the murders of Abram Zaremba and Carl Gans. Her eyes grew wider, and darker, and more afraid. When I finished, she said:
“All because Fran was looking for our father?”
“I don’t know that,” I said.
“Her scar,” she said. “Shot because of our father. I remember the nightmares. As if, somehow, Fran remembered it more. The shock of the wound in her memory, maybe.”
“Maybe,” I said.
She said, “What did happen to Fran, Mr. Fortune?”
“There are a lot of possibilities still,” I said. “She went to Harmon Dunstan, and then she moved on. I think she picked up a fifteen-year-old trail. The trail of a man supposed to be dead, and with a prison guard murder hanging over his head. A fugitive, Felicia, hiding one way or another. How would he know who she was? Just some girl trailing him. And even if he did know her, what could she have meant to him by now?”
“You think he…? To stay hidden? No!”
“Maybe her murder was more to do with Abram Zaremba, and the lawyer Mark Leland, and the Black Mountain Lake project, after all. I don’t know,” I said. “Or there could be someone else who doesn’t want Ralph Blackwind found.”