Текст книги "Still Life With Crows"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

“Then you see no difficulty in, ah, making me better acquainted with the inhabitants.”

“Mr. Pendergast, I’ve got nothing on my calendar until August twenty-second, when I have to type up the property tax bills for the fourth quarter.”

Pendergast glided a little closer to the desk. “Let’s hope it doesn’t take quite that long.”

Another bark of laughter. “Take that long! Hoo– eee!Man alive, that’s a good one.”

Marge turned her swivel chair to the back wall of the office, where an old-fashioned safe stood. It was massive and decorated around the edges with faded gold leaf. Aside from the desk and a small bookshelf, it was the only article of furniture in the room. She twirled its large central dial back and forth, entering the combination, then grasped the handle and pulled the iron door open. Inside was a smaller box, closed with a padlock. She unlocked the padlock with a key that she drew from around her neck. Reaching inside, she removed an even smaller, wooden box. Then she turned around in her swivel chair again and placed it on the desk between herself and Pendergast.

“There you go,” she said, patting the little box with satisfaction. “Where do you want to start?”

Pendergast looked at the box. “I beg your pardon?”

“I said, where do you want to start?”

“Do you mean to tell me that—” For a very brief moment, the man’s face seemed to go completely blank before once again assuming its look of casual curiosity.

“What, did you think it took a computer to run a town the size of Medicine Creek? I’ve got everything I need right in this little box. And what isn’t there is up here.” She tapped her temple. “Look, I’ll show you.” She opened the box, drew out an index card by random. It contained perhaps a dozen lines of neat handwriting, followed by a row of numbers, a couple of squiggles and symbols, and a few stickers of various colors: red, yellow, green. “You see?” she said, waving it under Pendergast’s nose. “This is the card of Dale Estrem, the cranky young farmer. His father was a cranky old farmer. And his grandfather—well, we won’t mention him.Dale and the rest of those troublemakers in the Farmer’s Co-operative, always standing in the way of progress. See, it shows here that he’s two quarters behind in his taxes, that his oldest kid had to repeat ninth grade, that his septic tank’s not in compliance with the code, and that he’s applied for farm relief seven years out of the last seven.” She clucked disapprovingly.

Pendergast looked from her, to the card, and back to her again. “I see,” he said.

“I’ve got ninety-three cards here, one for each family in Medicine Creek and in the unincorporated areas around it. I could talk for an hour on each, maybe two hours if necessary.” Marge felt herself growing excited. It wasn’t every day that somebody official took an interest in her records. And with Rocky passed on, God knows, she had precious few people to chat with. “I promise, you’ll know all there is to know about Medicine Creek when I’m done with you.”

This was greeted by a profound silence.

“Of course,” Pendergast said after a few moments, as if re-collecting himself.

“So I ask again, Mr. Pendergast. Where do you want to start?”

Pendergast thought a moment. “I suppose we should start with the A’s.”

“There are no last names starting with ‘A’ in Medicine Creek, Mr. Pendergast. We’ll start with David Barness, out on the Cry Road. So sorry I can’t get you a chair. Maybe when we start in again tomorrow I’ll bring one along for you from my kitchen.” And she returned the card she was holding to its spot, licked her finger eagerly, plucked the first card from the box, and began to talk. At her elbow the television flickered on, the game show now completely forgotten.

Sixteen

 

Deputy Sheriff Tad Franklin guided his cruiser into the gravel parking lot between the big old Victorian house and the gift shop. He crunched to a halt, pushed open the car door, and unfolded himself into the hot August sun. He paused to stretch, scratch at his black crew cut, and to peer, a little warily, at the house. The white picket fence that surrounded it was falling apart, paint peeling, slats hanging every which way. Beyond lay the overgrown yard. The giant old gabled house looked like it hadn’t been painted in fifty years. Kansas dust storms had sandblasted it right down to weatherbeaten wood and were now stripping the wood down to tarpaper. The “Kraus’s Kaverns” sign, off-kilter, with its great strips of peeling red and white paint, looked like something out of a grade-B horror flick. The whole place depressed him. He had to get out of Medicine Creek. But to do that, he needed to put in his time, get some more experience under his belt. And he dreaded the idea of telling Sheriff Hazen. The sheriff, Tad knew, was grooming him, in his rough paternal way, to take his place. Tad didn’t like to think about what the sheriff would say when he told him he was taking a job in Wichita or Topeka. Anywhere but Medicine Creek.

He forced himself through the gate, along the weed-choked sidewalk, and up the steps onto the crooked wraparound porch. His leather boots made a hollow sound as he walked up to the door. The air was still, and in the corn he could hear the cicadas droning. He paused, then rapped on the door.

It opened so quickly that he jumped. Special Agent Pendergast.

“Deputy Sheriff Franklin. Please come in.”

Tad took off his hat and came into the parlor, feeling uncomfortable. The sheriff had wanted him to quietly check up on what Pendergast was up to, what else he had learned about the dog killing. But now that he was here, he felt embarrassed. He couldn’t imagine any way to broach the subject without making the reason for his visit painfully obvious.

“You’re just in time for lunch,” said the agent, closing the door behind him. The shades were drawn and it was a little cooler here, out of the sun, but without air conditioning it was still uncomfortably hot. Not far from the front door sat two oversized suitcases—wardrobe trunks, really—overnight express labels still affixed to the expensive-looking leather exteriors. It seemed that Pendergast was settling in for a longer stay.

“Lunch?” Tad repeated.

“A light salad with antipasti. Prosciutto di San Daniele, pecorino cheese with truffled honey, baccelli, tomatoes, and rucola. Something light for a hot day.”

“Er, sure. Great.” If they were going to eat Italian, why not stick with pizza? He advanced another step, not knowing what to say. It was one o’clock. Who ate lunch at one o’clock? He had eaten at the normal time of eleven-thirty.

“Miss Kraus is feeling poorly. She’s taken to bed. I’ve been filling in.”

“I see.” Tad followed Pendergast into the kitchen. In one corner a stack of Federal Express and DHL boxes had been neatly piled halfway to the ceiling. The counter was littered with at least a dozen food packages sporting foreign-sounding names: Balducci’s, Zabar’s. Tad wondered if maybe Pendergast wasn’t Italian or French. He sure didn’t eat like an American.

Pendergast had busied himself in the kitchen, his movements deft and economical, quickly arranging odd-looking food onto three plates—salami and cheese and what had to be some kind of lettuce. Tad watched, shifting his hat from one hand to the other.

“I’ll just bring this plate back to Miss Kraus,” said Pendergast.

“Right. Okay.”

Pendergast disappeared into the back recesses of the house. Tad could hear Winifred’s soft voice, Pendergast’s murmured responses. A moment later, the agent returned.

“Is she okay?” Tad asked.

“Fine,” Pendergast said in a low voice. “It’s more psychological than physical. These delayed reactions are common in such cases. You can imagine the kind of shock she had, learning about the murder.”

“We were all shocked.”

“Of course you were. I recently wrapped up a rather unpleasant case myself in New York, where killings are regrettably more common. I am used to it, Mr. Franklin, or as used to it as a creature can ever be. For all of you, I have no doubt this was—and is—a most unwelcome new experience. Please sit down.”

Tad sat down, put his hat on the table, decided that wasn’t a good place, laid it on a chair, then snatched it up again, afraid he might forget it.

“I’ll take that,” said Pendergast, placing it on a hat rack nearby.

Tad shifted in his chair, feeling more awkward by the minute. A plate was put in front of him. “Buon appetito,”Pendergast said, gesturing for Tad to dig in.

Tad picked up a fork and stabbed into a piece of cheese. He cut some off and tasted it gingerly.

“You’ll want to drizzle a little of this miele al tartufo biancoon there,” Pendergast said, offering him a tiny jar of odd-smelling honey.

“I’ll stick to it plain, thanks.”

“Nonsense.” Pendergast took a pearl spoon and dribbled some honey over the rest of Tad’s cheese.

Tad took another bite, and discovered it wasn’t bad.

They ate in silence. Tad found the food much to his liking, especially some small slices of salami. “What’s this?” he asked.

“ Cinghiale.Wild boar.”

“Oh.”

Now Pendergast was pouring olive oil all over everything, as well as some liquid as black as tar. He poured some on Tad’s own plate as well. “And now, Deputy, I imagine you are here for a briefing.”

Somehow, having it stated so baldly made everything much less awkward. “Well, yes. Right.”

Pendergast dabbed his mouth and sat back. “The dog was named Jiff and he belonged to Andy Cahill. I understand that Andy is quite an explorer and that he used to roam all over the place with his dog. My assistant will be providing me soon with the results of an interview.”

Tad fumbled for his notebook, brought it out, and started taking notes.

“It appears the dog was killed that previous night. You may recall it was overcast for a few hours after midnight, and that appears to be when the killing occurred. I have the results of the autopsy right here, which I just received. The C 2, 3, and 4 vertebrae were actually crushed.There was no indication that any kind of machine or instrument was used, which is problematic, since if only one’s hands were employed, such crushing would require considerable force. The tail appears to have been hacked off with a crude implement and removed from the scene, along with the collar and tags.”

Tad took notes furiously. This was good stuff. The sheriff would be pleased. Then again, he’d probably gotten the same report. He continued taking notes, just to be sure.

“I followed the bare footprints leading to and from the scene. The same corn row was used in both cases, leading away from, and then back to, Medicine Creek. Once in the creek, it was no longer possible to follow the tracks. So I spent the morning with Mrs. Tealander, the town administrator, acquainting myself with the local residents. I fear that this task will take much longer than I’d originally—”

A tremulous voice came from the rear of the house. “Mr. Pendergast?”

Pendergast held his finger to his lips. “Miss Kraus is out of bed,” he murmured. “It wouldn’t do for her to hear us talking this way.” He turned, and said in a louder tone, “Yes, Miss Kraus?”

Tad saw the figure of the old woman appear in the doorway, muffled despite the heat in a nightgown and robes. Tad quickly rose.

“Why, hello, Tad,” said the old lady. “I’ve been poorly, you know, and Mr. Pendergast has been kind enough to take care of me. Don’t stand on my account. Please, take your seat.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Tad.

She sat down heavily in a chair at the table, her face careworn. “I have to tell you, I’m getting awfully tired of that bed. I don’t know how invalids do it. Mr. Pendergast, would you mind pouring me a cup of that green tea of yours? I find it settles my nerves.”

“Delighted.” Pendergast rose and moved toward the stove.

“It’s just terrible, isn’t it, Tad?” she said.

The deputy sheriff didn’t quite know how to respond.

“This killing. Who could have done it? Does anyoneknow?”

“We’ve got some leads we’re following up,” Tad replied. It was the line the sheriff always used.

Miss Kraus drew the robe more tightly around her throat. “I feel dreadful, just dreadful, knowing someone like that’s on the loose. And maybe even one of our own, if the papers are to be believed.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Pendergast served tea all around and the table fell silent. Through the gauze curtains Tad could see the great fields of corn stretching out toward the horizon, a monochromatic rusty yellow. It made the eyes tired just looking at it. For the first time, the idea occurred to him that working on this case—if it had a successful resolution—could be just the ticket out he’d been waiting for. All of a sudden, checking up on Pendergast didn’t seem like a chore. It seemed, instead, like something he should do regularly. But Miss Kraus was speaking again, and he politely turned to listen.

“I fear for our little town,” Winifred Kraus was saying. “With this murderer out there, I fear for it truly.”

Seventeen

 

Corrie Swanson brought the Gremlin to a shuddering halt, sending up a swirl of dust that spiraled slowly into the air. God, it was hot. She looked over at the passenger seat. Pendergast returned the glance, eyebrows slightly raised.

“This is the place,” she said. “You still haven’t told me why we’re here.”

“We’re going to pay a visit to one James Draper.”

“Why?”

“I understand he makes certain claims regarding the Medicine Creek Massacre. I think it’s time I learned more about them.”

“Brushy Jim makes a lot of claims.”

“You doubt him?”

Corrie laughed. “He can’t say hello without lying.”

“I have found that liars in the end communicate more truth than do truth tellers.”

“How’s that?”

“Because truth is the safest lie.”

Corrie eased the car forward, shaking her head. No question about it: weird, weird, weird.

Brushy Jim’s place was an eighth-section of land out on the Deeper Road, fenced in with barbed wire. The plankboard, two-room house stood well back from the highway, a lone cottonwood in front offering a semblance of privacy. The house was surrounded by a sea of junked cars, old trailers, rusted boilers, abandoned refrigerators, washing machines, old telephone poles, compressors, a couple of boat hulls, something that appeared to be a steam locomotive, and other things too sunken into decrepitude to be recognizable.

As Corrie rolled into the dirt driveway she gave the car just a bit too much gas, and the Gremlin shuddered, backfired thunderously, and died. For a moment all was still. Then the door of the house banged open and a man appeared in the shade of the porch. As they got out of the car, he advanced into the light. Like most people in Medicine Creek, Corrie went out of her way to avoid meeting Brushy Jim, yet he looked just the same as she remembered: a mass of pale red hair and beard that sprouted from his entire face, leaving nothing visible but two beady black eyes, a pair of lips, and a patch of forehead. He was dressed in thick denim jeans, big chocolate-colored roper boots, a blue shirt with fake pearl snaps, and a battered felt cowboy hat. A bolo tie with a chunk of turquoise big enough to split the skull of a mule hung around his thick neck, the knotted leather partially obscured by the heavy beard. He was well over fifty, but with all the hair managed to look a decade younger. He gripped the post and peered at them suspiciously.

Pendergast strode toward the porch, suit coat flapping.

“Just hold it right there,” Brushy Jim called out, “and state your business. Now.”

Corrie swallowed. If something bad was going to happen, it was going to happen now.

Pendergast halted. “I understand you are Mr. James Draper, great-grandson of Isaiah Draper?”

At this, Brushy Jim straightened slightly. The look of mistrust did not go away. “And?”

“My name is Pendergast. I’m interested in learning more about the Medicine Creek Massacre of August 14, 1865, of which your great-grandfather was the lone survivor.”

The mention of the massacre wrought a dramatic change in Brushy Jim’s countenance. The suspicious glare in his eye softened somewhat. “And the young lady, if that’s what she is? Who’s she?”

“Miss Corrie Swanson,” Pendergast replied.

At this, Jim stood even straighter. “Little Corrie?” he said in surprise. “What happened to your pretty blonde hair?”

Ate too much eggplant,Corrie almost said. But Brushy Jim was unpredictable, and he had a hair-trigger temper, so she decided that a shrug was the safest response.

“You look terrible, Corrie, all dressed in black.” He stood there a moment, looking at the two of them. Then he nodded his head. “Well, you might as well come in.”

They followed Brushy Jim into the stuffy confines of his house. There were few windows and it was dark, a house crammed full of shadowy objects. It smelled of old food and taxidermy gone bad.

“Sit down and have a Coke.” The refrigerator threw out a rectangle of welcome light as Brushy Jim opened it. Corrie perched on a folding chair, while Pendergast—after a quick scan of the premises—took a seat on the only portion of a cowhide sofa not stacked with dusty copies of Arizona Highways.Corrie had never been inside before, and she looked around uneasily. The walls were covered with old rifles, buckskins, boards with arrowheads glued on, Civil War memorabilia, plaques displaying different types of barbed wire. A row of moldering old books ran along one shelf, bookended by huge pieces of unpolished petrified wood. An entire stuffed horse, an Appaloosa, worn and moth-eaten, stood guard in one corner. The floor was littered with dirty laundry, broken saddle trees, pieces of leather, and other bric-a-brac. It was remarkable: the entire place was like a dusty museum devoted to relics of the Old West. Corrie had expected to see mementos of Vietnam: weapons, insignia, photographs. But there was absolutely nothing, not a trace, of the war that reputedly had changed Brushy Jim forever.

Brushy Jim handed Corrie and Pendergast cans of Coke. “Now, Mr. Pendergast, just what do you want to know about the massacre?”

Corrie watched Pendergast set the Coke can aside. “Everything.”

“Well, it started during the Civil War.” Brushy Jim threw his massive body into a big armchair, took a noisy sip. “You know all about Bloody Kansas, I’m sure, Mr. Pendergast, being a historian.”

“I’m not a historian, Mr. Draper. I’m a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

There was a dead silence. Then Brushy Jim cleared his throat.

“All right, then, Mr. Pendergast. So you’re FBI. May I ask what brings you to Medicine Creek?”

“The recent homicide.”

Brushy Jim’s look of suspicion had returned, full force. “And what, exactly,does that have to do with me?”

“The victim was a relic hunter named Sheila Swegg. She’d been digging in the Mounds.”

Brushy Jim spat on the floor, twisted it into the dust with his boot. “Goddamned relic hunters. They should leave the stuff in the ground.” Then he looked quickly back at Pendergast. “You still haven’t said what the murder has to do with me.”

“I understand the history of the Mounds, and the Medicine Creek Massacre, are intertwined. Along with something I’ve heard referred to locally as the ‘curse of the Forty-Fives.’ And as you may know, a large number of Southern Cheyenne arrows were found arranged with the body.”

A long time passed while Brushy Jim seemed to consider this. “What kind of arrows?” he finally asked.

“They were of cane, feathered with bald eagle primaries and tipped with a type II Plains Cimarron style point of Alibates chert and Bighorn red jasper. A matched set, by the way, in almost perfect condition. They date to around the time of the massacre.”

Brushy Jim issued a long low whistle, and then fell into silence, his brow furrowed with thought.

“Mr. Draper?” Pendergast prompted at last.

For another moment, Brushy Jim was still. Then, with a slow shake of his head, he began his story.

“Before the Civil War, southwestern Kansas was completely unsettled, just Cheyenne and Arapaho, Pawnee and Sioux. The only white folks were those passing through on the Santa Fe Trail. But settlement was rolling this way from the frontier, which at that time was eastern Kansas. Folks had their eye on the good range in the valleys of the Cimarron River, the Arkansas, Crooked Creek, and Medicine Creek. When the Civil War broke out all the soldiers went off, leaving the territory defenseless. The settlers had been brutalizing the Indians and now it was payback time. There was a whole string of Indian attacks along the frontier. Then when the Civil War ended, a lot of soldiers came back, armed and bitter. They’d seen war, Mr. Pendergast. And I mean war.That kind of violence can do something to a man. It can damage the mind.”

The man paused, cleared his throat.

“So they came back here and began forming vigilante groups to push the Indians west so they could take the land. ‘Clearing the country,’ they called it. There was a group formed over in Dodge, called the Forty-Fives. ’Course, it wasn’t Dodge then, just the Hickson Brothers ranch. Forty-five men, it was, some of the worst dregs of humanity, murderers and crooks pushed out of settled towns farther east. My great-grandfather Isaiah Draper was just a boy of sixteen, barely in long pants, and he got sucked into it. I guess his thinking was he’d missed the war, so he’d better hurry up and prove his manhood damn quick while he still could.”

Brushy Jim took another noisy sip.

“Anyway, in June of ’65 the Forty-Fives went on a rampage, heading down the criks south of the Canadian and Cimarron and into the Oklahoma panhandle. These were Civil War veterans who knew all about fighting a mounted enemy. They were hardened men, tough, survivors of the very worst sort. They’d been through the fires of hell, Mr. Pendergast. But they were also cowards. If you want to survive a war, nothing helps like being a chicken-livered, yellow-bellied poltroon. They waited until the warriors had gone off on the hunt and then attacked Indian settlements at night, killing mostly women and children. They showed no mercy, Mr. Pendergast. They had a saying: nits make lice. They even killed the babies. Bayoneted them to save ammunition.”

Another sip. His low gravelly voice in the dark cool room was hypnotic. It almost seemed to Corrie that he was describing something he himself had seen. Maybe he had, in a way . . . She averted her eyes.

“My great-grandfather was sickened by what he saw. Raping and killing women and cutting up babies wasn’t his idea of becoming a man. He wanted to leave the group, but with the Indians all riled up it would’ve been certain death to peel off and try to get home alone. So he had to go along. One night they got drunk and beat the hell out of him ’cause he wouldn’t join in the fun. Busted a few ribs. That’s what saved his life in the end—those broken ribs.

“Toward the middle of August they’d rampaged through a half dozen Cheyenne camps and driven the rest of them north and west out of Kansas. Or so they thought, anyways. They were returning to the Hickson ranch when they came through here. Medicine Creek. It was the night of August fourteenth they camped up at the Mounds—you been to the Mounds, Mr. Pendergast?”

Pendergast nodded.

“Then you’ll know it’s the highest point of land. There weren’t any trees back then, just a bare rise with three scrub-covered mounds on top. You could see for miles around. They posted pickets, like always. Four sentries at the compass points, posted a quarter mile from camp. Sun was setting and the wind had kicked up. A front was coming in and the dust was a-blowing.

“My great-grandfather had those broken ribs and they’d laid him down in a little holler right there behind the Mounds, maybe a hundred yards away. With the broken ribs he couldn’t sit up, see, and the dust at ground level was just about driving him crazy. So they put him in this little brush shelter out of the wind. I guess they felt sorry for what they’d done to him.

“Just as the sun was setting and the men were getting ready to eat dinner, it happened.”

He tilted his head back, took a long swig.

“There was a sound of beating hooves right on top of them. Thirty warriors on white horses, painted with red ochre, came out of the dust. The Indians were all duded up with painted faces and feathers and rattles—and they came howling, arrows flying. Right out of nowhere. Surprised the hell out of the Forty-Fives. Made a couple of passes and killed them all, every last man. The sentries saw nothing. They hadn’t seen any sign of riders approaching, hadn’t heard a sound. The sentries, Mr. Pendergast, were among the lastto be killed. Now that’s just the opposite of what usually happens, if you know your western military history.

“It weren’t no cakewalk for the Cheyennes, though. The Forty-Fives were tough men and fought back hard and killed at least a third of the attackers and a bunch of their horses. My great-grandfather saw the whole thing from where he was lying. After . . . after killing their last man, the Indians rode back intothe huge clouds of dust. Disappeared, Mr. Pendergast. And when the dust cleared there were no Indians. No horses. Just forty-four white men, dead and scalped. Even the Indians’ dead warriors and horses had vanished.

“A patrol of the Fourth Cavalry picked up my great-grandfather two days later near the Santa Fe Trail. He took ’em back to the site of the massacre. They found the blood and piles of rotting guts from the Indian horses, but no bodies or fresh graves. There were hoofprints all around the hilltop but nowhere else. No tracks went beyond where the sentries had been killed. There were some Arapaho scouts with the Fourth, and they were so terrified at the lack of tracks coming and going that they began wailing that these were ghost warriors and refused to follow the trail. There was a big uproar and several more Cheyenne villages were burned by the cavalry for good measure, but most folks were glad the Forty-Fives were gone. They were a bad bunch.

“That was the end of the Cheyenne in western Kansas. Dodge City was settled in 1871 and the Santa Fe Railroad came through in 1872, and pretty soon Dodge became the cowboy capital of the West, the end of the Texas Trail, shootouts, Wyatt Earp, Boot Hill, and all that. Medicine Creek was settled in 1877 by the cattleman H. H. Keyser, cattle brand bar H high on the left shoulder, horse brand flying H on the right. The blizzard of ’86 wiped out eleven thousand head and the next day Keyser leaned his head against the barrels of his shotgun and pulled both triggers. They said it was the curse. Then sodbusters and nesters came and the days of the cattle barons were over. First it was wheat and sorghum, then the dust bowl, and after that they replanted in feed corn and now gasohol corn. But in all that time no one ever solved the mystery of the Ghost Warriors and the Medicine Creek Massacre.”

He took one final sip and dramatically clunked down his can.

Corrie looked at Pendergast. It was a good story, and Brushy Jim told it well. Pendergast was so still he might have been asleep. His eyes were half closed, his fingers tented, his body sunken into the sofa.

“And your great-grandfather, Mr. Draper?” he murmured.

“He settled down in Deeper, married and buried three wives. He wrote up the whole thing in a private journal, with a lot more detail than what I just gave you, but the journal got sold off with a lot of his other valuables in the Great Depression and now sits in some library vault back east. Never could figure out where. I heard the story from my dad.”

“And how did he manage to see everything, in the middle of a dust storm?”

“Well, all I know is what my dad said. When you get a dust storm in these parts, sometimes it blows on and off, like.”

“And the Cheyenne, Mr. Draper, weren’t they already known to the U.S. Cavalry as the ‘Red Specters’ because of the way they could sneak up on even the most vigilant sentry and cut his throat before he even realized it?”

“For an FBI agent, you seem to know quite a lot, Mr. Pendergast. But you got to remember this happened at sunset, not at night, and those Forty-Fives had just fought as Confederates and lost a war. You know what it’s like to lose a war? You can damn well be sure they were keeping their eyes open.”

“How was it that the Indians didn’t discover your great-grandfather?”

“Like I said, the men felt bad about whomping him and had erected a little windbreak for him. He pulled that brush over himself to hide.”

“I see. And from that vantage point, lying in a hollow, covered with brush, at least a hundred yards downhill from the camp, in a dust storm, he was able to see all that you just described in such vivid detail. The Ghost Warriors appearing and disappearing as if by magic.”

Brushy Jim’s eyes flashed dangerously and he half rose from his seat. “I ain’t selling you anything, Mr. Pendergast. My great-granddaddy ain’t on trial here. I’m just telling you the story as it came down to me.”

“Then you have a theory, Mr. Draper? A personal opinion, perhaps? Or do you really think it was ghosts?”

There was a silence.

“I don’t like the tone you’re taking with me, Mr. Pendergast,” Brushy Jim said, now on his feet. “And FBI or not, if you’re insinuating something, I want to hear it flat out. Right now.”

Pendergast did not immediately reply. Corrie swallowed with difficulty, her gaze moving toward the door.

“Come now, Mr. Draper,” Pendergast said at last. “You’re no fool. I’d like to hear your realopinion.”

There was an electric moment in which nobody moved. Then Brushy Jim softened.

“Mr. Pendergast, it appears you’ve smoked me out. No, I don’t think those Indians were ghosts. If you go out to the Mounds—it’s hard to see now with all the trees—but there’s a long gentle fold of land that comes up from the crik. A group of thirty Cheyenne could come up that fold, hidden from the sentries if they walked their horses. The setting sun would have put them in the shadow of the Mounds. They could’ve waited below for the dust to come up, mounted real quick, and rode in. That would explain the sudden hoofbeats. And they could’ve left the same way, packing out their dead and erasing their tracks. I never heard of an Arapaho who could track a Cheyenne, anyway.”