The Thunder Keeper (4 page)

I
t took Father John almost an hour to drive north to Thermopolis, another hour heading west into the Owl Creek Mountains. A rainy haze lay over the piñons and junipers passing outside the windows. The sounds of
La Bohème
rose above the hum of the tires on wet asphalt. He spotted the turn into the Arapaho Ranch ahead, eased on the brake pedal, and made a sharp right onto the gravel road that dead-ended at a two-story log building. The smell of wet sage and new grasses hit him as he walked up to the wide porch along the front of the building and knocked on the door. There were no sounds except for that of water washing out of a downspout and the aluminum chairs banging against the porch railing in the wind.

He knocked again, then tried the knob. It turned in his hand, and he stepped into a cavernous room with overstuffed sofas and chairs and Indian rugs scattered about the plank floor. On the right was the kitchen with U-shaped cabinets that wrapped around a long, narrow table with chairs pushed into the sides. Ahead, a stairway rose to a second-floor balcony that overlooked the living room. Beyond the railing were closed doors that Father John guessed led to the bunk rooms.

“Hello!” he called. “Anybody here?”

One of the doors opened. An Indian who looked about sixty, dressed in blue jeans and plaid shirt, sauntered over to the railing. “You lookin' for somebody?”

“Ben Holden around?”

The Indian gestured with his head toward the window at the end of the balcony. “Out in the barn. Loadin' up hay for the back pasture.”

“Thanks.” Father John tipped the brim of his cowboy hat and stepped back outside. Hunching his shoulders in the rain, he walked down the driveway past a series of outbuildings just as a group of cowboys emerged through the side door of a barn streaked yellow with age. He spotted Ben Holden at once: the tall frame slightly stooped inside the black slicker, the black cowboy hat tilted low over his forehead.

The Indian glanced around. Then he started toward him. “What can I do for you?” His tone was businesslike, the dark eyes that regarded him steady and unreadable.

Father John felt a pang of admiration at Ben Holden's control, more certain than his own. There was a lot of history between them; they cared about the same woman, but not well enough, either of them. Ben—in and out of rehab, a violent drunk; and he, a priest.

He said, “I'd like to talk to you.”

Ben gave a noncommittal shrug and veered along a diagonal path to a shack. “In here,” he called, throwing his voice over one shoulder and opening the door.

Father John followed him into the small room jammed with a table and two chairs. Stacks of paper covered the tabletop and crept onto the chairs and then onto the floor. A potbelly stove hissed in the corner. The air felt warm and close.

Ben pushed a chair back with a muddy boot, lifted
some papers onto the table, and sat down. He unsnapped his slicker but made no effort to remove it, a sign that the conversation would be short.

“This about Vicky?” he said, a hard edge in his tone.

Father John cleared a stack from the other chair, swung it around, and straddled it, facing the Indian. “No,” he said.

A mixture of barely concealed relief and curiosity came into the man's dark eyes. His whole frame seemed to relax against the rungs of his chair. “I get it,” he said. “You're here about Duncan Grover.”

“I understand you knew him.”

Ben shifted sideways, stretched out his legs, and crossed one muddy boot over the other. “Duncan's dad and I were stationed in Germany together. The only Indians in the whole country”—he stared across the room at the memory—“couple Arapahos. Grover was from Oklahoma. His kid showed up at the res last month and looked me up. Said he'd been working in Denver and had enough of white people.” Ben gave a snort of laughter.

“Did he say where he'd been working?” Father John asked.

“Construction jobs. Looked like he was used to hard work, mostly outdoors.” He paused. The fire hissed into the quiet. “Nervous kid, looking over his shoulder all the time, like he expected an evil spirit to jump out at him. I figured he was on the run. Took a bad road in the city, came to the res to hide out and start over. I've started over a few times myself.” He glanced away again. “Anyway, the kid needed a job. I told him to come back in a couple weeks when we started moving the herd to the upper pastures, and I'd take him on.”

Father John didn't say anything for a moment. “What was he running from?”

“I didn't push him. He was serious about starting over, that's all I cared about. Told him to go see Gus Iron Bear so he could get back on the Arapaho road. He took instructions from the old man, then went up to Bear Lake for his vision quest. When he didn't come back, Gus asked me to take some of the skins and go looking for him.”

Ben pulled in his long legs and leaned over the table. “Detective Slinger and the coroner say Grover killed himself. What a load of bullshit. The kid was in a sacred place. The spirit was looking down on him. No way did he kill himself.”

“What else, Ben?” Father John said. “Give me something else that'll make them change their minds.”

“What's this to you?” Mistrust leaked into the Indian's voice.

Father John shook his head. “I don't like to see a man's death labeled suicide if it isn't true.”

“I see.” Ben leaned back against his chair, never taking his eyes away. “You're a real white do-gooder, aren't you, Father O'Malley? You're like the cavalry riding out against injustice wherever it raises its ugly head.”

Father John swallowed back the phlegm of anger that rose in his throat. “Give me something to take to the white detective, Holden,” he said. His voice was tight.

The Indian looked away a moment, considering. “I've been thinking,” he said finally, a conciliatory tone now. “I think Duncan got himself into some serious trouble, and somebody followed him here from Denver. Waited until he went out to Bear Lake and killed him.”

“You tell that to Detective Slinger?”

“Why don't you tell him? Maybe he'll listen to you.”

Father John got to his feet, pulled open the door, and went outside. It was raining harder now, and he tipped
his cowboy hat low over his forehead and started walking down the driveway. He didn't have much, but he had something: a guy who was looking for a job and planning to start work. Hardly somebody who was thinking about suicide. And there was more. Someone had followed Grover from Denver. It made sense. “The boss killed him,” the man in the confessional had said.

He could imagine the conversation with Detective Slinger:
Who,
Father O'Malley?
Who
followed Grover? And he wouldn't be able to say . . .

Unless Grover had mentioned a name to Gus Iron Bear while he was taking instructions.

Father John decided to drive out to the medicine man's place before he went to see Slinger.

“You heard from her?” The voice sliced through the rain, and Father John looked around. Ben Holden stood in the middle of the driveway, about twenty feet away, slicker still unsnapped, black cowboy hat pushed back. Wetness glistened on his dark face.

“No,” Father John said.

“Our boy Lucas is taking a job in Denver.” Ben came a few steps closer. They might have been old friends, talking about a mutual acquaintance, somebody they both liked but hadn't seen for a while. “He'll keep an eye on her. She's been alone in the city, nobody around that cares about her. I've been worrying about her.”

Father John nodded, then turned and continued down the driveway. “So have I,” he said to himself.

T
he intercom buzzed twice. On the third buzz, Vicky Holden forced her eyes away from the computer screen, swiveled around, and pushed the button on the small machine with the blinking red light.

“What is it?” She heard the irritation in her voice. She'd left instructions with her secretary, Laola, to hold all calls. There was an important meeting in a few minutes on the appeal in the
Navajo Nation
v.
Lexcon Oil
case. The outcome would determine who controlled the methane gas on a lot of Indian land: the tribes or the corporations that had managed to purchase the coal beds beneath the lands years ago. It was the most important case she'd ever worked on.

She'd come into it late, only a week after the federal district court had ruled against the Navajo Nation. Wes Nelson, the managing partner at Howard and Fergus, had asked her to handle the appeal to the Tenth Circuit. She'd jumped at the opportunity. Filed the notice of appeal and designation of record, started writing the brief. And then, the call from Jacob Hazen, the tribal lawyer. The Navajo Nation might not want to go ahead with the appeal after all.

Vicky had felt her heart sink. The federal district court
ruling affected all the tribes in the judicial district. It could impact the entire country. It could not stand! If the Navajos were getting nervous about moving ahead—the legal expenses, the uncertainty—well, she intended to present the strongest arguments possible to change their minds.

The meeting would start in ten minutes; the other lawyers were probably filing into the conference room now, and she still had some notes she wanted to finish.

“I'm very sorry, Vicky,” Laola was saying, a new patina of city sophistication in her voice. The girl had been her secretary for almost two years, managing her one-attorney office in Lander with the precision of a drill sergeant. She insisted on coming to Denver when Vicky had decided to rejoin Howard and Fergus, where she'd worked after graduating from the University of Denver law school. Vicky had done her best to talk the young woman out of coming. Not even twenty-one—an Arapaho, like herself, used to the open spaces of the reservation. She could get lost in the city. There were times when Vicky felt lost herself. The girl had insisted.

In the end, Vicky had talked the firm into hiring her. Most of the time she was grateful for Laola's presence, grateful not to be the lone Indian riding the elevators to the thirty-seventh floor of the steel-and-glass tower that rose over Seventeenth Street. Still, Laola could be like a young filly pulling in her own direction.

“Who is it?” Vicky said.

“He won't give his name.”

“What? Tell him to call back later.”

“I tried that. He says I should tell you it's a matter of life and death.”

Vicky threw her head back and stared at the ceiling. Her train of thought was derailed anyway. “Put him through,” she said, but the phone was already buzzing.

She lifted the receiver. “Vicky Holden,” she said, her tone now sharp with irritation.

“This is Vince Lewis.” The voice boomed over the line, as if the man were shouting from the outer office. “I must speak with you.”

“What is this about?” The name meant nothing to her.

“I have to see you today.”

“Mr. Lewis,” Vicky began, struggling to contain the growing sense of exasperation. “I have a full schedule. Perhaps my secretary can set up an appointment for next week.” Next week, she was thinking, was already booked. She had to file the brief with the appellate court, unless the Navajos decided not to proceed. The possibility sent a little shiver through her.

“You're an Arapaho from Wind River Reservation, aren't you?”

Vicky took a moment. The conversation had lurched in an unexpected direction. Vince Lewis, whoever he was, had taken the trouble to find out about her. Whatever he wanted to talk about could affect her people.

“Hold on.” She cradled the receiver into her shoulder, turned back to the computer, and tapped the keyboard. Today's schedule floated onto the screen. This morning's meeting—already starting—the brief to finish, two o'clock with a landlord about a lease, three o'clock with a couple in need of a new will. She was an expert on leases, wills, divorces, and custody matters, the everyday cases she'd handled the last five years in Lander and had hoped to escape in Denver. But every senior partner had an important client or friend who needed mundane legal help, and somehow the cases fell to her, inserting themselves around important matters like the Navajo Nation.

The couple could probably be rescheduled, she decided. Wills were seldom urgent.

She said, “I could see you at three.” That would still give her an hour before she had to leave for DIA to pick up Lucas, who was flying in from Los Angeles at five. “You know where we're located?”

“You don't understand.” The words were whipped with impatience. “Not your office. Not my office either. I'll meet you at the Ship's Tavern in the Brown Palace.”

“Wait a minute—” Vicky began, then stopped. A vacancy, like the absence of sound in a vault, came over the line. She pushed the intercom button. “Laola, can you get the caller back?”

“I don't think so.”

“Don't tell me that. Just do it.”

“He wouldn't give his number.”

Vicky drew in a long breath. “Reschedule my three o'clock,” she said. Then she swiveled to the computer, clicked on print, and waited while the printer spewed out several pages. Jamming the pages into her leather folder, she headed out into the corridor, her heels sinking into the plush royal-blue carpet, past the cubicle where Laola worked, past a succession of doors with the partners' names discreetly emblazoned on bronze plaques, and past the doors to the associates' offices, one of which had been hers five years before.

Displayed on the walls between the offices were large oil paintings of mountains and lakes in gilded frames. Sometimes, in the corridors of Howard and Fergus, she felt as if she was drowning in the low hum of purposeful activity that emanated from behind the doors.

She rode the elevator to the top-floor conference room, wondering what she'd done. Canceled an appointment to meet someone she hadn't heard of fifteen minutes ago, and she had no idea what the meeting was about. No, that wasn't true. It was about the reservation.

The others—men in dark suits, ties knotted smartly at the collars of light-colored shirts—were already seated around the polished cherry conference table. On one side, Jacob Hazen was flanked by the two Navajo councilmen, their dark heads silhouetted against the windows that framed a view of the Rocky Mountains. Across from the Indians were three lawyers from Howard and Fergus, including Wes Nelson, the managing partner.

“There's been a new development,” Wes explained as she slid into the vacant chair next to him.

As if on cue, Jacob Hazen leaned forward, bracing his stocky frame on both elbows. “Lexcon's proposed a settlement,” he said.

“Settlement!” Vicky heard the astonishment in her voice. “The court ruled in their favor. Why would they want a settlement now? Everything's going their way.”

One of the councilmen cleared his throat. “We hear a rumor Lexcon's found another methane gas field on the res. They're gonna want to give us a settlement in the old case, grease the wheels, you might say, so they can get on to drilling the new field. We're thinking we oughta consider an offer.”

Vicky remained quiet. She was aware of the eyes on her. “What makes you think they've located another field?”

“They never quit looking.” The Navajo gave a sharp laugh. “Flying planes over the res all the time, looking for methane coming up from the earth.”

“They also collect data from satellites.” Jacob Hazen nodded toward the windows and the endless sky with gray clouds breaking over patches of blue. “Commercial satellites up there, orbiting the earth, making images. Oil and gas companies buy data from satellite companies all the time.”

“We're buying our own satellite data now.” This from the other councilman. “No reason for Lexcon to know more than we know. We got a specialist to tell us what's going on.” He pushed his chair back and began levering himself to his feet.

Vicky stayed seated. She heard her own voice going on about how the case was too important for the district court ruling to stand, about how the appellate brief was due next week, but the others were getting to their feet, chairs scudding backward on the carpet, papers crackling. A sense of futility as heavy as weights settled over her shoulders. How could she help them if they didn't want her help? Suddenly she felt glad she'd agreed to meet Vince Lewis this afternoon. If something had happened on the reservation, she wanted to know about it. Maybe she could help her own people.

Vicky stood up and turned to Wes. “Could I see you a moment?”