Ghost Dance (16 page)

‘I think you’ll feel better today,’ she said.

‘I already do,’ he said, gazing at her.

Andie flushed and turned away with the back of her hand against her cheek. She took up a coffee mug from the pine bureau and sat in the overstuffed chair in the corner with her legs drawn up under her. She would not look at him.

As Gallagher wolfed down the eggs, toast and coffee, the bird wings faded to the flit of August butterflies. By the time he had finished, he could believe that the dream and even the moment that had just passed between him and Andie had been some physiological crosscurrent of chemical imbalance, fatigue and hunger pangs.

Andie looked out the window toward the Bluekill. She bit at the quick of her fingernail. ‘Charun didn’t come just to get my piece of Sarah Many Horses’ journal,’ she said quietly. ‘And I can’t help thinking he’ll come back and there’ll be one of those sick drawings tacked to my door.’

The juice Gallagher was drinking caught in his throat. He looked at her and felt a deep hollow in the pit of his stomach. ‘You’re safe,’ he said. ‘We’re safe.’

‘For now.’

A bluejay landed on the windowsill and bobbed his head before flying on. Downstairs in the woodstove, a burning log popped. At last she said, ‘Somehow Charun knew I had a piece of the journal. He must have figured out who has the other pieces.’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know, but if he can do it, we can, too,’ Andie replied.

‘So where do we start?’

‘I have no idea!’ Andie cried. She threw up her arms. ‘My mother never said who the other journal holders were, and it’s not the kind of thing you can put an advertisement in the paper about: “Beware, Vermonters. You might be the next victim of a serial killer if you happen to have a piece of the journal of a Sioux woman who exists only in the mind of a disgraced, drunk police detective.” ’

‘Don’t beat up on yourself,’ Gallagher chided. ‘That only goes one place.’

‘What do you know?’ she demanded in a knife-edge tone. ‘Have you ever had these thoughts and they repeat and repeat and get bigger each time? Have you ever felt that the only way to silence them is with a drink?’

Gallagher was suddenly very angry at her. ‘No,’ he yelled. ‘But I’ve seen what happens when you try to stop the voices with the bottle … and so have you.’

She visibly shuddered at that. Her shoulders rounded and she hung her head. ‘It must be painful to be here with me.’

His anger faded as quickly as it had come. ‘Sometimes. But you’re different than them.’

‘I’m a drunk, too.’

Gallagher struggled to attach words to the conflicting feelings buffeting him and seized on one that surprised him. ‘You know about the woman you were named after, don’t you? Andromeda?’

She waved a hand in the air. ‘I don’t know. My mom said it was her grandfather’s mother’s name. They were from Greece.’

‘It’s from myth,’ he said. ‘Andromeda was a great princess, raised to be a warrior. You helped Perseus become a hero, slay Medusa and thwart an evil king.’

She smiled. ‘I did all that, huh?’

‘Yes.’

They were quiet again for a long time, acutely aware of each other in the tiny bedroom. At last Andie cleared her throat. ‘Okay, we keep going. We need to make a list of what we don’t know and figure out a plan.’

Over the next thirty minutes they came up with more than a dozen questions, including these: how was Many Horses’ journal connected to these killings? And how could they find the other journal holders before more were killed?

‘I think the answer’s in the journal itself,’ Andie said at last. ‘And we’ve lost two parts of it.’

Gallagher thought about that, then seized on another possibility. ‘We may have lost two parts, but we’ve read them. We know what’s in them. What we don’t understand is the significance. If we can figure out what makes Many Horses’ story so important, we might figure out who wants it enough to kill for it.’

Andie nodded. ‘We need to talk to an expert on the Sioux.’

‘R
IDICULOUS!’ SNAPPED ROGER BARRETT
. He wagged his hand so frantically that the silver bracelets on his left wrist clanged. The professor was in his early fifties, with a sharp face, brush-cut black hair, a turquoise earring and a gaunt body. Barrett was an archival specialist from the University of Nebraska who was spending two years attached to Dartmouth’s School of Native American Studies. His cluttered office was just off the school’s library.

‘It’s real,’ Gallagher insisted.

‘No. If such a journal existed, I would know of it,’ Barrett declared snippily.

‘We’ve seen it,’ Andie insisted.

‘A hoax, most likely. But bring it if you must and I’ll take a look’

‘The two pieces we had were stolen,’ Andie said.

‘Then we’re all wasting our time,’ Barrett sniffed, and with a flamboyant wave of dismissal, he swiveled his desk chair and began rummaging through a stack of printed material on the floor.

Andie yanked out her badge, leaned across the desk and shoved it under the professor’s nose. ‘I didn’t want to use my official status,’ she said in a soft yet commanding voice that caused Barrett to turn. ‘But the journal may be related to murders in Vermont.’

‘Murders!’ Barrett shot upright. He toyed with a heavy turquoise ring. ‘I haven’t heard anything about any murders involving a Sioux journal.’

Gallagher glanced at the cover of the
Rutland Herald
in his lap and wondered how long the silence might last. Lieutenant Bowman had somehow kept the ramifications of Olga Dawson’s death from leaking to the press. The story on today’s regional page said simply that the fire remained under investigation. There was no mention of Charun, the drawings or the connection to Hank Potter.

‘We’re keeping that part of the investigation quiet,’ Andie said. ‘Professor, would such a journal be valuable enough to kill for?’

Barrett rubbed a bony finger along his lower lip. ‘From an anthropological as well as a historical perspective, I imagine a nineteenth-century journal written in English by a Lakota woman would be extremely valuable, especially if she survived Wounded Knee and told us how she danced the Ghost Dance.’

‘Why’s that?’ Gallagher asked.

‘Because the details of the actual Ghost Dance from that time were closely guarded,’ Barrett explained. ‘We have descriptions of it by whites watching from afar. But we have no personal blow-by-blow, this-is-how-you-do-it from the peak of the movement.’

Gallagher frowned. ‘But aren’t there Native Americans who still practice the ritual on reservations out West?’

Barrett nodded. ‘Yes, but that Ghost Dance is a modern interpretation of the rite. It could be argued that the ceremony as it was practiced in the 1890s largely died at Wounded Knee. So I guess what I’m saying is that such a journal’s value—either intellectual or monetary—would depend on the writer and what she was writing about.’

‘We can tell you what we’ve read,’ Andie offered.

Barrett sat forward, elbows on his desk, chin cradled in his hands, as they told him everything they remembered about the two pieces of the journal.

‘If this is a hoax, it’s a sophisticated one,’ the professor said when they had finished. ‘Some of the things you are describing—the lock of hair and stones, for example—are unrelated to the Ghost Dance, but deeply rooted in other Sioux religious practices. The stones are sacred talismans used by shamans during many of the various ceremonies that make up Lakota spiritual life to this day. The hair relates specifically to a ceremony known as The Releasing of the Soul.

‘When Many Horses says the hair can set her free, she’s probably referring to that rite, which was actually outlawed around the same time the Ghost Dance was banned,’ Barrett continued. ‘In Lakota society, after death, a lock of hair was snipped from the deceased and purified in sweet-grass smoke, then wrapped in buckskin and stored in a special place in a relative’s home. It was believed that the soul lived in the hair and had to be kept for at least a year before it could be released. During that time the family would gather what was necessary for the ritual—a buffalo cow robe, among others—and men there would be a great celebration in which the soul would be released to go on toward the life beyond.’

‘And all Sioux believe this?’ Andie asked.

‘Not dogmatically as a Catholic or a Jew might,’ Barrett admitted. ‘The Sioux religion is a charismatic one, passed on from one generation to the next, interpreted anew by each generation. That’s why we don’t know what the Ghost Dance was really like. Each successive Sioux, in a sense, invents his or her own religion, based on the spiritual ways of those who have gone before. Which is a verbose way of saying that a given Sioux may or may not believe in a ceremony like setting free the soul. But if she believes, she believes fervently.’

Gallagher asked, ‘Why did the government outlaw the soul-releasing ceremony and the Ghost Dance?’

‘You’d have to understand the way people thought a hundred years ago to—’

Barrett halted in mid-sentence, turned to his computer and began typing. Now came the screech of a modem and then a beep as the computer connected. He typed in a series of codes, followed by the words ‘Mooney/Tinmouth,’ then hit Enter.

Immediately there popped up on the screen a heading that read:

Tinmouth Correspondence Relating to the Army Investigation of the Battle of Wounded Knee and to the Sioux Campaign of 1890-1891. James Mooney et al: Report of the Secretary of War. Volume Nine. Appendix 3, pages 8004-8009. U.S. National Archives.

Barrett highlighted the entry and hit Enter. The transcript of a letter popped up on the screen and he turned it so Andie and Gallagher could read.

Major John Appleby

Chaplain, U.S. 7th Cavalry

Camped near Cheyenne River Agency. Dakota Territory

22 October 1890

Major General Horace Tinmouth Chief of Chaplains U.S. War Department Office of the Secretary Washington. D.C.

Dear General Tinmouth,

At your request, I have passed seven weeks among the Sioux on the agencies at Standing Rock, Cheyenne Creek and Pine Ridge in Dakota Territory. Your concern about the growing influence of the Ghost Dance here is more than justified.

The situation grows more volatile every day.

The most dangerous Sioux, including Sitting Bull and Hump, have embraced the rite. Big Foot is jubilant ‘about the coming of a messiah.’ All braves under Big Foot have Winchester repeating rifles. General

Beyond that, however, the stated policy of the United States is for the Indian to be assimilated into our Christian culture. This ceremony represents a giant step backward in our efforts to eradicate savage custom.

Two weeks ago I got into position above No Water’s camp at Pine Ridge at first light. Below me, a throng of eight hundred gathered around a twenty-foot aspen festooned with offerings.

Through the monocular I observed braves and squaws form a circle some four hundred yards in diameter. The squaws wore loose white robes with wide, flowing sleeves. The robes were painted blue at the neck, which is cut in a deep V and decorated with figures of birds, the moon and stars. The braves’ Ghost Dance shirts were adorned with painted eagles and feathers attached by quills to the wrist and left to fly in the breeze. Many of the dancers painted their faces red with black half-moons on their cheeks and foreheads.

As the sun rose, the savages held hands and began a stamping pattern to their left. Their feet raised a fine red dust on the plain. And their detestable singing made what little hair I have left stand on end.

This went on from dawn toward midday. Shortly after twelve hundred hours, a fast-moving storm, the first after a tiresome, parched spell out here. advanced from the west. The sky turned purple. The wind hastened; and so did the dance and the song, until the whole pack of heathens whirled and howled.

I have a strong faith in Jesus Christ, General, and as the Chaplain of the 7th Cavalry since the massacre at Little Bighorn, you know my faith has been tested many times. But I do not rightly know how to explain what happened next. The motion of the storm cloud turned circular, but opposite in direction to the dancers below. A misty, swirling funnel emerged from the belly of the clouds. Rain fell on the dancers. Lightning flashed. Thunder clapped. At least fifty of the dancers pitched forward into the mud.

They convulsed and twitched, then lay stone-still. Some of the stricken lay in the mud for an hour or more while the storm raged and the frenzied dance went on around them.

Around thirteen hundred hours, the cloud retreated to the east. One by one, those who had fallen rose again. A section of the multitude broke from the circle and closed around each of those who had risen. And every time that happened, the one who had fallen would speak and gesture wildly and the whole lot of them became even more frenzied.

I left the bluff as frightened as I have been in my lifetime.

I still cannot explain what occurred that day. But you have known me nearly fifteen years. General, and at the risk of you thinking me mad, during that ceremony I felt the presence of something, something that must be stopped for the good of all.

Please relay my concerns to the Secretary of War.

Yours in Christ.

Major John Appleby

Barrett said, ‘That gives you an idea of the world your journal writer was living in shortly before the massacre.’

Andie gestured toward the computer. ‘How extensive is your archive?’

‘The most comprehensive repository of its kind,’ Barrett said proudly.

‘Is Sarah in there?’ Andie asked.

Barrett’s eyebrows shot up and his nervous, foppish energy returned. ‘I’ve never heard the name, but possibly, possibly. Most of the documents have been scanned in by my graduate students.’

The professor turned the computer screen back in his direction. Gallagher got up on his crutches, grimaced at the fire in his thighs, but came around the desk. Andie followed. A white bar appeared on the flat blue screen. Barrett typed: ‘Lakota/Many Horses.’ The computer came back: ‘No matches found.’