Watching Eagles Soar

“Tony Hillerman calls Margaret Coel ‘a master' of her craft. It is no wonder. [She] brings Native Americans to the fictional frontier in a way that honors the genre.”

—The Denver Post

“Coel masterfully interweaves modern mysteries with the richness of Native American history and creates multilayered relationships in the larger tapestry of community life.”

—Ventura (CA) County Star

“Now widely considered the most accomplished heir to Tony Hillerman's legacy.”

—Scripps Howard News Service

“A great storyteller.”

—The Daily Oklahoman

PRAISE FOR

BLOOD MEMORY

“Taut, thrilling, and fleshed out with fascinating history, believable politics, and characters you want to know even better.”

—Boulder Daily Camera Online

PRAISE FOR MARGARET COEL'S WIND RIVER MYSTERIES

THE SPIDER'S WEB

“A tangled web woven of lies, coveting, and blackmail. This story covers it all while showing a picture of what life is like living on a reservation.”

—
The Romance Readers Connection

THE SILENT SPIRIT

“[Coel] writes with great feeling and knowledge about the Indian people and their way of life . . . The descriptive passages are so evocative that it's easy to ‘feel' the cold and the sun glinting off the snow . . . The author excels at finding ways to make each new novel in the long-standing series unique. While never a light read, any new novel from Ms. Coel is worth every word.”

—
CA Reviews

THE GIRL WITH BRAIDED HAIR

Winner of the Colorado Book Award for Popular Fiction

“Coel has fashioned another winner with her creation of great atmosphere, interesting and complex characters, a convoluted plot, and a great setting in the American West.”

—
The Denver Post

THE DROWNING MAN

“An accomplished writer . . . Coel plays it out with a flair for deep-seated human drama. Think shades of Chekhov on a Wyoming rez.”

—
Santa Fe New Mexican

EYE OF THE WOLF

Winner of the Colorado Book Award for Popular Fiction

“A winning combination of interesting and complex characters, fascinating settings . . . and great atmosphere.”

—
The Denver Post

WIFE OF MOON

Winner of the Colorado Book Award for Mystery

“The research and historical attributes are native to [Coel's] writing. Historical events here spawn fiction, and ever so naturally.”

—
The Denver Post

KILLING RAVEN

“Coel's fans will find this book satisfying.”

—
Rocky Mountain News

THE SHADOW DANCER

Winner of the Colorado Book Award for Mystery

“Coel not only presents a vivid and authentic picture of the Native American, past and present, but also captures the rugged and majestic atmosphere of Wyoming.”

—
Publishers Weekly

THE THUNDER KEEPER

“Coel has obvious respect for the land and people who populate it . . . She creates dense and compelling characters in complex stories to entertain her loyal fans.”

—
The Denver Post

THE SPIRIT WOMAN

Winner of the Colorado Book Award for Mystery

“Intriguing Arapaho and Shoshone history, and realistic treatment of contemporary Native American issues . . . [A] winner.”

—
Library Journal

THE LOST BIRD

“Engrossing . . . Enjoyable characters and a super mystery.”

—
The Literary Times

THE STORY TELLER

“One of the best of the year.”

—
Booklist
(starred review)

THE DREAM STALKER

“Seamless storytelling by someone who's obviously been there.”

—J. A. Jance

THE GHOST WALKER

“Coel is a vivid voice for the West.”

—
The Dallas Morning News

THE EAGLE CATCHER

“She's a master.”

—Tony Hillerman

Berkley Prime Crime titles by Margaret Coel

Catherine McLeod Mysteries

BLOOD MEMORY

THE PERFECT SUSPECT

Wind River Mysteries

THE EAGLE CATCHER

THE GHOST WALKER

THE DREAM STALKER

THE STORY TELLER

THE LOST BIRD

THE SPIRIT WOMAN

THE THUNDER KEEPER

THE SHADOW DANCER

KILLING RAVEN

WIFE OF MOON

EYE OF THE WOLF

THE DROWNING MAN

THE GIRL WITH BRAIDED HAIR

THE SILENT SPIRIT

THE SPIDER'S WEB

BUFFALO BILL'S DEAD NOW

Anthologies

WATCHING EAGLES SOAR

WATCHING EAGLES SOAR

MARGARET COEL

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

For more information about the Penguin Group, visit penguin.com.

WATCHING EAGLES SOAR

Copyright © 2013 by Margaret Coel.

Credits for previously published stories can be found on pages 351–352.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

BERKLEY
^®
PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-61276-7

An application to register this book for cataloging has been submitted to the Library of Congress.

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley Prime Crime trade paperback edition / July 2013

Cover design by Lesley Worrell.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

To Mary Fedel, my dear cousin and lifelong friend, who left us too soon.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A collection of short stories, like a child, requires a village to nurture it. I am in the debt of many people who championed these stories and brought them into print, including the editors who selected my stories for various anthologies. But I am especially grateful to Jim and Mary Seels of ASAP Publishing, who suggested the series of Arapaho Ten Commandments stories, and, over eleven years, published each story in a beautiful, limited hardback edition, then collected the stories in another limited hardback. My hat is off to Mary Seels, the technical wizard behind all of those hardback books. Another tip of my hat to my editor, Tom Colgan, and Berkley Prime Crime for believing in these stories enough to publish them in this trade paperback edition, thus bringing them to a wider audience. And a tip of my cowgirl hat to Craig Johnson, who took time from a busy schedule to write an enormously generous introduction.

To all of you, thank you for allowing me into your publications and into your lives. Thank you for having me.

Introduction

by Craig Johnson

W
here do you start when writing about a precious gem like Margaret Coel?

Do you start with the renaissance author who whips out novels, nonfiction books, magazine articles, and short stories with incomparable ease? How about a historian whose attention to detail is nothing short of awe-inspiring? Do you talk about a woman whose place in the literary and mystery fields is unassailable?

Or do you just talk about one of the finest people you know?

A fourth-generation Coloradan with more than sixteen prize-winning novels—it's hard to not mention Margaret in conjunction with one of her mentors, Tony Hillerman, who referred to her as a master in the field. You can read some of the resonances of the old master in Margaret's work, but you can also see where she advanced from there, cutting a new path for herself and her writing.

A fellow I once worked with said there is no such thing as tough; there is just prepared. I think that's one of the ways I view Margaret's work—prepared. She doesn't do anything by the seat of her skirt; like a true student of the craft, she prepares in a way that makes other authors blush. Each work is an opportunity for study, and one she takes very seriously. I remember having dinner with her as she was doing the research for one of her more recent novels,
The Silent Spirit
. She was like a kid in a candy store—the research she was doing on the Arapaho and Shoshone involvement with Hollywood in the twenties was a chocolate truffle. I listened to her as she breathlessly relayed the information she'd uncovered about the tribe's relationships with actor/cowboy Tim McCoy in my state of Wyoming. It was hard to concentrate on the words for the amount of excitement in her voice and the intellectual enthusiasm that threatened to take her away from the dinner table that night and back to her writing desk.

Margaret is like her writing: she tends to sweep you away.

I heard about “Saint” Margaret before meeting her, and by all reports, I figured she couldn't be real. I'd been invited to the Hillerman Conference in Albuquerque, and it was one of the first literary events that I'd attended. You learn a lot about other writers in those circumstances, and the one I was most impressed with was Margaret. She was warm, friendly, magnanimous, and charming—enough so that we've remained close friends over the years.

Dark and statuesque, Margaret has fielded the inevitable question of, “Are you Arapaho?” with grace and candor. Generally they take another look at her and insist, “Well, maybe you are and you just don't know it—maybe you should have your DNA done.” Margaret usually informs them that she really doesn't need to do that since the only people who've never mistaken her for Arapaho are the Arapahos. It isn't as if they wouldn't want her; in that, I suspect they love her as much as she loves them.

For Margaret Coel, love begins with interest, and the depths of her interest in the Wind River Reservation and its people have yet to be plumbed. Margaret is a writer; she's been a writer her entire life, and writers ask questions, looking for answers. Early in her life, the tales she heard were the stories of the individuals who had been there before her ancestors—the plains tribes of the Arapaho and Cheyenne.

I'll let you in on a little secret: I know why she chose the Arapaho as her main point of interest. They were the traders of the high plains, the barterers of both goods and words. Is it any wonder that the wordsmith Margaret Coel would be drawn to the storytellers?

Her first work, a magazine article on Chief Left Hand, blossomed to more than three hundred pages after five meticulous years of research—Margaret had accidentally written a book. A book, I might add, that hasn't been out of print since its publication in 1981. I'm sure Margaret considers that work to be her introduction to the Arapaho culture and its people. It was only in a chance event where she heard the aforementioned Tony Hillerman speak of his love for the Navajo and how they had enriched his life that that first spark of the novelist was seen. There in that massive ballroom, surrounded by others, she heard that small voice that speaks to would-be authors saying, “I can do that.”

She'd spent time with the Arapaho, knew the elders, and, most important, had heard the stories. A student of history and an avid mystery fan, Margaret made the wise decision to write what she read.

In structuring her novels, she knew that one of her protagonists would be an outsider like her, someone who could view the Arapaho and provide the reader with an entrée into their world. She settled on a novel approach with Father John—a man who would be intimately involved with the spiritual, social, and cultural tapestry of the Arapaho tribe. Father John Aloysius O'Malley, certainly the most Irish moniker ever introduced in modern literature, would be an outsider not only to the tribe but to the entire West. Knowing full well that we like people for their virtues, but that we love them for their faults, Margaret made the Jesuit priest a recovering alcoholic, banished, certainly in the minds of his Boston upbringing, to the wilds of the Wind River Reservation.

The counterbalance to Father John is the other creation of Margaret's fertile imagination—Vicky Holden, a traditional, young Arapaho woman and a shaman of the first right in modern culture—a lawyer. A woman who escaped an abusive marriage and returned to the reservation not only for her own good, but for the good she could do her people.

In her first novel,
The Eagle Catcher
, these two elements of fire and water begin a relationship that has carried through Margaret's novels with the personal and dramatic conflict that's the stuff good writing is all about.

I don't know whether Margaret knew she'd still be dealing with this unlikely relationship after sixteen installments, or how it would ever reconcile. We did a conversation together, and I had to admit that the chronological differences in the glancing relationship between my sheriff and his chief deputy paled in comparison with the obstacles she had to contend with—the weight and breadth of the Catholic Church.

In my mind the two characters are representative of church and state, an uneasy alliance where the stakes couldn't be any higher. The more specific Margaret becomes with her characters, the more she approaches the universality of the human condition—another hallmark of great writing.

You hold in your hands now, gentle reader, Berkley Prime Crime's Short Story Collection by Margaret Coel; handle it carefully because the stories are precious stones. Some are departures, like the curious case of “The Man Who Thought He Was a Deer,” or the unflinching historical “Murder on the Denver Express,” containing no less than the unsinkable Molly Brown, while some contain the characters from Margaret's award-winning series, such as “The Man in Her Dreams,” where we experience the character's hands-on spiritualism, and the mathematical/mystery precision of “A Well-Respected Man.” In fact, this collection starts with her tour de force and my personal favorite, “The Arapaho Ten Commandments,” which as a work stands alone. All of the stories are finely crafted, precious gems—just like the crowning jewel herself, Margaret Coel.

Craig Johnson

Ucross, Wyoming

2011