Obsidian Tears (Apparition Lake Book 2) Read online

  The ranger cleared his throat, then couldn't think of anything to say. Finally, he whispered, “What did you say her name was?”

  “I didn't say,” Two Ravens whispered back. “She answers to 'Alice'. That's how I'll introduce her.” Glenn stared a question. The outfitter read the look and nodded. “It's a long story. I'll tell you later.”

  “Okay.” A look of concern crossed Glenn's face. “Wait. I don't have a gift for her.”

  Two Ravens waved it away. “She wouldn't take it if you did. Look, Glenn, I should have warned you before now; don't expect a polite reception. Alice doesn't like palefaces.” Glenn did a double-take right out of vaudeville. Two Ravens smiled. “Don't take it personally. She hates the Shoshone nearly as much. To her, we're Snake Indians.”

  Glenn turned back to the lodge, wondering how such a lovely package could hold such an ugly point of view. He was too late to see anything. The shadow was gone; the fire out. The flaps of both lodges were open and the Ghost Dancers were emerging.

  From the lodge on Glenn's left came the towers and the gatekeepers. The ghost shirts were gone, all four changed to civvies, boots, jeans, western shirts and one t-shirt, worn with a decidedly street attitude. They looked more like a gang of hoods than Indian dancers. Glenn's mind leapt back in time, three years in an instant, to the late Fred Black and his gang. He shook it away, wanting no part of that memory. For their part, the dancers' smiles disappeared the moment they saw Glenn and recognized Two Ravens. Glenn regretted not having taken the time to lose his uniform. It was too late now.

  From the lodge on his right came Alice, the Ghost Dancer, also in jeans and a western-cut shirt. Again it struck Glenn how remarkably beautiful she was. Gorgeous, in spite of reddened eyes from crying and a generally somber expression. Her frown, it seemed, was not merely part of an act. She stared at Two Ravens, her look unchanging, and finally asked, “Slumming?”

  “Glenn,” Two Ravens said, ignoring her opening volley. “This is Alice. Alice, this is Glenn Merrill. He's Chief Ranger of Yellowstone but for the moment forget the uniform. He's here as my friend. We, the park and the reservation, have a problem that you might help us with. If you are willing?”

  She turned to Two Ravens, forgetting not only Glenn's uniform but the ranger in it, and sneered. It was a grotesque look on an incredibly beautiful face. “What reservation problem?”

  “The problem,” Glenn said pleasantly, refusing to be ignored, “is both with the reservation and the park. I understand you have knowledge that might assist us. I've come to ask for that assistance.”

  “With what?” Alice seemed to be asking Glenn. But, as she hadn't taken her eyes off of Two Ravens, it was difficult to tell.

  “We would like to know,” Glenn said, persevering. “We need to know what you can tell us about…” He hesitated, wondering how to say it. There seemed no other way than to just say it. “The little people of Arapaho legend.”

  Finally, Alice looked at Glenn but did so like he was nuts. “The little people?” she asked. “You ask about the little people?” She turned to share a snicker with the towers and the gatekeepers or, as Glenn saw them, her Greek chorus. Three of the four laughed on cue; the smaller girl seemed a tad confused. “This is your problem? Little people?” Alice grabbed a duffel at her feet. “Sounds like you have mice.”

  All four cronies laughed out loud. They grabbed their gear making ready to go.

  “I don't know what we have,” Glenn barked, stopping them in their tracks. “Outside of a lot of dead people and a lot of dead animals, I don't know what we have. I was hoping an Arapaho princess might be able to help.”

  Glenn regretted the comment immediately. He turned to see Two Ravens biting his lip with equal regret; it had been the wrong thing to say. Alice didn't exactly come off the pad but she was clearly ready to launch as she took a step toward the ranger. “I'm not an Arapaho princess. Whoever told you that got his wires crossed. I'm a whore, Ranger Glenn. I dance for white people and they give me money. I say as little to them as the situation requires. To white people who do not give me money, I say nothing at all.”

  “Please,” Two Ravens said. He and Alice locked eyes in a head-on train wreck of indecipherable emotions. The laughter of the chorus ceased. The drums and dancers in the distance became less than white noise. The world, the universe, was Two Ravens and Alice staring at one another. “Please.”

  Long story, short, Alice reluctantly told Glenn what she knew of the legend of the little people. Of how they came down from the mountains, how they killed the animals of the high plains and some of the Arapaho people. “Then the people got it together,” Alice said. “They fought back in a war with the Nimerigar. That's what the Arapaho called the little people, the Nimerigar. It means tiny people eater.”

  “Great,” Glenn replied, deflated.

  “I doubt you have anything to worry about,” Alice said with a smirk. “Like all crap fairy tales, the good guys won in the end. The Arapaho kicked their little butts.” Her chorus of followers laughed. “Those that escaped beat feet for, wherever they came from, the mountains, I guess.” Alice appeared to be growing bored with it all. “Moral of the story, I don't know, be good or the bad Nimerigar will come get you. So much for legends.”

  Glenn frowned. The story, with even less meat on its bones than the version told by Snow on the Mountains, was as interesting and exciting as your average spooky story told round the campfire, but it wasn't at all helpful. More annoying still, Alice seemed okay with that. “Anything else?” she asked without enthusiasm.

  “Glenn,” Two Ravens said. “Would you excuse us for a moment?”

  The ranger did, gladly, stepping away to watch the last of the tourists heading for their cars and to see the last of the Indian dancers packing up their accoutrement. Alice, Glenn thought, was a lovely creature to look at but, just then, he'd had plenty of her attitude.

  Meanwhile, Two Ravens had squared off on the Ghost Dancer with an attitude of his own. He looked past her to the towers and the gatekeepers, her loitering gang.

  “Don't bother issuing any demands about them,” Alice told him. “They're staying with me.”

  “Fine,” Two Ravens said. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder in Glenn's direction. “He came to you for help. You answered with a story for tourists.”

  “If they're white,” Alice said, sneering once more. “They are tourists.”

  “He's my friend, he's a good man, and he's a local authority with a problem.”

  Alice laughed. “I don't care about the first, I doubt the second, and I refuse to recognize the third. Come to think of it, John Two Ravens, I don't understand a word you're saying, either.”

  “That's on you, Alice. I've spent most of my life trying to speak your language.”

  “Quit trying. Arapaho is the most difficult language between the Missouri and the Rockies. Too hard for a Snake Indian.”

  “I'm not a Snake and I'm not talking about Arapaho. I'm talking about trying to figure you out.”

  Alice smirked, feigning disinterest, but her eyes betrayed more – much more – including at that instant a burning anger. “Don't waste your time with that, either.”

  Chapter 25

  “Don't take it so hard,” Glenn told Two Ravens on their long walk back. “I've wasted more time than that. Just not recently.”

  “I apologize again,” the outfitter said. “I should have known. I should at least have warned you what you were getting into.”

  “I still don't know. What did I get into? What was that all about? Why was Alice so angry and bitter to a complete stranger? Have I done something I'm not aware of?”

  “It has nothing to do with you. Abeque is angry and bitter with everyone… for the simple fact that she's angry and bitter.”

  Glenn paused in their walk. “A beck?”

  “Abeque. How many Indians do you know named Alice?”

  Wide-eyed, Glenn considered the question and realized that, outside of those he'd met t
hrough Two Ravens, he didn't know that many American Indians, period. Unsure how to confess it, all he could do was shrug.

  Two Ravens nodded and sighed deeply. “Her name is as good a place to start as any, I imagine.” They took up walking again and Two Ravens took up his story.

  “Her real name, her birth name, given by a father who wanted a son, was – is – Abeque. That's a Cheyenne name meaning 'Stays at home.' Her mother was the daughter of a Cheyenne chief and that makes her, Abeque, I mean, Alice, a real live Indian princess. But she's a Cheyenne princess on an Arapaho and Shoshone reservation. And she's the daughter of a holy man, ordered at birth by her name alone, to stay in the house. Not surprisingly, she's developed a few personality issues along the way. She's also semi-legend on the reservation, if such an animal exists, for a number of reasons. We grew up at the same time.”

  Glenn raised a quizzical brow.

  “It's more accurate than saying we grew up together. Alice sees to it that nobody is allowed to do anything together with her. Except of course her tribe, those four she dances with. The people of the reservation call them the towers and the gatekeepers. I usually call them The Antis; like that Groucho Marx song, whatever it is, they're against it. They're the drones to her queen, but even they are merely in orbit. Nobody visits the planet.”

  “Your metaphors are getting a little confusing.”

  “When it comes to Abeque,” Two Ravens said, still walking but staring at the ground again. “I get confused.” He sighed again. “Anyway, she's the only surviving child of the old Arapaho shaman. His name, for the record – that I hope you are not keeping – was Hridayesh. Ironically, that means King of Heart which is a heck of a name for a man so heartless to his daughter. He wanted a son so badly, he took her birth as a personal insult. There eventually was a son, Samuel. He was instantly the apple of his father's eye. Then, in his teens, Sam accidentally drowned. Hridayesh blamed Abeque, which was more than ridiculous, it was fantastic. She hadn't been anywhere near the accident. Regardless, he took his grief out on her. So she was a disappointment to her father before the brother came, she was nothing to him after Sam was born and, following his death, to Hridayesh, Abeque became nothing at all.”

  “I'm sure I've mentioned that, at the turn of the century, the Shoshone and Arapaho tribes were bitter enemies. That made no difference to your government when they forced us to live together on this reservation. But it made a difference to the tribes and, individually, it made a difference to the Indians. Those differences, those hurts, didn't go away with time. They buried themselves and festered. Being outnumbered here took away the magic of the Arapaho shaman. That hurt lingered generations. It was a hurt from which Abeque's father never recovered. After Samuel, he was a broken man.”

  “Hridayesh refused to teach Abeque the ways of the healer. Still she was a smart girl and, like it or not, he passed on most of what he knew without meaning to, merely by example. She followed him and spied on him to learn the rest. It didn't really matter anyway. With Snow on the Mountains around, the dwindling few on the reservation who paid attention to a medicine man paid attention to ours. Abeque's father died two years ago defeated and disrespected. Though she'd learned much of what a holy person needed to know, no one was left to accept her or treat her like one. No one left to love her.”

  Glenn was suddenly overwhelmed by a deep sadness for Alice and, though he wasn't certain why, a deeper sadness yet for his Shoshone friend walking beside him. They walked on in silence.

  Though the street remained busy with traffic an undeniable loneliness felt determined to take hold. The lights had come on. The cool of the evening found itself in the cold grip of the dessert night. The sun was gone, trailing a blood red slash across the horizon in its wake. The dust, stirred by the tourist's cars, carried on the wind across the sagebrush, could still be felt and tasted but was no longer seen.

  When Two Ravens spoke again, the sadness had gone from his voice, replaced by his own tone of bitterness. “And, here,” the outfitter said, throwing his hands up to the reservation night. “Here, she certainly wasn't treated as a princess. So she rejects all of it, angrily, including her name. She will not answer to it. Since her teens, excluding time spent in the presence of her father, she only answers to 'Alice'. That's the name she chose for herself. Alice! Alice through the looking glass. Alice doesn't live here anymore. Just another of her many protests that I have never understood.”

  “Or approved of?” Glenn asked.

  “Let it go,” Two Ravens said sharply.

  Glenn nodded. “It's gone.”

  “I'm sorry.” Two Ravens stopped again, removed his ever-present black hat, and shook out his long straight black hair, a gesture Glenn had long become accustomed to over the years. His friend was regrouping. He replaced the hat and started walking again. “Anyway… Alice has the knowledge, acquired by hook and by crook, and is called upon as a healer by some of the Arapaho.”

  “Why haven't I heard of her before? I don't remember her during the Silverbear mess.”

  “She does not take part in reservation community meetings. She would have considered Apparition Lake a white man's problem, and it looks very much as if it may be the same with this.”

  They reached the taxidermist's shop. Two Ravens apologized again, commiserating with Glenn, for it looked like he and his ranger friend had no choice but to wait on Snow on the Mountains. Only a block from his shop, down the nearest side street, Two Ravens wished Glenn a good night and started away home.

  Glenn watched Two Ravens disappear into the dark. A feeling of deja vu struck again and, in his mind's eye, the chief ranger suddenly pictured a massive grizzly vanishing into the fog. For an instant he could have sworn he heard a distant roar and echo.

  He'd imaged it, of course. Still Glenn shivered in spite of himself.

  The lights were off in the shaman's house when Glenn arrived to reclaim his Suburban. A man of Snow on the Mountains' years, the ranger imagined, had probably gone to bed long ago. It sounded like a fine idea. Glenn found his truck secure and, gazing through the rear window, saw the jacket-covered Pedro box as he'd left it, undisturbed. The ranger found something else as well, that something about the setting, the truck, the Pedro box, he didn't know for certain… Something indefinable had his nerves twitching. He couldn't shake it; that nonsensical feeling that rises from nowhere. The feeling that you're being watched.

  But why not? The high plains were easily as alive at night as they were in the day, even more so. Why couldn't a million tiny eyes be upon him? Tiny eyes? Little people?

  “Knock it off,” he told himself aloud.

  A final glance before he pulled away. The shaman's house was dark and quiet. Even the dog had vacated his stoop for the night. Surely the holy man was sound asleep. With any luck, Glenn hoped, dreaming of a way he could lend a hand.

  Glenn Merrill was wrong. And he was completely right.

  Inside the house, Snow on the Mountains wasn't asleep at all. He'd been sitting in the dark, watching and praying, since the park ranger and Johnny Two Ravens walked away several hours before. Walked away and left that truck parked outside his house. The truck the shaman had been unable to take his eyes off of and, once inside, that he'd been unable to take his mind off. It wasn't the Suburban, but what the shaman felt about the thing, the cargo, the vehicle carried.

  Snow on the Mountains saw the ranger return to the truck alone. He watched Glenn climb in, start it, and pull safely away. He was, he had to admit, relieved as the red tail lights shrank and, finally, blended with the multitude in the distance. The Shoshone holy man was greatly relieved, but not happy.

  Snow on the Mountains began praying in earnest for Chief Ranger Merrill.

  Chapter 26

  Glenn pulled away from the shaman's house. He navigated the still busy streets of Crowheart as tourists took a last look at modern reservation life and chatted about “the old ways” they couldn't understand but “admired.” They seemed not to notice the co
ntrast between the colorful energetic dancing they'd witnessed and the colorless reality surrounding the Pow Wow grounds. There was no mystery, no confusion. The abject poverty all around was, apparently, nothing more to them than “the simple life” of the Indian so far removed from their own hustle and bustle worlds. This represented the back to basics they wanted – sort of – but were too busy and important to ever hope to retire to.

  The last of daylight would linger only a few minutes more and all those who didn't live there were packed securely into their vehicles, stereos blaring, kids running up phone bills on their new splash-proof customizable Nokias, headlights pushing back the darkness as they made their way to a well-lit restaurant or well-furnished motel room. The only thing they'd taken from the ceremonies were a few sore muscles, a catchy drum beat in their heads, and a ton of photos they'd look at once when the film was developed.

  Life presented little difficulty to folks who only danced within the light of the flames. Those who never ventured into the nebulous regions beyond had no worries… and no fears.

  Fears, the unnerving emotions following a nightmare that can linger for days. Despite how fantastic or unreasonable they're judged by the intellect when roused, fear born in the subconscious takes the mind hostage. Logic has no home where terror abides. And the more extraordinary, weird, or grotesque the nightmares, the more realistic they become as you try to rationalize them away.

  Fear was not a familiar emotion to Glenn. He felt it, he knew, but had a difficult time recognizing it – and managing it. He thought again of Ron Franklin, lying there on the museum floor, and felt the fear return. He moved through traffic but his mind was elsewhere, praying he be allowed to wake from this new nightmare. This whole ordeal was too bizarre to be real. “Wake up,” he said aloud. Yet he knew, his gut told him, this was not hypnopompic imagery.

  Three years before, at Apparition Lake, the danger was a phantom. It came and went with the fog. Here, now, the danger was real. The enemy was out there somewhere and the answers were the phantoms; indiscernible and unknowable. For the first time in a long time, the fear was real again.