Death Where the Bad Rocks Live (33 page)

SPRING 1940

Moses led the way down the precarious path that wound between the two buttes. Popcorn gravel gave way underneath the huge man, and he grabbed onto a scrub juniper jutting from the hillside.

“You didn’t say it was going to be this hard getting there.” Ellis Lawler fell, picked himself up, then slid down the last twenty feet on his butt. He screamed just before he hit a boulder on the bottom that stopped him from falling over the edge and into the chasm a hundred feet down. “What the hell you guys laughing at?”

Moses shook his head as he looked down at Ellis slapping dirt from his trousers, and he turned to Clayton. “I cannot understand why you brought that pissy little man along.”

Clayton finally stopped laughing. “Let’s say he’s entertainment.”

“Be real entertainment if he would have sailed off over the side.”

“That any way for a holy man to talk? Besides, Ellis knows minerals better than anyone I know. And, he’ll keep his mouth shut.”

“Will it need shutting?”

“Depends on what those bad rocks of yours tell us.”

“I just wished you would have brought somebody quieter.”

“He is what he is.” Clayton laughed again as Ellis scrambled up the hillside. “He’ll be all right once we bed for the night. Trust me.”

“Seems like I trusted you once before.” Moses handed Clayton a water bladder and he took shallow sips. He took off his hat and dribbled water inside the brim.

“You’re not going to get on me about Renaud LaJeneuse again.”

“I would if it would do any good. You promised me that man was honorable.”

Clayton uncoiled his rope from his shoulder and fashioned a loop for Ellis. “How was I to know Renaud intended keeping those paintings you took to New York.”

“I should have hired an attorney.”

“You signed the papers, hoss.”

Moses’s voice became low, hostile, as he vented his anger on Clayton. “So you said. I thought I was signing a paper allowing him to show the paintings for an extra month in exchange for more food delivered to Pine Ridge.”

“Don’t forget the mineral supplements for your cattle.”

“That just prolonged their deaths by a couple months.”

“And the donation in your name he made to the tribe.”

“That donation he made will just about cover the price of vegetable seeds for one season. I should still hire a lawyer.”

Clayton tossed Ellis the rope. “Slip it around your waist.”

“Make it your neck,” Moses yelled down, but Ellis was too busy wiggling into the loop.

“Renaud is a lawyer and he set the agreement in stone. Couldn’t be broke. Guess it isn’t his fault you can’t read English. Now if it had been in Lakota…”

Clayton braced his feet against the side of the hill while Ellis took up slack on the rope and pulled himself up hand over hand. Ellis glared at Moses as he made the top and dropped into the dirt.

“What you grinning at? I could have been killed.”

“Have you not heard—only the good die young. You are in for a very long life.”

Ellis undid the loop and walked to where the water bladder was propped against a rock.

“It is not the same out here without Samuel.” Moses looked after Ellis pouring water over his sweaty face.

“Couldn’t be helped,” Clayton said. “He’s lucky they plea-bargained the aggravated assault down to a high-grade misdemeanor. Best I could do.”

“Still, a year in the Pennington County lockup for stabbing a ranch hand that picked the fight with him is pretty stiff. Guess you
wasicu
will always treat Indians differently than you do Whites.”

Clayton coiled his rope and slipped it over his shoulder. “What more could I have done for Samuel—I sent my aide to talk with the prosecutor.”

“You could have been a father to him.”

Clayton shook his head. “Little late for that, isn’t it? What do you want me to do, bust him out of jail and drag him back to D.C. with me?”

“If that is what it takes to be the father you should have been all along.” Moses grabbed the water bladder and walked along the path with Clayton close behind. Ellis brought up the rear, yelling and cursing as he slipped and nearly fell again.

Clayton scrambled to catch up. “I’m not like you. I don’t have the time to spend with Samuel like you do with Eldon. You show him the old ways, and that’s a good thing. Never let him forget his heritage. But Samuel’s a half-breed…”

Moses turned and grabbed Clayton’s shirtfront. He lifted him off the ground and debated if he should toss his friend over the cliff. Clayton, wide eyes darting to the hundred-foot drop, tried speaking, but couldn’t. Moses took deep, calming breaths and gently lowered Clayton to the ground. “In the old days, Samuel would have been called
atkuku
. Bastard. But your son is much more than
atkuku
. He deserves more respect than to be called a half-breed.”

Clayton stepped away and straightened his shirt. Somewhere behind him Ellis yelled about cactus sticking to his butt. “You’re right, hoss. But my point was that I wouldn’t have known what to teach him. We’re from different worlds.”

“You could have taught him the White man’s ways. Leave the old ways to me. At least he would have had a chance.”

“More of a chance than we’ll have in finding these legendary rocks you’ve been telling me about. How much farther?”

“Don’t be too anxious to get there. They are evil
wakan
.”

Ellis stumbled on the shifting dirt of the Badlands and yelled when he hit his shin against a rock. Moses jerked his thumb behind him. “I am having second thoughts about showing you the place with that bonehead along. I got half a notion to leave him and let him make it on his own.”

“That’d be like killing him.”

“Don’t tempt me.” Moses sneered and started back along the trail.

“Look at the bright side.” Clayton scrambled to keep up. “If these rocks pan out, it’ll be good for the tribe.”

“Sure. Trust you?”

Moses turned the venison backstraps crackling just above the embers and checked the wild onions and turnips roasting under the venison to catch the drippings. Embers sizzled and popped and landed in the dirt in front of Moses. “What is Ellis doing in there?” He nodded to his cabin. “Sounds like he is giving a speech, but there is no one in there with him. Like, if some
wasicu
rambles in the Badlands and there is no one to hear him, is he still crazy? And still a pain in the butt?”

Clayton shrugged. “Ellis talks to himself when he’s in the throes of discovery, as he puts it. He’s making some calculations based on what he measured today.”

“All the same, if I would have left him where you shot that deer, I would not have had to listen to his drivel.”

Clayton prodded the venison with his knife and licked the blade. “Look, he’s been a professor at the School of Mines all his life. Geology is all he has. His wife won’t even talk to him.”

“From what the moccasin telegraph tells me, Ellis has other, younger women he talks to. His students, from what I hear.”

“I don’t know about that. I just know he’s never at home long enough to be very intimate with his wife.”

“That is a blessing. Thank
Wakan Tanka
he won’t have any offspring. But if he says one more thing about my cooking, I will sacrifice him to the Gods of Night.”

Clayton slid his knife in the belt sheath. “Never heard you mention those gods before.”

“Just made it up. I did not want to offend any real gods.”

The cabin door burst open and Ellis ran to the campfire. “I got it!” he yelled, and stumbled in the soft dirt. He plopped onto a log beside Clayton. “I got it.”

“What you got?” Moses winked at Clayton. “VD? Some other White man’s disease?”

“What?”

“By the way you’re jerking around, you would think you had the itch.”

Ellis ignored him and turned to Clayton, shoving a paper at him, but Clayton waved it away. “Just tell me what it says.”

Ellis folded his legs under him and turned the paper so that it caught the light of the campfire. “By my calculations, it’s here. I’m positive we can make a go of it if we get the mining permits.”

Clayton twirled his handlebar mustache while his eyes roamed over Ellis’s paper. “Guess that’s where you come in.”

Moses turned the turnips with a cottonwood stick. “How is that?”

“We need you to grease the wheels for us. Talk the tribe into issuing mining permits.”

“The tribe has never issued any permits for the Stronghold before.”

Clayton put his hand on Moses’s arm. “They will if Moses Ten Bears says it’s all right.”

Moses sliced into the deer meat and rotated it just above the fire.
A few more minutes.
“This Moses Ten Bears is not convinced you will do right by the tribe.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean? I’ve done more in Washington for the Sioux than any other senator.”

“That’s right. Senator Clayton’s done more for Indians…”

Moses’s glare cut Ellis short. “Like bootlegging whiskey helped us so much?”

“What about bootleg whiskey?”

Moses sat cross-legged in front of the fire, warming his palms against the heat. “You forget so soon what your booze operation has done to so many of my people?”

Clayton slid his knife from the sheath and once more sampled the venison. “I’ll tell you what it’s done—it’s helped finance my run for Senate, which in turn allowed me to help the Sioux where I couldn’t before.”

“Drive around Pine Ridge at any time and see the men passed out in the afternoon from drinking their breakfasts, then tell me how your Senate position has helped us. Given the choice of drinking or going another day without jobs, my people drink to forget. The Lakota have never had to rely on the
wasicu
for food like we have in the last hundred years.”

“We give food rations once a month.”

Moses shook his head. “Sure, you dole out rations and make us feel like beggars. Look at the people lining up in the food line—you will not find an able man among the bunch of women there. All the men are passed out. Or dead.”

“That’s just my point.” Clayton scooted closer to Moses. “This is the chance we’ve been waiting for. If we get issued these mining permits, we’ll employ all local men. We’ll pay the tribe a royalty. Things will look up for the Lakota at last. Think what you can do for your people if you convince them to mine the Stronghold.”

“I do not know.” Moses stood as if to get away from Clayton. “I will have to pray on it.”

“Okay. Praying’s okay. But just remember the words of a famous Oglala sacred man: trust me.”

“Thought you didn’t drive?”

Reuben held the door for Manny. “Never said I didn’t. Just said I didn’t like to.”

“What do you do for a driver’s license?”

Reuben put his finger to his lips. “Don’t tell the OST cops. But as little driving as I do, the rez is a lot safer with me behind the wheel than you.”

“Can’t argue there. But at least you’re familiar with this heap.”

Reuben scowled as he started toward the Pine Ridge Hospital. “Crazy George He Crow lets me use the Buick now and again, and I let him ride the paint when he feels tradition pulling on his skirt.”

Manny smiled, remembering Crazy George, the
berdache
wannabe, the cross-dresser, parading in front of his house in the latest seventies ladies fashion. “I’d just give a month’s pay to see him ride that damned junkyard horse he keeps penned up by his house.”

“That’s not a riding horse.” Reuben grinned. “That’s a watch horse. Even he can’t sit it. Besides, he’s raising goats now, too.”

Manny chuckled. “Great. Now he’ll be complaining someone took his goats. Or fed them the wrong treat. Or any one of a number of nutty stuff to complain about. What prompted him to want to raise goats?”

Reuben adjusted the volume on the radio so that KILI’s music bounced around the car. “He says he was at an auction north of Kyle last week and just fell in love with her. He just had to have Josey—that’s what he named her.”

“That would account for the smell.” Manny wrinkled his nose and Reuben jerked his thumb toward the backseat.

“You got it. He brought her home seat belted in the back like a cheap date he didn’t want his mom to see.”