feel some pressure, especially if it comes from the Principal Chief. Osage oil stipends are still a major source of county income up there.'
He nodded. 'I'll try,' he replied. 'You've got a good point about the stipends. I sure wish David Spotted Horse would be a little more-more-'
'Sensible?' she supplied, doing her best not to sound too snide or catty. 'Reasonable? Thoughtful? I'm afraid those are pretty foreign concepts to Mister Spotted Horse. I learned that the hard way. His way is to overreact to everything, and his overreaction is one of the reasons we broke up.'
She got a sudden suspicion from the way her father's eyes narrowed that he was about to bring in personal matters.
She wasn't mistaken.
'You know,' he said carefully-and a little hopefully, 'your mother and I always kind of hoped you'd get a little more serious about David.'
She dashed his hopes by groaning. 'Puh-lease! He was way too busy being the Big Man in the Movement.' After a moment of consideration, she decided to let him in on a little personal secret that had finally stopped hurting. 'I never told you what it was that finally precipitated my breaking up with him. He quoted Huey Long at me.'
'Huey Long?' Dad replied, puzzled. 'Wasn't he a Black Panther or something? What was the quote? How could that break you two up?'
'You'll know how when I tell you.' She cleared her throat. 'I was trying to point out why bailing out of college was a bad idea, especially for someone who claimed he wanted to do some good for our people. I even pointed out how much good I could do, being both in criminal investigation and in the Movement. He said, word for word, 'the only place for a woman in the Movement is on her back.' '
Her father stared at her for a moment, and his face spasmed. 'I don't imagine you put up with that-' he choked, trying not to laugh.
She shrugged. 'For his pains, I egged him into trying to shove me around, then I put him on his-to let him get an idea of how it felt.'
That was too much for her father; he broke up laughing, and she grinned, feeling just a little smug now that the confrontation was old, old news. It had hurt at the time. What had hurt even more was that she had known, then and now, that it was meant to; David had an uncanny ability to pick the most hurtful words possible and use them.
'Well, he thought the reason I was taking tai chi was just to keep the fat off my hips and make me a good dancer. Boy, did he get a surprise!'
Her father chuckled. 'I'll bet he did. And I'd be the last person to tell you he didn't have it coming, after a crack like that.'
She shook her head. 'Needless to say, when I told him as much, he called me a flint-hearted bitch-among other things-I called him a male chauvinist pig-among a lot of other things-and we called it quits.'
Her father picked up a napkin and wiped his eyes. 'That's my daughter. If you hadn't, and I'd found out about it, I'd have disowned you myself.'
She picked up her sandwich again, and stared at it, before taking a pensive bite. 'You know, Dad,' she said after swallowing it, 'it isn't easy being a flint-hearted bitch. It takes a lot of work.'
To her surprise, he reached across the table and patted her free hand. 'You mean,' he said, quietly but firmly, 'that it isn't easy being a warrior. That is what you are, and only a foolish young man with no experience and unable to get past his own ego would fail to see it.'
She looked up at him in complete shock.
He nodded, and gave her a smile warm and bright with approval. 'Just promise me this. Watch your back very closely. Not because you need to, but to please your old man, who probably worries too much about the girl he remembers as a baby in his arms.'
She blinked, and agreed.
'Good,' he said with satisfaction. 'That is all I have any right to ask you. Now-can I force some strawberry cobbler on you?' He arched his eyebrows at the refrigerator. 'There's fresh homemade ice cream to go with it,' he continued temptingly.
All she could do was laugh, and agree.
She was thinking about the conversation as she made notes in her office after she got back. It had been a very enlightening and surprising little talk, on a lot of levels-
'Sometimes it would be easier not to be such a rebel,' Grandfather said from behind her, making her jump. 'Easier on you, as well as your parents. But sometimes it is something that you must be.'
She swiveled her chair around. There he was, standing in the door to her office, looking inscrutable. 'Are you eavesdropping on my brain again?' she asked, shaking a fist at his ear. 'Dirty old men shouldn't eavesdrop on ladies' thoughts!'
He ducked, and chuckled at her, waggling an admonitory finger at her. 'No respect,' he chided. 'You kids have no respect for the elderly and wise-'
It was hard to stay even annoyed with him for more than a minute when he was in this mood. 'If you were either, I might,' she retorted. 'You're an oversexed sixteen-year-old contrary, an Osage heyoka and there isn't any such thing, and you're just disguised as a wise old medicine man! You've got my real Grandfather tied up in a closet somewhere. You're Coyote, that's what you are, and not Mooncrow at all!'
His eyes crinkled up as he grinned. 'Could be, could be,' he replied. 'But I was just reading the thoughtful look on your face when you came in, and put it together with the pan of your mother's famous cobbler in the fridge. That meant you stopped to see my son, and since you brought the cobbler home, he must have let you know he's worried because you're so different, but since you aren't annoyed, he told you he knows you can take care of yourself. Hmm?'
She shook her head. 'I am never going to be able to do that. You sound just like Sherlock Holmes, and I feel as stupid as Watson,' she sighed, then hooked a chair with her toe and kicked it over to him. 'Sit, Mooncrow, my Teacher. I am troubled, and in need of counsel. We have a lot of problems that should fit together and don't. I need your help, Little Old Man.'
He took the chair, losing his smile. When she called him that-which was a title of high honor among their people- he knew the situation was more than simply serious. And he knew that she would not ask him for help unless she really was out of her depth.
She told him what she had told her father, but with more details, particularly the Medicine details. Although he was wearing his very best stoneface, as befit a Little Old Man, she thought that he became alarmed when she told him about Watches-Over-The-Land's looted grave.
He began to ask her some specific questions about what graves in particular had been looted where, and she had to confess that she had been so upset that she couldn't remember precise details.
'That's why I took these,' she said, pulling out the Polaroids, and handing them to him. 'Each set is from a specific grave; see, I put a number on a note right in the middle of each one, so you can tell which was which. I put everything back that I could, but with the bones gone, I got the feeling that my ceremonies were about as effective as blowing smoke into the wind. I did at least break the spiritual connection to the bones, but the mi-ah-luschka are looking for blood payment.'
He leafed through them, carefully, his face gone stony and cold. Finally, when he came to the last set, he took a quick intake of breath. That was all, but it was enough to tell her that he was as upset as she had ever seen him.
He closed his eyes for a moment, simply holding the photographs in his hands. When he finally opened his eyes again, though, he did not look the way she had expected.
He was angry, but that wasn't all. He was disturbed, and perhaps a little frightened. Something had happened that he had not expected.
'You are correct in remembering that this was Watches-Over-The-Land's resting place,' he said, after a long silence. 'As I have told you, he was a Medicine Chief, and a very great one.'
He paused, and she waited. He would tell her what he knew, but he was clearly thinking this through as he spoke.
'There is something wrong-besides this vandalism,' he said after that long pause. 'I am looking at these
