Still Life With Crows

“I see. And from that vantage point, lying in a hollow, covered with brush, at least a hundred yards downhill from the camp, in a dust storm, he was able to see all that you just described in such vivid detail. The Ghost Warriors appearing and disappearing as if by magic.”

Brushy Jim’s eyes flashed dangerously and he half rose from his seat. “I ain’t selling you anything, Mr. Pendergast. My great-granddaddy ain’t on trial here. I’m just telling you the story as it came down to me.”

“Then you have a theory, Mr. Draper? A personal opinion, perhaps? Or do you really think it wasghosts? ”

There was a silence.

“I don’t like the tone you’re taking with me, Mr. Pendergast,” Brushy Jim said, now on his feet. “And FBI or not, if you’re insinuating something, I want to hear it flat out.Right now. ”

Pendergast did not immediately reply. Corrie swallowed with difficulty, her gaze moving toward the door.

“Come now, Mr. Draper,” Pendergast said at last. “You’re no fool. I’d like to hear yourreal opinion.”

There was an electric moment in which nobody moved. Then Brushy Jim softened.

“Mr. Pendergast, it appears you’ve smoked me out. No, I don’t think those Indians were ghosts. If you go out to the Mounds—it’s hard to see now with all the trees—but there’s a long gentle fold of land that comes up from the crik. A group of thirty Cheyenne could come up that fold, hidden from the sentries if they walked their horses. The setting sun would have put them in the shadow of the Mounds. They could’ve waited below for the dust to come up, mounted real quick, and rode in. That would explain the sudden hoofbeats. And they could’ve left the same way, packing out their dead and erasing their tracks. I never heard of an Arapaho who could track a Cheyenne, anyway.”

He laughed, but it was a mirthless laugh.

“What about the dead Cheyenne horses? How did they vanish, in your opinion?”

“You’re a hard man to please, Mr. Pendergast. I thought about that, too. When I was young I saw an eighty- year-old Lakota chief butcher a buffalo in less than ten minutes. A buffalo’s a damn sight bigger than a horse. Indians ate horsemeat. They could’ve butchered the horses and packed the meat and bones out with their dead or hauled them out by travois. They left the guts behind, you see, to lighten the loads. And maybe there weren’t more than two or three dead Cheyenne horses, anyway. Maybe Great-Granddaddy Isaiah exaggerated just a little when he said a dozen of their horses had been killed.”

“Perhaps,” Pendergast said. He rose and walked over to the makeshift bookshelf. “And I thank you for a most informative story. But what does the story of the massacre have to do with the ‘curse of the Forty-Fives’ that you mentioned, which nobody seems willing to talk about?”

Brushy Jim stirred. “Well, now, Mr. Pendergast, I don’t think ‘willing’ is the right word there. It’s just not a pretty story, that’s all.”

“I’m all ears, Mr. Draper.”

Brushy Jim licked his lips. Then he leaned forward. “All right, then. You know how I said that the sentries were among the last to be killed?”

Pendergast nodded. He had picked up a battered copy ofButler & Company’s New American First Reader and was leafing through it.

“The very last to be killed was a fellow named Harry Beaumont. He was the leader of the Forty-Fives and a real hard case, too. The Indians were furious at what had been done to their women and children, and they punished Beaumont for it. They didn’t just scalp him. Theyrounded him.”

“I’m not familiar with that term.”

“Well, let’s just say that they did something to Harry Beaumont that would make sure none of his family recognized him in the afterlife. And after they were done they cut off his boots and skinned off the soles of his feet, so his spirit couldn’t follow them. Then they buried the boots on either side of the Mounds, as a backup, like, to trap his evil spirit there forever.”

Pendergast returned the book, pulled out another, even more battered, titledCommerce of the Prairies. He flipped through the pages. “I see. And the curse?”

“Different people will tell you different things. Some say Beaumont’s ghost still haunts the Mounds, looking for his missing boots. Some say still worse things that I’d just as soon not repeat in front of a lady, if it’s all the same to you. But the one thing I can tell you for sure is that, right before he died, Beaumont cursed the very ground around him—cursed it for all eternity. My great-granddaddy was still hidden in the hollow, and he heard him with his own ears. He was the only living witness.”

“I see.” Pendergast had pulled out another volume, very narrow and tall. “Thank you, Mr. Draper, for a most interesting history lesson.”

Brushy Jim rose. “Not a problem.”

But Pendergast seemed not to hear. He was staring closely at the narrow book. It had a cheap cloth cover, Corrie noticed, and its ruled pages seemed filled with crude drawings.

“Oh, that old thing,” Brushy Jim said. “My dad bought that off some soldier’s widow, years and years ago. Swindled. I’m ashamed he was taken in by such a fake. Always meant to throw it out with the trash.”

“This is no fake.” Pendergast turned a page, then another, with something close to reverence. “To all appearances, this is a genuine Indian ledger book. Fully intact, as well.”

“Ledger book?” Corrie repeated. “What’s that?”

“The Cheyenne would take an old Army ledger book and draw pictures on the pages—of battles, courtship, the hunt. The pictures would chronicle the life of a warrior, a kind of biography. The Indians thought decorated ledger books had supernatural powers, and if you strapped one to your body they would render you invincible. The Natural History Museum in New York has a ledger book done by a Cheyenne Indian named Little Finger Nail. It wasn’t as magical as Little Finger Nail would have liked: it still bears the mark of the soldier’s carbine ball that passed through both the ledger bookand him as well.”