Murder at Medicine Lodge Read Online Free PDF

riding a powerful warhorse belonging to White Bear. To make the disguise complete, I even carried a borrowed lance that was marked with the designs of the Jaifegau (Crazy Horses Society), the projectile point aimed at the sky while the rounded end was balanced on the toes of my right foot. I tried my best to look the part of a fiercesome warrior, but felt the fraud.
    The other warriors were told to keep watch over me, make certain I made no mistakes. Meanwhile I did my utmost to mimic their every move. There was a certain expression warriors showed outsiders, an expression I’ve heard described as stoic. Actually, what they were going for was surly, but stoic has its merits.
    At any rate, the men who convinced the world that they had only this one severe side to them were actually lively pranksters. All other emotions were intentionally hidden, resulting in a terrible misjudgment—that warriors did not laugh, did not cry. The greatest injury of this opinion is that it robs these men of their humanness. And so I tell you this truth: Those men laughed, they cried, they loved, and when they weren’t involved in a fight to the death, they were happy rascals.
    But on this day I am telling you about, they were being stoic and keeping sharp eyes on me so that I would not bungle.
    The Blue Jackets’ camp was sprawling and, as was their wont, organized into well-defined rows of two-man tents. To the back were the large tents belonging to the officers and dignitaries from Washington. There were about ten of those.
    What immediately caught my eye were the two officers’ tents set apart. I was looking at these tents when White Bear and Skywalker dismounted, their hands busily being shaken by the three greeting generals of the Blue Jacket army. I remained sitting stiffly on my loaned horse, trying very hard to remain blank-faced as I considered those curiously placed tents. During my brief stay among the Blue Jackets, I hadn’t learned a lot, but I had learned enough to know that those two out-of-place tents went directly against their fervent sense of order.
    While I studied them, the answer to the tent stuck off farther to the left became known, as an Indian woman dressed in white woman’s clothing emerged. Seeing her, one of the generals smiled, extended his arm, indicating that she was welcome to join us. She proceeded forward, holding herself in a curious fashion, ample breasts hoisted up almost to her neck, rear end jutting out, the hem of the long skirt of her dress dragging on the ground. I could not see her feet, so I wasn’t certain if she was walking, for I had never seen a woman walk with such a tottering sway. She was such an extraordinary sight that she held every warrior’s complete attention. Realizing this, she deliberately slowed her approach, seemed to enjoy the effect her peculiar appearance caused. As she passed the mounted gawking Kiowa, I was instantly taken by her hat.
    I love hats, but that isn’t why I fixed on hers. My long-dead father used to sell feathers and inadvertently he had passed his love for feathers of supreme quality on to me. The feather sticking from the back of that woman’s hat was the most marvelous red feather I’d ever seen. It was long enough to arch and hang far over the back brim of her hat. I learned later that this was a dyed ostrich feather. I have never seen an ostrich—not even a picture of one—but the memory of that single feather leaves me to believe that an ostrich is a formidable bird, one that must be as large as a buffalo. It would taken an even more formidable woman to dare to pluck a feather from it, and for this reason I have always held the Arapaho woman known as Mrs. Margaret Adams in my highest regard.
    But I do try to forget that when she turned her back to us we were all further appalled that she’d chosen to accentuate her already high, round backside with a large, blindingly white bow. The sight of all that