The Spirit Woman Read Online Free PDF Page B

uneasiness coming over her.
    â€œThe department chair,” Laura said haltingly. “I had to tell him, in case he had to get ahold of me about next semester’s schedule. I asked him not to tell anyone else.” She shrugged, as if to brush away her own uneasiness. “By the time I get back to Boulder, Toby will have found someone else, I’m sure, probably one of the grad students who used to call the apartment all the time.”
    Laura stacked the manuscript and journal back into the folder, then closed the flap. “How did you do it?” she asked.
    â€œDo what?” Vicky had slid across the booth, her black bag in one hand, and was about to get to her feet.
    â€œGet away from the man who made you walk into doors.”
    Vicky didn’t say anything. She felt like a reluctant witness in the courtroom, composing some kind of acceptable explanation.
    â€œDon’t tell me you’ve gone back to him!” Laura said, incredulity edging her voice.
    â€œWe have two grown kids, Lucas and Susan,” Vicky began, groping for the words, the logic behind the decision. The kids need a family, Vicky. “They’re in Los Angeles, but if Ben and I are together—if things are better—they’ll move back. We’re Arapaho, Laura. We want our family close by.” Explaining. Explaining. She sounded like the women in her office, the women at the Eagle Shelter. She was not one of them.
    â€œWell, we’re both like Sacajawea, aren’t we,” Laura said after a moment. It was a statement.
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œWe have our reasons for staying. Sacajawea stayed with Toussaint.”
    â€œShe was an Indian woman who lived two hundred years ago. She didn’t have any choice.”
    â€œOh, you’re wrong, Vicky. She could have left him when the expedition reached the Shoshones. Her own brother, Cameahwait, was the chief. He would have protected her. But she stayed until . . .” Laura paused. Suddenly she picked up her folder and bag and rose from the booth. “Shouldn’t we go over to the mission?”
    Vicky got to her feet and faced her friend. “Until what?”
    â€œUntil Toussaint nearly killed her.”

4
    F lecks of moisture spattered the windshield as Father John drove the old Toyota pickup west across the reservation under a sky of satiny gray. Seventeen Mile Road stretched ahead, a ribbon of asphalt that ran into the hazy clouds falling down the slopes of the Wind River Mountains. It was trying to snow. The music of Idomeneo rose from the tape player beside himunds of loss and impossible vows and hopeful journeys. He pushed the off button, leaving only the sound of the tires crunching gravel as he turned into the parking lot in front of the senior citizens’ center. He passed the pickups angled at the curb, stopped a few feet from the front door, and checked his watch. Almost nine-thirty. Thirty minutes late.
    Howard Elkman, one of the Arapaho elders, had called yesterday. A gravelly voice: Could he come by for a talk? About nine tomorrow? Father John had been half expecting the call. The moccasin telegraph was probably loaded down with news of the skeleton buried by the river, and an article had run in yesterday’s Gazette . The elders would be concerned.
    He didn’t know any more about the skeleton than he had when he found it. He’d met two Wind River police officers at the site, and by the time he’d left, there had been a crowd milling about: a couple of other officers, Art Banner, the police chief, and Ted Gianelli, the local FBI agent. An unexplained death on the reservation fell under the agent’s jurisdiction. He’d called Gianelli yesterday, after Howard had called. Nothing yet, the agent had said. “Let you know soon’s we get the lab reports.”
    Now he hurried up the sidewalk and gave the front door a hard pull. There was a warm, moist fog of stale coffee and cigarette