Death on the Greasy Grass (32 page)

E
PILOGUE

“You up to this?” Manny asked.

Willie nodded as he began standing from a lawn chair on a tall hill overlooking the Eagle Bull Ranch. He had started sitting back down when Doreen hooked her arm in his and helped him stand. Willie's strength had come back quicker these last weeks than Manny had expected. Still, he tired easily. But this was something he had to do.

Reuben opened a cedar box and took out an eagle feather fan and handed it to Willie.

“What's he going to do now?” Wilson whispered.

“He's going to smoke us.”

Willie lit the braid of sweetgrass, smoke thick in the windless afternoon. He moved the smoke over him and turned to pray to the four directions, the earth, the sky, before turning to Reuben. Reuben closed his eyes as Willie fanned the smoke over him, before turning to Manny and Clara and Wilson. The sweet odor filled Manny's nostrils, and he inhaled deep, taking in the sacred sweetgrass, the clean, clear air here on the rez. During moments like these, he didn't even miss his Alexandria, Virginia, home he'd given up when he moved here last year.

Willie's voice rose high, shrill, then dipped low as he continued signing, the heavy drumbeat echoing off the hills. They each stood, silent and reverent, until Willie stopped. He set the drum on the ground beside him and turned to Wilson. “The dead.”

Wilson bent and picked up a metal box and passed it to Reuben, who opened it and handed Willie the two scalps from the Eagle Bull collection. Manny swayed, yet there was no wind. He smelled the odor of blood, yet there was nothing killed here recently. He heard the cries of Levi Star Dancer's friend, White Crow. He stared into the pleading eyes of Conte Eagle Bull's companion, Stone Thrower, just before Conte killed him.

Reuben slipped his arm around Manny's shoulder and whispered, “You all right,
misun
?”

Manny nodded, his head clearing.

Reuben nodded as if he could witness the terrible scene as Manny had, a scene forgotten until the journal resurfaced. Manny had read the journal before giving it to Chenoa: It was exactly as Manny's visions had depicted.

Willie wrapped the scalps in a red muslin cloth, yellow and blue and black geometric designs painted across the front. Doreen helped Willie bend down and lay them into the deep hole in the pasture Pete and RePete had dug earlier.
Crow and Lakota together
, Manny thought.
Enemies until united by the evil of Conte Eagle Bull. At least Conte's descendent proved he had honor. At least Wilson had wanted them buried together.

Willie grabbed for the shovel and swayed; Doreen helped him into the lawn chair, and Reuben took the shovel and began moving dirt over the two scalps.

When the ceremony was completed, Doreen and Reuben helped Willie down the gentle slope with Wilson close behind.

Reuben walked beside Manny and Clara as they picked their way around clumps of cornstalks. “One thing's been bugging me,” Manny said to Reuben. “How come you didn't finish Degas off when you got a chance?”

Reuben smiled. “Some people make the world a better place,
misun
. Some by leaving it. The world would be a better place without the likes of Degas. But a
wicasa wakan
can't hardly be going around bumping off bad people. No matter the reason. I had a choice to make.”

Reuben went ahead and walked on the other side of Willie, helping him down the hill.

Clara nudged Manny. “That was honorable of Wilson—wanting both scalps buried together.”

Manny chin-pointed to Wilson. “He's not a bad sort. I think he would make a great senator if he can get elected over all that's happened with him.”

“I noticed the papers weren't too sympathetic to him. Hard to overcome that.”

“It will be.”

“Another thing I noticed,” she said, looping her arm in his.

“What's that?”

“There were two scalps buried. At the same time.”

“And?”

“Don't you see?”

“No,” Manny said.

Clara smiled. “Things that happen in twos go better than things done singly. Like marriage. Doreen and Willie set their wedding date. We could, too. At the same time.”

“You mean a double wedding?”

Clara nodded.

Manny groaned. Just what he needed—going down the aisle with the mad Lakota woman Doreen Big Eagle waiting for him by the altar.