Read Killing Custer for Free Online Page B

start getting too close, the warriors will give them Mikey.” She jerked a little sideways, as if her own words had sent a shock through her. “Oh, my God, Father. He’ll go to prison for the rest of his life.”
    â€œLook, Darleen,” Father John began. “Nobody knows yet what happened this morning.”
    â€œOh, Father.” She dropped her face into her hands. “Everybody knows.” Her voice was teary and blurred. “There isn’t anybody on this rez that didn’t want Custer dead.” Looking up, she seemed to make an effort to pull herself together. “That man thought he was Custer. He stood for everything Custer did to Indian people. Now they’ve killed him.”
    * * *
    THE SUN HAD disappeared behind the high mountain peaks, and a dusty yellow light slanted over the mission grounds. After helping Darleen into her car and watching the jerky way she drove around Circle Drive into the cottonwood tunnel, Father John started toward the Little Wind River. In the stillness, the mission seemed frozen in time. He could imagine Jesuits from the past, those of the austere photographs that lined the corridor in the administration building, walking to the river. The feeling that he was part of something larger than himself, the latest in a parade that would continue on, never left him. The past inhabited the reservation and clung to the mission like the invisible wind.
    He headed through the coolness of the shadows between the administration building and the church. Little spits of dust rose around his boots and turned the toes gray. What Darleen had said made no sense, and yet, there was a sense of the past here, as if General George Armstrong Custer still rode across the plains, attacking villages, burning tipis and food supplies, shooting the picketed ponies. There were people on the rez whose ancestors had died in Custer’s attacks. Darleen was right about one thing: No Indian would mourn Custer’s death. Except that the man who’d died this morning wasn’t Custer.
    And what about the rest of it? A plan the warriors had hatched and carried out? Under the leadership of Colin Morningside, dressed and painted like Crazy Horse, the Oglala chief who had defeated Custer? Detective Madden suspected an Indian had shot Garrett. Eventually he would focus the investigation on the Indian impersonating Crazy Horse. But the plan had covered that possibility. The warriors would give up Mike, someone dispensable because he was different.
    Help us, Dear Lord. Guide us. Show us the way.
    Walks-On came bounding toward him, stick in his mouth. Coming around a bend behind the golden retriever was the bishop. Baseball cap shading half his face, gray hair standing out below the rim. Father John sank onto his haunches, took hold of the dog and scratched behind his ears, then ran his hands over the back of his coat. When Walks-On dropped the stick, he scooped it up and tossed it ahead. Walks-On bounded after it as Father John stood up and fell in beside the bishop. They headed back the way Father John had just come. “What about the rodeo?” he said, trying for a lighter tone.
    â€œI thanked Lou for the offer of tickets, but . . .” The bishop stopped walking and drew in two or three breaths before he started off again. “I’m afraid it would be too dispiriting. A man dead. Indians and cavalry impersonators pulled from the program. Everyone will be sad, I think.” He waited, then added: “And worried. But Lou said the purses are pretty big, so the rodeo will go on.”
    Father John didn’t say anything. Cowboys and Indians came from across the West to compete in the rodeos. Bronco and bull riding, calf roping, dozens of events, once known as cowboy fun. Rodeos were the way rodeo riders made their living.
    They walked in silence. Blue-black shadows had begun to drape the guesthouse and Eagle Hall. Walks-On raced ahead, the stick