Chapter 18

“Dark Wolf,” I said, once we were ensconced comfortably in his great room, “I want to tell you about a project. The Great Spirit, whom I call Red, visited me with a vision. I called him Red before I had any idea who he was. I still do not know him, other than a voice in my head.”

“Hmmf.”

“He wants me to have two tribes work together, the Navajo and the Shoshone. They will have different parts in the making of a great change. It will profit all the Indian people, if we do it right.”

He was listening quietly. The Wolf ‘pack’ surely had the secret of silence. He just “hmmf” me again.

“Red wants me to ask the Shoshone to gather the raw materials that the Navajo can form into a great thing.” I was looking for a way to make the Shoshone’s contribution more significant.

“And your Spirit asked you to do this?” Finally, something other than “hmmf.”

“He showed me in visions what to do at each step.”

“This is true,” said Crying Wolf. “She had a vision just this morning, on the step of Wild Mustang’s tipi. I have never heard of anyone who meets with her Spirit so often.”

“Hmmf.” I swear, he grunted more than the Navajo medicine man. “What has your Red to say about the Shoshone’s part in this.”

“There is something in the soil, to the east, that could be valuable. It cannot be seen, and it is in the top layers of soil. No big digging is required. It will not damage the land. And it must be extracted from the soil. The large part of the soil will be returned to the place from which it was taken. The crystals that come at the end of the process will be sent to the Navajo.”

“Hmmf. There are many steps to be accomplished before that end. I hear ‘taking soil.’ I hear ‘extracted.’ I hear ‘returning the soil.’ Most likely, there are more steps along this path ... Many Shoshone will be employed, am I correct?”

“Yes. But it doesn’t need to be Shoshone only. Like the project on the Navajo lands, this project COULD be for Indians of all tribes.”

“Who will pay for all this? The Shoshone are not a wealthy people. Even after the casino will be built, with my son’s help, to make this come true.”

“Red has told me there will be adequate money, from a source outside the tribe. I do not know more. Just that he told me there will be adequate.”

“Tell me more about this ‘extraction,’” demanded Dark Wolf. “We will not have anything that harms the environment here. We have seen enough of that already.”

“Well, I have been told how to build a large kiln, heated by the sun. He said ‘at first.’ Which makes me think there is more, but I do not know it yet.” I was making this stuff up as I went, trying to make it more palatable. I could have just said ‘solar kiln to be electrified later,’ but I didn’t want to scare him off. This was the most detail I’d ever given anybody, after all.

“Hmmf. I have never seen the Spirits give this kind of vision and information before.”

I shrugged. It was my version of ‘hmmf.’

“Let’s have dinner. I have some lasagna in the freezer.” So said THE Medicine Man of the Shoshone. What a different meal than I had come to expect at an Indian tipi.

“Let me try and explain what I do know ... in a different way.”

So I spent another hour ‘splainin’ it again, while we were eating EYE-talian food and chewing through store-bought garlic bread. Dark Wolf did the “hmmf” between bites as I talked.

Toward the end of the lasagna, we heard a commotion from the enclosed pasture in the back. “I better look. It could be coyotes,” Dark Wolf said. He headed toward the back door, stopping on the way for a rifle. My Wolf followed. Then came me and Flower.

The back door opened and Dark Wolf stopped suddenly. This nearly caused a four-person pile up at his back. There sitting on one of the fence posts was the largest eagle I’d ever imagined, illuminated by the rising moon to the east. He was about fifteen feet away from us, just sitting there. He was the height of the fence post itself, which made him about five feet in all, just in the body.

The bald eagle looked at me. He might have been looking at some other person, I suppose, but it seemed like he zeroed in on me. We stood there, frozen, watching the eagle. The horses were at the far end of the pasture, with the paint stallion a few feet in front of them. The stallion and mares were also looking at the bird.

We were immobile for about five minutes. The giant eagle didn’t move either. We could see him in the light of the moon clearly. The moonlight glinted off his white crown. His eyes were large and yellow, and they blinked about every thirty seconds. He may have had a fierce visage to everyone else, but I thought he looked calm and welcoming, somehow. His eyes reminded me of Snow, the great white owl, except Snow’s eyes were significantly larger.

I waved goodnight at the eagle, for some reason, and turned and walked to the room assigned to me. I heard Crying Wolf talking in hushed tones to his father. Then they both turned and watched me walk into the house. I changed into a Dallas Cowboys jersey, and went to bed.

I woke in the morning to a heavy fist knocking on the door. It was Wolf. “It’s 7:30, Lexi. We don’t want to go to the meeting with an empty stomach... (knock knock) ... Lexi, are you awake?”

I grumbled “Yeah. I am now.” And I got out of bed, staggered to the door. On the way, I grabbed my toilet kit (thank you, Flower, for putting that in my shopping basket), and my pads. Yeah, I’d started my first period last night, and probably ruined my panties, ‘cause the blood leaked around my pad. Does this stuff wash out? I don’t remember that far back from life #1. At least it wasn’t staining the sheets.

I took a shower, being careful not to wet my long hair. It’s just a hassle to dry. It was easier when I was a hooker with a blonde bob (life #1), and I used a tampon then, too. I changed in the bathroom and went out to meet the world. Well ... I met Wolf, Flower and the elder Wolf. I looked out the window, and the big eagle was still there. Not the same as Snow, the owl, I guessed. She didn’t stay around while I was awake.

Red?

[Present.]

How did the razzmatazz with the money go?

[It was all jake.]

HUH?

[It’s just a phrase I found in the lexicon of the twentieth century.]

Oh. Well that’s way out of date, but you can use it if you like. I take it that we got the money and we have a small nest egg?

[Nest egg?] There was a pause. [I understand. A sum of money you start out with ... Indeed we do. We have about $8,501.87.]

Red, when you are going to provide an exact number, you don’t say ‘about.’ You either give the exact number, or you can round it off. People are analog thinkers; most of us are anyway. So that is about $8,500. Or, for example, the Intel building is going to cost about $4 million.

[The construction of the Intel building is going to cost about $8.5 million, Lexi.]

Good work, Red. Perfect.

[What degree of accuracy should I use in rounding? Should I have said $8.479 million? Or $8.478612 million?’

It’s hard to say, Red. For now, just use two digits.

[Okay. That’ll be jake.]

Tell him to read and he picks up outdated slang. Sheesh.

[I can hear everything you think, you know.]

Sure. That’s jake ... Can you do the same thing with the money as yesterday?

[Probably not the same. It takes $10,000 or more to trade in the commodity markets and that’s a bare minimum. But the stock market provides the same opportunities with a smaller nest egg. It’s just slower.]

Okay. Do it. Let me know if there are any problems. I think you’ll be limited to the ‘buy’ side. Our nest egg is too small to sell stocks that we don’t yet own.

[I am familiar with the concept of ‘short selling’, Lexi. It is well documented.]

Right. I forgot for the moment that you can read.

[Another joke, eh Lexi?}

I broke my reverie. “Sorry,” I said, and grabbed some breakfast. “I was lost in my head again.” Breakfast was my choice of juice or coffee and a croissant. Croissant? From an official medicine man? In Wyoming?

[Dark Wolf has them delivered every morning from a bakery in Ethete. He called last night and increased his normal order. The bakery is run by an Indian woman named Sierra and her husband, named Jacques d’Argosy. It’s called ‘Argosy Baked Goods.’ He makes them specially for Dark Wolf.]

Oh well, it was fresh and almost melted in my mouth. I took my breakfast out the backdoor. The horses were calmly grazing on grass, ignoring the eagle – who was staring at me and ignoring the horses. In a normal voice, I said, “We’re going to see Chief Bent Nose.” He just blinked. I waved. I finished the OJ and turned to leave.

Crying Wolf put Flower behind me in the passenger seat, and tipped me far back, so the seat belt wouldn’t touch my chest. That left Dark Wolf the fourth seat, behind the driver. Thank goodness the New Yorker was a big car. Wolf drove at a stately speed, toward Bent Nose’s place.

The elder Wolf asked me, “Are you in pain, White Owl?”

I tried to look over my shoulder. “No, not really. Not anymore. I got hit with a pipe – by a woman who once was my mother. Now I have broken ribs, and the seat belt hurts, if I sit up. It’s not as bad as a few days ago.”

“It is terrible that you were treated that way. But it is good that you are recovering ... I saw you talking to the eagle. Even if he is an animal guide, I don’t think he will answer you.”

“No, I don’t think so either. I ... I was ... just being polite. I mean ... before there was a white owl. She was extra large, too.”

“Yes, Crying Wolf told me ... last night,” said the other Wolf.

“Well, I never said ‘good bye’ to her.”

“So,” he said with a chuckle, “you thought you’d say ‘good bye’ to this one.”

“Just in case.”

He retreated into silence – a trick he undoubtedly taught his son.

I looked out the window to the west and considered the mountains, and the bigger mountains behind the mountains. And ... soon we were there.

Bent Nose was scratching his wolf/dog’s ears and watching the morning news on his TV. “You are about five minutes early,” he said.

“That’s okay,” said Dark Wolf, “we’ll just sit on the sofa and look at you.” He smiled at us. So we sat. But Bent Nose caved after a moment. He leaned forward and turned off the TV. He swiveled the chair and faced us. The dog came around and sat where the human’s left hand just happened to land on the dog’s head. No fool, that dog. The hand didn’t move fast enough to suit the dog. He gave it a strong nudge and the hand bounced up and landed in the same spot. This time it moved, gently scratching the ears. Doggie was satisfied.