Chapter 19

It was 3:20 p.m. when I woke up. I seemed to have a clock in my head. That’s thanks to Red, I assumed. I was covered with a light blanket. Anyway, Marylou Deer Horn was just arriving. Wow! She was a powerful looking woman. Somewhere over thirty, I was sure. She looked like she played middle linebacker: broad shoulders and heavily muscled, not an ounce of fat on her, a buzz cut.

“So, what’s up?” She addressed the Chief. “Pa said you were having a meeting.” She looked around: men were watching TV, Flower reading a book, and me dozing under a blanket.

“I’m Crying Wolf, this is my wife Desert Flower, and that is Lexi White Owl. We were waiting for you to look at the outline of a project she is suggesting.”

“Okay,” said Marylou. She pulled a pair of Clark Kent glasses from her shirt pocket. The middle linebacker strode over to the table and looked at the drawings spread out there. After some minutes, she asked Wolf, “What is it?”

Wolf gestured to me. I said, “It is a solar activated kiln to heat soil and extract a rare element.” I expected some sort of grunt, but instead of that, she just began to run down the list of components.

“A rare element, you say?” I nodded. “Is it radioactive?” I said ‘no’. “This is a partial bill of materials. A good starting point. Where are the ceramics coming from?”

“Beats me,” I said. “Let me explain a bit. I made the drawing from images I got from the Great Spirit. At least I think it’s the Great Spirit. I dunno, really. He’s given me several designs for different projects that I have created already. I gave some to the Intel Corporation and they said the designs were major improvements on what they have already. Based on that, they agreed to build a new plant down in Navajo country. Don’t mention that to anybody, please.”

“Who’d I mention it to?”

“I don’t know. Anybody. If word get out, it could be trouble ... Now I’m here in Shoshone country, trying to set up another kind of plant to make raw materials for the Navajo plant.”

“And who exactly are you?” Marylou asked. A reasonable question, it seemed to me.

“I am Lexi White Owl,” I started. “I am part Navajo, part Shoshone, and part Algonquin. And part white-girl, I guess. Originally from Fort Worth, Texas. The woman who was my mother beat me with a pipe and broke my ribs. I was about to go into foster care, when Crying Wolf rode in on his Range Rover, threw me over his saddle and rescued me.” I looked at Wolf, and smiled. “Since that time, I’ve been getting messages from a Spirit that I call Red. You are looking at the drawings and lists he gave me.”

Marylou looked over at the Chief. “And you want to build this thing?”

“If you think it will work and if you will ramrod the project,” nodded Chief Bent Nose. “If you say no to either, we won’t do it.” There were no grunts or ‘Aaha’s this time.

“Me? Ramrod the project? These drawings don’t have dimensions on them. So we’ll need more details. And the bill of materials will need to be finished.” She rustled through the papers again. “When do you want to start?”

“Marylou,” said the Chief. “If what this young lady says is true, I’d like to start last Tuesday. We’ll probably need to adjust the starting date, though.” Not a smile passed across his face.

“Yeah. This is an important project, I assume ... I’ll have to give notice to the Wild Horse Sanctuary, so I can’t start full time for two weeks. But I can work on this in the evenings.”

Red, how come we didn’t give them the kind of detail that we gave Intel?

[Intel needed it, Marylou didn’t. She’ll do fine filling in the details. She’ll do better for having contributed. She’ll own this project.]

Where did you learn about human psychology?

[A few thousand years will give some insight. I picked it up from books.]

“You got any copies of these?” Marylou asked me. I shook my head no. “I’m going to the Post Office before it closes and make copies. Maybe one of you strong Indian braves,” she said with a grin, “can provide some pizza for dinner. We’re going to have a long session tonight.” She straightened the papers and went out the door.

Six hours passed after she got back from the P.O. By that time, we had sussed out that the ceramics had to come from Corning, the insulation could come from one of a dozen suppliers, according to the catalogs Marylou returned from her trip with. She insisted that the wood had to be kiln dried before we started construction, but there were sources around this part of Wyoming for wood. Getting hard wood properly dried might be a problem, but not an insurmountable one. We had the dimensions for a small kiln, at last.

We’d also polished off two extra-large specials from Tony’s Pizza. My belly was overfull. But Marylou ate more than the three ‘strong Indian braves’ combined. Does every place in America have a Tony making pizza? Either a Tony or a Joe. Some bigger towns probably had both.

Roughly, the kiln was a trapezoid shape with the longest side facing south, so it would gather the most sun.²

Now all we had to do was find out where to put it and where the soil would come from.

“Can you meet with me tomorrow after breakfast?” Marylou asked me. It was Saturday, and I guessed that she didn’t have to work weekends. “I’ll bring one of my brothers. Him smart like bull, strong like fox.” She grunted out this last, in a movie Indian voice. She had a sense of humor, too.

I nodded and yawned, and then looked out the window. The eagle was back, sitting near the top of a tall pine tree. He was a ‘he’ eagle. I just knew. He needed a name; I’ll have to come up with something. “I’m tired,” I said to the Wolf pack. “Can we leave soon?”

“Where are you staying? I’ll pick you up at 7:30.” Great. Marylou was an early riser.

We sorted out the details.

...

I woke the next morning at 6:30, thanks to the alarm clock in my head. My Cowboys jersey covered me from neck to mid-thigh and I beat Wolf to my door. “G’morning,” I said as I passed him on my way to the bathroom. I didn’t shower today, but I was better after I scraped off the left-over dreck that Tony’s pizza left on my teeth. I wriggled into a pair of regular jeans and a T. I swapped my toilet kit for a sweatshirt from my room and went out to see what’s for breakfast.

The entire Wolf pack was just settling down at the table. There was a huge pile of scrambled eggs and some meat. There was also a new face at breakfast: a younger woman. Dark Wolf gestured at her. “My granddaughter, Antonia, has provided us with this repast. We like medium rare for our venison.”

Antonia introduced herself, “Hi, I’m Toni. Toni Sky Lark.”

Dark Wolf disagreed: “Antonia is a beautiful name.” The woman just smiled, and helped herself to some venison. I poured myself a glass of milk and dug in.

After a while, my Wolf broke a new subject. “White Owl, you’re going to be here – how long?”

[Before you ask, I have no idea on the required duration of your stay.]

“Uhm ... I’d guess a week or two?” I replied.

“As I suspected. There is lots for you to do here.” He continued, “Desert Flower and I will return to Texas, then. We have some business to conclude on the 28^th of March in Las Vegas. Then we’ll fly back and pick you up. You have some projects to monitor in Arizona.”

“Busy woman, you are,” Dark Wolf said. “And you, Crying Wolf. It seems you’re going to be floating about like a bee, pollinating here and then there. Are you never going to give me a grandchild? Antonia could use a cousin, you know.”

Wolf laughed at this old nag, “I thought your time would be occupied with your new adopted relative.”

My head jerked up at this. I was adopted? Not formally, nor legally. But that could be good. I liked Dark Wolf and the Shoshone I’d met, so far. I didn’t accept the Chief’s attitude toward women, but I’d work on that.