Chapter 1
Sioux Falls
South Dakota
April 1891
The buffalo charged straight at Kate.
She'd never seen a buffalo except in photographs. Then grouped together, the animals had looked small and slow-moving against the wide expanse of prairie and sky whitened from overexposure. This one was a huge hump of brown, matted fur, black eyes, black nose, black horns, and flared nostrils blowing a fog ahead of itself. This one was close enough to smell and coming closer. And worse it was dragging an Indian.
Kate steadied her camera against the fence railing and worked quickly-aperture, focus, slide the plate in . . .
Townswomen grabbed their children and ran. The wild west exhibitioner who owned the buffalo, climbed the fence, whip in hand. Other Indians leaped to the fence top whooping and hollering. All around people exclaimed the insanity:
"He'll be killed."
"Damned crazy Indian . . ."
"Fool thing. What does he . . ."
"I've never seen . . ."
But Kate had seen. She had watched a tremor rack the Indian's body as he threw himself against the startled wide-eyed bull in what could only be called an embrace-his fingers clawing the shaggy mane the way hers now clutched the fence top. And she knew . . . the Indian was not crazy. She couldn't explain it. Sometimes she saw things like that with a clarity that invaded her dreams, the images burned into her soul, and sometimes when she was lucky, she captured them on the gelatin of her photographic plates. She lived for those moments.
The Indian, a thin, crooked-armed man, past the prime of his life, threw back his head and sang out sharp and high-pitched, "Hey, ya na hah . . ." or some gibberish like that, and she thought again: maybe, this was crazy. Then it happened-the perfect orchestration of light and shadow, form and frame, even the angle of the sunlight on the dust roiling up under the beast. How many chances did one get to capture the image of an elderly Sioux warrior hugging a buffalo? She clicked the shutter.
Then the animal slammed against the opposite side of the fence where she still clung. The force was enough to split the top two rails. One broken rail punched her in the stomach and sent her flying. She threw her arms around her camera to protect it from the fall and landed flat on her back, the wind knocked out, her own focus blurred. She couldn't immediately catch her breath, and her dizziness grew. Still she worked her fingers over her camera feeling its various parts, checking for damage. Thankfully the camera seemed to be all right. That was about as important to her as breathing. Good cameras were hard to replace, in her case, next to impossible.
Just as she was on the verge of losing consciousness, she became aware of her husband leaning over her, shaking her. He was a graying, slightly rotund man with short, wide fingers that were now digging into her shoulder. His vocabulary included a range of grunts she'd learned to interpret with great accuracy. The one escaping him now was embarrassed frustration, but with a slightly higher pitch than usual-aggravated, embarrassed frustration, she decided, adding it to her catalogue.
Kate knew that Bill Burke considered her hand-held "snaps" a nuisance, not to mention the fact that his first wife would never have gotten herself flat on her back in the middle of a public fairground. But Kate had never promised ladylike decorum and, in general, doubted he had any notion what he was getting into when he asked her to marry him. Thus his ever-expanding range of non-verbal expressions. The fact that she could amuse herself with that observation, served to assure her that she was all right and not about to pass-out. Then, finally catching her breath, she sat up.
Bill grunted irritation, a second grunt of impatience; his fingers were still dug into her shoulder. He reached around with his other arm to steady his own camera atop a tripod. He had been using the open space of the fairgrounds to pose a picture that recreated a scene from the recent Ghost Dance Uprising. Nearby tents were being erected for a wild west show. Both activities had attracted plenty of onlookers. Then several buffalo were unloaded from a train causing a commotion. No, she thought, not the buffalo. It was the Indian who'd caused the disturbance. Seeing the buffalo, one old Sioux warrior had jumped to the top of the fence and then thrown himself around the neck of the largest.
Kate closed her eyes, remembering that, and heard the bustle of Sioux Falls in the background-the noises of the coming age-the hum of the electric generator on the opposite side of the river, the clack-clack of a trolley crossing the bridge, a factory whistle. It might have given the impression of being settled, almost urbane, if she hadn't known that only four months earlier the Ghost Dance Uprising had ended with the death of three hundred Indians and twenty or more soldiers at nearby Wounded Knee Creek. Now soldiers, Indians, reporters, lawyers, photographers and interested individuals from all over the country had converged for the trial of Plenty Horses-including this wild west show complete with seventeen buffalo.
The idea of trying Plenty Horses struck her as odd every time she paused long enough to think about it. He'd killed an army officer. No one disputed that fact. But why was that one killing deserving of formal justice and none of the hundreds of others? she wondered. Obviously the young Indian had crossed some fine legal line beyond her comprehension, but not beyond interest. The trial had sparked national attention.
Her dog, a large, red mongrel named Homer, pushed his nose into her face and licked her chin. She opened her eyes and rubbed his neck in the spots she knew he liked while waiting for the last of her dizziness to pass. He whimpered little sounds of pleasure.
Then her husband's fingers dug into her shoulder again, his hand caught her under her arm. "Get up," he told her. "Get up. Soldiers are coming."
It wasn't "soldiers" who caused the tautness she recognized in his voice. It was one particular soldier, Colonel Elliot George, an angular man with thin lips, deep-set eyes, and a manner so commanding she'd known her husband to break into a sweat just talking about him. The third time Bill said, "Come on, get up," she took his hand and pulled herself to her feet. Just in time. Suddenly the Colonel and half a dozen soldiers rode up on horseback, swirling a new cloud of dust across the fairgrounds. They immediately took positions around the corral, their guns drawn.
Kate turned and half-hunched her shoulders round her camera hoping to protect it from some of the newly raised grit, and at the same time gave a quick glance in the direction of the broken fence wondering about the Indian. Several men were bent over his form as it lay just inside the corral. She hoped he wasn't hurt too badly. All around the rest of the townsfolk were retreating from the fairgrounds as the Colonel ordered the Indians "rounded-up."
That got Bill. He stomped in the Colonel's direction, one hand raised, as he shouted to the man on horseback, "Now how am I supposed to get my picture if you send my Indians packing?" Bill gestured at his camera and props.
The Colonel turned his horse in a tight circle seemingly taking in the whole situation for the first time. Then he barked back, "Take it outside town. This trial's enough trouble. We don't need more reasons to have Indians wandering the streets of Sioux Falls."
Any excuse to hassle Indians, Kate thought, but kept that thought to herself. She hadn't liked the Colonel from the first time she met him. On that occasion, he'd barked back at Bill, "She won't last two weeks." He meant Kate, and she'd lasted all winter-stuck to it the whole time Bill and the Colonel and his soldiers were out on the prairie chasing ghost dancers. Not that she'd gotten any respect for that fortitude. But she had gotten some fine photographs which is what mattered to her.
Suddenly Kate's thirteen-year-old Indian serving girl, named Mary by the nuns at the reservation school, ran up and ducked behind Kate's skirts as if she thought that would hide her from the Colonel and his soldiers. Kate handed her a box of photographic plates that needed to be kept out of the dirt and whispered, "He doesn't mean you."
The Colonel returned to his soldiering, barking orders left and right. Bill swore quietly and then began packing his camera, other gear, and stage props. No photograph today. His Indian subjects were being marched away, three mounted soldiers at their rear. The soldiers he'd hired for his tableaux were now scrambling to mount their own horses and join in executing the Colonel's orders. Playacting one moment, drawing their guns for real the next, Kate didn't pretend to understand things like that. She folded her camera, and was pulling her cape over her shoulders when the Colonel swung around and halted his horse directly in front of her.
"I'll have that picture."
She was so startled, she wasn't sure what he meant. Then the realization of it spread over her like a blush. Why? she wondered. He'd never shown an interest in any other pictures she'd taken all the time she and Bill had traveled with him and his Seventh Cavalry documenting events being called "the end of Indian wars." Why did he care now? It was just a silly picture of an Indian hugging a buffalo, or at least she expected that was the way he would think of it.
His horse, heaving short breaths, was standing so close, she felt its edgy energy and found it hard to raise her eyes from the animal to the man above. When she did, she caught an unmistakable look of practiced arrogance. Colonel George plainly enjoyed keeping the horse under him wide eyed and quivering in nervous anticipation. He expected the same of her, a quick, quivering compliance. What's more, that's all he cared about, she realized. The picture meant nothing. He hadn't seen the way it had posed itself before her camera, the action coming straight at her such that she'd likely stopped even the flip of the Indian's hair. He just wanted to prove he could have it, the way he could march Indians in any direction he decided.
Kate tried feigned innocence. "What picture?"
"The one I hear you took of a fool Indian."
Kate swallowed. How long had it been since a Sioux warrior had seen a live buffalo? Ten years? Fifteen? To her way of thinking that image captured more of this time and place than all the pictures her husband had posed in the last eight months-another thought she didn't give voice. In fact, she didn't give voice to any thought. She was too awash in indignation to speak.
The Colonel leaned over his saddle horn bringing his face closer to hers. "I don't think anyone needs a picture of a drunken Indian, do you?"
The Indian in her picture hadn't been drunk. She was sure of that. There'd been too much knowing awe in his face as he hung to that shaggy beast, like embracing an old friend. She gave another quick glance over her shoulder. Several men were still bent over him. At least he wasn't dead. A body would have simply been carried off by now. She was glad for that. She'd seen quite enough of dead Indians lately.
Then her husband nudged her from behind. "Give him the plate." Of course he wouldn't side with her. Bill's business dealings with the Colonel included paying him a percentage of every photograph he sold in exchange for the privilege of being allowed places off-limits to other photographers. Given the interest this Ghost Dance Uprising had generated in the eastern press, that had proved a lucrative arrangement for both of them. Trouble was, the Colonel could work out that same arrangement with most any photographer, and there were plenty of them around. She considered all she owed Bill. Not trouble.
"Give him the plate." Bill nudged her again.
"Yes, give me the plate," the Colonel repeated. He'd straightened atop his horse and let a grin spread across his face. He thought he had her.
Why didn't he ask her to pluck out an eye and hand it over? No big thing. She had another eye. But he didn't have her. She knew what to do. Still she hesitated. If the Colonel didn't know that her plateholder held two plates, Bill did. Working the mechanism at the back of her camera, she chanced it. She slid out the blank, not the picture, and offered it up.
The rest happened quickly. The Colonel took the plate, broke it over his knee, and tossed it back into the dust in front of her. Typical, she thought. If there had been an image on that plate, it was ruined the moment it was removed from her plateholder, but the Colonel was a man who didn't stop at ruin. He ground things into the dust.
The Indian girl bent and immediately began picking up the shards. Her dog growled. The Colonel turned his horse, paused, as if he intended to say something else, but didn't. He rode off instead.
She felt her husband relax. "You know better than to take pictures of Indians. Stick to your other pretties."
She made no reply. Picking up her skirts and calling her dog, she stomped off the fairgrounds.
***
Bill Burke watched Kate leave with such a mix of fearful fondness his stomach churned. She'd slipped the Colonel the wrong plate. He'd watched and said nothing. He couldn't believe he'd allowed something like that. It was more than foolish; it was dangerous, but that's how much he wanted to please Kate. Not that it helped. No matter what he did, it was never enough to please that woman. His silence hadn't pleased her, he knew. He supposed she had expected him to speak up for her, confront the Colonel. She was that young.
He felt his pockets looking for his roll of liver pills. He hadn't experienced heart palpitations and stomach upset before marrying Kate.
Looking up again, he caught the way she kicked her skirts out of her way as she climbed aboard a trolley headed for town, her camera tucked under one arm, her cape flapping off her other shoulder, her dog and Indian girl at her heel. She was a short, small-boned bundle of energy topped with such a wild profusion of curly red hair she somehow never looked entirely tidy. Didn't matter. Anyone meeting her was immediately captured by her bright green eyes and wry smile. He'd watched how people looked at her and then looked at him wondering how they'd ever gotten together. Sometimes he caught himself marveling at her laugh and his own good fortune. Then she'd do some fool thing like almost letting a bull buffalo trample her. If that fence had given away completely . . .
He found it was better not to think about things like that. Most of the time he felt like an oaf in her presence and tried not to think about that either. He was too old for her. Old and a bit too fleshy and a lot too dowdy. She was the daughter of his longest and best friend. He'd literally watched her grow up, develop. He knew damned well she'd have never married him if she hadn't needed to escape a bad situation. He'd been familiar and conveniently available, that's all.
He popped the pill and felt its bitterness sting his tongue before it slipped down his throat.
Somebody had to keep Kate's exuberance in bounds. She had no idea the nastiness of this Indian business, for example. He couldn't let her meddle in that, alienate the Colonel. He might as well slit his own throat, when it came to his business. Nobody was going to respect him for doing that, not even Kate. She, at least, understood the necessity of "livelihood." He just wished she didn't always force him to act more like a father than a husband.
Bill popped a second pill and crushed the empty package in his left hand. Since coming to Sioux Falls he'd been going through three packages a week of these nasty liver pills. When they were out on the prairie with the troops, Kate had mostly kept to herself, Then the only questions put to him were friendly gibes about "having his bride along." Nothing serious. One look at her and every man out there knew why he "wanted his bride along." But since they came to Sioux Falls, the Colonel had begun to question why she was always taking pictures. He'd probably assumed she was amusing herself before. Now it bothered him. "Why doesn't she go shopping?" the Colonel had complained recently, "like other wives?"
Bill shook his head. His father had warned him about "expensive women." His father had meant the kind who needed baubles and fine clothes-the kind that had to "go shopping." They were the worst, he'd told Bill. "Suck the life right out of you," his father used to say. Bill tossed the pill wrapper into the dust. His father should have met Kate. A woman with a passion was worse than the "expensive kind."
***
On the other side of town, Kate stepped off the trolley and straightened the cape over her shoulder. Then she started up Phillips Street on her way to Tony Amato's photography studio. To her annoyance, her dog kept up a chorus of guttural noises as they moved along. He alternated those with rumbled warning growls whenever someone on the boardwalk moved too close. She told him to shush.
She was already thinking how she would develop and print the plate of the Indian and the buffalo. The problem was always how to hold the subtle spectrum of grays. Contrast defined a photograph, but too much contrast resulted in sooty shadows and chalky high values.
Her dog was still growling. She tried shushing him again, but Homer wouldn't be quieted. She looked around, saw nothing, continued. She stopped, looked around, still saw nothing. The third time she repeated that sequence, she saw the objects of Homer's unease-two Indian women working their way up the street on the opposite side.
She stopped and gave a glance to her girl, Mary, a young reservation child who'd been to Catholic mission school but still dressed mostly native. She was staring at the ground. Kate looked right and left and back to the trolley stop. The women were obviously keeping Kate in sight. Had they been waiting for her, knowing she frequently came to Amato's studio?
Her dog growled lower, longer.
She didn't understand the sudden rush of fear that gripped her except that there were rumors everywhere. Rumors of remote hostilities, secret ceremonies, other strange doings among the Indians that the Army hadn't yet quelled despite their protestations to the opposite. The very air of Sioux Falls rustled with such tales as if belying the safety of a city with five railroads and a new four-story hotel advertising a telephone in every room. She shook herself. She wasn't going to be part of the local paranoia. The town was in no danger. She'd been rubbing elbows with the "slayers of Custer" for some time now, and, in her opinion, there had never been any danger from them. This whole uprising wouldn't have amounted to anything, if not for the Colonel. She'd watched him repeatedly turn a bit of excitement into a full-blown confrontation, the way he had at the fairgrounds. It made him a big man, kept his name in the newspapers. Of course, as her husband was quick to point out, no one was asking her opinion, and supposedly she didn't understand such things anyway. Indian troubles couldn't be allowed to fester, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, he'd told her.
At first, she'd considered the possibility that he might be right. She'd never been "west" before coming with him. But after months of watching the Colonel and his men, her unease had grown and broadened as a slow widening arc of discomfort she couldn't quite name. There was something wrong with all of it. Very wrong.
Lies, she decided, slowly, quietly forming her own opinion as she took her pictures and hid them away. It was all lies. And lies based on lies that made it into the press and gotten believed. Needed justification for sending in the soldiers, she knew, but couldn't condone.
She was a photographer. She'd trained herself to see, and from what Kate had observed. ghost dancing had never posed a threat to anyone. It had been nothing but a strange religious hysteria-a messianic movement that had swept through the tribes offering hope to the hopeless. Diseased, defeated, hungry, and disillusioned by the government's failure to keep its promises, proud nomadic peoples newly confined to reservations began to believe they could dance their troubles away.
Believing in the visions of an Indian prophet who promised them a better future, they had gathered in open spaces and drummed and danced and fasted hoping to hasten the coming of those "better days." Some feel into trances and reported talking with their ancestors who, like the prophet, promised them the buffalo would return. And the people believed and danced and danced and danced until the local white population who equated all Indian dancing with "war dances," demanded that they stop, that the soldiers come and "subdue them." And the soldiers came and "subdued" the Indians-many of them right into their graves.
All that had happened because the Indians had danced until the "ghosts," their ancestors came and gave them comfort. Nothing more. But it was dangerous to speak that truth, Kate knew. Almost no one did.
Homer growled again. The Indian women now crossed the street, coming directly toward her. She put her hand on Homer's collar and commanded him to be still. His growl grew quieter, but not silent.
The Indian women sidled around to Kate's side opposite her dog and approached carefully. Both were wrapped in government issue blankets draped over long calico skirts. Only the moccasins were traditional. The younger woman's hair flowed over her shoulders in what appeared to Kate an unruly mess. But her face was scrubbed, her cheeks highly colored, her eyes dark and quick. More of the older woman's face showed, her hair having been pulled back and braided. The skin around her mouth was lined.
But when they got to Kate, they didn't stop. They passed by offering her a beckoning gesture so slight she almost missed it. Then they stepped off the boardwalk and disappeared into an alley.
Kate paused. She glanced around and thought twice about following them. Contrary to her husband's most common complaint of her, she did use caution sometimes.
She took Mary's shoulder. "Who are those women?"
The girl shrugged, said nothing.
Kate glanced up and down the street again. Then she stepped into the alley.
At first she didn't see the women. She continued down the passageway, past the back entrance to a barber shop, past a coal chute and several garbage bins. The light was dim from the closeness of the buildings. A cat started, hissed, and scurried under a back step. Kate grabbed Homer before he could give chase. Then hearing another noise, she whirled.
They emerged from shadow and while still at arm's length, the older women pulled a leather pocket pouch from between the folds of her skirt, unhooked it from her belt, and extended it to Kate. She motioned a second time with a gesture unmistakably meaning that Kate was to take the bag. She did. It was about six inches square with decorative fringe and what Kate recognized as an intricate quillwork design. This was a rare piece. Most Indian women had given up the more difficult porcupine quillwork for stitching beads. She turned it over. The back included a tuft of hair. Kate hoped it wasn't human. Kate had always been short and slight. These Sioux women of the plains towered over her. She looked up catching the shy glance of the older woman as well as the wide brown eyes of the younger one. They nodded in unison and the younger said, "It's beautiful?"
Kate nodded and again glanced at her hired girl hoping for some helpful hint. She got none.
"Woman-Who-Dreams makes it special for you," the younger woman said in hushed, almost reverential tones.
Kate let her eye follow the quilled pattern-geometric lines, bands, bright colors. Engaging and subtle, yet powerful in its ability to draw the eye deep and then deeper into the design. Kate's head swirled again. For an instant she wondered if she'd been more injured at the fairgrounds than she thought.
"Woman-Who-Dreams makes this special for you," the older woman repeated. "She knows you have Double-Woman in you."
"Double-what?" Kate looked up.
The younger woman was now nodding vigorously while the older woman continued, "Those who know Double-Woman see her not only in the dreamtime, but in the shadow the wind makes when it passes over the prairie. Grass and Double-Woman know things. Important things."
"You will come to our camp?" the younger woman now asked.
Kate shook her head. What was this about?
The older woman stepped closer. "You are invited. It is an honored invitation."
That explanation was hardly enough to answer Kate's mounting confusion.
The older woman fingered again between the folds of her skirt and pulled out another pocket bag. Without removing it from her belt, she indicated the finely worked design showing it to Kate. It was plainer, but still eye engaging. Now the younger woman did the same, pulling out a pouch that hung from her belt and showing it.
Kate thought she understood. They wanted her to come to their camp and buy handiwork from them. But she had no money. She said, "It's beautiful, but I'm afraid I can't." She offered the pouch back to them.
The older woman shook her head slowly. "It is made special for you, a gift."
Now Kate's confusion was complete. She couldn't imagine why these women would want to give her such an item. It was valuable and there were at least a dozen relic hunters in town willing to pay for it. What's more, it was common knowledge that the government gave these Indians barely enough to eat, less when there was trouble as now.
"It's beautiful," Kate repeated. "But you cannot mean to give it to me."
"Are you not the red-haired woman with the red dog?" the younger asked.
Kate nodded. She could hardly deny the description.
"Then it is for you, and so is the invitation. Day after tomorrow, the women who quill . . ." she paused and again pulled her bag forward for Kate to see. "The women who quill," she repeated, "wish you to be their guest on the south side of Indian camp."
Kate shook her head. Indian camp was a temporary cluster of teepees set up at the edge of town to accommodate the Indians who'd come to Sioux Falls for the trial, many of them witnesses who would be testifying, all of them guarded by the Colonel's soldiers.
"Woman-Who-Dreams calls for you," the older woman intoned in a voice deeply mellow. "You must come."
"I can't," Kate said and again tried to return the quillwork. More than the Colonel and his troops, a white woman, respectfully married, did not wander out of town and into an Indian camp by herself, not if she expected to come back with any decency left to her name. And since Kate already lived at the edge of what was considered respectable for a woman, she had even more reason to avoid this, or she just might find herself completely outside polite society. It was a delicate balance she'd chosen for herself.
"I'm sorry, but I can't," she repeated.
Homer growled.
The two women stepped back, but still refused the quillwork.
The younger woman looked to the dog, then back to Kate. "You must come. If you cannot come day after tomorrow, then please, you must come soon after that. It is honored, important."
Homer growled once more, and the women fled.
Kate looked at the pocket bag again and shook her head. Then she glanced up and down the alley to see who might have minded this strange encounter and caught her hired girl, Mary, crossing herself.
Kate Burke is known as "the red-haired woman with the red dog and the big camera." Focused on what she wants, she never blinks.
Bill Burke is a petty schemer and traveling photographer. He knows Kate married him only because he promised to take her West.
Colonel Elliot George is the hero who "ended Indian wars forever." He will be the nation's hero even if he has to kill Mrs. Burke to cover up the gruesome truth.
Woman-Who-Dreams is the last leader of the Sioux quillworkers, whose dream art is dying. Long ago she saw a vision of "a red-haired woman with a red dog." She will need courage to entice Kate to her destiny.
Powers T. Nock is the odd but charismatic lawyer with the impossible case. His client, an Indian, shot an army officer in front of witness. He uses the trial to mount an assult on the nation's conscience and tops that with an assault on Kate's heart.
Richard Houston, the son of a wealthy eastern businessman, was inspired by Kate's father to became a photographer. Disappointing his own father. Kate has an even better eye and no fear. He makes it his business to save her from the dangers she can't see.