The Dream Stalker Read Online Free

than in punishing them.
    “Gianelli’s welcome to this sucker,” Banner was saying. “I got my hands full just keepin’ the Indians and them nuclear activist screwballs from tearing each other’s guts out. We probably got a couple hundred outsiders on the rez tyin’ up traffic and makin’ nuisancesout of themselves with a lot of protesting and demonstrating.”
    “That explains the traffic,” Father John said, more to himself than to the police chief. Outsiders here to protest plans to store nuclear waste on the reservation. The tribal council—the business council, as the Arapahos called it—wanted to build a storage facility on the Legeau ranch in an isolated valley in the middle of the reservation, between the Arapaho and Shoshone communities. Father John had just finished reading the environmental report tonight when the cowboy called.
    “Either folks love the idea of storing nuclear waste here or they hate it.” The chief shrugged again, as if nothing made sense. “Folks that love it see all the jobs and money it’s gonna bring in. Millions of dollars, they say. Other folks don’t think it’s somethin’ Arapahos oughtta be a party to, no matter how much money’s involved. Jobs either. One thing’s for sure, all them environmental protesters aren’t gonna change the mind of any Indian. All they’ll do is stir things up. Could get real interesting at the public hearing tomorrow night.” Banner slid back the cuff of his jacket and glanced at the luminescent face of his watch. “Make that tonight.”
    Pushing open the door, the chief started to lift himself out into the drizzle. Then he leaned back inside, a look of fatherly concern on his face. “Why don’t you go on home, John. Get yourself a couple hours’ sleep. I guarantee Gianelli’s gonna be on your doorstep first thing in the morning.”

3
    F ather John awoke to a loud growling noise like the sound of a truck bearing down a mountain. It took him a moment to realize it was a chain saw. Leonard Bizzel, the caretaker, was probably pruning dead branches from the cottonwoods that sheltered the grounds of St. Francis Mission.
    Sunshine burst past the half-drawn blinds at the bedroom window and washed over the yellow walls, the faded brown carpet. The sunshine surprised him. He’d been dreaming of rain. Rain pattering on the tin roof of the old log cabin as the cowboy struggled to sit up, struggled to tell him something.
    He’d slept badly, and a dull ache crept across his shoulders and made its way up the back of his neck into his head. It had been close to four o’clock before he’d dropped into bed, every bone in his body screaming for sleep. But his mind had kept rerunning the telephone conversation, like a cassette player replaying the same tape, trying to fix the caller’s words, to understand how a man—a drifter, perhaps, a drunk, it didn’t matter—how he had ended up shot to death in a deserted log cabin. And hovering in the background, like some silent witness, was his own sense of failure.
    Now the hands on the alarm clock on the bedside table stood at 8:27. The day had started without him. Leonard was already tackling the spring cleanup on themission grounds; Father Geoff would have said the early Mass and put in a half hour at the office; and, judging by the sound of water swishing through the pipes, Elena, the housekeeper at St. Francis for more years than anyone could remember, was in the basement carrying out her self-imposed task of making sure no washable items in the priests’ residence escaped a frequent encounter with the washing machine.
    He swung out of bed. In twenty minutes he was showered and dressed in a clean, stiff pair of blue jeans and a long-sleeved plaid shirt worn into comfort. He shaved quickly, hardly noticing the gray hair mixing with the red at his temples, the little lines at the edges of his eyes. He would be forty-eight in a couple of weeks, but he still stood close to six feet four and was as