The Ghost Walker Read Online Free Page B

popped.”
    “Ghost did it,” Leonard said.
    *    *    *
    Father John retraced his steps to the priests’ residence under a sky the color of blue-tinted glass. The snow sparkled in the early morning sun. He tried to push thoughts of the body to the edge of his mind by mentallyticking off the day’s schedule: bills to pay, phone calls to return, meetings to arrange, people to counsel. He should call one of the parish priests to find out about last night’s meeting. Scratch that idea, he decided. The bishop’s representative would eventually call him with the news plus a reprimand for not attending.
    What he did want to do was drive out to Joe Deppert’s place to see how the old man was doing after his surgery. And Banner expected him at Fort Washakie to meet with the local FBI agent. Any report of a dead body on the reservation meant the FBI would be involved; major crimes in Indian country fell in FBI jurisdiction. But how the day went depended on when Jake Littlehorse returned the Toyota.
    He could smell bacon frying as he came up the stairs to the concrete stoop in front of the priests’ residence. He piled his parka and the rest of his winter gear on the bench inside the entry as Walks-on shuffled down the hallway, tail wagging, a red Frisbee in his mouth. “Later,” Father John said, patting the dog’s head before following the aroma into the kitchen.
    Father Peter sat at the table, his head bent into the
Wind River Gazette.
The old man’s frizzled white hair wrapped like a muff around a circle of pink scalp. Elena was at the stove scrambling eggs and tending wide slabs of bacon in a pan. Little dots of grease spouted into the air.
    Elena had been the housekeeper long before Father John had heard of St. Francis Mission. With her round face and stocky build, the old woman had the look of the Cheyenne, or the
Shyela
, as the Arapahos called the people who had traveled with them across the plains. She had once told him how her grandfather had been a Cheyenne dog soldier. When he saw the beautiful Arapaho girl who came with her family to the Cheyenne villageto trade, he had approached her father and asked permission to marry her. Her father had agreed because it was a dog soldier who asked. After they were married, they had lived with her people, and the dog soldier became one of the
Hinono eino.
    “I’ll have my eggs fried this morning.” Father John bent over the old woman, unable to resist teasing her a little.
    She scooped the scrambled eggs onto a plate and laid a couple of pieces of bacon alongside, flashing him the kind of exasperated look his mother had turned on him when he was a kid. “Behave yourself,” she said, handing him the plate, “or that ghost’ll shoot his ghost arrow at you and give you a big pain.”
    Another second, and Elena had placed a mug of coffee on the table, scooped up the empty dishes in front of Father Peter, and sauntered over to the sink. Father John set his plate down and took the vacant chair across from the old priest, still engrossed in the
Gazette.
Father Peter was the temporary assistant at St. Francis, but temporary was beginning to look more and more permanent. There weren’t a lot of Jesuits clamoring for assignments on an Indian reservation in the middle of Wyoming.
    When Father John first came to St. Francis, Father Peter had been the superior. But four years ago, a heart attack had sent the old man into retirement. There he was last fall at Ignatius Center, immersed in his beloved Shakespeare, when the Provincial had called him back.
    Now their roles were reversed. Father John was the superior, responsible for operating the mission and looking after his elderly assistant. A couple of mornings when Father Peter hadn’t appeared at breakfast, he had pounded on the old man’s bedroom door, fearful of what he might find.
    Father Peter pushed the newspaper toward him. “You made the front page, my boy.”
    Father John glanced at the headline: PRIEST