The Thunder Keeper Read Online Free

in the last month. That satisfy you? I got Sherlock Holmes on TV.”
    Father John told the chief to go back to his mystery, then he set the receiver in the cradle. There were people walking around this evening, settling down to a pizza maybe, watching TV, who were about to be killed. A man had already been killed. An Indian. Sooner or later somebody on the res was bound to start asking questions.
    He planned to visit the arts-and-crafts fair tomorrow anyway. Now he thought the fair would be a good opportunity to catch up with the latest news on the moccasin telegraph.

3
    G reat Plains Hall rose out of the prairie ahead. Father John had heard the drums as soon as he’d come around the bend on Seventeen Mile Road. The rhythmic thuds reverberated through the sounds of “Quando me’n vo” coming from the tape player wedged in the front seat of the Toyota pickup. The thuds grew stronger. He reached down and pressed the off button, allowing the beat of the drums to fill up the cab.
    On the horizon, the Wind River mountains, azure blue and green with the recent rains, poked into the clouds, but patches of sunshine lay over the flat, open plains that ran into the distances on either side of the road. The air was cool, tinged with both the coming warmth of summer and the promise of more rain.
    Father John made a right turn onto the dirt road that ran past the senior citizens’ center to Great Plains Hall. The field in front was filled with vehicles parked at odd angles. Old trucks and pickups next to shiny SUVs and sedans. The Arapaho arts-and-crafts fair always drew a mixture of Indians from the res and white people from the adjacent towns of Riverton and Lander.
    He parked next to a brown pickup as rusted and dented as the Toyota and made his way around the vehiclestoward the hall, his boots sinking into the soggy ground. The faintest roll of thunder in the distance mingled with the sound of the drums.
    The hall was packed, and a crowd of brown and white faces moved along the tables that had been arranged against the side walls. He could see the jewelry on the table just inside the door—beaded necklaces, bracelets, earrings: a white woman holding up a hand mirror and staring at the beaded earrings that dangled from her ears, nodding to the grandmother behind the table, handing the old woman a few bills.
    Across the hall, the drummers and singers sat huddled around a large drum. The steady thuds bounced off the cement walls, punctuating the hum of voices. A group of kids dressed in dance regalia was lining up alongside the musicians, their shiny shirts and dresses, feathered headdresses, and bustles flashing through the crowd.
    The smells of fresh coffee and fried bread permeated the air. In the far corner was the food table, and Father John caught sight of his assistant, Father Don, chatting with several Arapahos, tilting his head sideways—that way of his when he was listening—sipping from a Styrofoam cup, then throwing his head back and laughing. Other Indians started crowding around. The man seemed completely at ease, as if this was home. Elena could be wrong. Father John hoped so. People here liked the new assistant, and he liked them. The man was good with people.
    Father John started along the tables, stopping to chat with the Arapahos seated on folding chairs on the other side. Old people, kids, men and women in their twenties and thirties—the artists and craftspeople who had beaded the jewelry and vests, painted the shirts and dresses and small drums, sewn the Arapaho star quilts, and fashionedthe bows and arrows and coup sticks, just as their grandparents had done in the Old Time.
    On one table were several oil paintings that captured the beauty and loneliness of the plains and the hidden valleys of the Wind River mountains. As beautiful as any paintings of the area he’d seen. He gave a thumbs-up to Stone Yellowman, the young man watching him from the other side of the table,