Hawk Moon Read online

  HAWK MOON

  Ed Gorman

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  © 2012 Ed Gorman

  Copy-edited by: Patricia Lee Macomber

  Cover Design By: David Dodd

  Partial cover images provided courtesy of:

  Joseph Fritsch -- http://jsf1.deviantart.com/

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  OTHER CROSSROAD PRESS PRODUCTS BY ED GORMAN

  Novels:

  Nightmare Child

  Serpent's Kiss

  Shadow Games

  Showdown

  Robert Payne Series

  Voodoo Moon

  Harlot's Moon

  Sam McCain Series

  The Day the Music Died

  The Jack Dwyer Series:

  Murder in the Wings

  The Autumn Dead

  A Cry of Shadows

  Novellas:

  The End of It All

  Cast in Dark Waters (with Tom Piccirilli)

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  To the two best friends a writer ever had Rich Chizmar and Kara Tipton

  I would like to thank the brilliant Cherokee novelist and poet Robert Conley for reading the manuscript and suggesting key changes in the material dealing with Native Americans; and Bill Pronzini, who also read the manuscript and made several excellent suggestions; and, as always, Larry Segriff for all his work on the various drafts of this novel.

  Note: There is no La Costa tribe. Similarly, I have taken some real liberties with Iowa geography.

  E.G.

  "If you have not lived through something, it is not true."

  Kabir — 16th Century

  PART ONE

  Prologue

  Barbaric as the practice was, few Indian agents tried to stop it, reasoning that it only proved the general perception of white people that Indians were indeed savages and belonged on reservations.

  Professor David Cromwell's Indian Journal

  June 3, 1887

  Anna Tolan was helping her father shear sheep when she heard the woman's cry on the wind across the cornfield.

  Anna looked up, her grip loosening on the sheep.

  "Darn it, honey, hold 'im still," her father said.

  Anna redoubled her grip on old Henry, the eldest of all the sheep, as her father used the clippers with quick and nimble skill.

  "You hear it, Pa?"

  "Hear what?"

  "Some woman crying."

  "Huh-uh."

  "I did. I honest did."

  And then the cry came again and this time her father heard it and looked up.

  "Be darned," he said. "It is a woman."

  "She sounds bad, Pa."

  "She sure does."

  And with that, he let go of old Henry, who took the opportunity to wobble up on his legs and teeter away to freedom.

  Pa stood up, too.

  It was a sunny afternoon on the Iowa farm, hogs feeding in the yard, chickens squawking in the shed, milk cows dozing in the barn. Later that afternoon, once he was done with the shearing, Pa would go back to planting.

  But now he looked worried.

  "Maybe you'd better go inside and help you Ma, Anna," he said.

  "Aw, Pa, you said you wouldn't say that anymore after I turned ten, and I'll be ten in two weeks."

  He looked down and grinned at her and then swept her up in his arms and kissed her sweet freckled face. "That's what I said, did I?"

  "Uh-huh. And you said it at the supper table where Ma heard you and everything."

  "Well, then I guess I better keep my word, huh?"

  She grinned. "I guess you'd better."

  He took her hand and they set off.

  Took them half an hour to find the woman. She was on the other side of the cornfield, lying on her belly by the creek.

  They could tell right away she was an Indian. The black hair was in braids. The dress and leggings were animal skin.

  If she heard them, she gave no sign.

  She just kept splashing water on her face with her hands. And sobbing. Of course they couldn't see her face. They were still behind her.

  Anna had never heard a person cry like that before. It was frightening.

  There were shade trees and sunflowers and cottontails and butterflies here, and it should have been all lazy and beautiful the way things got in the middle of the afternoon.

  But there was no way they could be beautiful with her sobbing that way.

  Pa signaled for Anna to wait there.

  He went up closer to the woman.

  Spoke to her.

  And that was when she got slowly up and turned around.

  And that was when Anna clamped her hands over her eyes.

  She could not abide seeing the woman's face.

  Covered in blood it was, as were the woman's hands and forearms, all streaming from the dark and bloody hole in the middle of her face.

  Somebody had savagely cut off the woman's nose.

  "You run back to the farm and be with your Ma now, Anna," Pa said.

  She knew that this particular tone of voice brooked no argument. None whatsoever. No amount of pleading or freckle-faced grinning could change Pa's mind when he sounded this way.

  Anna stole a last horrified look at the Indian woman's face and then took off running back to the farm and her Ma.

  The Indian wars were over now In Iowa, the various tribes had sold their land to the white government for what amounted to eleven cents an acre. All the tribes were scattered to distant reservations now — all but two, which had insisted on staying in Iowa.

  Pa brought the Indian woman back to the house where Ma did what she could for her. Then Ma said they'd better get her into town, into Cedar Rapids, so a doc could fix her up proper-like.

  Pa got the buckboard out and took her into town.

  When they were gone, Ma made a big glass of cold sugar water for Anna — sugar from cane that Anna had helped cut last fall — and then Ma sat down across the supper-table from her and said, "That was a terrible thing you saw."

  "Yes, ma'am, it sure was," Anna said.

  "A man has no right to do that to his wife."

  "Her husband done that?"

  "Indian men do that sometimes, not very often, but sometimes, when they think that the woman — well, when they think that the woman hasn't been virtuous."

  Anna guessed she knew what virtuous meant. The priest used the word every Sunday.

  "Is she gonna die?"

  "No. But he's ruined her life — and that's what he meant to do. She'll always have that hole in the middle of her face."

  "I got scared when I saw her."

  Ma reached over and took Anna's hand. "You're a good girl, Anna, and I love you so much."

  "I'll bet she was pretty, wasn't she?"

  "She looked to be."

  "And now she won't be pretty no more?"

  "Not anymore, Anna, not anymore she won't be."

  "Her husband'll go to jail, won't he?"

  "Not likely."

  "How come?"

  "Because she's just an Indian. That's what the Judge'd say. She's ju
st an Indian and it's just Indian business."

  "If a white man done that, would he go to jail?"

  "If he did it to a white woman."

  "I don't see how come her husband shouldn't go to jail, do you?"

  "I sure don't."

  "It ain't fair."

  "It sure ain't, though I asked you not to use that word since you got to the fourth grade and all."

  Anna felt scared and alone then and went over and crawled up on her Ma's lap and held her and hugged her the way she did when she was a little girl.

  "I feel sorry for her," Anna said.

  "So do I," said her mother. "So do I."

  Then the day caught up with Anna and she was asleep, damp with sweat and worn with work and worry since seeing the Indian woman cut up that way.

  Her mother carried her upstairs to the bed they'd bought her last spring from the old Shaker woman. Her mother knelt next to the bed, holding young Anna's hand, and said a silent prayer that her daughter would never again have to see such a thing.

  LA COSTA WOMAN FOUND

  Native American Woman Found After Six Days Sister Still Missing

  The body of 46-year-old La Costa Indian Sandra Moore was found in an area of deep forest six miles from the La Costa Indian settlement where she grew up.

  Police indicate that she had been killed with a sharp instrument, presumably a knife. Preliminary reports indicate that Moore had been dead five or six days.

  Local Police Chief Richard Gibbs also responded to early press reports that the victim's nose had been cut off from her face and that her right arm had been severed. "This is in fact what happened but at this point we're not speculating on how or why it was done. We need to see the final report from the County Medical Examiner."

  Moore's sister Karen is still missing despite continued daily searches for her in and around the settlement and around the apartment house where she lived in Cedar Rapids. Sandra is survived by her daughter, Patricia, who also lives in Cedar Rapids.

  The La Costa settlement has been the subject of controversy ever since its gambling casino opened three years ago. While the majority of La Costas are happy with the casino, others cite the Sandra Moore murder as evidence that the crime rate has significantly risen since legalized gambling came to the settlement.

  Tribal Leader Jess Conroy argues that the casino has enabled more than twenty tribe members to open their own businesses in and around the settlement - everything from a small grocery store to an insurance agency, Conroy notes - and that the crime rate has not risen significantly. "We attract the ‘Mom and Pop’ type of gamblers; Conroy said. “Not the ‘mob’ type."

  The La Costa tribe has had a long history of difficulties. They were a peaceful group of Plains Indians even before the coming of the whites, the target of several other tribes who wanted their hunting and fishing land. In 1779 more than half the La Costas were killed in a savage three-day war with two other Plains tribes.

  The La Costa fared no better with the United States government. Two major treaties were broken by Washington and three times in six years, many young La Costa men died battling the infamous Colonel Daniel Ransom ('The Pride of West Point') whose obsession with destroying the La Costa tribe, historians note, stemmed from the time when he was slapped in front of his men by a young La Costa woman he was trying to embrace.

  In this century, the La Costa have lived quietly on their settlement but have suffered from critical unemployment, chronic bad health and an adjoining white community that has never completely accepted them.

  It was in this setting that the Moore sisters, Sandra and Karen, grew up. Now Sandra is dead and the same fate is feared for her sister. Investigation continues.

  Chapter 1

  He was scared and I didn't blame him.

  His name was Iron Crow and he was a La Costa Indian. He was also eighty-six years old and about to fly in an airplane for the first time in his life. His sister, who was eighty-three, wasn't crazy about the idea of him flying but she'd finally given in.

  We had struck a deal, Iron Crow and I. I would take him flying in exchange for him helping me write my piece on how white explorers, traders, and settlers had swept across the Plains in the last century, driving out, among others, the Crows, the Kiowas and the Cheyennes. He was a gifted storyteller and knew many tales.

  I was up in this part of Iowa to do a little fishing and relaxing, staying five miles due east of a river where pike, bass and perch practically waved white flags and begged you to catch them; and only ten miles north of the limestone cliffs where a famous Indian brave, Big Raven, had jumped to his death rather than surrender to the white cavalry officer who had stalked him across four states. I was waiting for Dr. Lawrence Esmond Ph.D., Big Raven's biographer, to meet me here. He was attending a week-long conference in Chicago where he'd planned to stay only two days. But as yet he hadn't been able to get away and I'd be here till he did.

  We stood in a field of buffalo grass in an Iowa meadow on a warm October morning, an arc of geese heading southward down the soft blue sky, and a beautiful sleek mahogany roan running the piney hills to the east. On the wind was the scent of autumn smoke and Indian-summer heat.

  Iron Crow was old but he was sweet old, almost boyish old, his wrinkled head and stooped body gussied up in a fancy white Stetson with a single eagle feather sticking out of the band. The rest was a blue western shirt and stiff new jeans and decorative moccasins. He was at the age when the adult becomes the child again. The way he eyed my open-cockpit biplane so apprehensively, he might have been a six-year-old getting his first sight of the school bus that would take him far, far away to a land of dragons and other assorted monsters. Around his neck, on a piece of rawhide, he carried a small black crow's feather he'd told me would bring him luck.

  Silver Moon, his sister, a woman just as stocky of body and nervous of eye as her brother, clutched his hand and then leaned over and kissed him. They'd both dressed up for this occasion — she was wearing basically the same outfit as Iron Crow except for the tan Stetson and the red shirt — and there was something touching about that. I could see them as little kids on a hardscrabble reservation, and the notion made me happy and sad at the same time.

  "He's going to be fine," I said.

  "You won't try nothin' fancy?" Silver Moon said.

  "Nothin' fancy?"

  "I seen you flyin' out here yesterday. All them loops or whatever you call them."

  I smiled. "I was just showing off a little. I won't try anything like that with Iron Crow."

  "I'm gonna trust you on that," she said. Given all I'd learned about the Native American tribes of Iowa in the past few months, I knew how difficult it was for her to talk about trusting a white man.

  "I appreciate that."

  Iron Crow smiled, revealing a set of gleaming store-bought teeth. "I just hope I don't wet my pants when we get up there."

  Silver Moon, always the kid sister, nudged him with an elbow. "That's what I was thinkin'." She looked at me and shook her head. "Iron Crow's got this bladder problem. You don't want to get him excited or nothin'."

  Then she grinned with her own sparkling set of store-boughts. "Course, sometimes he pees and he ain't excited at all."

  "She forgot to get me my diapers," Iron Crow said. "Last time she went to the grocery store, I said over and over, be sure to get me my diapers, and so she comes back home and guess what she forgot to get?"

  "Your diapers?"

  "Exactly."

  I wore my standard Snoopy gear — leather jacket, leather flying helmet, leather gloves and goggles — while Iron Crow wore the jacket I'd asked his sister to bring along. I'd lent him my spare Snoopy helmet, too. With his grinning false teeth and fierce ax of a nose, he looked like Snoopy's granddad.

  The plane is a biplane built in 1929 with a completely rebuilt 1953 Fairchild engine and a nice new yellow paint job — the color of the sun covering the cloth and wood that cover the heart and soul of this particular machine. The machine was s
uddenly a haze of blue smoke. The propeller cleaved the air with the great poetic power that would help lift us up in a few moments. Oil pressure. Fuel valve. Booster magneto coil. These words are lost on modern planes, yet they are vital to old barnstormers like this one.

  And then we were off, racing down a field of buffalo grass, Iron Crow crying out in exultation and terror.

  We stayed airborne for forty minutes. I didn't do any hot-shotting at all. As a boy I'd watched the scratchy, sacred films of my uncle barnstorming in a biplane very much like this one, and I knew from the time of my ninth birthday that I'd been born in the wrong generation. New planes might be bigger and sleeker and faster, but they had none of the old romance. Today, however, I wasn't trying to impress anybody, not even myself. Here was a man who still remembered the days of covered wagons and the corpse of a dead Indian bringing three dollars if you dragged it back to the reservation — and he'd never flown before. And I wanted it to be nice for him. He deserved good memories. God knew, he had plenty of bad ones.

  He shouted, he whooped, he pointed, he even tried to stand up a few times. But mostly he just grinned with his store-boughts and let the cool autumn winds carry us along the soft swift currents. Below sprawled hills and cornfields and creeks and red barns and brown-and-white cattle and the small town of Moon Valley, Iowa. From up here, you could see that the artist Grant Wood had gotten it right, after all. Cartoon-ish as some of his paintings looked, they recreated perfectly the swell and swoop and sway of the rolling green countryside that always gave the impression of deep seismic undulation, the way the shadows and shapes and textures of it seemed to change so fast.