Free Eye of the Wolf by Margaret Coel

dust.
    He reached over and switched on the desk lamp. A puddle of yellow light spread across the piles of papers and envelopes—letters to answer, bills to pay, notes to himself about upcoming meetings, ideas for homilies. Swiveling sideways toward a bookcase, he glanced over the shelves until he spotted the title on the spine of the book he was looking for. He plucked the book out of its slot. The jacket was white, with a photograph of four warriors sitting on their ponies. It had been a black and white photo until someone had colored the ponies a golden bronze. The faces of the warriors, squinting into the sun, were also bronze, like their sinewy arms, the trousers and shirts were gray, the beaded vests, red and blue, and the eagle-feathered headdresses, white and brown against the blue sky. Emblazoned in red above the photograph was the title: War onthe Plains . Below the photograph, also in red, was the name of the author: Charles Lambert, Ph.D.
    Father John opened the book and flipped through the pages, stopping to study the photographs. Warriors with naked chests and arms sat astride their ponies, both warriors and ponies painted for war. Warriors galloping out of the villages. Women, children, and old people herding horses packed with household goods, trying to escape an attack. Soldiers standing outside their tents on the plains. An army officer bent over papers on a collapsible desk, the gas lantern glowing on the canvas walls. Wooden structures at army forts facing one another across the parade grounds, American flags lofted on poles in the center. And the battlefields, pages of photographs from battles, as if, after the killing, soldiers had dug cameras out of their knapsacks, wanting to fix in time everything that had taken place.
    There was a sameness to the images, and for a moment Father John wondered if the soldiers had posed the bodies of fallen warriors before they’d snapped the pictures. He dismissed the idea. The bodies lay as they had fallen, arms and legs askew, heads wrenched sideways. He flipped to the back of the book and glanced down the index until he found Bates Battle. He turned to a page near the end of the book, just like the battle itself, which had come near the end of the plains war, and began reading through the double columns of text: One hundred and sixty Shoshone warriors and a company of cavalry under Captain Alfred E. Bates rode to the Arapaho village in the gorge near a creek. The attack began at dawn on July 4, 1874. Some Arapaho warriors managed to climb up the slopes, outflank the attackers, and drive them from the village. When the fighting ended, forty-seven Arapahos lay dead. Most of the tipis and household goods had been torched, and the horses had been stampeded. The Bates Battle became known as the day they killed the Arapahos.
    Father John leaned back in his chair. He could hear the mechanical voice in his head. The attack had occurred in the middle of the summer, the hottest time of the year. In the heat. Revenge is sweet.
    A large black and white photograph spread across the following two pages, a view of the canyon, the steep, rocky slopes rising on either side. It looked peaceful and quiet, wild grasses covering the canyon floor, the kind of place for a picnic, not a place of death. But on the following page, a photograph of death, the body of a man propped against the stump of a tree, arms flopped at his sides. He wore a canvas jacket, opened over a white shirt with the dark splotch of blood in the center. His right hand was stuffed into the jacket pocket.
    Father John closed the book and stared past the circle of light into the shadows. The killer had seen the photograph. The killer had shot the man, propped him against the tree stump, and put his right hand into his jacket pocket. Detective Burton was right. There was a maniac out there.

7
    FATHER JOHN SPOTTED the woman as he headed across the mission grounds for the administration building. A small figure