Free White Thunder by Aimée Thurlo

decided to throw convention to the winds and began walking toward the blanketed doorway. She’d only taken a few steps when she reconsidered, stopped in midstride, then returned to the SUV.
    She knew better. A disrespectful approach would get her
nowhere, and if wasting five minutes now would save a day’s searching later, she’d just have to stay still a while longer.
    Another two minutes passedand John failed to appear. Ella was certain that he knew she was there. She’d seen the blanket in the doorway billow out and part slightly as she’d started toward the hogan. John had probably noted her impatience and decided to teach her a lesson in manners by making her wait some more.
    Ella weighed her options carefully. It was time to get creative. Reaching inside her unit, Ella pulled outher clipboard, then began walking around, searching the ground and occasionally crouching down and pretending to take notes. She’d only done that for about a minute or so when John Tso came outside.
    “What are you doing?” he asked.
    Ella smiled at the medicine man, whom she suspected was in his nineties. “I was studying the plants around here,” she said. Noting his annoyed expression, Ella knewthat seeing her approach his hogan uninvited had angered him. If she wanted him to cooperate, she’d have to find a way to put him in a more receptive mood. Otherwise, he might choose not to give her the name of his patient or any other information pertaining to his Sing. All things considered, getting him to tell her anything at all was bound to be tricky. He’d probably taken Agent Thomas’s intrusionon the ceremony as an affront and wouldn’t be eager to interfere with whatever punishment the gods had meted out.
    “You’re lucky to have so many plants around here that are good for grazing, like blue gama and winter-fat,” Ella said.
    “You remember such things?” John asked, surprised.
    Ella nodded. “When I was a little girl, my mother taught me which were the best plants for grazing sheep andgoats. She even encouraged me to put the pieces of each in my mouth. I discovered one in particular that tasted really salty. When I told Mom, she smiled and told me that it was because the sheep peed on them. I spit that plant out so fast, I nearly gagged. Then I saw my mother laughing and realized she’d only been joking.”
    John laughed. “I know your mother, and that’s her, all right!”
He cockedhis head toward the hogan. “Come in. We’ll talk inside. Even a small breeze chills these old bones of mine.”
    Ella followed hastiin sání inside, taking the woman’s place on the north side, and accepted the warm cup of herbal tea he offered her. Though she was anxious not to waste time with pleasantries, on the Rez these rituals were far from inconsequential.
    “Uncle,” she said, using the nameout of respect, not kinship, “I’m searching for an FBI agent who I believe may have intruded on one of your Sings. A red-haired Anglo man.”
    “Yes, I know who you mean. He showed up uninvited at a ceremony I was conducting in a medicine hogan that belongs to my patient’s family. Someone spotted him watching from behind a tree and two of the men went up to chase him off.”
    “What happened to theagent?”
    “I didn’t see. My patient and I remained in the hogan. But that bilagáana made a very big mistake. My Sings have a lot of power so everyone there with the right attitude can benefit. But if the prayers aren’t said exactly right, or if something disturbs the harmony, then bad things happen and the gods aren’t always quick to forgive. You know this, your brother is a Singer like me.”
    “Who was your patient?”
    He shook his head, dismissing her question. “I don’t have to answer that”
    Ella said nothing for a while, staring instead at her lap, deep in thought. At long last she looked up. “Uncle, unless I find this agent, the federal government is going to send in dozens of their law-enforcement people. If