Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 141, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 858 & 859, March/April 2013

The Return of Crazy Horse by Clark Howard

By our count, this is Clark Howard’s 155th published story, an extraordinary number given the length and variety of his tales and the fact that they are almost all non-series stories that require the creation of new characters. An astonishing twenty of the stories have been either award winners or nominees, for awards as various as the MWA’s Edgar, the EQMM Readers Award, the PWA’s Shamus Award, the Western Writers’ Spur Award, and the SMFS’s Derringer.

When Nelson Clay returned after lunch to his assistant curator’s office at the Great Plains Native American Museum that early summer South Dakota day, he had no way of knowing that his life was about to change forever. In retrospect, he might have suspected something when he saw a brand-new bright yellow Corvette parked in one of the spaces marked: reserved for staff. But it was Friday and his mind was elsewhere; he had just finished a bison burger, his favorite, for lunch, and he was looking forward to the weekend and driving up to Rapid City with his lady friend, for a performance of the Black Hills Chamber Music Society. His companion for the occasion would be Rose Blackthorn, the hostess at Buffalo Run Restaurant, where he had lunch every day. He had been seeing Rose for nearly three years, and their romance was flourishing.

Nelson was an average-looking man, if such a creature existed: forty, tall, still slim, graying just a bit, not exactly handsome by certain standards, more accurately thought of as clean-cut. His best feature was a smile that was warm enough to seem sincere even when he was simply being courteous.

Passing the information desk on his way to his office, he was spoken to by the receptionist on duty. “Mr. Clay, Mr. White would like to see you in his office, sir.”

“All right. Thank you.” The receptionist was referring to Martin White, the curator of the museum. Having one-quarter Crow Indian blood, he had shortened his name from Martin White Cloud many years earlier, merely in the interest, so he said, of abbreviation rather than the elimination of immediate identification of his Crow ancestry. Even though he was curator of the largest, most prestigious Native American museum in the country, founded nearly a century before by the council of the Great Sioux Nation, it was still guided by a board of directors that was seventy percent Sioux or Northern Cheyenne, with only three of its ten members having Crow blood. “Ah, Nelson, come in, my boy,” Martin White greeted Nelson on this day. He had called Nelson “my boy” for nineteen years, since, at the age of twenty-one, Nelson had first come to work for him as assistant curator. Now that Nelson had reached forty, the term had begun to nettle him a bit.

Entering the curator’s office, Nelson saw that Martin White had a visitor: a tall, tan, perfectly postured woman who looked to be not yet thirty, with shiny black hair worn in a French twist at the back, dressed in a smart dove-colored St. John knit suit.

“Nelson, my boy, I want you to meet my niece, Naomi White. My dear, this is Nelson Clay, my assistant that I’ve been telling you about.”

Naomi White, who also apparently had shortened her name, stood and extended her hand, which Nelson shook as he said, “My pleasure, Miss White.” He smiled that smile that always looked sincere. “Is that your classy Corvette parked outside?”

“It is, indeed,” she said, smiling back. “A graduation gift from my very generous Uncle Martin.”

“Naomi was just recently awarded her doctorate degree at Stanford University.”

“Well, congratulations,” Nelson said. “That’s quite a high honor. Stanford, no less. May I ask what field you specialized in?”

The curator answered for her. “Why, Native American Studies, of course,” he said proudly. “Any other field,” he added with a chuckle, “and she would have received a Volkswagen.”

“Yes,” Naomi said, “I followed in the footsteps of my uncle, a man I admire more than anyone in the world. He’s been like a father to me, since I lost my own as a child.”

“Naomi’s mother is my sister,” Martin explained. “Her father was killed in an automobile accident when Naomi was only five. I’ve helped raise her ever since.”

“Helped is hardly the word,” Naomi corrected. “Uncle Martin supported me all the way through high school, four years in college for a bachelor’s degree, two more years for a master’s, and three years of study for my doctorate.”

“Most generous, I’d say,” Nelson commented, with a bow to the curator. “And a Corvette, as well.”

“Now, now,” Martin White protested modestly, “just doing my familial duty” He rose and came around his desk. “Come along, my boy, and let’s show Naomi around the museum. She’s been here before, of course, visiting from time to time, usually on a weekend when you weren’t around, my boy, which is why you two haven’t met before—”

Driving into Rapid City the next day, Rose Blackthorn at his side, Nelson scoffed at the comment Martin White had made.

“Not only had I not met her during the last nineteen years, I hadn’t even heard of her. Then out of the blue she shows up at the museum with a doctorate, no less, from Stanford, no less, with me standing there with a miserable little bachelor’s from Oklahoma State.”

“Don’t belittle yourself,” Rose scolded mildly. “You worked seven years to put yourself through college — and there wasn’t a new car waiting for you at the end either. You should be proud of yourself.”

Rose Blackthorn was, like Naomi White, a tall, naturally tan woman, mid thirties, one-half Sioux, with large, dark macadamia-colored eyes. She had been born illegitimately to a Sioux mother from the Pine Ridge reservation and a white serviceman from the nearby Ellsworth Air Force Base. Her father was discharged when she was two years old and never heard from again; her mother became an alcoholic and drank herself to death. Rose was raised by her Sioux grandmother on the reservation and still lived in the little clapboard house where she grew up, now five years after her grandmother’s death. She earned good money as a restaurant hostess and could have moved into town anytime she wanted to, but as she had once told Nelson Clay, she felt more at home on “the res,” as she called it. Nelson wasn’t sure he understood why.

“You’re around whites all the time,” he had reasoned, “all day long at the restaurant.”

“Yes,” she had replied quietly, “but I do not live with them.”

Nelson had once considered asking her to move in with him, but had abandoned the idea because he did not want to damage their relationship with the negative reply he felt certain he would have received.

As they drove toward Rapid City, Rose was quiet for a while before asking candidly, “What do you think White Cloud’s plans are for his niece?” She always referred to the curator by his tribal name.

“I think he may be grooming her as my replacement,” Nelson answered. He had been thinking that since meeting the curator’s niece, but this was the first time he had spoken of it.

“You’re not serious, are you? After you’ve put in nineteen years as assistant curator?”

“You forget one thing, my dear,” Nelson reminded her. “I have no Native American blood. Not a drop.”

“He knew that when you were hired. You were a summa grad in Native American studies with a four-point grade average. The museum board unanimously approved you. And the current board is very pleased with you. I don’t think White Cloud would dare pass you over — especially for a relative of his.”

“Blood is still blood, honey,” Nelson said ominously. He reached over and patted her knee. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

A week later, Nelson was at his desk checking invoices on several Apache artifacts they had obtained from the University of New Mexico, when Martin White came into his office.

“Nelson, my boy,” he said without preliminary, “I’ve decided to give my niece Naomi a paid internship with us. I want to help her obtain some practical experience to go with that degree of hers.”

“An internship?” Nelson allowed himself a moment to think about it, then said, “We’ve never had a paid intern before. Do you think the board will approve the expense?”

“Approve a paid intern with a doctorate, my boy?” White chuckled. “Why, they won’t think twice about it. Now then, I’m counting on you to give her all the support she needs. You won’t let me down, will you?”

“No, sir. Of course I won’t.”

A paid internship, he thought when White left. One foot in the door.

He told Rose about it that night, when she was staying over at his apartment. She was amazed. “I can’t believe it.”

“Believe it,” Nelson emphasized. “This is just the beginning.”

In the days and weeks that followed, Martin White saw to it that Nelson took Naomi well under his charge. She moved into a storeroom directly across from Martin’s office that her uncle had cleaned out and redecorated for her into small but comfortable working quarters. And, on a daily basis, Nelson received a list of assignments with the young woman designed to acquaint her not only with the running of the museum but the area around it as well.

One of the first things Nelson was tasked to do was familiarize Naomi with the extended community. Using his car, a modest sedan furnished by the museum as part of his compensation package, he took Naomi on casual driving excursions around Jackson and Shannon counties, introducing her to small towns like Red Shirt, Buffalo Gap, and Owanka, driving in a loose semicircle that skirted the northern and western boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation.

At one point on one of their excursions, when they stopped for lunch at a little cafe in Hermosa, Nelson asked, “Would you like me to show you some of Pine Ridge this afternoon?”

“I don’t think so,” she replied. “I’m not really interested in the reservation.”

Nelson thought that very odd. Years of studying Native Americans and not interested in seeing a reservation?

“Have you spent much time on reservations?” she asked.

“Yes, when I was studying at Oklahoma State. One summer I worked at the tribal museum on the Osage Reservation. And another time I hitchhiked up across Kansas and spent some time on the Potawatomi Reservation, then thumbed my way up to the Santee Reservation in Nebraska. And of course I’ve spent some time here on Pine Ridge.”

“All of that must have been very enlightening,” Naomi said, somewhat distantly, as if just being polite.

That evening, after having dinner at Rose Blackthorn’s little house on the Pine Ridge res, Nelson and Rose went onto the front porch to enjoy the cooling breeze and the mixed fragrances of the reservation night: the bitter sweetness of a hackberry bush, the pungence of chestnut soil in someone’s modest garden being hopefully watered, wisps of musky smoke from a wood-burning stove heating a cast-iron kettle for coffee. Off in the distance came the occasional bark of a prairie dog.

“I can’t figure her out,” Nelson said of Naomi White. “She seems to be interested in Native Americans only in the abstract. Like medieval history.”

“Do you like her?” Rose asked quietly.

“Like her?” Nelson shrugged. “I haven’t really thought about it. How do you mean?”

“Well, you know. White Cloud has you spending so much time with her, you’re bound to form some opinion of her.”

“Well, I don’t dislike her, certainly not like I’m beginning to dislike her uncle. But she doesn’t seem to be at all like him. Not on the surface anyway.”

Somewhere nearby, a woman could be heard calling someone named Teelie to come home at once. Rose spread her knees and drew her skirt partway up to let the evening air cool her thighs. Nelson had earlier removed his shirt and now sat in a sleeveless undershirt.

“I offered to show her some of the res today,” he told Rose. “But she wasn’t at all interested.”

“Maybe,” Rose theorized, “she has a different career path planned for herself. Something in public relations or some other high-profile work where her doctorate title would be impressive. Something entirely apart from your job.”

“Maybe,” Nelson said, his tone more doubtful than hers.

They fell silent for a few minutes, their shoulders occasionally touching as one or the other shifted position slightly. In the three years they had been intimate, they had reached a point where it was not necessary to have an ongoing conversation. Both found it comfortable just being together, theirs being at times a silent love.

After a while, Rose asked, “Are you staying over?”

“I don’t think so. I have to get the car washed and gassed in the morning before I take his niece out for the day.”

The next day, Nelson took it upon himself to drive Naomi White onto the reservation. She did not object or otherwise comment. They drove around, from Potato Creek to Porcupine to Wounded Knee. Along the way, he shared with her many of the things he had learned about Pine Ridge from Rose and his own observations.

“It’s the eighth largest Native American reservation in the country, and also the poorest. Unemployment is rarely less than eighty percent. Half the people here live below the federal poverty level. A large percentage of these homes don’t have electricity or running water. As you can see by the number of outhouses, they have no toilets or sewage systems. The only way they can cook or heat their homes is with wood-burning stoves. The infant mortality rate on Pine Ridge is five times the U.S. national average. The life expectancy of the men is forty-seven, for women it’s fifty-two. That’s the lowest life expectancy of any group in the entire Western Hemisphere.”

“Quite different from what’s depicted at the museum,” Naomi commented, without much feeling.

“Of course,” Nelson said. “The museum is for white people. You never see Indians visiting there.”

The following morning, Martin White summoned Nelson to his office. The expression Nelson encountered was one of obvious displeasure.

“At dinner last night,” he said, “my niece told me about your little excursion to Pine Ridge yesterday. She also related some of the statistics you quoted. May I ask what your purpose was in doing that?”

Nelson shrugged. “I thought some exposure to current conditions of Native American life today might give a little balance to what she’s learned from books.”

“I don’t agree with that,” White said irritably. “I cannot see any advantage in exposing her to the substandard conditions under which some of her own people live today.”

“They aren’t exactly her own people,” Nelson pointed out. “Pine Ridge is a Sioux reservation. You and your niece are Crow.”

“An Indian is an Indian!” White snapped.

Nelson’s mouth dropped open in surprise. The statement was absurd. Anyone of Sioux blood would have challenged it in a heartbeat. The Sioux considered the Crow far inferior to themselves. While the Sioux had been fighting to defend their tribal land, Crow men were wearing blue coats and scouting for the white soldiers.

The curator marshaled control of his displeasure. “At any rate, what’s done is done. But from now on, there will be no more excursions. Instead, I want you to explain in meticulous detail to my niece all of your duties as an assistant museum curator. You can begin with a full inventory and history of our entire collection. After you have done that, I will tell you what to do next. Understood?”

“Yes, sir. Understood.”

“He’s definitely replacing me,” Nelson told Rose that evening.

They had driven down to Hot Springs for dinner at the Buen Dia Mexican restaurant, and were taking a walk around town afterward. Nelson had purposely not mentioned his new conviction earlier in order to maintain tranquility during their meal. But now he decided he had to share it.

“How can you be sure?” Rose asked. “Has he said anything?”

“He doesn’t have to say anything. He’s assigned me to acquaint her with all my duties and responsibilities. After I’ve done that, I’m sure he’ll let me go and appoint her to replace me.”

“But what about the museum’s board of directors? Won’t they have something to say about it? Several of those board members are very fond of you.”

“Not enough to overrule any personnel change he recommends.”

“But she’s related to him, for God’s sake! Isn’t replacing you with her going to look kind of unfair? Kind of suspicious?”

“Ordinarily I’d say yes. But in this case it’s a relative who has a doctorate. White himself has only a master’s. The prospect of having a Ph.D. in Native American studies on the staff — and on the museum’s letterhead — is going to be a very impressive factor in their decision. Not to mention that it will carry a lot of weight in obtaining future private and government grants.”

“But it’s so unfair, sweetheart—”

“Nobody ever said life was fair.”

They walked on for a while, along River Street, as usual admiring the many old sandstone buildings that always looked pink in the late twilight. Presently they came to a little public park and sat on a bench.

“What will you do if this happens, Nelson?” Rose finally asked. She was the kind of woman who always wanted to think about what the future might hold.

“I don’t know. I don’t imagine there’s a deep job market for assistant Native American museum curators.”

“We could move away somewhere, couldn’t we, Nelson? Start a new life. Together.”

“On what? I’ve got about sixteen thousand dollars saved. How much have you got?”

“Not very much. Couple of thousand.”

“So together we’ve got a little over eighteen thousand. That won’t take us very far in today’s economy, Rose.”

“Well, there must be something we can do!”

Nelson put what he hoped would be a comforting arm around Rose and drew her close to him. “If you think of anything,” he said quietly, “let me know.” He kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks for saying we could move away together.”

For the next month, under the close scrutiny of Martin White Cloud, Nelson tutored Naomi White Cloud in the operation of all the various departments that formed the administration, management, and maintenance of the Great Plains Native American Museum, which was referred to in the National Directory of Private Museums as “the most prestigious monument to Native American history and culture” in the U.S.

As was Nelson Clay’s nature, he did his best to accomplish what he now felt was the curator’s objective, that being to groom the young woman for the position Nelson had held for the past nineteen years. Had he been a person of less character and conscience, he might have slacked off in his teaching, omitting a detail here and there in order to pare down the efficiency of his successor when she assumed the responsibility after his departure. But Nelson Clay loved the big museum, loved every artifact, photograph, diorama, everything, down to the smallest Chippewa arrowhead in it, and from his first day of employment he had loved his job there. It was a position of which he was very proud, and to which he applied himself fully and faithfully. Distressed as he was at the prospect of his post being taken away from him, he nevertheless sincerely desired that his successor perform as capably and competently as he had.

“My God, I never dreamed there were so many practical things to learn,” Naomi admitted toward the end of the month. “I really should find some way to thank you. Perhaps you’ll let me take you to dinner some evening.”

“Sure, if you’d like,” he said, wondering what this was all about. “When did you have in mind?”

“Anytime, really, but let’s wait until after the annual board of directors meeting. My dear uncle has me working on polishing up his presentation. And he’s arranged for me to sit in as an observer at the meeting. I think I’ll find it most interesting. You’ll be there, won’t you?”

“I usually attend, yes.”

If I’m still around, he thought.

Several mornings later, when Nelson was perusing the scant few Positions Available classified advertisements in the National Museum Monthly, one of the mail clerks came in and placed a small parcel on his desk. “This was just delivered by some Indian kid on a bicycle, Mr. Clay,” she said.

The parcel, about the size of an average paperback book, was neatly wrapped in plain brown paper, sealed with transparent tape, and addressed simply to: MANAGER, GREAT PLAINS NATIVE AMERICAN MUSEUM, in neat letters. Opening it, Nelson found a small manila envelope wrapped in a single sheet of lined notebook paper, on which was a letter inked in script which read:

At the bottom of the letter was an address in Cedar Butte, South Dakota.

Nelson immediately took the material to Martin White’s office. The curator was having coffee with his niece Naomi at his desk. “This is something I thought you should see,” Nelson said.

Martin read the letter, passed it to Naomi, and with soft-tipped tweezers from his desk drawer examined the relics under a magnifying glass.

“How can those be Crazy Horse’s bones?” Naomi asked. “I was under the impression that no one knew where he was buried.”

“That is the general impression, yes,” said Nelson.

“This smacks of some sort of confidence scheme,” said Martin. “As I recall, Crazy Horse did father a daughter, whom he named She-Is-Not-Afraid, but the child died of cholera when she was only two or three. Clearly, she could not be an ancestor of this letter writer. Where exactly is Cedar Butte anyway?” he asked Nelson.

“I believe it’s over in Millette County, about a hundred miles east.”

“So this person doesn’t live on reservation land.”

“Probably not. I think Cedar Butte would be east of the Pine Ridge agency, and north of the Rosebud agency.”

Martin rose. “I don’t expect anything to come of this, but let’s have a closer look as these relics anyway.” He returned the bones to the envelope and handed it to Nelson. “You and Naomi carbon-date them.”

The spectrometry laboratory of the museum was located underground in the subbasement of the main storage building. The spectrometer used to date samples of any type of raw material, such as organic items from archaeological sites, was no larger than an ordinary kitchen-variety toaster oven. It had the ability to determine the age of carbonaceous matter up to some sixty thousand years old. This was done by radiometrically measuring the amount of naturally occurring carbon-14, an isotope that forms in dormant states, such as decomposing human or animal bodies.

The instrument reports the age of the tested material in radiocarbon years known as BP, or before present time. Present time has been established as the year 1950.

“This should be an easy one for our spectro,” Nelson said when he and Naomi entered the lab. “Just from the look of these bones, they don’t appear to be more than a couple of hundred years old, if that.”

“I think you’re right,” Naomi agreed. “They look well preserved. Maybe they’ve been in an air-tight container of some kind.”

“Some of the old-timers, the ones they called ancients, kept relics of their ancestors in Mason jars that were distributed by the Indian agencies to teach them the canning process for foods.”

When the spectrometer results appeared on the instrument’s screen and a tape printout began to generate, Nelson and Naomi saw that their speculations had been close to accurate. The BP reading was 73.

Back in Martin White’s office, the curator studied the result thoughtfully. A BP reading of 73 dated the relics to the year 1877.

“That certainly lends some credence to the matter,” he said, glancing down at an open copy of The Encyclopedia of North American Indian Tribes. “Crazy Horse was killed in 1877.”

Martin rose and paced around the large, well-furnished, richly decorated office, an office that Nelson Clay had once thought would someday be his. As was the curator’s habit when deep in thought, he gently pulled at his lower lip. Finally reaching a decision, he returned to his chair.

“We have no alternative but to pursue this matter further. I want you two to pay a visit to this Nelli Mae Feathers in Cedar Butte.”

Leaving the museum at eight the next morning, this time taking Naomi’s yellow Corvette, Nelson and Naomi cruised at seventy miles an hour east on Interstate 90 for fifty miles, then had to slow down considerably when they turned south on narrow, curvy State Route 73, which took them to eastbound State Route 44 into Cedar Butte. It was barely a wide spot in the road, with a weather-worn sign that announced CEDAR BUTTE TOWNSHIP — POPULATION 48.

The address they had was a small white frame house. No one answered the door. A neighbor across the road told them that Nelli Mae was not at home during the day; she worked in the Visitors Center at the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands, a Department of the Interior nature reserve. Nelson and Naomi had passed it on their way to Cedar Butte. Resignedly, they turned around and drove back.

At the Buffalo Gap Visitors Center, they found Nelli Mae Feathers to be a pleasant woman appearing to be in her late thirties, a very light-skinned Native American, clearly a ’breed, dark hair trimmed short, dressed in the neat gray uniform of the National Park Service.

“We’re here in response to your letter to the Great Plains North American Indian Museum,” Nelson said, introducing himself and Naomi.

“Oh,” Nelli said in surprise, “I didn’t expect a personal visit.”

On the pretext of a guided tour around the visitors center complex, they were able to have a conversation.

“Are the bones I sent you my three-times great-grandfather’s?” she asked eagerly.

“We know that they are old enough to have belonged to someone of that period,” Nelson said. “We don’t know whose bones they are.”

Naomi asked, “What makes you think that Crazy Horse is an ancestor of yours?”

“My late grandmother, who raised me on the Pine Ridge res, told me he was.”

“Who was your grandmother?” Nelson asked.

“Her name was Shawl-in-the-Sky, as I told you in my letter. As I also told you, she was the granddaughter of She-Is-Not-Afraid, who was the daughter of Crazy Horse.”

“But She-Is-Not-Afraid died of cholera when she was only two or three years old,” Nelson pointed out. “She could not have borne children.”

“The child who died was the first She-Is-Not-Afraid. She was the daughter of Crazy Horse’s second wife, Black Shawl. But when Black Shawl became ill, Crazy Horse took a third wife to care for her. A child was later born to that wife, and she was named after Crazy Horse’s dead first child. It was that second child that my grandmother knew as her grandmother.”

Nelson and Naomi exchanged reflective looks.

“Where did you get the relics — the bones — that you sent us?” Naomi asked.

“I dug them up. From the grave where Crazy Horse is buried.”

Now the expressions on Nelson’s and Naomi’s faces morphed from reflective to astonished.

“You know where Crazy Horse is buried?” asked Naomi.

“Yes. It is a secret place near the Cheyenne River.”

“Will you show us the place?” Nelson asked, trying not to sound too eager. “Why?” Nelli asked, tilting her head inquisitively.

“For the sake of history,” Naomi said quickly. “No one has ever known where Crazy Horse was buried. He was a great warrior, a great leader of his tribe. People deserve to know where he is buried so that they can pay tribute to him, honor him.”

Nelli shook her head. “My grandmother, Shawl-in-the-Sky, never told anyone. Only me. She said Crazy Horse’s mother, Blanket Woman, wanted him buried in a secret place where the white people could not desecrate his grave.”

“We would protect him from that sort of thing,” Nelson emphasized. “We would put him in an environmentally safe display where his remains would be preserved forever, to be seen by generations of people in the future. And,” he added, “if those remains truly are those of Crazy Horse, the museum would pay you a substantial amount of money for them, since you are his living heir.”

“I don’t know,” Nelli shook her head hesitantly. “I wish my grandmother was here. She was wise and would tell me the right thing to do.”

Naomi put a gentle hand on Nelli’s arm. “Come to our museum,” she encouraged. “Meet my uncle, who is in charge there. You will see how carefully things are preserved there, how we honor those who are gone. Perhaps that will help you to decide.”

Nelli Mae Feathers thought about the invitation, her expression pensive, for a long, heavy moment, before finally saying, “All right. I will come and see for myself how you would honor my three-times great-grandfather.”

Martin White did not take their report graciously.

“What did you say she was: an ordinary visitor guide for the National Park Service? Hardly anyone qualified to judge my museum.”

“She isn’t coming to judge it, Uncle Martin,” Naomi said placatingly. “She just wants to see for herself that it would be a proper resting place for her ancestor.”

“If he is in fact that ancestor,” Martin demurred. “That has yet to be determined. What is your opinion on all this, Nelson?”

“I’m not sure yet. She seems sincere. Her story could be true. If so, our locating the remains of Crazy Horse would certainly bolster the museum’s prestige.”

Martin drew back in his chair. “I wasn’t aware that our prestige needed any bolstering,” he rebuffed icily. “At any rate, we are obligated to find out one way or the other. I want you,” he pointed a finger at Nelson, “to conduct a complete genealogical study of Crazy Horse to see if you can find any evidence of a second daughter born and given the same name as the child who died from cholera. And you, my dear,” this to Naomi, “I want you to go to the U.S. Army Records Archives in St. Louis and search all military records having to do with the Oglala Sioux tribe from, oh, let’s say eighteen seventy-five to eighteen eighty-five. I’m sure you’ll find Crazy Horse’s name mentioned prominently in scores of reports, particularly since Custer’s egomaniacal blunder at the Little Big Horn occurred in 1876. Meanwhile, I am going to consult with Dr. Benton Foster at the Smithsonian. Foster and I vied for the position he now holds at the Institution; he was selected over me, and is now considered the world’s foremost expert on Native American history, a title I seriously suspect he gave himself.” Martin stood and rubbed his hands together briskly. “Now then, the museum’s annual board of directors meeting is fast approaching. If there is anything credible about the information we have, I want to know before that meeting. So, let’s go to it!”

Nelson Clay’s in-depth study of the renowned Oglala Sioux warrior chief, Crazy Horse, began with a verification of his birth year. Historians had placed it as late as 1845, but Nelson learned that it was actually five years earlier in 1840. That was proved by an Oglala warrior named Encouraging Bear, who in an interview years after Crazy Horse’s death related that both of them had been born in the fall of the year in which the Oglala bands to which both their fathers had belonged had stolen one hundred horses, at that time a tribal record. That year, according to Sioux elders Cloud Shield, American Horse, and Red Horse, was 1840. Even more compelling was the comment by Crazy Horse’s father, who said, when he came to claim the body of his son after a soldier had killed him in 1877, “My son would have been thirty-seven years old in another moon,” or month.

At birth, he had been named Cha-O-Ha, which in Sioux dialect meant Among-the-Trees. His father bore the name Crazy Horse at that time, and his mother was called Blanket Woman. She had a sister named Lone Horn, who gave birth to a son who as an adult was given the name Touch-the-Clouds because he grew to be seven feet tall. When Crazy Horse reached manhood and took his father’s name, he and his cousin, Touch-the-Clouds, became inseparable friends.

In 1860, when Crazy Horse was twenty, and was called Tasunke Witko, the Oglala translation of his name, he led a small band of young warriors on a buffalo hunt. They came upon a Minneconjou village being raided by a Crow band. The Crow were traditional Sioux enemies, so Crazy Horse led his men against them and overwhelmed them. The Minneconjou elder who was the head of the village was called Com. In gratitude for Crazy Horse’s help, he gave the young warrior three of his daughters: Between Horns, who was eighteen; Kills Enemy, seventeen; and Red Leggings, fifteen. When Crazy Horse proudly rode home with the three girls in tow, his mother, Blanket Woman, hit him smartly in the head with a spoon made from a mule’s leg, and turned the girls over to the Oglala elders, who allowed them to go among the young men of the village and select their own husbands. To Crazy Horse’s chagrin, none of them chose him. Touch-the-Clouds thought it was all very funny.

As was the Oglala custom, each young warrior was required to go alone into the wilderness for three moons to live by himself with no help from anyone. It was called a spiritual journey. Crazy Horse made his in the summer of 1865. While out on the great plains and up in the mountains of the badlands, Crazy Horse claimed that a red-tailed hawk had led him to a resting place where he experienced a vision that showed him riding his horse in a great battle in which many other warriors were killed by the enemy, but through which he rode unharmed. In that battle, he had three white circles painted on his forehead, representing three hailstones, and a red lightning bolt painted down the left side of his face. When he returned home from his spiritual journey, he proclaimed that no enemy would ever kill him in battle.

In Sioux society, it was permitted, even expected, for pretty young women to openly torment the young men with shy smiles, tantalizing poses, giggling, and whatever other mischief they could conjure up. One such young woman was Black Buffalo Woman, niece of Red Cloud, one of the Oglala’s greatest chiefs. Crazy Horse fell in love with Black Buffalo Woman and began courting her. But he had several rivals, among whom was No Water, whose brother, Black Twin, was a high member of the council headed by Red Cloud. Sioux maidens were required to remain chaste until marriage, and while it was clear that Black Buffalo Woman felt a strong physical attraction to Crazy Horse, who was handsome and muscular, compared to No Water, who was short and bowlegged, she knew that No Water came from a more prominent family, so to please her uncle, the great Red Cloud, she chose No Water as her husband. Devastated, Crazy Horse vowed to marry no other.

Over the years, Crazy Horse’s reputation grew as a great warrior and a great hunter. Before he was thirty, he had led bands in more than four dozen successful battles against traditional enemies of the Sioux: the Crow, whom they despised, and the arrogant Shoshone, as well as white settlers who ventured onto Sioux lands deeded to the tribe by treaty. Before long, he was selected by the chiefs of the council to become a Shirt Wearer. These were considered to be the bravest of the young warriors, and as a symbol of their authority they wore shirts made of two bighorn sheepskins, each one beautifully quilled with feathers and fringed with small locks of the wearer’s hair, each lock representing a brave deed accomplished in battle. Legend has it that before his death, Crazy Horse had two hundred and forty locks on his shirt.

Gradual, but continuous, encroachment of white settlers on their treaty lands eventually caused the Oglalas to move northward to the Yellowstone River area of Montana Territory, where they joined other tribes forced to relocate: the Minneconjous, Sans Arcs, and Hunkpapas, led by a revered medicine man named Sitting Bull. Soon there were more than two hundred lodges spread along the Yellowstone. Among them was the lodge of No Water and Black Buffalo Woman, who by now was the mother of three children.

In 1872, when Crazy Horse was thirty-two, returning from a raid against the Crows, he stopped his band near No Water’s lodge to rest. No Water was away on a hunting trip. When Black Buffalo Woman saw Crazy Horse again, her desire for him overcame her better judgment, and she took her three children to their grandparents and declared her intention to go with Crazy Horse. It was law among the Sioux, where women historically had many rights that even white women did not have, that a married woman could leave her husband at any time, for any reason, or no reason, and the husband had no recourse but to let her go. He could, however, demand compensation in horses or other property from any man with whom his wife subsequently cohabited.

When No Water returned and learned that his wife had ridden off with Crazy Horse, he loaded his pistol and went after them, feeling that it was his right since Crazy Horse had not paid him for Black Buffalo Woman. The lovers were soon overtaken in a tipi next to the Powder River. They were lying together beside a small campfire. No Water rushed in, his pistol at the ready. Crazy Horse reached for his knife and No Water shot him, the bullet striking him next to his left nostril, breaking his jaw, causing him to fall forward onto the campfire. Black Buffalo Woman fled, No Water close behind her. Others from nearby lodges rushed in to give aid to Crazy Horse.

The Oglala council now had before it a perplexing problem. Crazy Horse had taken another man’s wife without offering the man compensation of any kind. The man had physically attacked a Shirt Wearer charged with enforcing tribal laws. It was serious business, since word of it had spread throughout the Oglalas. Ironically, no blame was attached to Black Buffalo Woman, who had initiated the incident; under Oglala law, which enforced exceptionally permissive rights for women, she was permitted to live with any man she pleased, without regard to consequences.

After much consideration, the council ruled that Crazy Horse not see Black Buffalo Woman again and that No Water take her back as his wife, a ruling with which she complied since she could no longer have Crazy Horse. No Water was ordered to give his three best ponies to Crazy Horse’s father for the physical harm done to his son. And the worst punishment of all was that Crazy Horse was stripped of his status as a Shirt Wearer.

Crazy Horse recovered from the bullet wound, although permanently scarred across the left side of his face. The burns he had suffered falling into the campfire were superficial and soon healed. He now resumed his standing as an ordinary warrior, but over the ensuing years his deeds of bravery against enemy tribes and white settlers trespassing on Oglala treaty lands brought him wide acclaim among his people.

At some point, Touch-the-Clouds, seeing that his friend and cousin was not a happy man, arranged a marriage between Crazy Horse and a woman named Black Shawl, the sister of one of Crazy Horse’s most devoted followers, Red Feather. Black Shawl, who was young, strong, and beautiful, had rejected numerous offers of marriage because she had long admired Crazy Horse from afar. The opportunity to marry him brought her great joy. Their union was successful to the point of clearly making Crazy Horse a happy man who now had a home tipi of his own, and soon, to his delight, a baby daughter whom he named She-Is-Not-Afraid, and upon whom he doted. Life was now good for Crazy Horse — but it was not to remain so.

The last of the Great Plains tribes had united on the lush grasslands of the Rosebud and Powder Rivers in Montana Territory, determined under Sitting Bull to make one final stand against the incursion of the white man. But before that fateful day, Crazy Horse was to suffer still more personal grief. Returning from a raid on the Crows, who had now become scouts for the blue-coat soldiers, he learned that his beloved daughter, then only three years old, had contracted cholera and died. A cold bitterness came over the bereaved father, who blamed the white settlers and soldiers for the disease. Before they came, the tribes of the Great Plains knew nothing of sicknesses such as measles, smallpox, and the dreaded cholera that flourished in waters that the white man polluted. So Crazy Horse stood more than ready to take his band of followers to join warriors from the Sioux, Cheyenne, Blackfoot, Sans Arcs, Santees, Arapahoes, Brulés, and Assiniboine, who had gathered under Sitting Bull to face three forces of the U.S. Army under Generals Crook, Gibbon, and Terry.

When the two enemy forces finally met in what would be the last great conflict of what was to be historically designated as the Indian Wars, it was called by the tribes the Battle of the Greasy Grass, and by the whites the Battle of the Little Big Horn. After the battle ended, another name also soon came to be applied. A daring, charismatic, yellow-haired officer under Terry’s command, who had been a brevet brigadier general in the Civil War — brevet meaning temporary, for the duration of a conflict — who was now a lieutenant colonel in command of the Seventh Cavalry Regiment, would glorify himself that day by losing his entire force through brash overconfidence.

That man was George Armstrong Custer, and the epithet he earned for his poor judgment was Custer’s Last Stand. He became a national hero. But the tribes won the battle.

Ultimately, however, they lost the war.

Crazy Horse fought the white settlers and the bluecoats sent to protect them for several more years. With a following of six hundred warriors, in a band that numbered two thousand including women and children, he moved from place to place across the vast Great Plains, along the Powder River, into the mountains, able to strike his lodges and travel miles away to a new camp within hours. But time and weather and illness took their toll on his people. Without the buffalo herds, now being killed for hides by white hunters, the Indians lacked food and warm robes. As the bluecoat net around them tightened, there were fewer places to raid for weapons, ammunition, and fresh horses. And then a dread new disease began to spread among them, a disease the whites called whooping cough.

The time finally came when Crazy Horse had no option but to surrender or watch his people starve. On May 6, 1877, he surrendered his band to Lieutenant William Howard Clark at Camp Robinson in the White River Valley of South Dakota Territory. There were only eight hundred and eighty-nine people left, two hundred warriors out of the original six hundred, and the men had only forty-six rifles among them.

Crazy Horse was now an “agency Indian,” one who had no tipi, no weapon, no pony. He and Black Shawl slept on the ground with the others, and ate what they were fed, like the agency mongrel dogs. Black Shawl had contracted the terrible whooping cough. Touch-the-Clouds persuaded Crazy Horse to put aside his pride and take her to the camp surgeon, Major Valentine McGillycuddy, who gave her medicine. The doctor treated Crazy Horse with respect and told him through a half-breed interpreter that Black Shawl must stop sleeping on the ground out in the night air. Late that night, Crazy Horse and Touch-the-Clouds stole three settler horses and left the camp to set up a hidden tipi in nearby woods for Black Shawl. They made a bed for her out of buffalo robes and saddle blankets stolen from a post trader’s supply stores.

Soon, Lieutenant Clark learned about the absence and activities of the two rogue Indians and offered a two-hundred-dollar reward for their capture. Unable to bring Black Shawl into the camp for regular visits ordered by Dr. McGillycuddy, Crazy Horse sought someone to do it for him, and to look after his wife when he and Touch-the-Clouds were away. He decided on the interpreter who had helped him talk with the white doctor, the daughter of one of the French traders at the post, who was half French, half Southern Cheyenne. She had grown up among the Sioux and was fluent in four languages. Crazy Horse slipped into camp and offered to buy the girl from her father, who was known as Long Joe. The father agreed and Crazy Horse paid him six mustang ponies caught on the prairie, plus two hundred dollars in gold stolen from a Wells Fargo stagecoach he and Touch-the-Clouds held up between Spearfish and Deadwood. Crazy Horse took the young woman to the hidden tipi, where she began to care for Black Shawl.

For a year, Crazy Horse and Touch-the-Clouds made hit-and-run raids on settlers’ homes all across the plains, stealing horses, chickens, hogs, and harvested com. Sometimes they were gone two or three days at a time, but always when they returned with the spoils of their raids, Crazy Horse found Black Shawl well cared for by the woman he had bought. The raids by the renegade cousins were becoming notorious, and the name of Crazy Horse was once again gaining fame, and few at a time other young warriors left the agency and rode out to join him. Lieutenant Clark’s superiors soon lost patience with the failure of his patrols to stop the raiding, and Lieutenant Colonel Leonard Bradley was dispatched from Omaha to take charge of the situation. His aide, Lieutenant Jesse Lee, accompanied him. Bradley learned that one of the older agency Indians, Spotted Tail, was an uncle through marriage to Crazy Horse. Spotted Tail was persuaded to leave the camp and go in search of his nephew to arrange a meeting to discuss ending the private war Crazy Horse was conducting. Spotted Tail did what none of the army patrols had been able to do: Within a day, he had located the hidden tipi.

Crazy Horse agreed to meet with the new commander at the camp and discontinue the raids if certain terms were met: If he surrendered, he must be treated as a chief and have a tipi for his wife, continued medical care for her from Dr. McGillycuddy, his own horse to ride and permission to leave the camp to hunt for his own food, and immunity from punishment for himself, Touch-the-Clouds, and all of the young men who had left the agency, for all of the raids and robberies they had committed. When Spotted Tail returned to the agency and recited Crazy Horse’s terms, Colonel Bradley accepted them at once. He sent Lieutenant Lee with Spotted Tail to meet with Crazy Horse out on the prairie. At the meeting, Lee assured Crazy Horse that he spoke for Colonel Bradley and that all of Crazy Horse’s terms would be met.

On the morning of September 5, 1877, Lieutenant Lee led Crazy Horse, Touch-the-Clouds, and the rest of the band into Camp Robinson. Upon the group’s arrival, all the agency Indians assembled to cheer them. Lee escorted Crazy Horse to the adjutant’s office and asked him to wait while he spoke to Colonel Bradley to arrange a meeting between them. But when Lee reported to Colonel Bradley, he was stunned by the order he received.

Bradley ordered that Crazy Horse be put in the guardhouse, and advised him that the following morning a military guard detail would arrive to transport him, in chains, to Omaha, Nebraska, and from there he would be taken to the Dry Tortugas Military Prison on an island seventy miles off the coast of Florida, where a military tribunal had determined he would spend the rest of his life.

Bradley summoned the Officer of the Day, Captain Franklin Maynard, to accompany Lee to where Crazy Horse waited.

Back in the adjutant’s office, where Crazy Horse patiently sat, Lee simply said, “We’re ready to go, Chief.” Nodding that he understood, Crazy Horse went with the two officers, thinking he was being taken to talk with Bradley. But outside, Private William Gentles, his rifle with bayonet fixed, was standing next to an open door, as he had been ordered to do by Captain Maynard while Lee was in Bradley’s office. Crazy Horse was directed through the door. It led into a three-foot-by-six-foot windowless cell.

Crazy Horse took only one step inside the door — and halted, knowing he had been tricked. Stepping back out, he poised to run.

“Stab him! Stab the son of a bitch!” Captain Maynard shouted the order.

As Private Gentles swung his rifle down to the attack position, Crazy Horse took two running steps — and Gentles bayoneted him in the back.

Dr. McGillycuddy, who had treated Black Shawl for her whooping cough, rushed out to help the wounded man, but it was too late. The blood coming from Crazy Horse’s body was black; the bayonet had gone through his liver. All the doctor could do was listen to the dying warrior’s last words.

“Once we had buffalo for food, and their hides for clothing and for our tipis. Hunting was our way of life. But the white man’s government would not leave us alone. I was tired of fighting and came here to ask the white chief to let me live in peace. Instead, he killed me—”

The following morning, Crazy Horse’s body was turned over to his elderly parents.

Lieutenant Jesse Lee, despondent and aggrieved over the part he had been forced to play in the treachery, released Touch-the-Clouds from the guardhouse and allowed him to go with them. The huge warrior easily lifted his dead cousin onto a wagon and they left.

No white man ever saw Crazy Horse’s body after that day. His final resting place was never revealed.

Nelson Clay’s report on Crazy Horse’s genealogy contained no pertinent new information.

“I found nothing at all in his lineage or ancestry that would support the claim of Nelli Mae Feathers that she is a descendant of his.”

“That doesn’t negate the fact that she might know where Crazy Horse is buried,” the curator argued. “All those names she mentioned: Shawl-in-the-Sky, Blanket Woman; and that story of hers that a second daughter was born and given the same name as the earlier child who died of cholera, that’s just the sort of thing that a savage like Crazy Horse would do.”

“But there’s no record anywhere of Black Shawl having a second child. She lived on the Pine Ridge Reservation for forty-five years after Crazy Horse’s death, not dying until 1930, when she was eighty-four years old. Certainly if she had a second daughter, there would be some record of it.”

“True, very true,” Martin admitted. “Unless she gave the child to another family to raise, which was not uncommon among the Sioux. There are still loose ends to be tied up here. And if this Feathers woman does know where Crazy Horse is buried, whether she’s an heir to his remains or not, it will still be a major discovery. When did she agree to come here to the museum?”

“She’s waiting for either Naomi or me to set a time. One of us is to call her.”

“I see.” Martin rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Well, instead of calling her, let’s you and I pay her another personal visit. While Naomi is still going through army records in St. Louis, perhaps you and I can persuade Ms. Feathers to show us the grave’s actual location.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Nelson grumbled.

“You’re too negative, my boy,” the curator said firmly. “That’s one of your major faults. We’ll leave in the morning and visit her at the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands visitors center, where she works.”

The next afternoon, Martin and Nelson were waiting for Nelli Mae Feathers when her shift ended at the visitors center. Nelson introduced the curator. Martin was all smiles and charm.

“I happen to know of a splendid restaurant just off Interstate 90, in the little town of Wall,” he said pleasantly. “I wonder if you would consent to have supper with Mr. Clay and myself so we can discuss the matter of payment for the remains of your late, great warrior relative, Crazy Horse?”

Nelson was surprised. Martin had not previously mentioned bringing payment into the equation, before even verifying the authenticity of her claim. Now things seemed to be moving right along.

Nelli accepted the curator’s offer and they all drove back to I-90 and on to Wall, where Martin took them to the Red Rock, which was indeed a very nice restaurant. “I recommend any steak on the menu,” the curator said urbanely, as if he were a regular customer.

Throughout the meal, which as touted consisted of one of the best steaks Nelson had ever tasted, Martin praised his Great Plains Native American Museum in the most laudable and flowery language Nelson had ever heard him use. His usual sour countenance was replaced by a smiling grandfatherly face that Norman Rockwell might have painted. By the time they finished eating, Nelli Mae Feathers seemed all but enthralled. That was when the Crow blood began to flow and Martin White Cloud struck like the viper Nelson now thought him to be.

“Now, my dear,” he all but purred, “let’s discuss how we are to proceed to your best advantage in addressing your claim to being a descendant of Chief Crazy Horse. I presume you do expect some sort of recompense for bringing the matter to our attention, am I correct?”

“Well, yes, I guess so,” Nelli Mae replied demurely, looking down at her plate. “I hadn’t really given the matter any thought until recently, when some of my coworkers at the visitors center were discussing the fact that two of the most famous Native American war chiefs of all time, Crazy Horse of the Oglala Sioux and Cochise of the Chiricahua Apaches, had been buried secretly in unknown locations. Of course, none of them knew that I was a descendant of Crazy Horse. But one of my friends, Agnes Two Mules, who is part Blackfoot, commented that for anyone finding either of those graves, it would be like finding buried treasure.”

“Yes, so it might,” Martin reluctantly agreed. “But of course everything would depend upon verification of the remains, as well as authenticating your relationship to them. Establishing the identity of the endoskeleton — the bones — would require more than the small samples you submitted to us.”

“Oh, I have more than that,” Nelli Mae said, almost exuberantly. “I also have his skull.” Nelson saw Martin’s mouth drop open and his normally squinty eyes widen in surprise. “You didn’t mention that to Ms. White and me when we visited you,” Nelson said.

“Well, to tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure then that I could trust you. But after meeting Mr. White Cloud, I’m sure now that I can.” She smiled warmly at Martin.

“Where, uh — exactly where is the, uh — skull?”

“At my house. In the closet. On a shelf. In a shoe box.”

Nelli continued to smile, at both of them now, back and forth, as if she were very pleased with herself.

After Martin and Nelson meticulously examined the skull back in the museum laboratory, and radiocarbon dated it, twice, Martin found himself convinced that it very likely was the skull of Crazy Horse.

“I don’t agree,” Nelson said unequivocally. “I think Ms. Nelli Mae Feathers is trying to run a con game on us. That skull could belong to anyone who died around eighteen seventy-seven. And there’s not a shred of evidence that she is a descendant of Crazy Horse. I’m not even convinced that she’s got any Indian blood in her!”

“She looks like an Indian,” Martin insisted.

“So did Tony Curtis when he played Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian who was one of the Iwo Jima flag raisers, in a movie. And Curtis was a Brooklyn Jew. Anybody can look like an Indian if they know how to use makeup.”

“I’m surprised at you, Nelson,” the curator said sternly. “Aren’t you the one who said that finding Crazy Horse’s body would — how did you put it — bolster our prestige? Now you seem to be doing a complete turnaround.”

“I simply feel that caution is called for at this point.”

“And cautious we will be — until we have Naomi’s full report on her study of the military archives. In the meantime, the annual board meeting is rapidly approaching and I expect a full summary of your areas of responsibility to present along with my own report. As well as your recommendation regarding this claim of Ms. Feathers. I suggest we get busy on both.”

“Yes, sir, of course,” Nelson agreed.

The annual meeting of the Board of Directors of the Great Plains Native American Museum was held in the large conference room of the museum, where Martin White Cloud hosted luncheons for celebrity guests, gave lectures to visiting historians and other academicians, and frequently invited the press to release pertinent reports on new museum acquisitions and other matters of interest.

Around the table sat nine of the ten elected directors: four elders from the Oglala, Brule, and Hunkpapa Sioux tribes, three Northern Cheyenne elders, and two Crow. At the head of the table sat Moses Big Rain, Chairman of the Board, a direct descendant of Rain-in-the-Face, the Hunkpapa chief who led his tribe in the Battle of the Little Big Horn. At the opposite end sat Martin White Cloud.

Off to the side, away from the table, were two other chairs, one occupied by Nelson Clay, the other by Naomi White Cloud, who had just returned the previous evening from her assignment at the U.S. Army Records Archives in St. Louis.

“Mr. Chairman and Honorable Directors,” Martin White Cloud addressed the gathering. “All of you have received, prior to this meeting, reports from my assistant, Mr. Clay, with whom you are all familiar, and from myself, regarding the matter of one Ms. Nelli Mae Feathers and her claim to be a direct descendant of the venerated Oglala war chief, Tasunke Witko, or Crazy Horse, as he is known in English. We have processed a skull and other relics brought to us by Ms. Feathers and determined that they are authentic as to age. Our only uncertainty at this point is whether or not the lineage Ms. Feathers claims can be verified — which, if accomplished, would be almost certain evidence that the skull is authentic.

“As you see by the reports previously given to you, my assistant, Mr. Clay, has taken strong exception to the story of Ms. Feathers and rejected it as false. I have reserved my own opinion on the matter until we have heard the report of my niece, Dr. Naomi White Cloud, whom you all met at our welcoming breakfast this morning.”

A breakfast to which I was not invited, Nelson mused. Goodbye job.

“I now ask Dr. White Cloud for her report on this matter.” Martin bowed, stepping aside as Naomi stood.

She was resplendent in a white soft leather dress with jewelry representing Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Crow tribes, her sable black hair braided down the back all the way to her waist. Way to go, Naomi, Nelson thought.

“Good morning, Honorable Elders,” she said, with a ceremonial bow of her head, first to Moses Big Rain, then to each side of the table in turn. “Let me qualify my report by saying that I present it respectfully but reluctantly, since it is in direct contradiction to Mr. Clay’s report. After an extensive search and analysis of U.S. Army military records in the St. Louis archives, as well as Sioux tribal records and Bureau of Indian Affairs records, I believe I have incontrovertible evidence that Ms. Nelli Mae Feathers is indeed, without any doubt, a direct blood descendant of Crazy Horse. Here—” she distributed printed sheets to each director — “are the facts as I ascertained them.

“Army records show that in eighteen eighty-seven at Camp Robinson in Dakota Territory, a trader known as Long Joe, who was of French descent and whose actual name was Joseph Lavarie, had a daughter named Nelly May Lavarie, who was born of a Southern Cheyenne woman. This daughter was fluent not only in English and French, but also in dialects commonly used by Sioux, Cheyenne, Crow, and other tribes as well.

“Nelly was frequently called upon by the army surgeon posted there, Major Valentine McGillycuddy, to act as an interpreter between the doctor and non-English-speaking patients such as the so-called agency Indians who lived on the post. One of the doctor’s patients was Black Shawl, the wife of Crazy Horse, who suffered from whooping cough. It was through Nelly’s work with the doctor that she came to know Crazy Horse. This was presumably during a period when peace negotiations were going on between the army and the Indians.

“There is a report in Dr. McGillycuddy’s medical logbook that Nelly Lavarie left Camp Robinson to live with Crazy Horse and care for Black Shawl outside the camp. All of this information supports Mr. Clay’s conclusions — up to this point. It is here, however, that we differ.

“Dr. McGillycuddy’s log also indicates that while living with Crazy Horse and Black Shawl, the young woman fell in love with Crazy Horse, became pregnant, and bore him a daughter in July eighteen seventy-seven, just two months before he was killed. That child was given the name She-Is-Not-Afraid, the same name as Crazy Horse’s first daughter who died of cholera years earlier. The child was half Sioux, one-quarter Southern Cheyenne, and one-quarter French.

“Twenty years later, in eighteen ninety-seven, according to Sioux tribal records, that child married a full-blooded Sioux named Chasing-the-Sun, and that same year gave birth to a daughter who was named Many Feathers, after the father’s mother, Bright Feathers. That child was the granddaughter of Crazy Horse. She was three-quarters Sioux, one-eighth Southern Cheyenne, and one-eighth French.

“Twenty years after that, in nineteen seventeen, according to Bureau of Indian Affairs records, Many Feathers herself married a full-blooded Sioux named Three Hawks. She bore five children, four of whom, all boys, died during the smallpox epidemic that followed World War One, while the fifth child, a daughter, survived. She was named Shawl-in-the-Sky, because her parents believed that her ancestors dropped a shawl from the spirit world to protect her from the disease brought by the white man. Shawl-in-the-Sky was the great-granddaughter of Crazy Horse. She was fourteen-sixteenths Sioux, and one-sixteenth each Southern Cheyenne and French.

“Twenty-five years after that, in nineteen forty-two, according to U.S. Marine Corps records, Shawl-in-the-Sky was married to a full-blooded Sioux named John Brave Deer, who was a corporal in the Marine Corps. He was killed in action in the battle for Guadalcanal, but not before he had fathered a daughter. The mother, Shawl-in-the-Sky, named her baby Little Shawl. She was thirty thirty-seconds Sioux and one thirty-second each Southern Cheyenne and French, and was the great-great-granddaughter of Crazy Horse.

“Thirty-three years later, in nineteen seventy-five, that child, at the age of thirty-three, bore a child out of wedlock to an unknown Caucasian first lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, who was stationed at Ellsworth Air Force Base, north of Rapid City and the Pine Ridge Reservation. Before the birth of that child, she had changed her name from Little Shawl to Lilly Shaw, and moved to Rapid City, where she worked as a night-club hostess, and where she met the officer and began the affair that resulted in her pregnancy. The child, whom she did not bother to name, was left with its grandmother, Shawl-in-the-Sky, to be raised on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The grandmother gave her the surname Feathers, after her own mother, Many Feathers, and the given names Nelli Mae, from the long ago, much storied Nelly May Lavarie, the mother of the second She-Is-Not-Afraid.

“So,” Naomi White Cloud concluded her report to the elders around the board table, “the records I have checked all indicate that the child named Nelli Mae

Feathers, born illegitimately in nineteen seventy-five, who is thirty-three sixty-fourths Caucasian, thirty sixty-fourths Sioux, and one sixty-fourth Southern Cheyenne, is the linear great-great-great granddaughter of Tasunke Witko, known in the white man’s history as Crazy Horse — and she has brought the relics of his venerated body to us.”

An almost reverential silence filled the boardroom as the Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Crow elders exchanged awed, devout looks.

Crazy Horse had returned to them.

Two days later, Nelson Clay had just finished cleaning out his desk when Naomi White Cloud came into the office that would now be hers.

“I don’t know what to say, Nelson,” she began.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he told her.

“I really didn’t come here intending to take your job.”

“Doesn’t make much difference one way or the other now, does it?”

“I suppose not. You could stay on, you know. As my assistant. I could speak to my uncle—”

“Please,” Nelson winced. Then he asked, “Did Ms. Feathers get her money today?”

“Yes. My uncle and Moses Big Rain met with her at our bank and formally transferred three million dollars into a trust account for her. So the museum now legally owns the relics of Crazy Horse. Uncle Martin is planning a big national publicity campaign and is going to remodel one wing of the museum into the Crazy Horse Memorial Exhibit.”

“Sounds like a lot of exciting work for you down the line.”

“Yes. And of course I’ll be taking over my uncle’s position one day.”

“Of course.” Nelson smiled and closed the suitcase into which he had packed his personal belongings. “Say goodbye to the curator for me,” he added wryly.

Naomi walked out to the museum lobby with him. “Since you’ll be leaving your museum car here, Nelson, can I give you a lift somewhere?”

“Thanks anyway, but someone is picking me up.”

She waited with him outside the museum entrance until, presently, a car drove up. Rose Blackthorn was driving. Sitting beside her was Nelli Mae Feathers. “So long, Dr. White Cloud,” Nelson said.

He tossed his bag into the backseat as Nelli Mae slid over to make room for him in the front seat.

Naomi’s mouth hung open in confusion and disbelief as the car drove away.

Down the highway, behind the wheel, Rose glanced at Nelli Mae and asked, “Do you think all those stories your grandmother told you were true? That you might really be a descendant of Crazy Horse?”

“I don’t know,” Nelli Mae said. “Grandmother loved to tell stories that had been told to her as a child. I have to admit, though, that she never told the same story the same way twice. Anyway, what’s the difference?”

“None, I guess,” Rose allowed. “Nelson,” she then said, “I’d like to make a quick stop on our way out of town and put some flowers on my Great-great-great-great Uncle Hawk Wing’s grave. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Not at all,” Nelson replied. “That’s the least we can do for him. Or what’s left of him.”