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of his back.
    â€œClint,” Father John said when they were only a couple feet away.
    The man twisted slightly and glanced up, past the blanket bunched at his neck. Wrinkles cut deep furrows into his dark forehead. The black eyes narrowed in sadness. “I been waitin’ for you. You bring the police?”
    â€œNo.” Father John dropped down on one knee beside the old man. “What happened?” he said.
    â€œI couldn’t let Junior sell the prayer pipe.” Clint turned back toward the frame. “I figured Junior was up to something when he didn’t come around the last couple weeks. So this morning I went out to his place. He was fixin’ to load something out of that camper of his, so I went over to give him a hand, you know. Then I seen what was on that old blanket. All the stuff that was in the museum, and the sacred pipe, too, just layin’ there, like it was nothing. Oh, I knew what was goin’ on. Junior was gonna sell the ancestors’ things. He didn’t deny it. ‘What the hell,’ he says. ‘Who cares about this old stuff anyway?’ And I thought all the time he was comin’ out here to learn the Arapaho Way ’cause he wanted to be a new man. All he wanted was to find out about the stuff in the museum so he’d know how much money he could get for it.”
    The old man tilted his head back and fixed his gaze on the pipe. “Truth was, Junior loved money more than anything, even more than the sacred pipe that sent smoke up to heaven and joined the people to the Creator Himself. Even more than that.”
    â€œSo you shot him,” Vicky said. Her voice was quiet behind them.
    The old man had started shaking. He drew in his shoulders and dropped his head. “I didn’t mean to shoot him. I said, ‘Junior, we gotta talk this over.’ He said he didn’t have no time. I said, ‘It’s not the Arapaho Way, sellin’ the ancestors’ things.’ He just looked at me and said, ‘They’re goin’, old man.’ I said, ‘Not the sacred pipe, Junior. It’s gotta go back to the museum so the people can come and visit it.’ ‘Get outta my way, old man,’ he says, and starts pushing me back, pushing me hard. So I grabbed a skillet on the table and hit him on the side of the head. He went down on both knees and pulls out a gun. I hit him again, and the gun went flying across the floor. I was going after it when Junior knocks me down and starts pounding on my head ’til everything starts goin’ black, but I got my hand on the gun and then I hear a noise like thunder and I seen Junior laying real still next to me.”
    Clint stopped talking. The cottonwoods swayed in the wind; the air filled with the smell of smoke. “It was terrible,” he said.
    â€œYou didn’t mean to kill him.” Father John reached out and patted the old man’s shoulder.
    Slowly Clint began unfolding the blanket. He withdrew a small, black revolver and turned it over in his hand, examining it, as if it were some alien object he couldn’t understand. Then he handed it to Father John.
    â€œI heard everything.” Gianelli’s voice came from the far side of the tipi. There was the slow, rhythmic crackling of leaves under his boots.
    Father John got to his feet and gave the revolver to the agent. “What brought you here?”
    â€œThe way you and Vicky tore out of the parking lot.” He shot a glance at Vicky. “I figured you two were on to something, so I decided I’d better follow and see what it was.” The agent stepped around the frame and leaned over the old man. “You know I have to arrest you, Clint.” In a voice not much above a whisper, he began ticking off the old man’s rights—the right to remain silent, the right to have an attorney present.
    Clint started to his feet, struggling upright, reeling sideways. Father John gripped the