JESSE WHITE OWL left Fort Washakie and rode hard cross-country to Arapaho, detouring past the fences that Arapahos had put up around their allotments, in the way of white men. Ahead, in the far distance, the Mercantile store sprawled over the rise, white walls gleaming in the sun.
Jesse slowed uphill past a child leading a pony toward the water pooled in the gully. He dismounted and walked up the steps to the men standing on the porch, working at cigarettes cupped in their hands, dressed in canvas trousers, brown leather vests, and long-sleeved white shirts with black bands above the elbows. They wore gray hats with rounded crowns and wide brims that threw a line of shade over the top half of their faces. Thick black braids hung over their chests.
Jesse had known the men all his life: Joe Yellow Plume, William Red Horn, Sumner Bull, Old Man Scarface. Jesse was the one who’d stood on the porch and told them how Curtis was going to photograph a real Arapaho village. They’d thrown their heads back and shouted with laughter. “Where’s he gonna find this village?” they’d asked.
Well, that was the thing, he’d explained. Curtis was gonna create the village and he was gonna pay good money to anyone who brought his family and tipis out to Black Mountain.
That had caught their attention, and two days later, all four men had shown up, wagons humped with canvas tipis, feathered headdresses and elk-tooth shirts and breastplates dragged out of sheds.
Now they stared at him, the cigarettes burning down between their fingers, smoke curling around the cuffs of their shirts, wariness and alertness in their eyes.
“I been at the agency,” he said.
“They’re gonna hang ’em soon’s the executioner gets here day after tomorrow.” Old Man Scarface tossed his head toward the railroad tracks that ran behind the Mercantile.
“They aren’t guilty,” Jesse said.
“There was witnesses.” This from Sumner Bull, the youngest man there, not out of his teens yet, still on the first hill of life. What he saw from the first hill was small. He’d see farther as he climbed the next three hills.
Jesse moved in front of the young man. “You one of the witnesses?”
Sumner backed away until he was wedged against the porch railing. “There was lots of witnesses. The white man was the most important.”
“What’re you after?” Old Man Scarface said.
“I want the truth.”
“We said the truth to the agent, and we said the same truth to the magistrate. We said what we seen.” Scarface glanced at the closed door to the Mercantile. “You can ask anybody inside. We were running around the village, shouting like the photographer said we was to do, shooting off the blanks in our rifles. People started screaming and crying, like the Crow was really attacking. Thunder rode straight to Bashful’s tipi, them other two right behind him, all of ’em shooting off their rifles. We seen the truth, Jesse.”
“Your eyes seen something else.”
“You was there.” Yellow Plume spoke up for the first time.
“I was taking plates out of the camera and handing new ones to the photographer so he could keep shooting his images.” Jesse stopped. He felt as if a bolt of lightning had crashed into him and knocked out his air. It was a moment before he could speak. “The photographer was looking through that big, black eye of his,” Jesse managed. “He must’ve seen what happened. What did he tell the magistrate?”
“You ain’t heard?” Scarface shook his head. “Mr. Curtis packed up his belongings in that wagon of his and pulled out of here before the agent come out to the village and started asking questions. Said he wasn’t gonna have no part of murder. Said he was going up to the Sioux ’cause they was civilized.” The old man gave a bark of laughter. “Mr. Curtis didn’t know the Sioux in the Old Time. You ask me, Curtis was scared he was gonna get blamed and Bashful’s people was gonna punish him ’cause he’s the one who set up the village.”
“He took everything?” Jesse could barely form the question. The black eye on the photographer’s box had seen what happened. It had captured the truth.
“Everything he could pile into the wagons. Sumner here helped him.” Scarface nodded at the young man over by the railing. “Ain’t that right?”
Sumner took a long pull on the cigarette and let his shoulders relax. “Loaded stuff out of the cabin and packed up his tent and loaded it into the wagon with the cartons of bottles and paper, all that would fit. Some of it he left behind.”
“What about the glass plates?” Jesse felt his jaw muscles tighten.
“He was sitting in the middle of the floor, packing things up.” The young man shrugged. “I took the cartons he gave me and put ’em in the middle of the wagon and wrapped the tent around ’em. There was some cartons still in the cabin, but when I went to get ’em, the photographer says, ‘Leave ’em.’ Guess he didn’t want ’em any more.”
The Indian was still talking when Jesse swung over the porch railing. He placed two fingers in his mouth and whistled for the pony, which started trotting up from the water. Jesse ran to meet it, swung up into the saddle, and, leaning along the pony’s neck, galloped north.
BLACK MOUNTAIN HAD turned gun-metal gray in the afternoon shadows when Jesse turned the pony loose at the stream that ran crooked in the flats below. He made his way through the brush crackling under his boots, trying not to look at the stretch of bare ground where the village had stood. The place of death. He walked on, following the little creek that was no more than a thread of water angling off the stream, until he came to the log cabin with the sloping roof that looked as if it might fall onto the ground and the porch that shifted to one side, broken planks like the teeth of a monster animal jutting out of the wood floor.
The cabin had stood there since the Old Time, the elders said, when whites came to Indian lands to trap beaver and trade their white goods. “It will work just fine for my lodging,” Curtis had told him that first day they’d ridden out to Black Mountain. “I can set up my tents nearby.”
The door was open, moving back and forth with the gusts of wind that blew across the porch, hinges squealing like a trapped animal. Jesse stood in the doorway a moment and let his eyes adjust to the dim light glowing in the small window in the opposite wall. The place looked as if a tornado had blown through. Pieces of paper and bundles of cloth scattered over the floor; cardboard cartons that looked as if they had been tossed aside. For a moment, Jesse wondered if a bear had gotten in and rummaged about for food. Then he understood. The photographer had left in a hurry. Sat in the middle of the floor, Sumner said, packing things up, setting other things aside.
Jesse dug in the pocket of his trousers, past the bag of tobacco and little envelope of cigarette papers, and pulled out a stick match. Then he stepped inside, struck the match against the wall, and lit the wick of the candle on a wooden bench. The light flared blue and danced about over the log wall behind, then settled into a low, steady yellow flame.
He stepped over the debris, glancing around the cabin. In the far corner, a carton that had once held glass plates, wrapped in foil, tidy, ready for use. The carton was empty. Jesse turned slowly, his eyes scanning the other cartons. Under the bench, he spotted an overturned box—also empty, he saw. But sitting beside the box, almost hidden in shadow, was a stack of three blue and white enameled developing tanks. There was a bulge in the center of the top tank, as if a boot had stomped on it.
Jesse swung around and, picking up the candle, surveyed the piles of grayish rags. He poked the tip of his boot at one pile, then another, until he uncovered a twisted jumble of red cloth. Something caught his attention—the smallest outline of an object. He stooped down and began patting the cloth until his fingers gripped the smooth edge of wood. He dropped to his knees, pushed the base of the candle into a crack in the plank floor until the candle seemed steady. He tugged at the cloth pulling out three wooden plate holders, with glass plates still secured in place, protected by dark slides. The plates had been exposed, he could tell. After the photographer had snapped each picture, Jesse had been careful to insert the slide with the dark rim visible, so that the photographer would know not to use the plate again and make a double exposure.
For the briefest moment, Jesse had the sense that the photographer had meant for him to find the three plates. And yet—his heart was hammering now—the plates were no good without chemicals to develop them and paper on which to print the images.
Jesse picked up the candle and got to his feet, squinting into the flickering light. Some of the cartons left behind had remnants of cloth and paper inside. In the corner next to the stone fireplace was a wood box with the tops of glass jugs poking over the edges. He walked over and pulled out a clear glass jug, half-full of yellowish-brown liquid developer, sparkling in the candlelight. In another jug, he realized, were the white crystals of sodium thiosulfate. He lifted out two small bottles wedged among the jugs, next to a box of thumb tacks and a glass ramekin holding a thin, glass rod. Still squinting, he read the tiny print on the labels pasted to the bottles: FERRIC AMMONIUM CITRATE and POTASSIUM BICHROMATE.
He set the bottles back into the carton, his heart crashing against his ribs. The photographer had also left him the chemicals, and enough paper in the cartons—it was possible—to print the images. He would make the blue pictures first, he decided. The cyanotypes, Curtis called them. Working pictures that showed blue-gray images on paper and were quick to make. If the cyanotypes showed what he expected, then Jesse could make the black-and-white prints. He had one more day before Thunder and the others would die.
Jesse pushed the base of the candle hard into the plank floor again, then he gathered up the red cloth and began tucking it around the edges of the window. Now the light coming through the window glowed a dim red—a safe light for developing the exposed plates, the photographer had said. Jesse lifted the enameled tank with the bulge in the middle, went outside and, after pounding out the bulge with his fist, filled the tank with creek water. He would have to hurry. The day was wearing on; the sun already fading into a pale white glow.
Back in the cabin, he set the tank on the bench and arranged the other tanks on either side. After shutting the door, he ripped up pieces of paper and cardboard and stuffed them into the cracks until the rim of light around the edges had disappeared. Then he blew out the candle, allowing the dull red light from the window to float around him. He was ready.
In one of the cartons, he found three pieces of smooth paper, which he laid out on the end of the bench. Then he took out the two small bottles and poured the chemicals into the ramekin. Using the glass rod, he spread the mixture over the sheets of paper and thumbtacked them to the log wall to dry.
Working as fast as he could, he lifted out the jug with the yellowish-brown developer and poured the chemical into the tank to the left of the tank of water. He poured the white crystals into the tank on the right. Carefully, the way the photographer had shown him, he removed one of the glass plates from the holder and slipped the plate into the developing tank. The image began to take shape before his eyes: the village spread at the base of Black Mountain, the warriors galloping around the tipis. When the image was clear, Jesse moved the plate into the water tank to stop the developing, then into the tank of crystals to fix the image. He rinsed the plate in water again and propped it upright against a carton so that the water could drip free.
He went through the same motions with the second glass plate, then the third. Finally he opened the door, dislodging the wads of papers and cardboard that fluttered over his trousers and boots. Outside on the porch, he lit a cigarette, the match shaking between his fingers, the flame closing down, then flaring again. He had seen the images. They were what he had expected.
After a few moments, Jesse ground out the cigarette butt under his boot and went back inside. He rummaged through the piles of rags until he’d found three wooden printing frames, never doubting that Curtis had left them behind with the rest of materials and that he had only to find them. He fitted one of the coated sheets of paper—which had turned yellowish—against each of the glass plates, then fastened them into the frames, took them outside, and set them upright in the thin column of sunshine still falling over the porch. It took several moments before the shadows of the images printed themselves onto the sheets of paper in bluish-gray tones.
Back in the cabin, he rinsed the cyanotypes in the tray of water to remove the last of the yellow tinges. Now the images were a deep blue color, highlighted in white. No one would believe blue images. What are these strange images? He could hear the agent’s voice in his head. He would have to turn the images into black-and-white photographs.
Rummaging through the cartons, hurrying against the fading sun, Jesse found several sheets of printing-out paper, coated with silver chloride. He could fasten the sheets against the glass plates in the printing frames and let the sun develop the black-and-white prints, but it would take longer than it had taken to develop the cyanotypes. He would have to fix and tone the black-and-white images in the chemicals. It would take time. He stared out the door at the pencil-thin column of sunshine evaporating like water off the plank floor of the porch and the blue shadows moving over the ground. It was too late.
He would have to sleep here in the cabin with the blue-and-white images, and tomorrow he would make the photographs. If he started early, in the first strength of the sun, he could bring the images to light. Tomorrow he would watch the village take shape. He would see Bashful again.