CHAPTER 22

CENTURIES BEFORE ANY WHITE man set foot in the Big Horn Mountains, the Sheepeaters gathered atop 10,000-foot-high Medicine Wheel Mountain, from which they could see into what is now three states.  The sun dances, ceremonies, and the sacrifices they performed there remain the secrets of history.  Much later—probably around 1700 A.D.—the Shoshones built the Medicine Wheel on the site.  When Jan was a boy, he drove to the wheel and walked among the cairns.  Now it was encircled by a chain-link fence and visitors had to park their vehicles and walk the last mile-and-a-half on foot, up a steep grade.  Unless, of course, you were with Monster Broadbeck, who drove around the barrier and up the service road to the Wheel.  When Jan was a kid, the Medicine Wheel was an interesting oddity, now it was a shrine for American Indians and New Age mystics.

Twenty-eight granite stone spokes—coinciding both with the number of lunar days and the number of tribes in the original Shoshone nation—radiate from the center of the wheel.  Some of the spokes terminate in hollowed-out pockets lined with similar stones.  These rock cairns precisely align with the rising sun at the summer solstice.  Some investigators speculate that ancients filled the pockets with water to perform a kind of baptism—a view discounted by most anthropologists who consider such a theory an attempt to impose Western culture on a pagan society.

As an adult, the Medicine Wheel infected Jan with a ghostly feeling similar to what he had experienced at the Custer Battlefield, forty miles to the northeast.  Indeed, there was a connection between the Medicine Wheel and the Battle of the Little Big Horn.  Some legends say Sitting Bull danced three days at the wheel just before the battle.  And, for certain, a contingent of warriors came to the Medicine Wheel immediately after the battle.  Sitting Bull, a Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux, wound up in Canada, but a huge band of warriors trekked up into the Big Horns before eventually straggling back to the Black Hills Reservation.  The battle on the Little Big Horn occurred on the banks of the stream, which took its name from its larger counterpart—the Big Horn River which flowed by Jan’s ranch.  The Little Big Horn makes its confluence with the main Big Horn a few miles north of the battleground where General Custer died on June 25, 1876.

Mystical types, Jan knew, spoke of the Medicine Wheel as a spiritual vortex—these same folks consider Manti, Utah, and Sedona, Arizona, to be similar vortices.  But even dyed-in-the-wool secularists admit to feeling “something” at the Medicine Wheel.  Something conjured by the ancient chiefs and maidens who danced and mated under the stars and orbiting moon.  Nearly all traces of the Sheepeaters have long since vanished, except for the spiritual residue infusing Medicine Wheel Mountain.

Jan, Monster, and George Olson parked in the turnaround at the Medicine Wheel. They regarded the wheel silently through the chain link fence.  At  2:30 a.m. they pulled equipment bags from the trunk of the county cruiser in the near total darkness—the quarter moon having barely set. They headed across the meadow toward the C1MS relay site.

They walked the mile to the relay site in silence.  As they approached the dark and silent cabin, they saw Melissa’s car still parked in front.  She, of course, had taken the private road which avoided the Medicine Wheel altogether.

“Hope Melissa plied him with booze,” Jan said.

“Yeah,” Monster said, “I hope that’s all she plied him with.”

“Apparently the generator is off for the night,” Olson said.  “That’s nice because we won’t be interrupting any transmission.  On the other hand, we won’t have its noise for cover and we won’t know if we have power to our unit.  We’ll just have to trust Granny’s schematic.”

“Well,” Monster said, “I guess that is about as sure a bet as we’ll get in this operation.  If there is one professional in this outfit, it’s Granny.  No offense.”

“You got that right,” Olson said.  “Granny gets my vote for the ‘Most Reliable Criminal Contractor’ award.”

Olson paused, checked his gear one last time and said, “Well, boys, ready or not, here we go.  No more voice communication from here.  After we drag the equipment to the tower, you two take up covering positions and I’ll skinny up the pole.  This whole operation shouldn’t take thirty minutes if all goes well.”

“Don’t worry, George,” Monster said.  “We won’t let you fall into Campbell’s hands.  If he comes outside, I’ll shoot you off the tower.”

“Knew I could count on you, John,” Olson said.

***

Getting up the pole had been easy for Olson—much easier than opening the transmitter box and attaching the power leads.  Sweat had dripped off his forehead as he worked under the tarp in the beam of a dim penlight Velcroed to his baseball cap.  The colors on the wires were nearly imperceptible in the feeble light.  That was something Granny had not counted on.  Olson thought he got the wires right.

He climbed the tower, trailing the light power lead which he taped to the pole every five feet or so.  From fifty feet up, he secured himself with the leather safety belt and gently pulled the antenna up.  It was tethered on a light line, and he drew it up slowly so it would not bump into the tower.

Holding the antenna in front of him, he pointed it in the general direction of Basin, whose lights were clearly visible thirty miles due south on the valley floor.  Olson remembered taking a commercial flight from Chicago to Boise one night years earlier—when he was on his way to testify in the Ruby Ridge trial.  From 35,000 feet he had been able to locate the towns of Northern Wyoming—Sheridan to the east of the Big Horns and Cody, Greybull, Basin, Worland, and Thermopolis to the west. 

Tonight the panorama was breathtaking.  The sky in the east was just beginning to lighten and would, within a couple of hours, extinguish the starry host.  Olson had the sensation that he was at the very top of the world.  Looking up, he was lost in crystal clear heavens with stars so bright and distinct he felt that if he reached out, he could scoop up a handful of them.  

This must be how astronauts feel on space walks, he thought.  

It seemed as if he let go he would drift off over the Big Horn Basin like a leaf.  To the north he could see outlines of mountains in Montana, and to the east he saw the darkness over the Great Plains—the rolling buffalo hills undulating toward Devil’s Tower.  He couldn’t help but picturing his first visit to Devil’s Tower after coming to Wyoming.  Driving through the rolling grain fields, heading west from Belle Fouche, suddenly the tower appeared in front of him.  So remarkable was the sight, his breath caught and he thought he was not going to be able to take another.  Indian legend said the scarring of the tower was done by the claws of a giant bear.  But the sight of Devil’s Tower was every bit as astounding as it had been made to appear in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  Olson shook off the thought that he was having some sort of weird psychological—or was it spiritual—encounter right now.

He pulled the bolts from the pocket of his jacket and inserted them through the clamps on the antenna.  In five minutes he had them cinched down and, sighting along the antenna horn, he guessed he was pointed dead on Basin.

Carefully, he unscrewed the connector on the antenna belonging to C1MS, attached his adapter, and reconnected it.  Then he connected the lead to his own antenna and checked the power wires to the small transmitter box at the back of the antenna.

“If that doesn’t do it, we ain’t gonna get the job done,” he said to himself.

Just then, a shaft of light burst through the cabin door and Bill Campbell stepped out.  He was dressed entirely in white!  Olson’s heart leaped into his throat.  He held his breath, waiting for Campbell to look up.  He hoped Monster had a night vision scope trained on Campbell.

Campbell walked to the edge of the cabin’s porch.  He didn’t look up.  Instead, he walked to the edge of the porch and stood very still.  Olson now saw the reason.  Campbell was relieving himself.

***

On the ground with Jan and Monster, Olson found he was trembling. 

“S’matter, George?” Monster said. “I thought you federales never got nervous.  You think Campbell was coming up the pole after you?”

“I was worried that you might start shooting at Campbell and blow me off the pole, is all,” Olson said.

Monster guffawed at that.

“What the heck was he dressed in white for?” Olson asked.  “That was spooky!”

“Those were his garments,” Jan said.  “His temple garments.”

“Why was he wearing those?”

“Mormons wear them all the time once they have been through the temple.  They have occult markings sewn in them above the breasts, navel and knee.”

“Oh, yeah.” Olson said.  “The holy Mormon underwear.”

“That’s it.”

***

At the cruiser, they looked back at the cabin, which was beginning to become visible in the predawn.

No one mentioned Melissa, but Jan couldn’t erase from his mind the picture of her and Campbell alone in the cabin.  He held his breath, hoping Monster wouldn’t bring it up.  But Monster was silent in the front seat behind the wheel of the cruiser.  Too many wheels in motion here tonight, Jan thought.  The celestial wheel of the stars, the cycle of love, the grinding wheels of justice.  Rocks flew from the cruiser’s wheels as it picked up speed down the hill and away from the Medicine Wheel.