CHAPTER 41
Minnesota, 1906
Alma’s eyes climbed the red and white edifice of the Ryan Hotel, lighting on the fifth floor. Behind her, carriages and bicycles rattled. Automobiles honked. Streetcars whined along their tracks. Her bounding pulse had not slowed in the hour-long ride from Fort Snelling, nor had her mind quieted. How could she face Stewart? What would she tell him—that Asku was guilty? She hardly believed it herself.
Her feet echoed as she crossed the marble foyer. The gears of the elevator worked her nerves. Inside the room, Stewart was already preparing for dinner. “Hurry and change, darling,” he said, slipping an arm into his freshly pressed dress shirt. “We don’t want to miss our reservation.”
She sat on the edge of the bed and watched him dress. He worked through his buttons and donned his waistcoat—white on white. Embellished satin upon starched cotton. His face, reflected in the vanity mirror, wore a cheerful expression she’d not seen since they crossed the Mississippi. A good meeting with Mr. Gates then. Agreement all around they could win the case. Save for one small detail: Asku wasn’t innocent. Just thinking the words pained her. How could she utter them aloud?
Stewart picked up his bow tie. Also white, though black was in fashion now too. He whistled as he worked it round his collar and began to tie. She could see the deft movement of his hands in the mirror. Over, under, fold, around. “I thought you might like your blue chiffon,” he said, and gestured toward the chaise. “I already laid it out for you.”
She glanced over at the dress. The window above the chaise looked out over the skyline. Shadow had fallen and the sky colored over like a bruise. If only she’d passed over the morning paper that day, left its stories silenced between the pages, thrown it out with the breakfast scraps. She would never have returned to Stover and seen the injustice her childhood eyes could not. She would never have lost her fantasies of prosperity to the reality of life on the reservation.
Stewart’s cufflinks snapped into place. Fabric rustled as he shrugged on his tailcoat.
Could she leave Asku for the gallows, let him die when she had the power to save him? In lieu of an answer, her father’s voice came to her, warm, robust, humming with excitement: We’re their salvation. He’d said those words the very first day the Indians arrived. How fervently she’d once believed them.
But then, for all their good intentions, they hadn’t really saved them at all.
“Aren’t you going to take off your duster and dress for dinner?”
She jogged her head and turned to her husband. How handsome he looked in his double-breasted jacket, the silk-faced collar shining in the lamplight. His hair was neatly combed, his cheeks freshly shaven, his hazel eyes expectant. She pulled off her coat and laid it beside her on the bed. As an afterthought, she removed her gloves and unpinned her hat too. Sweat clung to the palms of her hands. She wiped them over her skirt. “I have to tell you something.”
“Yes, we can talk at dinner.”
“No, here.”
He hesitated, then sat beside her.
She searched the silence for the best way to begin. It offered nothing. She ran her hands over her dress for the second time, then hid them in folds of fabric when she noticed her reddened and haggard nail beds. “Why do you love me?”
His brow furrowed. “What?”
“When you first saw me at the picture show and afterward, during our courtship, what made you fall in love with me?”
He flattened his lips and sat back. “I guess it was many things. Your sweetness, your intelligence, your pensiveness—”
“My frailty?”
“I never saw you as frail. Melancholy perhaps. But with that comes grit. Having borne something terrible and survived. For that I loved you too.”
“But you never asked after the circumstances.”
He shrugged. “I figured you’d tell me when you were ready.”
At last perhaps she was.
“I told Harry what we found at White Earth. He still refuses our help.”
“What?” He started to chuckle, but the sound sputtered into a wheezing exhale. “You’re serious. Why?”
“He told me, that is, he confessed that”—Alma swallowed—“he killed Agent Andrews.”
Stewart blinked. “He’s guilty? We did all this, came all this way, to help a murderer?”
Alma winced at the word. It still seemed impossible, her beloved Asku a killer.
“Why didn’t he tell you this at the beginning? Before we wasted all that time at White Earth?” Stewart jerked to his feet and paced the length of the bedroom. The pendant light above swayed on its gilded chain, casting roving pools of light and shadow. “If he thinks I’m going to walk into that courtroom and convince the jury he’s an innocent man—”
“That’s not what he wants.” She paused. The testimonies, the letters, the fraudulent documents they’d uncovered on the reservation—they could still use them to save Asku’s life. She brought her fingers to her mouth, stopped, and let her hand fall to her lap. No. Asku had made his choice. Who were they to override it? “He wants to plead guilty. He’s ready to die.”
“As he should.”
“Stewart!”
“Alma, he killed a man. Not to mention he embroiled us in his deceit, sent us out on this frivolous hunt to uncover evidence that didn’t exist.”
“He didn’t send us. We went of our own accord, remember.”
Stewart continued to pace. He tugged at the knot of his bow tie as if his collar were strangling him. “Mr. Gates is going to be furious. Judge Baum. The whole courtroom will be in an uproar.”
“Let them be.”
“How can you be so calm about this? We’ve made a disgrace of ourselves here. Inserted ourselves into the investigation. Aroused trouble on the reservation. All this for a murderer? Tell me at least that he’s repentant.”
“No.”
Stewart balked. “No?”
“Sit down, dearest. Please.”
She gestured to the bed, but he flopped down on the chaise, brushing aside her dress as if it were a rag.
“It’s hard to explain.” She fought the tremble in her voice. “Harry knew full well when he shot the agent he would die for it. He did it for honor.”
“Honor?” His head fell back against the wall. “Honor? What does honor—”
“You saw the reservation. The corruption. The poverty.” She looked down at her dust-stained skirt. She had to say the words, as much for her own ears as Stewart’s. “It’s more than that, though. It was the school—Stover—that was the start of it.”
He stood and set again to pacing—around the bed between the vanity stool and lacquered table to the chaise and window and back. She imagined the thoughts working through his head. You said Harry thrived at Stover. How could something that happened all those years ago lead a man to murder? I thought the schools were set up for the Indians’ own good?
Whatever his thoughts, he said nothing and Alma bore the silence. In time, the clap of patent-leather shoes atop the floor softened to a hum. “Tell me what this is about, Alma. All of it.”
And so she did. She told him of the very first day she’d met Asku, how he clambered so bravely from the wagon. She told him of Minowe and the doll. Of Miss Wells and her ruler. Of their lessons and their games. She told him how they’d sneak out into the woods, dance their forbidden dances, sing their forbidden songs, speak in their foreign tongues.
“. . . for me it was fun, an adventure.” A tear trickled from her eye, cutting a path down her face for others to follow. She rifled through her handbag. When she remembered she’d given her silk hankie to Minowe, she wiped her face with her sleeve. “I didn’t realize these rituals were a way to keep a piece of their original selves alive. Their struggle, their homesickness, the discrimination they faced—it was all around me and I did nothing about it.”
Stewart sat next to her. “It’s not your fault, Alma. You were just a girl.”
“And Harry?”
He frowned, dragged a hand down his face, and sighed. “I’ll speak to Mr. Gates tomorrow before the trial, convince him we must let Mr. Muskrat plead guilty.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m not saying I agree with any of this—the murder, staying silent about what we uncovered on the reservation—but if your friend is ready and willing to die for his crime, well, I suppose that’s justice.”
“There’s something more I must tell you.” She fished again through her purse. Her fingers clasped around the necklace. She’d held it so many times, worked over every inch, knew each plane and curve. How smooth the beads and quill felt. How cold. She pulled it out and handed it to Stewart. “A boy came to Stover when I was fourteen. They called him George, but his name was 
. . .”
. . .”