Eye of the Wolf by Margaret Coel Page A

like Trent finally got away from her, all right. My guess is he doesn’t want her knowing his whereabouts.”
    Father John thanked the man and set the receiver back in the cradle. The girl was still leaning forward, clasping her hands so tightly in her lap that her knuckles had turned bloodless.
    â€œHis father hasn’t seen him,” he told her.
    â€œOh, God.” She sank back against her chair. “I did right, coming here. Trent always said to me, Edie, if there’s any trouble, you go to the Indian priest at the Catholic mission. You ask anybody, they’ll tell you how to find him. So I came here. I didn’t know where else to go.”
    â€œWhat kind of trouble, Edie? Was Trent expecting trouble?”
    She shrugged, lifted her chin, and locked eyes with him again. “There was some guy over at the Cowboy.”
    â€œThe Cowboy?”
    â€œBar and grill over in Riverton. Sometimes we go there for a burger. So we’re just sitting in the booth, me and Trent and these other guys from class, and this Indian at the bar starts mouthing off, saying how Shoshones oughtta get the hell outta there, that nobody wants ’em. And Trent told him to shut up, and the guy says, ‘Yeah? You wanna go outside and party?’ And Trent says for him to go . . .” She paused. “You know what I’m saying.”
    Father John nodded. “Any idea of who he was?”
    â€œArapaho, that’s all I know. Trent says to me, ‘Take a good look, ’cause that’s an Arapaho and he’s nothing but trouble. One of these days, we might have to teach him a lesson. All I know is, he was a skinny guy with tattoos on his arms and a long nose that made him look like a horse. He even had his hair pulled back in a ponytail.”
    Father John didn’t say anything for a moment. He could think of two or three young men who might fit the description. Troublemakers, young men who got drunk and hung out at the park. Park rangers, they were called. Like the fort Indians in the Old Time, hanging out at the forts where the alcohol was always available. Usually harmless, except to themselves.
    â€œThat’s it?” Father John said. But that wasn’t all of it. He could tell from the way the girl’s blue eyes shifted away. “Suppose you tell me the rest,” he said.
    â€œIt’s no big deal.” The girl shrugged again. Moisture glistened on her cheeks. “I mean, we got things settled so there wasn’t any more trouble from my boyfriend, I mean, before I met Trent. Jason Rizzo’s his name. He’s one of them white supremacist guys, always talking about the pure Aryan race and how it can’t be contaminated, and all that crap. I don’t know why I ever got involved with him, except I was real lonely, you know, and this girl I was working with over at the thrift shop says her boyfriend’s in prison, and he’s got this buddy, Jason, that’s looking for somebody to write to. So I figure, what the heck. Poor guy’s in prison, probably lonely like me, so we start sending letters back and forth, and he seems like a real nice guy. Then he gets out of prison and moves to Riverton, and he’s expecting me to be his girlfriend, but I see he’s real scary. I was his girl for a while, but I was looking to get away from him, and then I met Trent. He helped me get away. Said, ‘Come on, Edie. You can go to school. You can make something of yourself.’ Gave me the guts to walk out, ’cause I knew that he was gonna protect me if Jason came after me. So I moved in with Trent in a little house behind a big, old mansion over on Pershing.” The girl caught her face in both hands. Her shoulders began shaking, the sobs coming in jerky spasms.
    Father John waited until the sobs were quiet, and then he said, “What happened, Edie?”
    She dropped her hands and started lacing and unlacing the tissue again, keeping