Read Online The Man Who Fell from the Sky by Margaret Coel - Free Book Online

families. People whose ancestors knew him, hid him on their ranches. I’m hoping you can put me in touch with folks like that.”
    Father John sipped at his own coffee for a moment. His parishioners were still flowing around the table, leaving a space between the director and themselves. “Have you talked to Arapahos?”
    â€œWe got nowhere. Oh, they’re very polite. Didn’t tell us to back off or go away. Smiled, said they’d check with a few people who might know someone and get back to us. I know the old skiddoo when I see it. No sense in riling us up by saying you don’t know anybody and if you did, you wouldn’t be telling us. Just smile and smile. Works every time. Left us hoping every day that the next day we’d get an interview with somebody who had stories about Butch.”
    â€œI can make some inquiries.”
    â€œAh!” Paxton threw up both hands. “I wish I had a dollar for all the times I’ve heard that.”
    â€œThere’s a white woman from an old family in the area. I can see if she’d be willing to talk to you. Do you have a card?”
    â€œWhite?” Todd Paxton fumbled in his jeans’ side pocket, withdrew a small metal envelope, and extracted a card that he pushed across the table. “I was hoping you’d suggest some Arapahos.”
    There were probably a lot of Arapahos with stories, Father John was thinking. Families that had straggled onto the rez with Chief Black Coal and Chief Sharpnose after the Arapahos had been hunted across the plains with nowhere to go, no more lands to call their own. The government had sent them to the Shoshones. They had asked Chief Washakie if they could come under his tent, and the Shoshone chief had taken pity. That was in 1878. Fifteen years later, Butch Cassidy had ridden into the area.
    â€œI’ll check around.” He slipped Paxton’s card into his shirt pocket and got to his feet.
    The director had already stood up and was pushing the chair into the table. He glanced toward the door, as if he were plotting a path across the plains. “I’d appreciate it.”
    Father John watched the man weave through his parishioners and step outside, a dark figure against the sunlight. Then he started through the crowd, visiting, exchanging polite pleasantries. He stopped at the table where Elsa Lone Bear was sitting, pulled a vacant chair over with his boot, and sat down a little behind her left shoulder. She turned toward him. “That white man the film director?”
    â€œHis name is Todd Paxton.”
    â€œWhat’s he doing here?” Elsa was in her twenties, part of the younger generation, teaching fifth grade and trying to find a way between the past and the present.
    â€œAt the mission?”
    â€œNo. What are they trying to prove? Butch Cassidy was a long time ago. Times have changed.”
    â€œThe landscape doesn’t change much.” He was thinking that Butch Cassidy had seen the same mountains, the same rivers, the same prairie stretching into an almost always blue and cloudless sky.
    â€œThe people don’t like a lot of attention, you know.”
    He nodded. He had come to realize that Arapahos liked to be the observers.
    â€œWould it be all right to stop by later to see Eldon?”
    â€œOh, Grandfather would like that. Hasn’t gotten out much lately. He’s been having trouble with his ghost leg. The one that burns like fire even though he lost it in that automobile accident twenty years ago. The doctor says the nerves still think the leg is there, so they keep sending out pain signals.”
    â€œThe past has a way of hanging around.”
    â€œDo we ever get free?”
    â€œIs that what you would like?”
    She turned her head and stared out over the hall. The crowd was smaller now. The plates of doughnuts gone. Coffee smells turning musky and stale.
    â€œSometimes I think . . .” She hesitated. “Not