The Rapid City Airport appeared to be a landing strip in search of a town. The approach took them over weathered pastureland, dry streambeds, and ranches. The single runway sat atop a grassy mesa, which held only a tiny terminal, low tower, and an almost-empty parking lot.
As Baedecker settled into his rented Honda Civic, he decided that he had had enough of scheduled flights and rental cars. He would use the bulk of his savings to buy a 1960 Corvette and have done with it. Better yet, when the money came in, a nice little Cessna 180 . . .
It was a forty-minute drive from Rapid City along Interstate 90 to the Sturgis exit. The highway ran along the foothills separating the dark mass of the Black Hills in the south from the prairie and pastureland stretching north to the horizon. The housing developments and mobile home parks perched on hillsides along the way looked as raw as open wounds on the landscape.
It was twelve-thirty when Baedecker asked directions at a Conoco station near the I-90 exit and almost one P.M. by the time he drove under a wooden arch and down a long lane to the Wheeler Ranch.
The woman who approached him as he got out of the car and stretched reminded him somewhat of Miz Elizabeth Sterling Callahan of Lonerock, Oregon. In her seventies, at least, but still fluid in her movements, this woman had her long, gray hair tied back in a scarf and wore a red mackinaw jacket over dark blue pants. Her face was lined but placid. A collie trotted at her heels. 'Hello there,' she called. 'Can I help you?'
'Yes, ma'am. Are you Mrs. Wheeler?'
'Ruth Wheeler,' said the woman as she came close. There were deep laugh lines around eyes as startlingly green as Maggie's.
'My name's Richard Baedecker,' he said and offered his hand for the collie to smell. 'I'm hunting for Maggie.'
'Richard . . . oh, Richard!' said the woman. 'Oh, my, yes. Margaret has mentioned your name. Well, welcome, Richard.'
'Thank you, Mrs. Wheeler.'
'Ruth, please,' she said. 'Oh, my, Margaret will be surprised. She's gone right now, Richard. She went into town to run some errands. Won't you come in the house for some coffee while we wait for her. She should be back soon.' On the verge of accepting, Baedecker felt a tremendous impatience seize him, as if he could not rest, could not stop until a long voyage was finished. 'Thank you, Ruth,' he said. 'If you have an idea where she might be, I think I'll run into town and try to find her.'
'Try the Safeway in the shopping center or the hardware store on Main,' she said. 'Margaret's driving our old blue Ford pickup with a big, red generator in the bed. It has my Dukakis sticker on the rear bumper.' Baedecker grinned. 'Thank you, ma'am. If I don't find her and she gets back first, tell her I'll be back soon.' Mrs. Wheeler walked up and put her hand on the open window after he turned the Civic around. 'One other place she might be,' she said. 'Margaret likes to stop by Bear Butte. It's a big old hill just outside of town. Just go to the north end and follow the signs.'
The blue pickup was not in the Safeway lot or parked along Main Street. Baedecker drove slowly back and forth through the small town, half expecting to see Maggie step out of a doorway at any moment. The one-thirty news on the radio talked about the secret launch of the space shuttle that should be lifting off sometime in the next two hours. The reporter incorrectly referred to the KSC as 'Cape Kennedy' and reported that the area had high clouds but that the weather should hold for the launch.
Baedecker turned around in the parking lot of a beef jerky plant and drove back through Sturgis, following the green signs to Bear Butte State Park.
The small lot was empty of cars. Baedecker parked the Civic near a closed-up information building and looked up at Bear Butte. It was an impressive hill. If his geology training still served, Baedecker estimated that the mountain was a well-weathered volcanic cone rising in a long ridge to a summit he guessed to be at least eight hundred feet above the surrounding prairie, perhaps more. The mountain was separated from the foothills to the south and it leaped out of the grasslands quite dramatically. Baedecker had to use his imagination to see a bear in the long hill, and when he did it was a bear hunkered forward with its haunches in the air.
On a whim, Baedecker grabbed his old flight jacket out of the back seat and began walking up the trail from the visitors' center.
Although patches of snow lay here and there in shaded areas, the day was warm and Baedecker could smell the thawing earth. He felt somewhat light-headed as he switchbacked up the first, steep segment of trail, but he had no trouble breathing. He wondered idly why he had felt no appetite the past three days and why, despite no sleep for two days and an empty stomach, he felt strong and fit, almost buoyant.
The trail evened out to run along the rising ridgeline and Baedecker paused to look out over low piñon and ponderosa pines to admire the view to the north and east. About a third of the way up he began noticing bits of cloth, tiny colored rags, tied to low bushes along the trail. He stopped and touched one of them as it fluttered in the warm breeze.
'Hello.'
Baedecker spun around. The man was sitting in a low area near the cliff edge about fifteen feet from the trail. It was a natural campsite, sheltered from the north and west winds by rocks and trees but open to the view on three sides.
'Hello,' said Baedecker and walked closer. 'I didn't see you over here.' Baedecker had no doubt that the old man was an Indian. His skin was a burnt copper, his eyes were so dark as to appear black, the wrinkles on his brow radiated from a broad blade of a nose, and he was wearing a loose, blueprint shirt, had a red headband pulled tight, and had tied his long, graying hair into pigtails. He wore a single ring of some deep blue stone. Only his tattered, green-canvas sneakers were out of character. 'I didn't mean to intrude here,' said Baedecker. He looked beyond the old man to where a tan canvas tent had been erected near a lower structure built of boughs and rocks and branches. Baedecker instantly knew that the thing was a sweat lodge without knowing how he knew.
'Sit down,' said the Indian. The old man himself was seated on a rock, not cross-legged but with one leg over the other in a comfortable, almost feminine pose. 'I am Robert Sweet Medicine,' he said. His voice was husky, amused, as if he were on the verge of chuckling at some unstated joke.
'Richard Baedecker.'
The old man nodded as if this was redundant information. 'Nice day to climb the mountain, Baedecker.'
'Very nice day,' said Baedecker. 'Although I'm not sure I'm going all the way to the top.' The Indian shrugged. 'I have been coming here a very long time and have never been to the top. It is not always necessary.' He was using a pocketknife to whittle at a short stick. There were various twigs, roots, and stones on the ground in front of him. Baedecker noticed the bones of some small animal in the heap. Some of the stones had been painted bright colors.
Baedecker looked out at the miles of prairie to the north. From this vantage point he could see no highways and only small pockets of trees showed where ranches huddled. He had a sudden, visceral sense of the physical freedom the Plains Indians must have felt a century and a half earlier when they had roamed without restriction across that seemingly boundless land. 'Are you a Sioux?' he asked, not knowing whether the question was polite but wanting to know the answer.
Robert Sweet Medicine shook his head. 'Cheyenne.'
'Oh, for some reason I thought the Sioux lived in this part of South Dakota.'