Gabriel's Stand Read Free Page B

skull filled in.”
    â€œYou said I wouldn’t want to damage my hard-headed reputation.”
    â€œThick-headed.” The two men smiled. As John stood to stretch, he caught Gabriel with a direct look. “There was something more you were going to tell me about your skull surgery?”
    â€œYes.” Gabriel also got up. “Dental surgeons do something like it but I will be supplying the filling.”
    Snowfeather had been quietly standing behind the two men when Gabriel made his “bone” announcement. She made a face, and Gabriel patted her on the shoulder.
    â€œUsing your own bone?” John asked.
    â€œNo, but it’s sort of in the family,” Gabriel said.
    â€œPlease, Dad, can I tell?” Snowfeather was gleefully impatient. Gabriel nodded and winked. “It is from the skull of a bear Grandfather Tall Bear killed in Montana.” Snowfeather dramatically rolled her eyes—she was enjoying this moment.
    â€œOh boy,” Dr. Owen remarked. “I’d love to see the look on the face of that surgeon.”

Chapter 3
    Gabriel’s skull surgery took place a month after their Seattle boat trip with John and his family. After a call from Dr. Owen, the surgeon used a bone graft made of powdered bear bone, neatly filling the furrow left by the bullet.
    A few months later, Gabriel and Alice kidnapped Snowfeather from school for a long weekend in Northern Idaho where they would meet the family’s old friend, Fred Loud Owl, a Navajo tribal healer. Gabriel’s skull had healed quickly. Some new gray hair had grown back over the spot. Fred Loud Owl’s reputation as a shaman and a healer had gained a wide following in and outside the Northwest and Southwest tribes. At Fred’s direction, a sweat lodge had been dug out of the earth and roofed with lashed willow branches and pine logs on a private preserve leased to a foundation owned by The Native Americans of Idaho .
    It was autumn in Northern Idaho, several hours before sundown. Inside, Gabriel Standing Bear sat cross-legged on a pile of fresh pine needles and sage. Heat was heavy in the air, and the mid-afternoon sunlight leaked through cracks in the logs overhead. The deerskin stretched over the frame entrance glowed softly, making a webbed lantern covered with backlit symbols for fire, sun, earth, the bear, the bison, the hawk and the eagle.
    The doorway slid aside, the sunlight lancing through the dim lodge space. Then the lanky silhouette of Fred Loud Owl filled the opening, carrying a large heated stone in forked branches. He slipped in almost soundlessly, and the deerskin closed behind him. Gabriel blinked as a rush of cool air was swallowed in the heat—sweat was trickling freely down his face.
    A fire outside filled the nearby air with the pungent smells of burning pine, sage, and willow. Gabriel closed his eyes. In the hot gloom, he could hear the heavy click of the final stone, and Fred’s soft breathing. In the remote distance, a dog barked.
    â€”—
    Fred Loud Owl sometimes described himself as a neo-orthodox shaman. Raised in New Mexico as Navajo Catholic, Fred had absorbed all of the modern permutations of the North American aboriginal experience, soaking up a full century of cultural fads and developments. From his father and grandfather, he memorized stories of the Red Power movement of the 1960s, their disparaging jokes about the aborted “God is Red” movements of the 1980s, even the casino syndicate scandals and the reservation welfare revolts.
    As a young man, Fred joined in the pan-tribal movements in the early 21 st century. In his thirties, Fred Loud Owl became a leader of a more thoughtful and serious effort to knit the authentic common threads of the old traditions. His mission was to keep the Indian sense of life alive and relevant. For Fred, the “Indian Way” was a deep, rooted counterpoint to the rootless, fragmented postmodern culture and to the