Book 2 of The Sacred Clown’s Modern West Trilogy, Sitting Bull’s Mutual Funds

Five Mil Missing

“The fool always laughs silently when the tribe’s pockets are empty, because he knows everyone’s too busy blaming ghosts to notice who’s picking them clean.” ~ The Clown

Elias Tough Wolf was pissed. Other tribal council members sensed it. Five million dollars had disappeared from tribal coffers. Just like that. Nada, zilch, over a cliff, bye-bye.

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“How can the tribe make anything happen when our money always goes missing? It’s criminal. This is what ruins our credibility with Congress, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the all the enrollees! How can we be self-sufficient if those few dollars we do manage to scrape from the bottom of the federal barrel wind up in one or two persons’ pockets?” he yelled.

Shifting in their seats, mostly but not completely avoiding eye contact, and pretending to admire their own boots, council members were quiet. Flickering under fluorescent lights the portraits of the reservation chiefs circled the room—Rain in the Face, John Grass, Gall, Running Antelope, and Sitting Bull himself. All men of charity and integrity. Big enemies if you had neither. Hated by their white contemporaries for those very reasons. The Clown thought he saw the old headmen exchanging sideways glances. Maybe what he saw were only the tribal council members rolling their eyes behind closed eyelids. The Clown watched the finance staff fidget, waiting for someone—anyone—to break the silence. “Ah, the sacred ritual of the silent council,” he mused. “Where the ghosts of five million dollars dance, and no one dares to speak for fear the earth will open up and swallow them whole.”

Finally, Councilman Doug Slippery Elm raised his hand, “If Sitting Bull had left all those mutual funds to the tribe like he sure should have, we wouldn’t be in this position. He could have bought and sold all those soldiers and missionaries with what he made touring with the Wild West Show. But, no. He had to go and get himself assassinated without leaving a will! We’d be rolling in all that moolah right now if he had thought ahead!” The marriage of greed and disbelief produced a chorus of gasps and grunts. It jarred the ceiling tiles and drowned the ant chorus just warming up in the corner, “we know who dunnit, we know who dunnit, we know who dunnit…”

Slippery Elm’s claims were, of course, blasphemy. He knew it. Sitting Bull never owned mutual funds. They didn’t exist in 1890 when he was assassinated by the so-called tribal police. He died nearly penniless but left behind legendary reservoirs of strength from which the people could draw in times of peril. He was a hero’s hero. Why would Slippery Elm bring up his name? Why would he cloud the missing dollars? Was he trying to distract Tough Wolf and the council from the missing $5 million? Maybe it was Slippery Elm that had lined his own pockets? He looked awful good in those new boots, fancy western shirt, and turquoise bolo tie.

Tough Wolf spoke, “That’s ridiculous. Sitting Bull was a hero and a poor hero. He left us a legacy of personal strength, not a white man’s fortune. He cared about the people not money!” As soon as the blood rushed to his head, he could see that Slippery Elm had hit a chord. Staff quit looking at their phones. Council members quit looking at their shoes. That old boy had pivoted the whole room and everyone in it once again.

What if it was true that the Sitting Bull really owned mutual funds? It would be worth billions all these years later! Wasn’t that something the tribe needed to look into? What if there had been a will? Who were his true beneficiaries? What if, as Slippery Elm had just claimed, there had been no will and last testament? Even so, where did all that money go? Wasn’t a billion dollars much more than a piddly little $5 million? Millions were chump change compared to that billion dollar jackpot.

Putting on his most reasonable voice Slippery Elm sighed, “If we were a real council and really represented the people, we’d launch an investigation into Sitting Bull’s mutual funds to see if we could recover all that money. Let’s use our energy for that. Makes the piddly $5 million that we’re missing seem like chump change. It’s important as Tough Wolf says, but let’s not get distracted. It’s small time prairie dog money. Let’s not forget about the big buffalo before us.” 

Elias Dreams

The morning light played on the prairie with what many took for enchantment. Elias knew that the prairie wasn’t a fairytale. It was damn dangerous out there, festooned with small cactus, cunning coyotes, and capricious rattlesnakes. Anyone could come to harm especially cruising around on foot, especially if they were merging psychotropics with that special early dawn light he thought. He thought he saw movement.

Maybe some of those dawn interlopers were from that batch of new volunteers from the state university? A curious group Elias thought. Their ancestors were among the first to plunder the plains and Indians. Yet here they were were their great grandsons and great granddaughters practicing atonement. But love for humanity in abundance was no cure for a cactus spine pricking the thin rubber of their cheap tennis shoes. Jesus Christ some of those kids were stupid but they mostly made up for it by being nice. Was he just dreaming this?

What he did know was that he’d spent most of the night restlessly alternating between sleeping and thinking about the disaster that was yesterday’s council meeting. Visceral greed was in the air and remembering how everyone started drooling over Sitting Bull’s missing mutual funds made him nauseous. Mutual funds? Billions of dollars? Everyone a millionaire? He had to hand it to Slippery Elm’s sly way of rolling an agenda. His new pickup trucks and Western finery were obvious clues about where $5 million had gone. Now someone needed to get the council back on the Good Red Road. Smacking the pillow with his fist, Elias wondered what he’d done in a previous life to be summoned to this messy, unappreciated work.

The Clown thought greed’s got them chasing ghosts and dreaming of billions, while the real thieves ride off in new trucks. Poor Elias—awake and alone, the only one who sees the real joke.

The sleepless nights began in boarding school, back when he was whisked away by missionaries and taken to the eastern part of South Dakota. It was supposed to be more civilized back there where the neat rows of corn grew and the Scandinavians kept their yards prim and proper. But he quickly learned to hate the whole dirty thing, especially the cold nights and the dark bunk beds made warm only by visits from the old priests. 

These late night visits predated the discovery of Viagra and, so, they hadn’t lasted long but even so he felt violated in more than one way. Punctured was more like it. The daylight always brought back order. To learn English grammar, white man’s civics, and fractions from those same nighttime predators was more than he could bear. Elias had learned to disguise his shudders and vomit silently at his desk, swallowing all the erupted bile without a grimace, undetected by those same nocturnal visitors but completely obvious to his classmates.

Perhaps the source of his pain hadn’t solely been the boarding school. Maybe it was his great grandfather, he who had shed tears late every summer when Elias had set foot back inside the bus to return to boarding school. Old Tough Wolf was a man who understood precisely where he stood on the pain and pleasure continuum. He’d shared those life lessons with Elias. 

Grandfather had ridden with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show all over the eastern states and onward through Europe. So had Sitting Bull. They rode together. Whether his family wisdom began in that era or earlier with his clan and his forebears as leaders wasn’t clear, but it didn’t matter. A headman is a head man. Wisdom is wisdom. Now it was his turn.

His phone pierced the silence.

“Hello?”

“Elias, it’s Slippery Elm. We gotta talk.”

“About what?”

“Sitting Bull’s mutual funds. I think I got someone up in Bismarck that can help us track them down.”

With a deep sigh, Elias whispered into the phone, “Slippery Elm, you know there’s just no such thing. Old Bull never owned much and certainly not mutual funds.”

“Don’t be so certain. You don’t know that he didn’t. If he did, and we can find them, we all will be like totally rich. We’ll never have to work again!”

“You’ve never done a day’s work in your life, Doug. Even your marijuana business when you were a kid failed. Now you show up in new vehicles and nice turquoise. Where’d you get that kind of money?”

“I saved up for many years.”

“You never had good habits, even when we were at boarding school. You were a slacker then and more so now. Remember when you organized us all to play strip poker when the priests and bros went into the agency town to drink? You always wound up naked. And then you ratted us out for taking all your clothes.”

“Old news, tired news” he sighed. Nobody else on council cares. They do care about the billions we’re owed though, and I aim to make that happen.”

“While we all care less about the missing $5 million.”

“Exactly. When we hunt buffalo, we go for the big one.”

“Who do you have in Bismarck to help you get to the bottom of these so-called mutual funds?”

“His name is Mamzer Mud Hut He She the Second. He’s a real good lawyer, I hear, like his father. Dad helped those mud hut Indians from Fort Berthold build the Garrison dam and win back their basketball title from 1942. He died mysteriously in some sort of dust storm a little while back. Had some control issues, some say. But his kid is a real whiz bang. 

He contacted me. Never really knew his dad but it turns out he’s really connected. Said he’d recover all those lost funds, and his fee would only be eighty percent of everything he got for us.”

“Eighty percent? By law he can take only a third, every shyster knows that. He needs to lower his fee if we’re going to hire him.”

“He needs a million dollars to start. Non-refundable. That’s why I’m calling you. You know the most about the tribe’s financial affairs.”

“A million to start? No refund if unsuccessful? And you think this is reasonable? We can’t find $5 million, and you want another million to give this crook? Where’s the tribe supposed to get that kind of money even if you convince everyone else on the council?”

“Small questions. Small questions. Small man makes small questions. Remember, we’re talking about billions and billions of dollars that we’d be rolling around in if the Old Bull hadn’t died without a will. Are you in or out?”

“What’s this lawyer’s number? I want to get to the bottom of this.”

 

Mamzer Mud Hut He She Junior

“When the story’s old and the witnesses dead, the cleverest thief writes the ending—and sends the bill.” ~ The Clown

Mamzer Mud Hut He She Junior drummed his fingers on his desk. Drawing from what he knew about his dad, he’d modeled unpredictable behavior bordering on the thin line separating the crazy from the functional and for screwing Indians and widows at every turn. Business was now at a standstill. Maybe he’d burned through all whatever karma he still had when he’d cheated on the Law School Admissions Test. Or maybe it was the North Dakota Bar Exam. Oh well, more karma could be bought, he thought. But, where? In his fever dream he thought about his famous father that he’d never met. He’d heard many a story, though.

Sitting Bull’s mutual funds. That old crone knew nothing about finance and died in 1890 well before mutual funds were created. Or, did the Old Bull really own investment paper? But whose? In Sitting Bull’s time, robber barons had raped and pillaged the economy. John Jacob Astor—known in the press as Jack Ass-tor—had made obscene money paying his trappers to pillage Indian territory and denude it of fur. He wasn’t the type to leave beaver or bucks behind and, besides, his time on earth hadn’t overlapped with the Old Bull.

Some worshiped robber barons as the leaders who would create unlimited wealth to be shared with all, including Native Americans, if only it would trickle down. It would be a long wait until Ronald Reagan resuscitated that fantasy. Some had an opposite view; robber barons were true villains and the root cause of all human misfortunes. Which side had the Old Bull be on? Is it possible that he knew one or more of these capitalists and had been rewarded?

Sitting Bull had been the greatest star of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Had he met one or more famous financiers hanging around the show? Buffalo Bill himself was a famously terrible money manager. Being a huckster had its price including bankruptcy and moving an entire circus, mules, bears, broncos, and Indians in the dead of night to three towns over. Had he paid his exploited co-star in worthless paper? If that was true, it was likely to be messy figuring out where that scrip was and how much it would be worth in today’s dollars.

Mamzer He She Junior felt equal to this challenge. He was just crazy enough that a small sliver of Indians still actually found him amusing. Until he double crossed them, that is. His father had tricked the Three Affiliated Tribes into signing away their claim to the Missouri River Bottom in 1942. This was now seven decades later, and it was only the dying elders who remembered his father for the fraud he was. They would soon be gone and if they didn’t tell anyone there was a good chance that his questionable inheritance could soon proceed without eyewitnesses to the greed that was the Mamzer surname.

He’d have to summon some caginess.  Slippery Elm seemed like a perfect barometer for his prospects. He dressed well, drove nice vehicles, a heavy drinker, and was obviously entirely duplicitous. Perfect, he and He She Junior recognized each other for who they were. Their bond formed instantly. 

There’d be a lot of work ahead, figuring out where the money was. If there really was money. It was a blessing and a curse that no one was left alive from the 1890s. No witnesses existed to contradict the claim that the Old Bull’s mutual funds existed and that was a good thing he thought. On the other hand, there was no one left no who could point He She Junor. in the right direction. A perfect, ambiguous stage for the ethically challenged. Make it all up! He’d need Slippery Elm to do legwork on the reservation to contact the tribal trust department and to interview descendants. Old Bull’s offspring might trust Slippery Elm more than they would He She Junior.

In Mamzer’s loud mind, a $1 million dollar, non-refundable retainer seemed entirely reasonable. He or his heirs would then bill the tribe in even increments of $250,000 a month thereafter for fifty years. He’d, of course, agreed to a 50-50 split quietly with Slippery Elm who was eager to get the show on the road. This was a good thing. Why not share the bounty when the spigots were fully open. Slippery Elm would only need to get this contract through the council, and he assured He She Junior of smooth sailing.