Mercy Thompson 06 - River Marked

room, not by a long shot. There were also others more detailed, better executed even, but it spoke to me in a way the others did not. Here among English and Greek landscapes, portraits of maids and wildflowers, the cowboys looked a little out of place.
    Adam leaned forward, which pressed him more tightly against me without being too flagrant, to read the display information. I snorted at him in mock dismay.
    “I can see that you are not a true Westerner, or you’d have recognized him right off.”
    “No, ma’am,” he drawled mildly, though I could see a dimple peeping out. I loved his dimple—and I loved it even more when he dropped into the accent of his youth. I especially loved the warm strength of him against me. I was so easy. “I’m a Southerner.”
    “Just like most of the cowboys he painted,” I told him. “The West was populated by Southerners who didn’t want to fight in the War Between the States—or who came here after they lost. That, my dear uncultured wolf, is a Charlie Russell—cowboy turned artist. Without him, Montana’s history would just be a footnote in a Zane Grey novel. Charlie drew what he saw—and he saw a lot. Not a romantic, but a true realist. Every once in a while, some old Montana rancher still finds a few of his watercolors rolled up and forgotten in the bunkhouse. Like winning the lottery, only better.”
    Adam’s shoulders shook. “I sense passion,” he said, his voice soft with laughter, tickling my ear as he spoke into it. “But is it the art or the history that speaks to you?”
    “Yes,” I said, shivering. “I showed you mine. Which one is your favorite?”
    He pulled away and directed me to a painting on the next wall. The woman sat in a cave, a dim waterfall to the left and behind her, a pool of water at her feet. The extraordinary thing about the work was the luminescence of the central figure achieved by some alchemy of the color and texture of her skin and of the fabric of her clothing combined with the shape of her pose. Solitude was its title.
    This had none of the dirt and roughness of detail that appealed to me in the Russell painting. This wasn’t a woman who had to get up and wash her clothes and fix dinner. Yet . . .
    “Okay,” I said. “I wouldn’t get tired of seeing that on a wall, either. But I’m warning you, it will look odd next to my Charlie Russells.”
    He kissed my ear and laughed.
    The American Indian exhibit was in the basement. Sam Hill had, apparently, collected Native American baskets along with his artwork. Lots and lots of baskets. Over the years, other things had been added—some terrific photographs, for instance, and large petroglyphic rocks. Still, the overall effect was a million baskets and a few other things, too.
    Here, too, we weren’t alone. The family from upstairs was examining the petroglyphs. The oldest, a girl, pulled free of her parents and put her face against one of the Plexiglas display cases.
    There was a middle-aged Indian woman on her own. Her face was serious, though it was a face that was more comfortable with smiles than with grimness. There were lines of laughter and weather near her eyes and mouth, and all of her attention was on Adam and me.
    It made me a little uncomfortable for some reason. So I turned from the stone carvings near the doorway to the baskets, putting my back toward the woman.
    The baskets were extraordinary. In some of them, the designs of almost-stick-figure animals were surprisingly powerful in a way I wouldn’t have thought possible with such extreme stylization as required by the weaving.
    “It’s a good thing I wasn’t born back then,” I told Adam. “I took an art course in college, and one of the projects was weaving a basket. Mine looked sort of like a disproportionate hammock complete with holes. I never could get the handle to stay on both sides at the same time.”
    But not even my history-driven passion could keep me interested in the million and twelfth basket, as beautifully made as they were—and I outlasted Adam by a fair bit. These weren’t the kinds of baskets used on a daily basis. Most of them were made to sell to collectors and tourists.
    They reminded me of a history professor of mine who mourned the loss of everyday things. Every museum, she said, had wedding dresses and christening dresses galore, Indian ceremonial robes and beaded or elk-tooth dresses worn only on the most special occasion. People don’t save Grandma’s work dress or