The Shadow Catcher

In purely economic terms Clara could not see how the business could sustain another out-of-pocket cost. Their bread-and-butter, Edward’s society portraits of debutantes and heirs, was already showing symptoms of decline owing to his absences. “Mr. Curtis oversees each print himself,” was her front office line when clients voiced their disappointment that Edward, personally, was not behind the camera, but, “Mr. Curtis oversees each print himself,” could hardly float when the Seattle papers advertised that Edward was in Alaska for two months. Or going to Montana. She had cut costs everywhere she could — she had no domestic help, herself, in a household of eight people, except for a laundress and a daily char. She employed a part-time woman, when she could, to help her cook and although she resented Eva’s passive presence in the household she was reluctant to ask either her or Edward’s mother to take on the duties of a servant. She encouraged Eva to develop interest in the business, in the darkroom processes, but Asahel, alone among the Curtises, was the only one on whom either she or Edward could depend for active help, and his absence in Alaska had been sorely felt. Still, she knew, the person on whom all of them depended most was Edward — and if he was determined to make the journey to Montana she would help him any way she could.

Little did either know that love was waiting.

As it always does: in ambush.

On the evening of his departure Clara heard Edward come home as she was putting the children in their beds upstairs. She heard the front door close and heard his footsteps toward the study. Minutes later she heard the front door open and close again and then the sound of other footsteps toward the study and within moments after that she heard the sound of two male voices raised in heated argument, below. She put the children down and closed their doors and went to listen on the stairs.

Edward had never raised his voice in all the time she’d known him.

But he was shouting now — and the voice that countered his and overpowered it, was one she recognized:

Asahel, returned.

She crept forward ’til she reached the bottom tread.

As best as she could fathom, through the door, Asahel was shouting about shadow, about being overshadowed all his life by his older brother, every act of his own “stolen for the greater good of Edward! And now my photographs—”

“—it is common practice for a studio to sign its name…”

“—‘its’ name! But the name you printed on my photographs says ’Edward Curtis’—”

“—that’s the name of—”

“—not the ‘studio of Edward Curtis.’ Ed…ward…Curt…is!”

“—yes! The man who paid for you to make those pictures—”

“—the man who paid? — so that gives you the right to own them—?”

“—absolutely.”

“I swear I hope this comes to bite you on your backside one day, brother.”

“Get out of my house—!”

Despite herself Clara had edged into the entrance hall to hear them and the sudden violent exit of Asahel caught her stranded, off her guard, as he slammed the study door behind him and swept past her in impassioned heat. Several feet away from her he stopped and turned and swung around to her, forcing her against the banisters, feeding her his mouth until she couldn’t breathe. She raised her hand to strike him but he caught it in mid-air, and then released it.

“Now you know,” he said: “You married the wrong brother.”

Then he was gone.

Clara took several minutes to compose herself, then rapped on Edward’s door.

No! came the answer.

He would never speak to Asahel again, so long as they both lived.

If he saw him on the street, in Seattle, he would cross to the other side and not acknowledge him.

Such were the things playing on Edward’s mind when he left Seattle for Montana — and whether it was his doubts about his own career, in the public’s seeming lack of interest in the photography he cared about, or whether it was his doubts about his words and actions toward his brother — or neither of these things — when Edward reached his destination on horseback he was in a frame of mind that was, uncharacteristically, open to emotion.

And what he saw was like nothing he had seen before.

He had traveled out by train to Butte where he and Bird Grinnell had hired horses and they’d camped a night and then pressed on to where the several tribes of Sioux — Lakota, Apsaroke, Piegan — were gathering as one great nation.