Gabriel Cross Guns

Quick Facts

• Role: One of the four Blackfeet hunters whose illegal elk hunt sets the novel’s tragedy in motion; a major point-of-view character in the second half
• First appearance: Named early in Lewis’s section; steps into focus as the narrative pivots back to the reservation
• Key relationships: Father to Denorah Cross Guns; best friend to Cassidy Sees Elk; childhood friend of Lewis Clarke; hunted by the supernatural force of the Elk Head Woman
• Physical presence: Six-foot-two, often mistaken for Lewis; a “sharp-at-the-right-side” smile—swagger and restless energy more memorable than details

Who He Is

Bold, funny, and perpetually in motion, Gabriel “Gabe” Cross Guns is the reservation friend who never left—the guy everyone gravitates toward until his charisma curdles into catastrophe. He performs toughness and tradition, but what truly anchors him is fatherhood: every joke, hustle, and half-cocked plan funnels back to protecting Denorah. Gabe’s section turns the novel into a raw study of Guilt and Atonement, where bravado can’t shield him from the consequences of a decade-old trespass—or from a vengeance that knows exactly how to find his softest, most defenseless spot.

Personality & Traits

Gabe’s persona is a mix of rattling charm and dangerous momentum. He is the friend who will show up, make you laugh, and get you into trouble—all while insisting he’s honoring something older and braver than the present.

• Reckless and impulsive: He “liked this kind of shit—playing cowboys and Indians in all the parking lots of the world,” as Richard Boss Ribs remembers. That appetite for risk is what pushes the group into the forbidden elder section.
• Proud father: He calls Denorah his “Finals Girl,” whispering her name “like the best secret ever.” His pride is less swagger here than reverence—a tenderness that reveals the man beneath the performance.
• Performatively traditional: From the “stupid war whoop” to dreams of heroic charges, Gabe leans on a theatrical version of “the old ways” to patch over insecurity, mirroring the book’s tension around Cultural Identity and Assimilation.
• Charismatic and humorous: The group’s “comedian,” he disarms with jokes and grin—but that same charm oils the gears of bad decisions and makes others follow.
• Loyal but destructive: He organizes a sweat for Lewis and stands by his friends—but his loyalty often expresses itself through rule-breaking and violence, culminating in the disastrous Thanksgiving Classic.
• Physical presence: Six-two with a killer high-school smile—his body on the page is less detail than kinetic effect: the swaggering silhouette you see before you hear the joke.

Character Journey

Gabe’s arc is not growth but collapse—a man stripped to what he loves most and then forced to weaponize it. He begins as a day-to-day hustler and poacher who treats the old elk hunt as a half-guilty memory. When Lewis dies, the past stops being a story and becomes a hunter. Gabe responds with bravado: a sweat, a laugh, a charge forward. But the Elk Head Woman learns him quickly. She doesn’t meet strength with strength; she meets it with misdirection, prying open the one true devotion that organizes his life—Denorah—and turning it against him. Convinced his best friend Cassidy has harmed his daughter, Gabe kills the person who might have saved him. The revelation of that manipulation reorients him instantly: the warrior costume falls away, and the father steps forward. His final act—offering his own life for Denorah’s—folds love, guilt, and the cost of masculinity into one terrible bargain, echoing the novel’s meditation on Parenthood, Legacy, and Intergenerational Trauma and ending in the bleak justice of Revenge and Retribution.

Key Relationships

• Cassidy Sees Elk: Gabe’s truest companion on the reservation, Cassidy is the person who understands the jokes and the silences. That intimacy becomes a pressure point the Elk Head Woman exploits, turning loyalty into suspicion and pushing Gabe into fratricide—a grim turn in the Cycle of Violence.
• Denorah Cross Guns: The still point of Gabe’s spinning world. His pride in her athletic brilliance is pure and uncomplicated—so pure that it becomes the perfect lever for manipulation. His eventual self-sacrifice emerges from the same place his impulsiveness does: a total, unfiltered, all-in love.
• Lewis Clarke: Though Lewis left, their easy banter endures. Lewis saw Gabe’s reckless bravery as strength; that faith—both earned and naïve—underscores the story’s entanglement of Friendship and Betrayal.
• Richard Boss Ribs: Part of the original quartet, Ricky remembers and even yearns for Gabe’s all-gas-no-brake courage. In that admiration is a warning: the myth of fearlessness often leads straight to the edge.

Defining Moments

Gabe’s life turns on choices that feel small to him in the moment and monumental in hindsight. Each step tightens the noose the past has thrown over the present.

• The Thanksgiving Classic: He pushes the crew into the off-limits elder section—“Last day of the season …”—fusing bravado to disrespect. Why it matters: This transgression invites the novel’s haunting and tethers Gabe to a debt he cannot pay.
• The Sweat Lodge: He plans a sweat with Cassidy for Lewis, even choosing sacred rocks from old tipi rings. Why it matters: A sincere attempt at remembrance becomes another instance of performative traditionalism—comforting ritual without humbled responsibility.
• The Confrontation with Cassidy: Evidence planted by the Elk Head Woman convinces him Cassidy has stolen from him and killed Jo, then Denorah. Why it matters: Gabe’s trust fractures; his protective love shifts from care to vengeance.
• The Murder of Cassidy: Blinded by grief, he kills his best friend with a thermos—brutal, intimate, irreversible. Why it matters: The act collapses his identity as friend and protector; the hunter becomes the hand of the haunting.
• The Final Sacrifice: Realizing he’s been played and that Denorah is next, he offers his life to save hers. Why it matters: The performance of warriorhood dissolves, revealing the father willing to pay any price.

Essential Quotes

If only Gabe were here. Gabe liked this kind of shit—playing cowboys and Indians in all the parking lots of the world. He’d do his stupid war whoop and just rush the hell in. It might as well have been a hundred and fifty years ago for him, every single day of his ridiculous life.

This outside view crystallizes how others mythologize Gabe: fun, fearless, a little ridiculous. The “war whoop” and time-bending language expose the gap between performed tradition and lived responsibility—the exact gap the haunting exploits.

“Denorah’s like that,” Gabe whispers, like the best secret ever. “Just, better, man. Serious. Browning’s never seen nothing like her.”

The whisper matters more than the words. Gabe’s voice softens when he talks about Denorah, revealing the vulnerability beneath his swagger. His pride is untainted here, which is precisely why it’s weaponized against him.

“Shit, we’re legends to them, man. The four boogeymen—the four butchers of Duck Lake.”

Gabe reframes infamy as legend to keep shame at bay. The line shows his gift for spinning a story he can live with, even as it admits the community’s darker memory of the hunt—a tension that will destroy him.

“You shot her, man,” he says, like he’s pleading. Like he’s trying to explain. “You shot Denorah. You shot my little girl …”

The repetition (“you shot”) is both accusation and self-justification, the moment where grief becomes license. We hear the pivot from protector to avenger, a turn engineered by the haunting but carried out by Gabe’s own hand.

“I wanted it to be like those two Cheyenne I read about, yeah? I wanted to run my horse back and forth in front of all the soldiers, so it would be like … it would be heroic. Like the old days. Not like—not like this.”

Here Gabe names the fantasy driving his performances: a clean, legible heroism borrowed from history. The stammered ending—“Not like this”—admits he knows the difference between story and consequence, and that he’s trapped on the wrong side of it.