Wait for Signs: Twelve Longmire Stories

by Craig Johnson

  “Bathroom.”

  He came back over and placed his hands on the shelf under the bar, where I knew from experience an Ithaca 10-gauge double-barreled shotgun resided.

  I uncovered my sidearm just to show him I was having the same premonition. “Signs?”

  He studied the bathroom door over my right shoulder. “The truck plates are from Nevada. It is possible that it is just that it is simply registered there, but he seems edgy.”

  I covered my .45 again and sighed. “You want me to go outside and run the plates?”

  “There is also a woman in the truck and a very small child, both asleep.”

  I felt some of the coolness drain from my face, and the stillness of my hands slackened. “Not the usual MO for a robber, is it?”

  “No.”

  “You think we’re getting scary in our old age—losing our faith in humanity?”

  He glanced over my shoulder again. “I would be inclined to agree with you if he were not standing behind you holding a pistol on us right now.”

  Dog was growling again, but this time I didn’t silence him; instead, I braced a boot against the bar and slowly swiveled to my left until I could see him standing there on the small platform about twenty feet away, his arm extended and a 9mm semiautomatic aimed at me.

  “I need money.”

  It’s strange, the things that go through your head when you’ve got a gun pointed at you. I suppose most people get a little nervous, but I’ve had so many pointed at me in my career that the thrill is gone—instead, the training kicks in and you start thinking in a tactical sense, taking into consideration the distance, exactly where your assailant is pointing his weapon, exactly what kind of weapon, how fast you can draw yours, and how quickly your two backups are going to react.

  By all accounts, the young man was dead and he didn’t even know it.

  “I need money.”

  Dog continued to growl, and I smiled. “I think we got that.”

  “I don’t normally do this kind of thing . . . I’ve got a wife and kid. I mean, this is not who I am. I lost my job and I need to get back to Elko—”

  “I thought it was Colorado?”

  “Shut up.” He shook the gun at me in an attempt to stop my words. “I need money for gas . . . and food.”

  Maybe it was his sixth sense, or a sign that I’d given the Bear, but he placed a hand on my shoulder just as the thought of introducing my own weapon made a drive-by in my mind.

  His voice was easy and conversational. “What kind of gun is that?”

  The robber’s eyes shifted from me, to Dog, and then back to Henry. “What?”

  I could see that both of the Cheyenne Nation’s hands were spread across the bar like powerful spiders. “The semiautomatic you’re holding—what kind is it?”

  He actually kicked it sideways in an attempt to read the name of the manufacturer on the slide action. “I don’t know, it’s a . . . I don’t know.” He pointed it back at us. “Look, I need money.”

  “And I need a gun.” I joined the welder in looking at the Bear as he turned and hit the NO SALE button on the old brass register, the cash drawer flying open like a jutting jaw. Henry reached in and pulled out a wad of twenties and fifties, quickly counting them out on the surface of the bar without taking his eyes off the man. “Four hundred and seventy dollars, and I can throw in the eighty-five cents for the beer.”

  “I can’t sell you my gun.”

  “Why not?”

  It took him a while to come up with a reason. “I’m kind of using it right now.”

  I could imagine the thin-as-a-paper-cut smile that Henry Standing Bear was smiling behind me as he spoke. “I am proposing an alternative.”

  He reassessed his aim toward the Bear. “How ’bout I just keep my gun and take all your money?”

  The voice that answered was resigned and just a little sad. “That is not what will happen, and all the other options will end badly for you.” He nudged my shoulder and gestured toward the gunman and, more specifically, the gun. “Does that seem like a fair offer?”

  My turn to growl. “I think you’re overpaying.”

  He leaned forward on the bar, his large arms folded yet relaxed. “I do not have much time for gift gathering this season, so we will consider it as payment for your services as a personal shopper.”

  The gunman paused and then gestured with the pistol. “Give me the money first.”

  I glanced at the Bear, but he didn’t look at me, his voice remaining steady. “All right.”

  I watched as he disappeared, crossing behind me and coming out from behind the bar near the back door. He continued toward the young man, stepped between the two of us, and then held the money out to him. The Bear knew full well that I’d taken advantage of his standing in front of me to draw my Colt and by now had it pointed straight at the man, one of the oldest tricks in the book, but instead of stepping aside, he remained there between us, protecting the gunman.

  The welder reached for the cash, but Henry drew it back, just a little. “There is one last thing, though.”

  The young man cocked his head and kept the 9mm on the Cheyenne Nation. “Yeah?”

  “We are about to eat, and there is too much food; I will purchase the gun from you on the condition that you bring your wife and child in here and join us for dinner before continuing your journey.”

  I watched the welder’s eyes and finally saw them soften, almost as if he’d forgotten the gun in his hand. There was a long pause, the muted noise from the TV the only sound. The young man sighed deeply, and his entire body relaxed a little. “We don’t want to be a bother.”

  Henry held the money out. “It is not a bother . . . It is a deal.”

  This time without hesitation, the gunman lowered the hammer on the semiautomatic and handed it to the Bear. Henry made him take the money, including the pocket change. “Go get your family.”

  I quietly slipped the .45 back into its holster and watched as the young man left, tucking the wad of cash into his Carhartts as the door swung closed behind him. Henry walked back behind the bar to stir the cranberry sauce and then returned to the back door to check the brussels sprouts and give the turkey one last look.

  “How do you know he’ll come back?”

  He stood there, looking out the door. “Signs.”

  After a moment he crossed behind the bar again and rested the pistol by the cash register. He stood there for a moment with his back to me and then turned and placed the gunman’s keys between us.

  He said nothing more, so I lifted my Rainier and watched as he picked up the stemmed glass of Armagnac. He held it out in a mutual toast, and as I touched the aluminum to the glass, I provided the words he could not bring himself to say. “Happy Thanksgiving, Henry.”

  MESSENGER

  It was one of those late summer days that sometimes showed up in early October after a killing frost—warm, dry, and hazy; Indian summer. The term is over two hundred years old, coined in 1778 by the French American writer J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur to describe the warm calm before the winter storm.

  Boy howdy.

  If one of these miraculous days happened to appear on an autumn Saturday in north central Wyoming, Henry and I would head up into the Bighorn Mountains in pursuit of rainbow, brown, brook, and cutthroat trout. One late afternoon, we were returning from one of those trips with a cooler of fish. By that time in the season, the aspens had turned a shimmering gold in counterpoint to the dense verdant green of the conifers. The made-for-me VistaVision effect was ruined by only one thing: due to the rough road leading into and out of one of our favorite spots along Baby Wagon Creek, relatively unknown to the greater fishing population, I was forced to accompany the Bear in his truck, Rezdawg, a vehicle I hated beyond all others.

  Making the environs more decorative, however, was Vic,
who had decided to join us on the spur of the moment. She was seated between Henry and me, and I glanced at her, dressed in tight jeans, hiking boots, and a hooded Philadelphia Flyers sweatshirt. The buds of her iPod were in her ears, her eyes were closed, and she was ignoring everything, including me.

  We’d just rounded a corner when Rezdawg’s wrinkled right fender collided with one of the aspens, which scraped along the door and knocked into my elbow. It might’ve collided with the passenger side mirror if there had been one, but we’d knocked that off a mile back. The trunk was a little bit bigger in circumference than a Major League Baseball bat.

  “Ouch.”

  Diving between two more trees before heaving the vintage 4x4 over a rock outcropping on top of a small ridge and then sliding down the other side, the Bear sawed at the wheel and looked at me rubbing my elbow. “Are you okay?”

  I opened the glove compartment, which contained a pair of work gloves, a box of fuses, an old radiator cap, a seventeen-year-old vehicle registration, and a large mouse nest, but not one Band-Aid. “Scarred for life.” I glanced back at him, unsure of what to make of the attention, but then focused on Vic’s head instead, bobbing along with the music playing so loudly we could hear it, too. “I don’t think she’s concerned for my welfare.”

  “Do you think she is upset about not catching any fish?”

  “If she was, she should’ve tied a fly on the end of her line and put it in the water—that’s where I usually catch fish.” I reset the handheld radio that kept trying to ride up under my rump and placed it back between Vic and me. “Are you sure this is the way we came in?”

  He shot me a look, the corners of his mouth pulled down like guidelines on an outfitter’s wall tent. “Shortcut.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The handheld radio chattered briefly, but it had been doing that all day; set on scan, it was picking up the signals from the sheriff’s department, the highway patrol, the forest service, and the wardens from game and fish. I picked the thing up and toyed with the squelch in an attempt to get better reception, but it didn’t seem to do any good. “Wardens must be busy . . .”

  The Cheyenne Nation nodded. “Hunting season and the last of the tourists.”

  I pointed toward the road, or the lack thereof. “If you’d pay more attention to where we’re going, you might save some of these trees.” He ignored me, and I continued to fiddle with the knobs on the police radio, the only concession I made to my full-time job while fishing. In my line of work, it’s sometimes important for people to get in touch—not too often, but sometimes.

  I could feel his eyes on me as he looked past Vic, grooving in her own world. “What?”

  He did his best to sound innocent, something he wasn’t particularly good at. “What?”

  “Why are you behaving strangely?”

  He turned back to the road. “Define strangely.”

  “You keep watching me and asking me if I’m all right.”

  He didn’t turn to look at me this time. “Are you?”

  “Yep.” I sighed. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “As a good friend . . .” He sounded annoyed now. “Can I not simply be interested in your general well-being?”

  “No, not really.” I played with the radio again and thought about what this kind of inordinate attention usually meant. “Have you been talking to Cady?” Newly married, she was pregnant with her first child, but still liked to treat me as if I were one. “What’ve the two of you been cahooting about now?”

  He shook his head. “I know you are in the suspicion business, but your paranoia may be getting the best of you.”

  “Are you saying you haven’t been talking with her?”

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  He shook his head solemnly. “No, I did not say that.”

  “No, you haven’t been talking to Cady or no you didn’t say that?”

  “Exactly.”

  I shook my head and watched the passing scenery as we bumped along.

  After a few moments, he spoke again, just as I knew he would. “I am supposed to broach a subject with you.”

  “Ahh . . .” This is the way it usually worked; Cady, sometimes unwilling to ask me questions on more sensitive issues, would ask the Bear to intercede and bring up the subject, floating a topic so she could gauge the response before the real familial debate began. “What’s this about?”

  “Your granddaughter.”

  I took a breath, realizing the subject matter was of true import. “Okay.”

  “She is going to need a name.”

  I nodded. “Tell my daughter I agree, the child should have a name.”

  He quickly added, ignoring the humor, “It is a question of what name.”

  I smiled. “We discussed that when she was here for rodeo—she’s going to name her Martha.”

  Henry had been friends with both of us long before we’d gotten married. There was a long pause as the Cheyenne Nation fought the wheel, the road, and possibly me.

  I turned and looked at him. “She’s not going to name her daughter after her mother?” He shrugged. “We talked about this; we sat there in the bleachers at rodeo and she brought up her mother’s name and I seconded it.”

  “She says you are the one who brought up Martha’s name.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “She said she mentioned something about the baby’s name and that you brought up Martha.”

  “I just brought her mother’s name up casually in conversation, and then she said she was going to name the baby after her.”

  He shook his head some more. “When you bring Martha’s name up in conversation, it is never casual.”

  We drove in silence, hearing only the music in Vic’s ears.

  “I might’ve brought it up un-casually.” He continued to say nothing, which spoke volumes. “So, she doesn’t want to name the baby after her mother?”

  “She is not sure.”

  “Fine.”

  “Obviously, it is not.”

  “I just . . .” My voice sounded a little confrontational even to me, so I changed my tone. “It’s just that I’d gotten used to the idea.”

  “Your idea.”

  “Evidently.” We glanced off another tree, but they were fewer and farther between. “What does she want to name the baby?”

  “Lola.”

  “She wants to name my granddaughter after your car?”

  He gestured toward the vehicle in which we rode. “At least she is not going to name her Rezdawg.”

  “Lola, really?”

  “Yes.”

  I thought about it. “Where did the name of your car come from?”

  “There was a lovely young woman from South Dakota . . .”

  “The stripper?”

  He smiled a knowing smile. “She was a dancer, yes.”

  “A stripper; she was a stripper from over in Sturgis that you dated in the seventies.”

  “She was a very talented performer.”

  “And you named the car after her.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not having my granddaughter named after a car named after a stripper.” I shook my head. “Lola Moretti. Lola Moretti?”

  Vic chimed in for the first time, and I noticed she’d taken the buds from her ears and was cupping them in her hand. “Sounds like a pole dancer to me.”

  Static. “. . . A couple of lives endangered, and if we don’t get any help here pretty soon I’m going to have to do something drastic.”

  Henry, Vic, and I looked at the handheld radio in my grip—surprised at the interruption.

  I punched the button on the mic and responded. “This is Walt Longmire, sheriff of Absaroka County. Copy?”

  Static. “. . . Crazy Woman Canyon, and the situation is pretty s
erious. We can’t get to our vehicles and . . .” The sound drifted off, and I glanced at Henry. “. . . Without backup I’m going to have to use my gun.”

  I keyed the mic again; it sounded like Chuck Coon, one of the forest service rangers. “Chuck, this is Walt Longmire. Over?”

  The Bear mumbled under his breath. “Did you say Chuck? Chuck Coon?”

  I nodded and smiled. Coon was actually a very nice guy—he wasn’t the kind of ranger who would cite you if your campfire was an inch too close to the trail or your horse was picketed a little too near a water source. Henry, however, had had a few visits with him about the difference between brook trout and brown trout and the number of each species allowed a day, but ever since I had dissuaded a group of motorcyclists traveling from Sturgis from beating Coon to death at West Ten Sleep Campground, the ranger had pretty much decided we were best friends. “Sounds like he’s in trouble.”

  Henry shrugged. “We could go help whoever is trying to kill him.”

  I thought about the distance between where we were now and where the ranger was. “How long do you think it’ll take us to get there?”

  “Not too long.”

  Looking out the window to avoid Henry’s intermittent gaze as we glanced off another tree, I folded my arms on my chest. “Lola.”

  Henry remained resolute. “It is a lovely name.”

  Vic shrugged. “She’s my niece, and I vote for Lola. We just better start stocking up on body glitter.”

  * * *

  Passing Muddy Creek forest station, Henry accelerated into the turn and slowed at the dirt road marked Crazy Woman Canyon, a spot in the Bighorn Mountains where a settler family had been decimated, leaving only the mother who had, reasonably, lost her mind, the incident made famous in the Robert Redford film Jeremiah Johnson. “Did Coon say Crazy Woman Canyon or the campground at Crazy Woman Creek?”

  “There is no campground in the canyon, but there is one at the north fork of the creek.” I braced a hand on the dash and again reached around for a seat belt, even though I knew there were none.