by Baron, Mike;
Pratt turned toward the man and stuck out his hand. “Josh Pratt.”
Longtree shook his hand ceremoniously. “That was slick, what you did, man, taking down a mountain lion. We didn’t even know Moon was around.”
“I’m sure he’s gone now,” Pratt said. “Half the country’s going to be looking for him by the morning.”
Vern leaned on the bar, lowered his voice. “I got a friend whose brother’s a deputy, says they pulled two bodies out of the ground out there this morning. One of ’em may be that missing fed guy.”
“What fed guy?” Pratt said.
“Couple years ago, federal marshal went on the Pingree Res looking for an AIM guy named Little Danny. He disappeared. No one’s heard from Little Danny either.”
“I always figured Little Danny for the fed job,” Longtree said. “Maybe Moon killed ’em both.”
“Rich,” Pratt said, “I’ve got to take care of some business. Then I’ll come over and join you guys for a drink.”
Longtree clapped a big hand on Pratt’s shoulder, causing him to wince. “We’ll be waiting.”
Longtree returned to his table. Pratt pulled out his cell phone. “Vern, I need to charge this.”
Vern held out his hand. “Give it here. I got a universal charger back in my office. You can pick one up at the Walgreens in Buffalo.”
“And I need to use your phone to call my old lady.”
Vern handed him the phone. Pratt dialed Cass.
“Where are you?” she demanded. “I was worried sick about you! Then that lawyer called and said you’d been arrested!”
Pratt heard Ginger’s querulous voice in the background. “I’m out now. I wonder if you’d come get me. I’m in Hog Tail, Wyoming.”
“Jesus, Pratt. That’s the ass end of the universe! Are you all right?”
“I’m a little torn up. I’m really in no condition to ride.” Pratt wanted Cass for another reason. He suspected Eric might react more favorably to a woman. He could be wrong. He wasn’t about to leave without taking another crack at finding the kid. The boy had been on his mind since their encounter. How could he survive out there on his own, without the most rudimentary skills?
“If I leave now I can be there in the morning.”
“You’d have to drive straight through. I don’t want you to do that.”
“No prob. I got shit to stay up.”
“Cass, no. I have some shit to take care of anyway. Leave now but don’t try to make it in one sitting. It’d be a real bummer if you crashed. I’ll still be here tomorrow night.”
“Did you find him?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Ginger wants to talk to you.”
“I can’t talk to her right now. Cass, just come get me. I’ll explain everything.”
“What am I supposed to tell Ginger?”
“Moon is looking for her. He’s looking for both of you.”
“They’ve hired a private security firm.”
“Who?”
“Flintstone.
“They’re very good,” Pratt said. “Ginger should be all right.”
“Okay, baby. I’ll leave in an hour. I love you.”
“I love you too,” Pratt automatically answered, feeling like a fraud.
CHAPTER 35
The Indians seated at the round table regarded Pratt with awe. They solemnly shook his hand, drawing strength through the skin. He was something out of the old times when adolescents were sent into the wilderness on their dream quest armed with a knife and a bow. Only by proving themselves in elemental struggle with nature could they become men and warriors. Now the young men drank and did drugs and hung around the reservations waiting for their welfare checks.
Pratt read awe in their eyes and felt unworthy.
“That Moon,” Longtree said. “He was always trouble, even when he was a little boy.”
“You knew him?” Pratt said.
“Oh yeah. He was the class bully out at Crazy Horse Middle School. You know how hard it is to get expelled from a reservation school?”
A thin man named Pat said, “He was rapin’ girls in junior high.”
The other two Indians were Burt and Paul.
“He was always a freak,” Paul said. “He was into Satanism and death metal before he decided to become an authentic Injun.”
“Claimed he had second sight,” Longtree said.
Burt asked Pratt about the Sturgis shooting.
“I wasn’t there,” Pratt said.
“Last thing the rally needs,” Pat said.
“This won’t hurt the rally,” Longtree said. “Just means they’re gonna eighty-six the Skulls and the Vandals.”
“Ain’t no loss,” Burt said. The others nodded solemnly. None of them had gone to the rally anyway.
As Pratt finished a second shot Dr. Keith entered beneath the wheezing air conditioning unit carrying his little black bag. Pratt excused himself and met the doctor at the bar.
“Sorry you got arrested,” Dr. Keith said, setting his black bag on the bar. “Sorry about that, but the sheriff had me dead to rights as I was leaving the other night. It’s one thing not to volunteer information, quite another when the sheriff’s got you dead to rights.”
Pratt eased himself down on a stool. “I understand, Doc. So they went out there?”
“Oh yeah,” Dr. Keith said, sitting on a stool and opening his bag. “Found two bodies. One of ’em might be that missing fed. I think back to that day when I ran into Moon about to unload his truck up in the high country I can’t help but wonder maybe it was that federal agent. Take your shirt off, son.”
Pratt peeled off his shirt. A couple field hands burnt red by the sun glanced at him as they took up two bar stools toward the back. A silent TV monitor over the bar showed a baseball game. Vern drew two drafts without being asked and carried them down the bar.
Dr. Keith poked and prodded, checked the seams, took out his stethoscope and held the welcome cool against Pratt’s back. Had Pratt cough several times, looked in his eyes. “Son, you have got the constitution of a dray horse. You could just as easily gone into shock and died out there. If I was younger I might try and write you up for some medical magazine. Those antibiotics seem to be doing the trick. How you feeling?”
“Just glad to be alive, Doc.”
“Try not to rip these stitches.”
Vern came back. “Offer you gentlemen a beer?”
Pratt shrugged. “Why not.”
Dr. Keith nodded. “Might as well. I just got done helping McGillicuddy’s cow give breech birth. How we got that tangle of limbs outta there I still don’t know, but we had three people pushing and pulling at one point.”
Pratt hoisted his glass. Vern and Dr. Keith hoisted theirs. They clanked. They drank.
“Vern, do you know any trackers?”
“Lester,” the doc said.
“My cousin Lester can track a sheet of white paper in a blizzard.”
“Can you get Lester to meet me here in a day or so? I’ll pay you two hundred and I’ll pay Lester eight hundred.” Pratt figured it wouldn’t hurt to give the sheriff’s department another day to sift through the ranch.
“Boy that money sure do sound good to me and it’ll sound good to Lester, but Moon, he ain’t one to hang around, not without a reason.”
“Can you do it?”
Vern shrugged. “Let me give him a call.”
“Where can I book a room?”
Vern nodded toward the door, his Adam’s apple doing a slow wobble. “Chic’s Best Western straight up the street. Ain’t nothin’ else, ’less you want to crash on my sprung and beer-drenched sofa.”
Pratt grinned, feeling the stitches at his hairline draw tight. “I appreciate it, Vern, but I have an expense account.”
“Chic’s ain’t bad,” Vern said. “They got cable and an indoor pool.”
“Used to be the Buffalo Bill but that closed down years ago,” Dr. Keith said.
The pimply teenage girl behind the check-in desk blanched when Pratt entered the air-conditioned office. “What happened to you?” she said, chewing gum.
“Crashed my bike.”
“Wow.”
“Do you have a single?”
“You can have any room in the place, just about.”
Pratt gave her his credit card and checked into a second floor room in the rear. The girl supplied him with a toothbrush and a mini-tube of Colgate. Pratt went into the darkened room and turned the air conditioner up full blast. He switched the TV on to
Fox News and took a shower as hot as he could stand. Water stung his cuts and gouges from head to toe but it was worth it. He gently toweled himself off, sat on the springy bed and gingerly put on his shoes and socks. Had to find a thrift store or something. His underwear was getting rank.
It was eight-thirty, dusk by the time he stiff-legged across the highway to Frody’s. The parking lot was nearly full. Inside ol’ Waylon was wailing on the jukebox and the bar was busy. Three mesomorphs stood out with their baggy, low-hanging trou and Tapout hoodies. They watched Pratt make his way to a booth and sniggered.
A cute blond waitress brought Pratt a short menu. She tried not to stare. “Can I get you something to drink, sir?”
Pratt smiled. “I hit a deer,” he said. “How about a shot of Jack and a Hamm’s back?”
As the waitress brought Pratt his drinks and a glass of water, one of the Tapouts said, “Hey Brianna! When you gonna go for a ride with me?”
Brianna didn’t drop a beat. “In your dreams, Gus.”
“Hey Brianna,” said another one. “When you gonna take me and Cal for a ride?” They grinned and elbowed one another. The waitress ignored them as she set the drinks down.
“There you are. Are you ready to order?”
The one called Gus stepped away from the bar. “What happened to your friend, Bri? Did you cross your legs too fast?”
The trio guffawed. The bartender gave them a dirty look. Pratt ordered a steak and a salad. The food came quickly. Pratt ate like a starving dog. The steak was good but it hurt to chew. When he looked up the mesomorphs were gone.
Pratt left a generous tip, went outside, waited for a semi to pass, and herky-jerked across the highway inhaling diesel. He let himself into his chilled room, stripped, and was out in ten minutes.
He dreamed about Bosselman’s, that sheer panic in his chest when he realized what had happened. He ran from gift shop to restaurant to showers searching for his wayward father.
And then he tripped and fell down the well.
CHAPTER 36
Pratt slept like shit. Every time sleep tossed him back up, he fixated on the kid out there in the hills peering fearfully as strange men ripped apart the only home he’d ever known. He finally rose at seven, carefully put on his clothes, tossed down a couple of ibuprofens and headed out. There was no point picking up his impounded Road King if he couldn’t ride it. May as well wait for Cass.
Pratt went back across the highway and into Frody’s. Brianna was on duty.
“Don’t you ever sleep?” he asked as she handed him a menu.
“I went home at eleven, caught six hours. Coffee?”
“Yes please.”
Pratt perused the menu while Brianna got a pot. He decided to pass on the Rocky Mountain Oysters.
“Those fools ever give you any trouble?” he asked when the waitress returned.
“I can handle those boys,” Brianna said, pouring coffee into a mug. “They’ve been nothing but trouble ever since I’ve known them. They know they pull any shit in here, sheriff’s gonna land on them like a load of bricks.”
Pratt ordered the Denver omelet. It was perfectly cooked and easily chewed. Pratt felt better after eating and several cups of coffee. He felt he could talk to Ginger and explain what had happened, but he’d left his cell phone at Vern’s and Vern didn’t open until eleven. He glanced at Duane’s cheap digital watch, which had survived flood and famine. Three hours to kill.
He would have loved to go back out to the ranch and search for the boy himself, but he didn’t know what he was doing and there was a good chance the sheriff still had deputies out there, understaffed as they were. Finding a dead fed would bring the feds in on it. Pratt had a nightmare vision of scores of law enforcement officers tramping up and down the little valley rendering it forever uninhabitable for Eric.
The image of the boy’s furred figure broken at the bottom of a ravine would not desert him. Broken like the boy’s heart.
And yet there was something deep in Pratt’s soul, a candle flame of hope, that refused to accept that.
Eric was alive! Look at what he’d already survived. Boy like that, he doesn’t quit easy.
Stop it, man. You’re freaking yourself out.
After breakfast Pratt borrowed a Cabela’s cap from Frody’s lost and found and walked into Hog Tail. The sun beat down. Pratt’s shadow jigged before him razor sharp. He sat on a bench outside Small’s Drug until the proprietor, an older woman in a severe bun with pince-nez dangling from her neck on a pink beaded chain, unlocked the doors at nine.
Pratt went inside and took a basket. He bought a razor and a traveler’s tube of Barbasol, floss, a toothbrush, Axe body spray, earplugs, more ibuprofen, a cell phone charger and the latest issue of The Horse. The saleslady rang them up without looking at him.
As she handed him his receipt she finally looked up with a twinkle in her eye. “So what’s it like to fight a mountain lion?”
“Does everybody know?”
“You bet. This is a small town and my sister-in-law works for the sheriff.”
“Well I guess it’s like riding in a clothes dryer with a thousand razor blades. Where can I buy clothes?”
“Sid’s Men’s Wear, a half block down toward the courthouse.”
Sid’s had a dusty window display that looked as if it hadn’t been changed since the eighties. Inside the store was redolent with hardwood floors. There was a rack of leisure suits in one corner on sale seventy five per cent off. Sid himself was a natty septuagenarian in a seersucker suit, tufts of white hair crouching above the ears.
Sid didn’t bat an eye at Pratt’s appearance. “Good morning! How can I help you today?”
Pratt bought Levi’s, his first new pair in years, underwear, and a gaudy Hawaiian shirt with crimson blossoms on a sky blue background. Throughout the transaction Sid never commented on Pratt’s injuries or rough appearance. By the time he was finished it was ten.
Pratt killed an hour in Babe’s Diner across the street from Vern’s. He read the local paper. It was twelve pages and consisted mostly of livestock prices and high school sports. Bikers blatted through town. Even here, three hundred and fifty miles from the rally, there was spillover. At five of eleven, Vern unlocked the front door of his bar and opened it from inside.
Main Street had two traffic lights. Pratt waited patiently at one of them even though there was no traffic and walked across the street. He pushed into the dim coolness. Vern looked up from behind the bar, shielding his eyes with his hand.
“Good morning, Vern,” Pratt said, taking a stool.
Vern brought up two glasses and filled them with orange juice from a carton. Pratt washed down a couple more ibuprofens.
“You don’t look too bad, considerin’.”
“Thank you.”
“Well I talked to Lester and he says pick him up here tomorrow at nine.”
“You gonna be open?”
“Special for you.”
Pratt thanked Vern, got up and went into the back, where his phone was fully charged. Sitting in the creaky old captain’s chair, Pratt phoned
Cass. She answered on the third ring. Pratt could tell from the highway sound she was on the road.
“I just went through Brookings. I should be in Hog Tail by five.”
“How’s Ginger holding up?”
“The same. She’s always been kinda fatalistic.”
“Security?”
“Those Flintstone boys mean business. She’s well protected. I miss you, baby.”
“I miss you too,” he said automatically, feeling his penis stiffen. Pavlovian. Every time he made love to her he was more banged up than before.
“Love you,” Cass said with a plaintive tone Pratt instinctively resented.
“Love you too,” he said, feeling a heavy weight on his shoulder. Sighing, he closed the phone and put it in his pocket. He went back out front and shot the shit with Vern. The drought was bad for everyone. If they didn’t get some rain soon the ranchers and farmers were going to have a shit year and so was Vern.
A few customers staggered in from the heat. While Vern served them Pratt got up and left. Cap pulled low, he walked back out to the Best Western as bikers and trucks rumbled by raising dust.
Alone in his room Pratt stretched. He could do push-ups but sit-ups still threatened to tear out the stitches across his gut. He slept. He watched Judge Judy.
Pratt pumped a fist as Judge Judy read the riot act to a feckless young man. “You go, girl!”
At five-thirty his cell phone rang.
“I’m in the lobby, baby. What room you in?”
He told her, excited as a little boy on Christmas morning. Oh boy, he was going to get laid. He went into the bathroom and doused himself with Axe. He hurriedly straightened up the room. He cursed himself for not getting a bottle of tequila or something—not that he craved a drink but he knew she would.
A minute later she knocked on the door. Pratt opened it, Cass dropped her overnighter and folded herself in his arms. They didn’t speak. She kicked her bag inside and shut the door behind her. They raced each other to the bed. This time Pratt got on top.
“I’m famished,” she said fifteen minutes later. “Let me take a shower and then you’re taking me out to dinner.”
“Cass, are you on some kind of birth control?”