Wolf, No Wolf

by Peter Bowen

Du Pré nodded.

  “You come up with a name,” said Benny, “and a good one, and I’ll quit. If they agree to take it.”

  Du Pré nodded.

  A siren, far off in the distance.

  The helicopter was coming back, low.

  “They are here already,” said Du Pré.

  “Who?”

  “Them FBIs,” said Du Pré. “That is not a crop duster.” The chopper Du Pré had come in was owned by Taylor Martin, and pretty small.

  This thing was much bigger, had jet engines on it.

  Here come the fucking cavalry, Du Pré thought, as charming as usual. I think maybe they find their goddamned Little Bighorn, too.

  They waited.

  “I know the guy who will do this,” said Du Pré.

  “What?”

  “Not kill those people, who will be the Sheriff.”

  “I think I do, too,” said Benny.

  “Bart,” they both said.

  “Perfect,” Benny said. “He’s richer’n God and he’s been dried out a good long time and he don’t take shit, we know that. But would he do it?”

  “I ask him, he do it,” said Du Pré.

  My good friend. Years ago, he just a rich drunk but he is good now and people like and respect him. Very powerful man, the lawyer he got to come here, Charles Foote, got teeth way back to his asshole. Yes, that Bart, we need him now.

  His lady, that pretty Michele, the cop, she dump him. She like that Washington, D.C. She crazy. He better do this, take his mind off that. She hate Montana, he was here long enough no place else good enough for him. She figure that out, too.

  Life can be very sad.

  The chopper began to circle the wreck, blowing dust all over Du Pré and Benny. They ducked into the cruiser.

  “Pricks,” said Benny.

  “Well,” said Du Pré, “you can count on them, for sure.”

  The big chopper set down and four men in dark suits jumped out into the cactus. They ducked under the blades and dashed toward Benny and Du Pré.

  “I got a great idea,” said Du Pré.

  “What.”

  “Lock these doors,” said Du Pré.

  Benny shrugged and pressed the electric lock.

  “Wait till they get here,” said Du Pré.

  “OK,” said Benny.

  “Then we give them the finger,” said Du Pré.

  Benny nodded.

  “And then we drive home,” he said.

  They did and they did.

  Chapter 3

  BENNY SWIRLED THE WHISKEY in his glass and stared at the ice cubes in it.

  “You got to do this, Bart,” said Du Pré. “We help you, you know, but these people here, they need you now.”

  “Jesus,” said Bart. “This is like handing me a stick of dynamite and tellin’ me to suck on the end ain’t lit.”

  He is talking Montanan pretty good there, Du Pré thought.

  “We need you,” said Benny.

  “I don’t understand,” said Bart. “You resign and how do I get to be Sheriff?”

  “County Commissioners appoint you,” said Benny. “They can call an election, of course, or they can wait for a petition. But we need you right now.”

  Bart looked at Du Pré for a long moment. Du Pré looked at him.

  “OK,” he said. “I think I understand. I’m an outsider.”

  “Some people think you are an outsider if your great-grandfather wasn’t born here,” said Du Pré. “But not many. You are liked much. You dry out, you help, you work. How many people in trouble you help out? Many. You don’t even tell me all. I hear it pretty quick, though, it is a small place.”

  “And what do I do when I find the people who killed these two idiots?” said Bart. “I arrest them and see them to trial. I will not do anything else. Those fools should have been spanked and sent home to Mother. Not murdered.”

  “No,” said Du Pré, “they should not have been murdered. But you know these people, what happens, you press them too far, Bart.”

  Bart nodded. Old Booger Tom had probably shot the previous Sheriff. The Sheriff was shooting at Booger Tom. There was no evidence surviving and Booger Tom just looked amused when asked about it. Booger Tom made lovely horsehair hackamores and ropes and quirts; he’d learned to do that in Deer Lodge Prison. For killing two men.

  I wonder what that was all about, Du Pré thought. All Booger Tom ever said about it was that they needed killing. They probably did.

  “I’ll stay on as a deputy,” said Benny, “but there isn’t anyone in the county who can do it but you.”

  Bart nodded.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Thanks?” said Benny. “Jesus! This is going to be purely awful. I wouldn’t blame you you pissed on my shoes.”

  Bart nodded.

  “I’m going to call Guerdon Smith right now,” said Benny. He went into the kitchen.

  “It may get some worse, you know,” said Du Pré. “I mean, they come here, cut the fences, shoot cows. Then there is that silly wolf thing, put them back in the Wolf Mountains. I think I will go to the hearing in Cooper, there, it is day after tomorrow. These people here have been here long time, you know, they don’t like being told move on, we don’t like you, got better idea for the place.”

  “I forgot about the wolf business,” said Bart. “Are they here now, too?”

  Du Pré shook his head. “Oh, I do not know. Sometime soon they will come, talk, go up in the Wolfs. I hope that they come down. You know my grandpapa, he kill the last wolves here in Montana, 1923, with that Don Stevens.”

  “A government hunter?” said Bart.

  “Sometime, he was editor of that Great Falls paper, too,” said Du Pré.

  Benny came back, beaming. “I called Smith because he’s the smartest, and he said …”

  They waited.

  Benny grinned. “He said he’d call the others and the whole business should be done today. Matter of fact, he said he’d come by the saloon and swear you in.”

  Bart nodded. “I hope I’m big enough to do this,” he said. “I knew this would happen one day but I never thought I’d be the Sheriff who had to do it. Frankly, I am scared.”

  “Good,” said Du Pré. “You weren’t, you be pretty dumb.”

  “I suppose I’ll need uniforms.”

  “We order ours from Chicago,” said Benny.”Take a few days to get here. Nobody here’s your size. You’re a big man.”

  “Foote is going to hate this,” said Bart. “I’ll go and call him. You go on down to the bar, get some lunch. I’ll be along in a moment.”

  Du Pré and Benny drove down Bart’s drive and out onto the road.

  “I never thought he’d do it,” said Benny.

  “Bart, he is bigger than you think,” said Du Pré. “Trouble is, with lots of money, it is easier to throw it at life than take life’s troubles. So you mostly never live, I think.”

  “He’s got guts, for sure,” said Benny.

  There were a few people in the Toussaint Bar, having red beers and nibbling at the baskets of chips and pretzels Susan kept out for her customers.

  Benny went round the bar, and then back into the kitchen. When he and Susan finally came out her eyes were wet.

  She reached across the bar top and took Du Pré’s hand.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I was half out of my mind. I knew this was going to happen, too.”

  Du Pré grinned. “That Bart, he need to do this.”

  The door opened and Bart and Booger Tom came in. Bart looked a bit stunned. Booger Tom looked grim.

  “I’se working for a lawman?” he said. “All my life I been a good dishonest cuss, honorable, never stole no horse nor cattle. Well, maybe some from them Eastern-owned ranches, I forget. I only robbed banks a couple times. Well, maybe four. I never killed anyone didn’t really, really need it. And I wake up this morning, belch, fart, have my coffee, and ride into town with the goddamned Sheriff? I need a drink, bad.”

  “Yo
u never rode in with a Sheriff before?” said Du Pré. “You tell me that, look in my eye while you do.”

  “Plenty of times,” said Booger Tom, “but it was some different…”

  “You shoulda heard him scream,” said Bart. “You’d think I scared him or something.”

  “Shit,” said Booger Tom.

  “Just don’t do anything I’d have to arrest you for,” said Bart. “You know how much I’d love it.”

  It is changing, Du Pré thought, something, like maybe my people when the buffalo were gone or they fled down here from the English. Left that Red River country, Canada, 1886.

  The telephone rang. Susan went to answer it and she brought it to Bart.

  Bart put it to his ear. He listened.

  “I know, I know, Charles,” he said. “I have to do this, though. I can’t in conscience demand that you come. But I would deeply appreciate it. I’ll buy you a thick down bag and plenty of caviar.”

  Lawyer Foote was abrupt.

  Bart handed the phone back to Susan Klein.

  “Well?” said Du Pré.

  “He said he ought to have me committed,” said Bart. “But he did quite understand and he would be here late this evening, and would like to be met at the Billings airport. He hates flying in little planes, especially at night.”

  “Madelaine and me, we go get him,” said Du Pré, “if you want.”

  Bart nodded, then he shook his head no.

  “Benny,” he said, “I’m the Sheriff now, soon’s Guerdon gets here with his Bible. So I would…what would you think of perhaps taking Susan to Billings? You could have—”

  “We’re outa here,” said Susan. “Who’ll tend bar?”

  The door opened. Three men in dark suits came in. They peered a moment into the dark, saw Benny Klein, and came over to him.

  “Special Agent Hansen,” said one of them, a tall, dark-haired man, his mouth sneering, “and this is Special Agent Miller and that is Special Agent Houghton.”

  Benny nodded.

  “Unusual,” said Hansen, “to find a Sheriff in a bar when a case of this gravity has occurred.”

  “I’m not the Sheriff,” said Benny.

  “We were told he would be here,” said Hansen.

  “He’s here,” said Benny. “Bart? These…uh…folks seem to want to talk to you.”

  “Bart Fascelli,” said Bart. He didn’t get off his stool and he did not extend his hand.

  “We need several things,” said Agent Hansen. “Office space, telephones. Fax machines.”

  Bart nodded. “Then I suggest you go rent them,” he said. He stood up. “This is my county. These are my people. You stupid cocksuckers fuck up once and I’ll throw your asses over the line myself.”

  “Just a goddamned minute,” yelled Hansen. “The Governor requested our assistance—”

  “I don’t work for the fucking Governor,” said Bart. “So get him to rent some offices for you.”

  Guerdon Smith came through the door with a couple of the County Commissioners.

  He walked up to Bart.

  “You swear?” he said.

  “Yup,” said Bart.

  Bart picked up the badge Benny had left on the bar top. He pinned it on. He stood in his old boots and torn jeans and stained leather jacket.

  “Ever see High Noon?” he said. He grinned at Special Agent Hansen.

  Chapter 4

  DU PRÉ STOOD AT the back of the hearing room in Cooper. There were a bunch of very angry ranchers there, and some well-dressed young people in yuppie outdoor clothes, ugly colors and stupid buffalo designs on them.

  “We will now listen to public testimony in the matter of reintroducing the gray wolf to the Wolf Mountains.”

  “We’ll just kill the bastards!” shouted a weathered rancher.

  The first speaker moved to the podium. A young woman in hiking boots and multipocketed clothes.

  “We need to restore the predators…” she began. She stopped. There was a hail of cowshit landing on her and the Fish and Wildlife agents sitting at the long table on the dais.

  She ducked and turned her back.

  Something started hissing in the back of the room. Du Pré looked down at a stink bomb working up to good thick smoke. He ran for the door and made it through before the rest of the crowd caught on. They soon followed, choking in the fierce stench.

  Du Pré laughed. He was wearing his Métis clothes, the high moccasins and Red River sash and hat, the doeskin pants and the loose shirt and leather jacket, buffalo with the fleece in. He rolled a smoke and lit it and watched the crowd sneeze and choke and bitch.

  The high school auditorium would need to air a long time.

  The Fish and Wildlife agents had been the last out. They coughed and cursed.

  “Why don’t you sons of bitches go bust poachers?” a ranchwoman yelled. “We aren’t raisin’ cattle to feed goddamn wolves, so these California bastards like Montana better. We like it just fine and we been here a hundred years.”

  Du Pré laughed. Jesus, he thought, they think they just march in here, tell us, hey, you get wolves back, we say fine? These wolves, they will not live very long, you bet.

  The young woman who had tried to speak came up to Du Pré, wiping her eyes. She coughed a little.

  “Excuse me,” she said, “who are you?”

  “Gabriel Du Pré,” said Du Pré. “You did not get much chance in there.”

  She shook her head. “These stockmen, they just won’t let us bring anything back. I’ve had cowshit thrown at me before.”

  Du Pré waited.

  “Are you Indian, I mean Native American?” she said.

  “Part Indian,” said Du Pré. “Métis, French Cree Chippewa.”

  “Oh,” she said. “What do you think?”

  “Eh?” said Du Pré.

  “About bringing the wolves back. It’s a major medicine animal.”

  Du Pré laughed. “All animals are medicine animals,” he said, “all of them four-footed, six-footed, eight. All.”

  “We came up yesterday and had a sweat with a Native American shaman,” she said.

  Du Pré grinned at her. “Maybe Benjamin Medicine Eagle?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Do you know him?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Du Pré, “I know him very well.” Jesus. That little shit.

  “It was very moving,” she said. “We prayed for the return of the wolf.”

  Du Pré laughed.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “His name is Bucky Dassault,” said Du Pré. “He is a child molester, did time, Deer Lodge, he con his way to alcohol counselor, get fired from that, then he set himself up, shaman. He is a bad guy. How much he rip you off for?”

  “Uh,” she said, “oh, God.”

  “He didn’t come here?” said Du Pré.

  “Yes,” she said, “he did, but then he said he had an appointment he had forgotten.”

  “No,” said Du Pré, “I think that maybe he saw me.

  “Oh,” she said. Her eyes were red from the smoke.

  “There are not so very many shamans,” said Du Pré. “Medicine People are very rare.”

  “He sent us an ad,” she said.

  Du Pré nodded. An ad. Coupons, maybe.

  “What do you think about the wolves?” she said.

  “Well,” said Du Pré, “it is a bad thing, bring them back, you have heard about the murders up near the Wolf Mountains, there.”

  “Those stockmen…”she said.

  “You know, it is a very bad idea, cut fences, shoot someone’s stock.”

  “They were friends of mine,” she said.

  “I am sorry,” said Du Pré.

  “I came here for them,” she said. “We won’t give up. But you didn’t really say what you think. ”

  “Um,” said Du Pré. “My grandpapa, he hunt down the last two wolves in Montana, in the lower states here, with that Don Stevens. Old Snowdrift and Lady Snowdrift. Year before they kill them they find thei
r pups, ship all but two of them to the Smithsonian. Don, he take one female pup and he train her, she was in some silent movies with a dog named Strongheart. My grandpapa, he raise a male but it get mean. He kill it. I still have the hide.”

  She was looking at him in horror.

  “So if you stupid people do this I don’t think that your wolves live very long. Very bad idea push these people around some. They don’t take it.”

  The young woman reached in her pocket and she pulled out a tape recorder.

  “I’m going to give this to the FBI,” she said, “you bastard.”

  Du Pré laughed at her. He walked to his Rover and got in and drove off toward home.

  Very strange, these people, he thought. The road home was a straight line north. They just come here, say everything has changed, because we told you so. I don’t like this at all.

  I got to keep any more of these fools from being killed. That will not be easy. So stupid. They really want to clear everybody out from the Big Dry? Just tell them, go? Dig up the graves, your people, take them with you? We want a park here? Pretty crazy.

  We got them FBIs, we got these people we never seen before. We got lot of change coming, maybe I have to go to Canada. That western Montana is very sad place. Strange people move in there, all alike mostly.

  A coyote ran across far ahead of Du Pré’s Rover.

  Medicine animal there, for sure, Du Pré thought, he is some joker. Sometimes he catch himself up, get caught in his own jokes, yelp.

  I go see Benetsee, Du Pré thought, old coyote joker there, see what he says. Be three in the morning I get there.

  He reached under the seat and took up a pint of whiskey and sipped while the Rover shot down the two-lane highway. He had bought a pack of tailor-made cigarettes at the gas station. He smoked and drank and drove.

  He shot past a Highway Patrol car lurking in the shadows where a county road came into the highway.

  Du Pré sighed and flipped the switch and turned on his flashing lights and siren.

  The Highway Patrol car slowed and turned off its light bar.

  I liked Montana better before all those social workers, they take over the legislature.

  Piss on ’em.

  Du Pré’s bladder sent its message. He slowed down and pulled off onto the verge and pissed in the road and got in and went on. Snow started to fall, fat flakes, so it wouldn’t last long.