by Peter Bowen
Du Pré walked back up toward the sweat lodge. The flaps were shut again and wisps of steam were rising from the cracks in the lodge.
Du Pré shrugged and he drove down toward town.
Where the road suddenly dipped and turned he saw car tracks going off and over the side, down toward the creek bottom. Du Pré shot down the hill and pulled over and got out and walked to the edge.
The agent’s car was upside down in the little creek. Hansen was crawling out of it.
Du Pré called the dispatcher and then he got out and he slid down the side of the hill.
Another agent had struggled out. The third one was hanging upside down in the car, unconscious. Du Pré got the seat belt unbuckled and he dragged the man out and up away from the car. The motor was still running and the gasoline fumes were heavy.
Hansen and the other agent crawled away on their hands and knees.
The car began to burn.
Sirens in the distance.
Hansen looked at Du Pré, hating him.
“Answer me a question,” said Du Pré. “I am guessing.”
Hansen stared at him.
“You are driving, and a coyote runs across the road.”
Hansen nodded.
“It was funny,” he said. “The coyote crossed and then it…”
Du Pré waited.
“It felt like something just shoved us over the side.”
The ambulance stopped on the road above.
Chapter 7
“A COYOTE, EH?” SAID Deputy Lawyer Foote. “Life is a strange business.”
Du Pré nodded. They were sitting in the saloon, eating cheeseburgers and drinking beer. The fire roared in the glass-fronted woodstove.
They were the only two people left in the bar. Susan Klein had left, saying they should pull the door shut after them. The potluck had been a success. They always were, and Du Pré had fiddled like he always did.
“Wonderful music,” said Foote. “Is it Celtic? It sounds like some I have heard, Irish and Scottish.”
“It is that,” said Du Pré. “We got some Indian, some French, some Scot. We some stew, us.”
“Did you tell me what the Métis are?” said Foote.
“We the voyageurs. Some French they come, Scot, Irish, all them Catholic, with the Black Robes, them Jesuits. Very tough priests, them Jesuits. And they marry Indians and here we are. Some of us, we live on the reservations, some of us don’t, most of us are gone, part of what America mostly is, you know. Indians call us white, whites call us Indians. So we are the peacemakers, catch all the shit from everybody.”
Foote laughed.
“You weren’t too peaceful with Hansen,” he said. “God, that could have been trouble for you.”
“Why they do that to an old man?” said Du Pré.
“No one here will talk to them,” said Foote. “They are very used to solving things. With a murder, you know, if you don’t solve it quickly the chances of solving it ever are small. And they are under great pressure to solve these cases. So three of them are in the hospital and now we get three more. Or more. I expect they will lean on you.”
Du Pré nodded. Stick a gun in an FBI neck, they take it personally.
“I hope they don’t any of them get killed,” said Du Pré.
“Oh, God,” said Foote, “that would mean we would have hundreds of them here. I have been able to forestall their…overcrowding…so far. The political reality is that fatuous rich kids perceived as defenders of the environment are thought much more valuable than the backwards sixth-generation ranchers, who I seem to remember stand or fall on how well they take care of the grass. The people who have lived here for a century or more are most independent. They don’t resent outsiders interfering with them. They refuse to tolerate it at all. It worries me. A great deal.”
“Worry me, too,” said Du Pré. “The first time, you know, some FBI pulls a gun on a rancher, that rancher’s wife, she will just blow that FBI guy away like a gopher. Them FBIs, they don’t know how to act, they need to go away, let me and Bart and Benny and the others figure this out. They make things, you know, much worse.”
“There is a lot of loose talk about a conspiracy,” said Foote.
“You think these ranchers get together, say, these fools come here, we wait for them, shoot them, maybe next Wednesday at ten at night? Paugh. No.”
“Please explain,” said Foote.
“OK,” said Du Pré. “These fools come here, but it is not their land, you know. They drive around it, they think, well, this is very empty land, nobody on it. But I make you a bet. You, Lawyer Foote, you go on out when the season for deer it is over. You shoot one deer from the road. You see how long it is before the game warden is with you. No, I know what happen. These people are young, city people, can’t see much here. They are here, cut these fences, shoot cows, they want a nice place to play in. They are scared, too. So they are on a dirt road, don’t see nobody around, they drive slowly back and forth, for Chrissakes. They maybe smoke a joint, drink a little, helps some. They are out there after dark, driving around, headlights, slow. How far can you see headlights, this country? Oh, fifty miles. So someone has seen them, they have come, they are wondering, what in the hell are these people doing out here, anyway? Then those dumb kids, they get out of their expensive four-wheel-drive, they go cut fences, shoot some cattle. Whoever is watching them says, Jesus Christ, enough is enough. So whoever is watching these fools, they grab a gun and they shoot them, they are so mad. They just kill them.”
Foote nodded. “I see,” he said. “I suppose out here, empty as it looks, someone is always watching.”
“Always,” said Du Pré. “Now, this person who shot those two stupid kids, they are pret’ mad at the bunny-huggers already. Environmentalists, they just march in here, say, you are bad people, this is our land now, get off it. Jesus Christ, what they expect? Free beer? Shit.”
“They don’t drink,” said Foote. “They expect free designer mineral water and fat-free cheese. God, everybody who lives here has guns. I know that the owner is a local if there is a gun rack in the pickup. Full of guns. Guns which it is illegal even to own, I’d bet, too.”
Du Pré thought about the machine pistol in his attic. The one Catfoot, his papa, had brought home from the war. MP-40. Schmeisser. It worked just fine. Someday Du Pré might need it.
“Tell you a story,” said Du Pré. “It is the early sixties and this Federal Commissioner, Aviation, is flying across Montana in a plane, he sees another plane flying along with him, it comes up suddenly. The pilot is wearing a cowboy hat and dark glasses. Pilot grins. He fires off the machine guns, the twenty-millimeter cannon, so that the Commissioner knows they work, tracers, you know. He does a flip over the Commissioner’s plane, so that he sees there are no identity numbers. It is painted like sagebrush and rock and grass. Commissioner, he goes crazy, hundreds of people looking for that plane, they never find it. It is still out there somewhere, in some rancher’s barn. Rancher, he figures, he’s had enough of that Washington, D.C., he strafe it.”
“Hmmm,” said Foote. “What kind of plane was it?”
“Old P-thirty-eight Lightning,” said Du Pré. “You know, it is very fast for a propeller plane. I read about it. Somebody out there, cowboy hat, he owns it, loves it, keeps it oiled up and ready.”
“Jesus,” said Foote, “I think I see what you’re saying.”
Du Pré fetched more whiskey and the brandy bottle from the bar. He sat back down and he rolled a smoke. Foote lit one of his long black cigars and he leaned over and lit Du Pré’s cigarette.
“I see now why you wanted so to have Bart take the Sheriff’s job,” said Foote.
Du Pré nodded.
“Times will change but these people will not,” said Foote, “and they won’t run or bend or give an inch.”
“No,” said Du Pré, “they will not. You know what is needed here, I think, is some FBI from here, knows these people. Lead these agents, make them not get themsel
ves killed. Because they will work very hard and that is where it will end, I know, sure as hell, and when it happens and they send more and more get killed, that will be all.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Foote.
Foote took his brandy and went off to a corner and made two phone calls.
Ah, thought Du Pré, I am friend to a guy, he can call Washington, D.C., at three, the morning, and someone will answer.
Foote sat down, cigar in his hand, brandy snifter in the other.
“Done,” he said, “if they don’t screw it up. I expect them to screw it up, but not too much.”
Du Pré rolled another smoke and he lit it and he looked up at the blue tendrils rising.
“Things changing,” he said, “much change. A time that is bent and maybe breaking. Old Benetsee, he listen to the earth, you know, he say it is speaking to him and never has this way before.”
“He has a truly terrible moral force,” said Foote. “I can’t quite understand how those agents could have treated him so; my impulse is to bow. Never had that before. So a coyote ran in front of the car and then an unseen hand pushed the car over the bank. Curious.”
Du Pré nodded. His power, reach a long way. Du Pré remembered the River of the Whale.
“Yah,” said Du Pré, “I feel him all the way east in Canada, that mess with Lucky, few years ago.” When I kill a man, have to, old Benetsee he see it coming.”
“It is possible,” said Foote. “And I should warn you, that the FBI may send someone from the West who left because he hated it and he will be real glad to make it worse.”
“Shit,” said Du Pré.
“What do you mean by changing?” said Foote.
“Last time it changed this much, it is 1886, the Métis rise up in Canada, they fight the English, poor mad Louis Riel he talking to Jesus and Jesus say, hang two English. Then Louis Riel he don’t let his little general, Gabriel Dumont, defeat them English and so the Métis they lose and the priests betray poor Louis Riel and the English hang him. Some the Métis, they come down here, North Dakota, the buffalo are gone and they have nothing, they got maybe a Red River cart, hoe, ax, couple horses. Nine children, probably. They stay here, Indians hate them call them white, whites hate them call them Indian. But we live.”
Foote nodded.
They smoked.
“Now these new people come, they say everybody here is bad people, you go away now, we want to play on your land. Bring back wolves. Bring back buffalo. But they don’t know, these people.”
Foote nodded.
“So these people here, first they don’t understand, they are some confused. Then they get very angry, when they do understand.”
Du Pré blew smoke at the ceiling.
“And then?” said Foote.
“Then they say, it is a good day to die.”
“I have heard that line in a lot of movies,” said Foote.
“Yah,” said Du Pré, “well, that is silly Hollywood saying it. But I tell you something, I just think of it. It means you, too.”
Foote nodded and waited.
“You live this country, a time,” said Du Pré, “and you walk on it and you listen to it talk with you, you listen to the many peoples—rocks, trees, four-leggeds, six-leggeds, winged peoples—you are Indian. It will happen, you don’t know it, maybe you are a rancher, hates Indians. But it take you.”
“I see,” said Foote.
“We got to stop this,” said Du Pré. “But me, I do not for sure know how.”
Chapter 8
DU PRÉ AND HIS daughter Jacqueline’s husband, Raymond, were sitting on a fence rail smoking. They had just signed off on a double load of calves headed for feedlots and tables out east. The diesel engines of the trucks taking them were fading to nothing in the distance. It was one of the warm November days, golden light and the air so clear things seemed closer than they were.
Du Pré stared up at the Wolf Mountains.
“Well,” said Du Pré, “them assholes want to put them wolf back there, I guess I go kill them like my grandfather did.”
“I help,” said Raymond.
“No, you don’t,” said Du Pré. “I tell you something, you do this kind of thing ever, you do it alone and you don’t talk about it.”
“You just talked about it,” said Raymond.
“Yah,” said Du Pré, “well, now I don’t got to do it. Someone else do it, you bet.”
A pheasant flushed from the thick weeds in the creek bottom over the road. Then another.
“Someone down there chasing them,” said Du Pré. “Wonder who?”
“What you ever find out about that dog Packy got?” said Raymond.
“Oh, he belong to that murdered woman’s boyfriend. End of that, it was just a call-in service, find a lost dog, call eight hundred.”
The springer spaniel broke cover and ran down again into the weeds. Du Pré looked off east and saw Packy coming, shotgun across his chest, high. A pheasant flushed in front of him and he shot it, one smooth motion, boom, a puff of feathers.
Packy waved and then he disappeared, down behind a hill.
Du Pré heard a car coming, pretty fast. Drive like they are from here, he thought.
A tan government car topped a rise and then dipped out of sight. It came up again, still roaring, then began to slow down three hundred yards or so away. The car slowed and stopped.
A woman got out, standing up in one smooth motion. She had gray hair with white streaks in it. Dressed in jeans and boots and a worn rough leather jacket. She reached into the car and pulled out a stained hat and put it on.
She walked up to Du Pré and Raymond, chewing slowly.
She nodded. Clear blue eyes, lines around her mouth and eyes. About forty. Very lean. Horsewoman.
“Gabriel and Raymond,” she said. “Told I’d find you here.” Her accent was Montana, down deep. “I’m an FBI agent. In charge of this mess. Name’s Corey Banning.”
Gabriel and Raymond took off their hats and shook hands with her. They put their hats back on.
“I thought so,” she said, grinning. “Now, I got a favor to ask of you, hope that it won’t piss you off too much. I need to talk with Mr. Du Pré here, and Raymond, if you could maybe drive my car back to town we’ll pick it up later.”
“I got to go anyway,” said Raymond. “I let Gabriel bring you my house, pick it up. Nice to meet you.”
He walked over to the pool car and drove away.
“Just broke a bunch of regulations,” said Corey Banning, “so fuck ’em.”
Du Pré went to his Rover, got out a half-full bottle of whiskey, came back. He offered it to her.
“Obliged,” she said, taking a sip.
Du Pré had a good slug.
“Whew,” said Corey Banning. “Now, murder is not, as you know, a federal crime, so I am here to prove who violated their civil rights, which since they are dead I think must have happened. I ain’t going away till I find out who, why, where, when, and all that good stuff. Now, unfortunately us folks at the FBI have a very poor reputation in the courtesy department and I just made it very clear to the three guys who came with me and who already hated my guts that they got to sir and ma’am and not shit in the punch bowl. Or someone’ll blow their fool heads off.”
“Good,” said Du Pré. “Now I feel some better. I thought that maybe we have a war, you know?”
“Well, yeah,” said Corey Banning, “it was headed that way. Now you and me, we know what happened. The little dummies thought no one was watching them and someone of course was and they lost their tempers some and killed them. That’s against the law and further it ain’t right.”
“Yah,” said Du Pré.
“Now I’m going to find these folks,” said Corey Banning, “every goddamned one of them, and I’m going to see them tried and put in prison. You can go to the bank with it. And if you or Bart—nice guy, I like him—or Benny Klein screw up, withhold information, or break the law I’ll do the same to you. Only fair
to warn you. I got a job to do and further I happen to like the job.”
Du Pré laughed.
“So I want to hear from you today all that you know. Everything. Now, we’ll just sit here if you don’t mind smoking and having a drink now and again, putting a little smile on, till all my questions are answered. I like answered questions, I hang around till I get them. Real pain in the ass. Not too bright, sometimes three, four days later, I think, now I didn’t like that answer, I come back, see if it’s changed any. Or maybe, I think, I asked that question wrong, there.”
“OK,” said Du Pré. “I am very glad you are here, you know why? Now, that Benny he quit, he don’t want to arrest his good friends and neighbors and so he do that. Bart, he swallow hard and then he say, well, I will do this job best I can.”
“Pretty strange,” said Banning. “Guy’s got more’n a hundred million dollars, dried-out drunk living in the ass end of nowhere to begin with, and suddenly he’s the law. Good guy?”
“Yah,” said Du Pré, “I think he be a very sad guy before this is over, but he is a good guy.”
“Sad families just buried their kids, Du Pré,” said Agent Banning. “Those kids were too dumb to walk and chew gum all at once, but they still didn’t need killing. Even if they did we don’t do things that way anymore.”
Du Pré shrugged.
“Like that guy you killed in New York,” said Agent Banning. “You do recall your old friend Lucky? Bad guy. You did the right thing, mind you, and I can say that because we never got any evidence and you ain’t going to dance on in and confess and say please hang me. But I know that you did it and of course you know it’s against the law and out of fashion. Even here.”
Du Pré looked at her.
Ah yes, she is something, this one, he thought.
“Now,” said Banning, “the Rosses and the Stemples they come up to you and tell you about their cut fences and dead cattle, you’re playing at the bar—I love that music, I’ll be there next time, you bet, you bet—they got good alibis and so it ain’t them. Now, you aren’t exactly a cop so I suspect you’re too smart to be one which I admire but when you get back you’re going to find ol’ Bart there at the bar with a badge for you on account of how I asked him so nice and blinked my baby blues at him and waved my ass under his nose. Actually, I just told him it would be easier and he agreed.”