Wolf, No Wolf

by Peter Bowen

  I hate these people, but kill them, no, that is wrong.

  “It is a shitty mess,” said Du Pré. “I would quit, you know, but I cannot do that, Bart.”

  “You cannot do that, you,” said Madelaine. “This is plenty bad now, you know, but it will be worse, you quit. Bart quit, you quit, Governor send in his people, lot of shooting. Our friends, neighbors, very good shots. Also, they only want to live, so much.”

  “Huh?”

  “You know what I am saying, Du Pré,” said Madelaine.

  Yah, I know, I am like that, too. I get mad enough, me, I don’t care what anybody think. Kill Lucky, for sure. I almost kill that damn Bucky Dassault, too.

  “Hah,” said Madelaine. “Now that damn Governor, he worried about the tourists, you know, they will be afraid, not come to Montana at all. Maybe they get caught in avalanche, July, big old grizzly eat them under the snow. All those fat guys, Chamber of Commerces, having fits. Hah.”

  Du Pré laughed.

  “Hey,” he said, “we make maybe commercial, television. You want to die, come to Montana. We shoot you, feed you to the bears. Everything that walks, it is here, it bites.”

  “Don’t get too mad, Du Pré,” said Madelaine. “I know you pret’ good, you don’t get too mad, you get too mad, you talk, your Madelaine, before you do something.”

  “Ah,” said Du Pré. He parked in front of the Toussaint Bar.

  “I don’t want to come visit you, Deer Lodge, or the cemetery, have to put flowers on your stone, say, Du Pré, you bastard, you were going to call your Madelaine.”

  She began to cry.

  Du Pré put his arms around her and he held her and stroked her hair. She smelled of roses and mountain gentian.

  “OK,” said Du Pré, “I will do that. But you know, if someone is going to be having some shots at me I will have to talk to you maybe after.”

  “Well,” said Madelaine, “that is all right, they shoot at you you just kill them, you hear, so you can talk, me, later.”

  Du Pré rocked her.

  She snuffled and then fished around in her purse and took out a linen handkerchief and blew her nose and dabbed at her eyes. She never wore makeup.

  “Pink wine,” said Madelaine, “and I feel pretty lucky, so I roll for it with Susan.”

  They went in. The bar was empty but for Susan Klein and old Benetsee slumped down on a stool.

  Du Pré yelled.

  “Old man, I look for you, weeks, you old bastard, now you are here! I think you are white bones and coyote shit. Damn you!”

  Madelaine ran to the old man and hugged him.

  Benetsee turned round and he grinned his old brown grin at Du Pré.

  “I been, Canada,” he said. “I left you note, you know, hanging on a bush, behind my house.”

  Shit, Du Pré thought, I never went behind his damn house. The snow was deep. I never went far enough. Never went far enough. I am afraid of the snow now a little bit. A lot. Did not want my legs all the way down in it. Deep under that snow it scared me. Made me mad enough to live but it scared me. Damn, I ought to go burrow into it, sleep in it a few nights. Damn.

  Benetsee’s notes, they are carved in wood, bone, stone. His notes, very hard to understand. Easy to read, very hard to understand.

  The old man lifted up a big glass of fizzy screwtop wine and drank it.

  “Them people pretty good meat, Old Black Claws,” said Benetsee. “I see him wake up under the snow, he grumble, claw his way out, find someone. Can’t believe his luck, Old Black Claws. He eat pretty good there, couple three months. Hee. Sleep some, get up, go eat. Good life.”

  “God,” said Susan Klein.

  “Yeah,” said Du Pré. “They hunt him down now for sure. Old bastard. I will miss him.”

  “He is gone,” said Benetsee.

  “Gone?” said Du Pré.

  Gone fucking where? Them Wolf Mountain, they are an island range, it is hundred and fifty miles to next bear country.

  “Where gone?” said Du Pré.

  Benetsee belched.

  “North.”

  Susan Klein set down Madelaine’s wine and Du Pré’s whiskey.

  “Where north?”

  “He don’t tell me,” said Benetsee.

  “Old man,” said Du Pré, “your help, I need now. What you know about these people killed? Who killed them? It is not right, you know. And we can’t have more, you know.”

  “No more,” said Benetsee, “of them. They all live now. Somebody else die but I can’t see who.”

  Old man always knows the riddles.

  I don’t need this. Who dies? Bart? Me? Who?

  “Yah,” said Benetsee, “Old Black Claws, he eats them but he don’t like them much, I guess. Except for candy bars in their pockets. Hee. Pretty damn bad when a grizzly don’t like eating you.”

  “Oh, you awful old man,” said Madelaine, “those people they got mothers, fathers, you know. Lots of tears, pretty awful, can’t even bury their kids. Pretty awful.”

  “Them whites, they like to pickle their dead people,” said Benetsee. “Pretty selfish. Lots of hungry Peoples out there. They take, they don’t give back.”

  “Oh, barf,” said Susan Klein. “Way you talk I ought to go dig up someone, fry them up, serve ’em to you.”

  She filled Benetsee’s wine glass. He drank it.

  “You have a cheeseburger now,” said Susan, “or no more wine.”

  “Is this going to stop?” said Madelaine. “This horribles?”

  Benetsee nodded.

  “Sure,” he said. “Everything stops, you know.”

  Du Pré looked down at the whiskey and ice in his glass. He could see a carving in the top of the bar, someone’s initials, very old and filled with black polished dirt. The bar top was more than a century old.

  “Hey, Susan,” said Du Pré, looking down through his glass, “how old, this old bar here?”

  “Made in Pennsylvania in 1868,” said Susan, “this and the backbar. Old German woodcarvers. Shipped to Fort Benton and when that died out it was hauled to Miles City and then here. Got dates on the back of the far left door there, where the old ice blocks were kept. All zinc in it, like the ceiling here.”

  HDP, the carving said. My ancestor, Hercule Du Pré, the one who did cuss so very good, him, he sat here, carve his initials in this wood.

  He say goddamn, shit, Balls of Christ, all that.

  Me, I say it, too.

  Chapter 26

  DU PRÉ AND BART looked up the Cooper Creek Canyon. All mud and rock now, a couple bloated carcasses of mountain goats that had died when the avalanche came down.

  One of the medical examiners stood next to them, puffing on a pipe. He was young, moustached, very calm.

  “The bear didn’t eat the lower jaws,” the ME said. “Nice of him. We were able to identify all of the victims. If he had we would have been mixing and matching teeth till the next millenium.”

  Du Pré nodded.

  Good for that Old Black Claws. Hope he walks all the way up to Canada and finds himself a nice ski hill to feed off of. Nice fat young yuppies. I send him a case of hot sauce or something. This is pretty terrible but pretty funny.

  “Yeah, well,” said Du Pré, “that Governor he send in his trappers and hunters and they don’t find Old Black Claws, but I guess they shoot some other bear and call it even.”

  “Governors are like that,” said the ME. “Offering a million-dollar reward for information leading to the conviction of the murderers of the people killed here last October is another example. Would you care to bet that someone is convicted?”

  “No,” said Du Pré.

  “You’re all done with this now?” said Bart. The torn ground was trampled by searchers. The ice had scraped off the brush, tearing the roots out when the moving equipment had lifted it.

  “Eight death certificates,” said the ME. “I suppose I’ll be back here soon. For one thing, it strains credulity to think that Taylor Martin murdered six people w
ithout assistance.”

  “I just want to know who killed the two in my county,” said Bart. “I have very modest ambitions.”

  “Well,” said the ME, “one of them died instantly. A Magnum rifle shot through the brain, but it hit the stem. Magnum rifles are useless, of course, for shooting much of anything; they just punch a hole through. But the woman didn’t die right then. Someone cut her throat. She was alive till her jugular was separated.”

  “There was not that much blood, that car,” said Du Pré.

  “There’s been plenty of time to wash up,” said the ME. “There are some chemicals that reveal minute quantities of blood. But without a tip you won’t know where to look, and if you do get a warrant and you can find some blood there still probably won’t be enough to type even if there is enough to declare it human, which I doubt.”

  “I wonder if we will ever know,” Bart said.

  “Murderers are an unremarkable lot,” said the ME. “They kill when they are angry, or for money, or in a botched robbery, or jealousy. If you haven’t found out anything by now I don’t think you will find enough to get any convictions, since your confession will come from someone who was a part of it. You have to have corroboration. There won’t be any. And there isn’t any reason for anyone to come forward. Nobody’s talked by now, I don’t think anyone will.”

  “Very encouraging,” said Bart.

  “Taylor Martin’s confession foxed you,” said the ME. “Now you have to go around that. Even the vaunted FBI is at a loss. That formidable Banning woman, by the way, is dangerous.”

  “Eh,” said Bart.

  “I don’t happen to be from Montana,” said the ME, “and I love it here. I love the people, too. I even love the fact that they are crazy. My brother was an officer in Vietnam, and when he arrived, a fresh second lieutenant, out in the boondocks, the staff sergeant took him aside and saved his life.”

  “Huh?” said Bart.

  “The sergeant said, son, these are Montana and Wyoming boys here. You ask them to do something, they’ll probably do it. You order them, they’ll kill you. Last officer ordered them lasted seven hours. My brother was polite to his men and he lived because of them. This Banning woman is from here, and she’s getting pissed, and I fear she may saddle up and charge just to see what she can shake loose. Even unlawfully. I would recommend that you request her transfer.”

  “She talk to you?” said Bart.

  “Frequently,” said the ME. “She has four suspects. She’s probably right, but the days when you could bung suspects into a cell, let them sit in the dark, and then use the rubber hoses are long gone. That is only done in graduate schools now. But she just may do something out of anger and it will not be the right thing.”

  “She is one girl who hates to lose,” said Du Pré.

  “Get her out of here,” said the ME.

  He walked off, in his rubber boots.

  “What do I do about this?” said Bart.

  “Huh, ah,” said Du Pré, “well, we are some her friends, we maybe talk with her?”

  “Worth a try. All we need now is an FBI agent getting blown away,” said Bart. “I thought she was sent here to avoid that.”

  Du Pré shrugged.

  This Corey Banning has been looking very tired and she is not letting us know that she knows anything even if she don’t know anything.

  “Maybe we let that Madelaine of mine talk, her,” said Du Pré.

  “OK,” said Bart.

  They squelched back to their four-wheelers and backed and filled, tires sucking out of the mud, and went down the wrecked road toward Cooper.

  Children were playing soccer on the softball field. The trees were in bud, cannily waiting out the several frosts between here and the summer. Du Pré saw a long flight of geese headed straight north, the lead goose homed on the polestar even in high sun.

  Du Pré and Bart parked in front of the Sheriff’s office and went in. Bart tried to raise Corey Banning on his phone, then called the FBI office in the trailer.

  “I don’t have anything to say to you, fuck-head,” Bart said to whoever was on the other end of the line. “Just tell Banning we are at the Toussaint Bar and have some items of interest to discuss with her.” He hung up. “I’m usually a nice man.”

  Du Pré nodded.

  They drove down to Toussaint. Corey Banning’s muddy rig was already parked out front.

  “I go get Madelaine,” said Du Pré to Bart, out the window of his Rover. He drove off to her place, his, too, now.

  She was sitting at her beading table in the living room, picking through jars of beads, looking for the perfect shade to add to the hatband she was making for her son.

  “I need you, my love,” said Du Pré. “Come talk that Banning woman, she is I think about to maybe get herself in trouble.”

  “OK,” said Madelaine, “but I don’t know what I say.”

  “Oh,” said Du Pré, “maybe just listen, you do that good for me.”

  “All people really need,” said Madelaine. “They talk through it mostly.”

  Du Pré nodded.

  She screwed the lid on a little jar of beads and she shrugged into her jacket and they went out and down to the bar.

  Bart and Corey Banning were sitting off at a table. They weren’t talking. Bart was looking a little off to the right, Corey a little off to the left. Bart got up and walked to the bar the minute Madelaine began to move toward them.

  Madelaine stood for a moment. She said something in a low voice and she laughed and sat down. Corey bent to listen. Madelaine whispered. The two women got up and came round so that they could sit with their backs to the rest of the saloon. They put their heads together.

  “Well,” said Bart, “we’re pretty worthless here. I need to run out to my place and see that old misery Booger Tom and sign some paychecks. Are you gonna go look at the spot where our two came to rest? I wonder if we missed anything last fall.”

  “OK,” said Du Pré.

  Yeah, we miss something last fall. You miss something, every time. But now maybe the water and spring it move it down to the little creek or stick it on the uphill side of a sagebrush and maybe now I see it. You can hope, anyway.

  Du Pré waved to Madelaine and he went out and drove back up the bench to the turnoff above the draw where the four-wheeler and the two dead fools had been dumped fifty years ago, it seemed.

  I like to see that snow go away, Du Pré thought, maybe I move, the damn desert.

  Du Pré walked to the rock and then he let himself down hand by hand, grabbing on to sagebrush till he was at the spot where the two dead kids had been. The marks in the earth had mostly erased. A few chips of glass on the ground. Du Pré squatted and looked hard, looked up at the sky. A raven flew past.

  Been a badger through here, couple days gone.

  Smell the new grass.

  Something’s not right here.

  That root there is too straight.

  So is the other one.

  I wonder.

  Du Pré shuffled over to the sagebrush.

  He reached down and picked up a nail. One for a horseshoe. Never been used on a horse, though.

  Another. Another. Another.

  Du Pré stood up. He put the nails in his pocket and he went back up the hill to his Rover and drove off.

  Chapter 27

  “DU PRÉ,” SAID PACKY, “you’re nuts. I couldn’t make it down that hill with this leg. And you act like I’m the only man in the damn county has a use for shoein’ nails. Is this all because of that dog? Jesus, man, I found the dog thirty miles away.”

  “I tell that Corey Banning she is all over you like stink on shit,” said Du Pré, “so you better think good and you better have some other people they know where you were that damn night, you know.”

  “I pulled shoes till fucking two in the morning,” said Packy. “I did it three different places. You know me, I just make my rounds and send my bills out and that’s it. I didn’t see anybody. They were out o
r they were asleep.”

  “Which places you do that at?” said Du Pré.

  “Stemple’s. They was off in Billings, you know. Then I did some at Moore’s, till about ten at night. Then I went way the hell out to the St. Francis place. I hate those bastards and they take lousy care of their stock, but I got to do what I can. I love horses.”

  “And they were in jail that night,” said Du Pré.

  “Well,” said Packy, “they are a lot. But the lights were on in the house and there was a pickup there I didn’t know. It was dark, I didn’t look at the license plate. It took a long time to catch all the damn horses and it was after two-thirty when I finished.”

  Du Pré nodded.

  “Packy,” said Du Pré, “if you are lying even a little bit you got to tell me now, for Chrissakes. This is a very bad business. People around here they got to know some who did this. OK? Them FBI they will not go away, me and Bart we won’t stop. We can’t, they can’t. It was wrong, that. They cut fence and shoot stock we arrest them, make them pay. But not that.”

  Packy raised his hands. They were covered in scars, white memories of cuts and punctures from his hard work. A couple fresh red holes.

  “OK,” said Du Pré, “I will do this. I will tell that Banning about the nails but not about you. She probably figure that out, you know. I got to do that that way, you know.”

  Du Pré rolled a cigarette and lit it and he smoked a moment.

  “OK,” he said, “you are at the St. Francis place, you see this pickup. Now, they got some other trucks out there. Any of them gone, you know?”

  Packy shook his head. “They had a couple old beaters, didn’t even license them, used ’em for hauling on the ranch. Never took ’em off of it. Then they had that canner truck.”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ,” said Du Pré, “I forgot about that.”