Any Other Name: A Longmire Mystery

by Craig Johnson

  “There are a few—Blue Bell and Legion Lake Lodges maybe, but I’m not sure where they are in this soup.” He quickly added, “I’ve only been here once when I was a teenager, and we stayed at the State Game Lodge. I remember it because there was a photograph of Grace Coolidge holding a raccoon and she was a looker.”

  “A raccoon?”

  “Yeah, it was the summer White House and she had this pet raccoon. I thought that was kind of weird, right?”

  I glanced at Henry, who shook his head and then nodded toward the two depressions leading into the whiteout. “We better get moving before the tracks fill in.” Henry and I took a few steps in that direction, but I noticed the kid wasn’t following, so I stopped and turned to look at him. “You coming?”

  He shook his head. “I told you, I’m not leaving this vehicle.”

  The Bear’s voice sounded from out of the wall of white, muffled by the frozen condensation. “I do not think anyone is going to be able to take it without a tandem of tow trucks.”

  I stood there for a moment longer and then turned and followed the Bear. “Call the HPs and tell them where we are, would you?”

  “Right.” I could hear him crunch toward the cruiser but then stop. “Hold on; let me get them on the radio and then get the keys.”

  —

  It was slow going; I was monkey in the middle with the Cheyenne Nation ahead and the puffing patrolman behind me.

  “How far can they get?”

  It was as if our voices were being struck by the tiny particles of snow and then steadfastly driven to the ground. Personally, I didn’t feel like talking, but the kid was nervous so I tried to make an effort. “Hard to say, but he’s got four-wheel drive. If there’s a road around here he’s got a better chance, but I’m betting that he’s going to get stuck just like we did, or his radiator will drain out and he’ll burn up the engine.”

  We huffed along for a while in silence, but then he spoke again. “Do you think the other guy is dangerous?”

  “I don’t know—either dangerous or stupid or both.”

  “Why’s that?”

  I pulled up, and he almost ran into me. “Would you be out here doing this without the right gear, if you had any choice?”

  “No.”

  “Smart boy.” I started off again but couldn’t see the Bear, and I was getting worried that he was outpacing us to the point of leaving us behind, so I doubled up on my efforts. Out of the corner of my eye, I could almost make out something moving alongside, but it disappeared.

  I squeezed my eyes together and then quickly opened them but couldn’t see anything this time. I stared into the frozen fog, but the more I looked the more unsure I became. Off to my right, there was something dark outlined in the curtains of white gloom. Whatever it was, it must’ve moved fast to get ahead of us again. I didn’t have any worries that it was Willie, the mystery man, or Roberta because human beings couldn’t be that quick in snow that deep.

  The kid’s voice came up from immediately behind me. “Something wrong?”

  “No, nothing.”

  I kept moving and scanned the area to my right but, responding to some kind of movement, I pivoted to the left and suddenly it materialized again. “What the hell . . .”

  As soon as I spoke, the apparition disappeared.

  Tavis was behind me and seemed spooked. “Hey, did you hear something?”

  I stopped, and he caught up; now we were both looking outward in circles, like prey. “No, but I thought I saw something. Why, what did you hear?”

  “Um . . . breathing.”

  “Breathing?”

  “Right.”

  I stared at the path ahead. “We better catch up with Henry; I don’t want him coming up on those three alone.”

  There was a thought that wavered in and out of my mind like the shadows in the snow, a déjà vu that reminded me of my time in the Bighorn Mountains a few years past and again when I’d been stalking some convicts in that same region only six months ago—it was not a welcome thought.

  I was watching carefully as we moved on with more conviction, but there were no more shades in the claustrophobic storm. The kid had dropped directly behind me, and I listened to him breathe and sigh. “I bet you wish you’d never stumbled onto us back in Deadwood.”

  His voice sounded remarkably cheery. “Are you kidding? Other than the odd biker fight, this is the biggest adventure I’ve had since I’ve been on the force.” Then he sighed again.

  There was a little edge in my voice. “Why do you keep making that sound?”

  “I’m not.” He glanced around, but his eyes came back to mine. “I thought that was you.”

  There was a noise directly behind us.

  Tavis stepped in closer to me. “Do you think it’s your buddy?”

  “No, not from that direction.”

  The patrolman edged in even closer, looking behind us. “Maybe he got lost.”

  “He doesn’t get lost.”

  “Ever?”

  “Ever.”

  It was quiet all of a sudden, and the only sound was our breathing and the snow crunching as Tavis adjusted his weight. “Maybe he—”

  “Sssh.” Something exhaled to my left. “Well, whatever or whoever it is, it’s moving around out there in this storm at a pretty amazing speed.”

  “A horse, maybe? Or a mountain lion?”

  “No, whatever this is, it knows what it’s doing in deep snow and mountain lions don’t make that kind of noise.” I turned and started off. “C’mon, let’s get going before we—” There was another sigh, this one directly in front of me that came with what looked like the exhaust from a steam train. I pulled up and stopped and took a step back, almost standing on Tavis’s feet.

  “Hey—”

  “Be still—whatever it is it’s in the trail right in front of us.”

  “Maybe it’s a tree.”

  “That would mean the truck drove over it; besides, trees don’t breathe.” I leaned forward, but it looked like a rock, white with fissures and cracks running through it, darker than the snow, but not by much. It breathed out, twin billows that drove the flakes floating in the air like a double blast of a breathing shotgun. “It’s a buffalo, and I think there are more than one.”

  As I whispered, a low plaintive noise emanated from my right that was answered by a snort from the animal in front of me. I slowly turned my head and could now see two more massive things to my left that swung their heads and regarded us—four, no counting the rest.

  Having once roamed the grasslands of America in herds estimated at sixty to seventy-five million, the American bison became nearly extinct in the nineteenth century after being hunted and slaughtered relentlessly. Approaching twelve feet in length, six feet at the shoulder, and weighing well over two thousand pounds, the buffalo is the largest mammal on the North American continent. With the ability to fight grizzly bears, mountain lions, and entire packs of wolves to a standstill, they fear nothing. And because they’re capable of reaching speeds of forty miles an hour, your percentages of being attacked by a buffalo in the national parks are three times greater than any other animal.

  Tavis whispered, “There’s a herd here in Custer State Park, a big one with more than a thousand of them, but they round them up and auction a bunch off in October.”

  “Including the bulls?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I sighed myself. “The bulls are bigger and meaner . . . I think we’ve stumbled into a herd of buffalo bulls, so don’t put on your roller skates.”

  “What?”

  “That was a joke.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  The one on the trail in front of us shook its head and came a step closer. I could see that it was the packed and melted snow on him that had made him appear to be made of rock, the snow and ice cracke
d revealing the dark coat underneath. He was close enough that I could see the horns and the broad, black nose that blew contrails into the snow around his barrel-sized hooves.

  There was nothing we could do, and nowhere we could go. If we tried to back away or change direction it was likely that we’d just run into another of the shaggy behemoths—maybe a thousand of them.

  The big bull took another step closer, bringing him within seven yards of us, but his eyesight, which wasn’t so great in the best of conditions, was failing him in the still fast-falling snow and the fog.

  “Should we draw our guns?”

  I whispered out of the corner of my mouth. “No, the damn things have very thick skulls—all you’ll do is piss them off or start a stampede and get us gored or trampled to death.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “The hardest thing in the world—nothing.” The bull took another step closer, stretching its neck out for that much more of a view and even going so far as to stamp a hoof. It was only a question of time, given the animal’s natural curiosity, before he would eventually get close enough to realize that we were not part of the herd, and then all bets would be off.

  I ignored my own advice and, humping my sheepskin coat onto my shoulders, I placed a boot forward and stamped it in the snow in order to convince him that we were buffalo, too.

  The bull didn’t move.

  “What the heck are you doing?”

  “It’s what he did. Now, will you shut up, because I’m pretty sure he knows that buffalo don’t talk.”

  I wondered where Henry was and then thought about Vic, safely ensconced at the Franklin Hotel in a bubble bath, but mostly I was just glad that neither of them were here to see me imitate a buffalo.

  The real buffalo still didn’t move and didn’t seem to know what to make of my performance—hell, for all I knew I was asking him out to the buffalo prom, but as a rancher’s son with a long history of dealing with large animals, I did know that when they get confused, they become dangerous.

  I stopped moving, too.

  Suddenly his head dropped, and I saw his tail lift and stick straight up.

  There still wasn’t anything to do; if I jumped out of the way the kid would get killed and I couldn’t allow for that—the only other thing to do was to charge the buffalo myself.

  All I wanted was to bluff him and not send all the others into a stampede that would leave us as bloody puddles in the snow, and I was just getting ready to make a bold and most likely foolish move when I heard a song lifted like the wind in a melody that was familiar.

  “Oooh-Wahy-yo heeeey-yay-yoway, Wahy-ya-yo-ha, Wahy-yo-ho-way-ahway-ahway . . .”

  The buffalo bull immediately pivoted to the right and then in a full circle to look at us again, shook its head, and turned its wide horns to the right and left—like us, unable to determine from where the song came.

  It was silent for a beat, while the singer took a breath, but then he continued.

  “Aho, hotoa’e! Netonesevehe? Netone’xovomohtahe? Eneseo’o . . . They are the foolish Ve’ho’e, the trickster people, and do not watch where they go.”

  The bull turned again, this time to the left, and waited.

  “I am Nehoveoo Nahkohe, Hotametaneo’o of the Tsetsehestehese. Do you know me, big brother?”

  The buffalo turned a bit more.

  “We mean you no harm, and only wish to pass through this sacred place.”

  I watched as the buffalo bull’s tail descended, and the muscles relaxed in the beast as he finally lowered his head and pawed at the ground again, this time in a disinterested manner, as if surprised to find snow on his buffet. Another moment passed, and he started off, up the slight grade to our right.

  I sighed. “You still out there?”

  “I am.”

  I still could not tell exactly where he was.

  “Did I just see you attempting to imitate a buffalo?”

  “You did.”

  “Do not quit your day job.”

  I buttoned my coat, flipped the collar back up, and started forward carefully with Tavis in tow. After a few steps I could see Henry in the pale gloom, a tall figure with a leather cloak moving in an imaginary breeze. “We lost you; where the heck did you go?”

  He glanced at the buffalo—there were still a lot of them milling around—and whispered. “I was ahead of you when we walked into them; when I tried to double back they blocked my path. I was simply going to wait until they moved on, but then you started challenging the biggest one and I thought I should intercede.”

  I began whispering, too. “Challenging, is that what I was doing?”

  “Yes.”

  I smiled. “I think I could’ve taken him.”

  The Cheyenne Nation did not look particularly impressed.

  I kept my voice low. “Find the truck?”

  “No, but the tracks continue toward the tree line.”

  Tavis broke in from behind me in a loud voice. “There’s a tree line?”

  The Bear looked at the patrolman and shushed him. “The buffalo are looking for shelter but must have gotten spooked when the truck drove through the herd.” He glanced around at the hulking shapes. “They are just now settling down and getting their bearings, so be quiet.”

  I gestured with my chin. “Let’s get going; I don’t want to lose them.”

  Henry turned, and we started off, a little more carefully this time.

  After a hundred yards or so, we started to climb, and I could make out a few small trees leading toward larger copses and eventually the tree line that Henry had found.

  The Bear stopped, looked at the tracks, and then at what countryside was visible, all twenty feet of it. “This slope leads down into a canyon and I would suppose a creek, whereas the embankment to the right leads up to a ridge. If they are stupid, they went into the canyon, and if they are wise, they stayed with the ridge.”

  “If they took the canyon they aren’t going far, so let’s check the ridge.”

  He nodded and then frowned. “Unfortunate.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It appears to be the same choice that the buffalo have made.”

  “Misery loves company.” I could see at least a dozen of them in the immediate vicinity as I started after our Indian scout. “How many of these things do you suppose there are out here?”

  “From the movement of the herd, I would say a couple hundred at least.” He slowed as one of the bulls, tossing its head and huffing, tracked in front of us. “They are still very uneasy, and I am afraid that any movement or sound could set them off.”

  I nodded. “Just that much more of a reason to get to the tree line; if these monsters start charging around, I’d just as soon have a tree or two to put between us.”

  The Bear suddenly stopped and whispered, even quieter this time. “I can see the truck.”

  Bunching in close to Henry, I slipped my hand under my coat, pulled my .45 from the holster, and trailed it along my leg, watching as Tavis did the same with his Glock.

  The Bear looked back at the two of us and shook his head. “Do not fire those weapons, unless it becomes absolutely necessary.” He took a few more steps forward and then stopped again. “As near as I can tell, there is someone standing in the bed of the truck.”

  Of course, I couldn’t see anything, but I was used to that in my dealings with the Cheyenne Nation’s uncanny sensory abilities. “Do you think they’ve seen us?”

  He watched the invisible landscape for a moment. “No.”

  “If I keep moving in this direction, I’ll run into them?”

  “Yes. This may take a while with the buffalo, so when you get to the truck, keep him talking.” Without another word, Henry moved off to our left and gradually disappeared like a cipher.

  “Where is he?”

  I ge
stured for Tavis to follow. “Stick with me, troop, and don’t fire that weapon until I tell you.”

  Another forty feet and even I could see the outline of the blue truck, and indeed, someone standing in the bed. “Look, we don’t know that any of these individuals are dangerous, so let’s just play it slow. Chances are, this guy just thinks a couple of crazies are after his friend and his friend’s girl, and he’s just trying to do the right thing.”

  He swallowed. “Is that what your twenty-five years of sheriffing are telling you?”

  “Not really, but there’s gotta be a first time, right?” I looked at the kid and thought that I really didn’t want to be shot in the back by the Glock .40 he was carrying. “Don’t shoot anybody, okay? Especially me.”

  I turned, took another step, and lifted my voice just loud enough to be heard but hopefully not loud enough to spook the buffalo that surrounded us. “Hey Willie, how are you doing?”

  A little distance away, one of the bulls turned to regard us.

  The croupier moved toward the tailgate and yelled back at me, “I’ve got a gun!”

  “Okay.” I waited a few seconds, just to let the nearest buffalo know that we bore no ill intent. “Do you mind keeping your voice down a little? We’re concerned that these buffalo might spook, and I’m sure that none of us want that.” He didn’t say anything, so I continued. “My name is Walt Longmire, and I’m the sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming. I’m working on a missing persons case—”

  “Whatta ya want?”

  I watched as one of the bulls crossed between us, and I carefully took a few more steps to get a clearer view of the man. I could see that he was holding a rifle. “Well, this doesn’t have much to do with you, but it has a lot to do with the other man and the woman who are with you.”

  There was a long pause before he spoke. “I don’t got no woman with me.”

  I took a few more steps toward him. “Well then, the woman who was in your truck.”

  He gestured with the weapon. “That’s close enough.” He leaned a little forward. “Who’s that with you?”

  “Patrolman Tavis Bradley of the Deadwood Police Department.” I held my free hand up. “The woman in the casino who was getting money from the ATM? We believe that she might be Roberta Payne, who went missing from Gillette, Wyoming, three months ago.”