“I don’t know no Roberta Payne.” There was a long pause. “I don’t know if I even believe you’re a sheriff.”
“If you let me get close enough I’ll show you my badge, and Tavis here can show you a whole uniform, if you’d like.”
His head turned as he glanced around. “Where’s that big Indian guy?”
“He’s not with us anymore—maybe he’s with your friends?” An out-and-out lie, but it was all I could think of to say. I took another step and could see that there were two more people sitting in the truck. “Look, we just want to talk to you about the woman—”
“He says that somebody’s after her.”
I took a breath, just to let him know that he’d slipped up. “So, they are with you?”
He gestured with the rifle again. “I’m just telling you what he said before. Now, turn around and head back out of here before I make you sorry you followed me.”
“What’s your friend’s name?”
“Go away.”
I figured I’d put my cards on the table, so to speak. “Willie, you know I can’t do that. I’m trying to find this woman for her mother, who doesn’t know where she is or what happened to her. Now, if she doesn’t want to go back there that’s her business, but I need to speak with her and make sure she’s all right and that there’s nothing illegal going on.”
He didn’t move, not a muscle as near as I could see, and it was as if he were some kind of black cardboard cutout in a cheap community play, until the man in the cab raised the barrel of a pistol and aimed it at Willie and I heard a woman scream, “No!”
10
Willie fell forward, and another round passed through the collar of my sheepskin coat, grazed off my neck like a vengeful hornet, and yanked me sideways. I immediately raised my Colt.
I’m pretty sure that one of the buffalo rammed smack into the truck. Huge, wooly animals were shooting off in every direction as I turned to yell at Tavis to stay with me, but the young patrolman, clutching his side, with the Glock next to him and a lot of blood sprayed across the white hillside, was lying in the snow.
I grabbed him. “C’mon, we’ve got to get out of here.”
“He shot me!” He tried to pull away. “I swear to God, he shot me!”
Pulling the kid up onto my left shoulder, keeping the .45 aimed on the truck, I staggered forward with buffalo galloping around us like cue balls looking for a good strike. One brushed extremely close, and I fell with the kid but scrambled up, dragging him by his arm as he screamed.
Another bull was hurtling at us, and I could see that we weren’t going to make it, so I threw myself on top of Tavis in an attempt to shield him. He screamed again as my weight hit him, and I felt one of the hooves graze across the back of my head, the heavy, warm breath of the animal blowing down on us.
I lay there for a second more and then holstered my Colt, figuring it was about as useful as a peashooter in a shooting gallery, and pushed off again, this time grabbing Tavis by the front of his jacket. It was about then that I heard the truck start up and the billowing exhaust blew back at us from the twin tailpipes.
Lurching after it, my hand glanced off the tailgate, and I could see the card dealer lying in the bed, and the woman in the cab screamed, “Deke, don’t!”
There were two people in the truck—the man whom I assumed was named Deke spinning the steering wheel, and the woman whom I believed to be Roberta Payne staring back at us with a look of horror on her face.
I slipped to the ground, the reverse lights flickered on for a second, but then the thing peeled out in the same direction it had been heading, spinning snow in my face and ice on all the rest of me.
Spotting a copse of evergreens to my left, I dragged the kid and pushed some of the branches away so that we could get close to the trunks and shelter ourselves from the charging herd that surrounded us.
I settled him on the ground but felt the branches cave in as one of the animals must’ve come a little too close to the tree. “Get the hell out of here, there’s only room for two!” I fell backward onto Tavis, turned, and kicked at the thing to keep it away. The buffalo yanked its head around, stripping the branches in a cloud of needles that peppered the two of us, and I thought for some reason that maybe he might respond to a cattle call, so I started yelling, “Yaaaaaaah, yaaaaaaah—get out of here! Yaaaaaaah, yaaaaaaah!”
The bull, obviously having been herded in the State Park Roundup, recognized the call and immediately turned his big head and bounded away.
I sat there, stunned that my ploy had worked, and then rolled over, taking the flashlight from Tavis’s duty belt to study him. He looked pale. “How are you doing, troop?”
He didn’t say anything, but he wheezed and his chin trembled.
I rolled him to the right and could see the wound in his side, the blood saturating the bottom of his jacket. “This is going to hurt, but I’m only going to have to do it once.” I unzipped his coat and then trussed him up using my bandana as a bandage to quell the blood loss. “You all right?”
He nodded.
“I’ve got to go out there and look for Henry, okay?” He nodded again. “I won’t leave you, but I’ve got to make sure he’s all right and bring him back here if he isn’t.” I glanced down at the kid with blood all over him. “We’ll take you to the hospital over in Custer and get you squared away. You’ll be okay.”
He nodded again but still didn’t say anything.
I stood and became aware of something warm and slick on the side of my head. I reached up and felt the spot where the buffalo must have kicked me and noticed blood on my glove that must have been dripping from the wound on my neck. I reset my hat, wiped my glove on my pants, and pushed through the evergreen canopy out into the open.
It was the middle of the night, and I was surrounded by buffalo in a blizzard with a stuck cruiser and as far as I knew no available cover for miles around—good going, Sheriff.
I trudged in the direction where the truck had been, pretty sure that the Bear must’ve been close to the thing when everything had all gone to hell.
The buffalo appeared to have calmed down as I found the spot where the truck had been sitting. I bent and picked up the kid’s Glock and then glanced around but could see no sign of my friend. A sense of dread began overtaking me—what if he was out here, unconscious or hurt and unable to call out, what if he’d been killed?
“Walt.”
I turned with the flashlight and the .40 and could see the outline of what looked like a giant crow, the long black wings attempting to wrap close to his body, but ruffled and twisting ever so slightly in the wind. “You all right?”
He grew closer, and I could see that he was moving with a little trouble. “As well as can be expected—who was the idiot that fired first?”
“I assume it was the man named Deke—the woman in the truck yelled his name when they took off.”
He nodded as he drew up next to me, and I noticed he held his side with one hand.
“You’re hurt?”
“My back. I was attempting to negotiate my way around a particularly cantankerous bull when the shot went off. I got out of the way, but his horn caught my coat and we went for a ride.”
“You should’ve done my imitation.”
“There was not much time for interpretive dance.” He grunted a laugh but then regretted it. He poked a finger at my neck, where a little blood had saturated the sheepskin. “You are hit?”
“Not bad, but it grazed me and got the kid.”
He pursed his lips. “Where is he?”
“Under a tree over here—shot through a few ribs it looks like, but he’s breathing okay, so it didn’t get his lungs.” We both stood there, looking at our boots. “His legs work, and you can get him back to the cruiser. I would imagine that the South Dakota Highway Patrol will already be there and they might
have information on this Willie character, but also make sure they check out Roberta Payne and the mystery man, Deke.”
“And what are you going to do?” I was still looking at my boots as he studied me. “You have no supplies, no gear, not even the proper footwear.”
“I’ll take the duty belt off Tavis, and you can take this.” I handed him the Glock. “I’m just going to follow them. They’ll probably come out on a road, and I’ll be waiting for a ride, but if they get stuck or wreck that thing . . .” I reached out with my left and gently laid a hand on his shoulder. “That kid is hurt, and somebody’s going to have to get him out of here.”
He made a face. “I can track better than you with my eyes closed.”
“I think I can follow a pickup truck; besides, you’re hurt.”
He cocked his head, studying first my neck and then the blood on the side of my face. “So are you.”
My arm was aching, which must have been some sort of reaction to the bullet that had grazed my neck, and so was my head, but I decided to withhold those thoughts. “Not as bad as you, and anyway, it’s my job.”
He looked at the tracks leading toward the ridge and handed me his cell phone. “You need to be careful, this is an unpredictable situation—the worst kind.”
I gestured weakly toward the tree where Tavis was hidden. “Get him some help, and I’ll call you when I find anything.”
He shook his head. “Where, exactly, is Vic?”
I converted my grimace into a clearing of my throat. “Room two thirteen at the Franklin Hotel, right across from the casino. I’m betting she’s asleep,” I added. “You can have my bed.”
“What if she is in it?”
“Then you get the sofa and Dog.” I started toward the trees and was already weary at the thought of traipsing through the snowbanks all night. “C’mon, I’ll help you with him.” I paused and looked at him. “When you get back to the cruiser, radio Emil Fredriksen—as soon as he finds out one of his own caught a bullet, he’s going to want this Deke fellow’s head, and other portions of his anatomy, I’m thinking.”
—
My head was giving my neck a run for its money as I adjusted Tavis’s duty belt to the first hole, took a deep breath, and studied the tire tracks, the only thing visible in the whiteout. As I’d suspected, they had followed the ridge and skirted the tree line before heading down a slight incline that flattened and opened up into an expanse of white.
Slipping in my boots, I continued down the grade until I could hear the muffled sound of rushing water, most likely under ice. Keeping the water to my left, I continued following the tracks and suddenly felt firmer ground underneath, almost as if it were paved. Pretty soon I could hear the heels of my boots clicking on the surface, and I was sure I was walking on a road, although I still couldn’t see more than fifteen feet ahead.
I could feel a lump rising where I had been kicked by the buffalo. It didn’t seem as though it was bleeding, but it ached like mad and wasn’t feeling any better with me probing at it. I adjusted my hat a little forward so that the band didn’t rest on the wound, and, since my neck was cold, I pulled up the collar of my coat and buttoned it tight, standing there for a moment feeling light-headed and weak.
The truck tracks were the only ones on the road, and I hoped they’d stay that way. I also figured that by now Deke would have become Black Hills Public Enemy Number One, and there were probably a dozen or so HPs out here prowling about like the buffalo, looking for somebody to hook. I just hoped it wasn’t accidentally me.
The snow was getting deep again, and I couldn’t feel the surface of the road any more, the drifts filling the area in with swales that started making the going a little rougher and forcing me into a few of the reflector poles.
It hadn’t been high plains cold until now. I squinted my eyes to clear them, but it was as though my mind was trying to go on down the road without me. My teeth were beginning to chatter and my hands and feet were becoming numb as I clomped along, the mantle of snow I had acquired probably making me appear more and more like one of the buffalo.
I trudged across a bridge and as I yawned, trying to stretch my jaw in an attempt to get rid of the ache in my head and the one in my neck, I thought about what had happened back on the ridge. What had Willie been doing with Roberta Payne and why was she living in Deadwood, siphoning money from her own account? Where did the Deke character come in? Why did he shoot Willie? None of it made any sense, but until I got back to civilization and the backstory, my job was to find the woman.
I rounded a corner, looked up, and saw a large structure on a hillside near a giant cottonwood with bark like stripped bone, and I stopped to place a hand on it for a brief rest, but discovered my right arm was numb.
Using my left, I pulled my arm up and looked at the glove and the inside of the cuff where blood had coagulated and frozen. I would have thought the wound would have stopped bleeding by now, but as I half turned and looked back at the trail of red I’d left on the roadway slowly being erased by the snow, I suddenly felt a little woozy.
There was a sound to my left, and I could see another buffalo standing near the creek. He ambled up the rise into the falling snow, but when he got even with the tree, he stopped, turned his great head, and stared at me—he was completely white. At first I thought it was just the snow covering him, but from only a couple of yards away, I could see that under the frost his fur was indeed white.
We stood there looking at each other, but when I blinked he had completely disappeared. I blinked again and took a few more breaths, but he was gone. Thinking he had climbed the hill, I turned back toward the lodge and allowed my eyes to adjust—there was no white buffalo, but there was the back end of a dark-colored pickup truck.
Standing there huffing my breath through my mouth like the great beast, I tried to make sure I was seeing what I was seeing, but the image, though swimming, remained the same. Pulling off my left glove with a leather fingertip between my teeth, I unsnapped my Colt from the holster.
I moved forward and leveled the sights on the vehicle, which was parked in front of a rock retainer wall. There, lying in the truck with the majority of his blood having drained into its snowy bed, was Willie.
Reaching out, I placed a few fingers alongside his throat, but there was no pulse—and the rifle was gone.
I slipped up to the side of the vehicle and blinked to keep the ice from my eyes. Resting the Colt on the top of the truck, I got the Maglite from Tavis’s duty belt and switched it on with my good hand to study the interior of the pickup. Most of the window was frosted over, but there was nobody inside—the keys were gone, but the hood was warm, so they must’ve not been here for that long.
Remembering Henry’s cell phone, I holstered the flashlight and pulled the device from the inside pocket of my coat and looked at the bars, having become something of a master in searching for a signal in the Bighorn Mountains last spring. There weren’t any bars, but I tried it anyway and dialed 911, holding the device to my ear but hearing nothing.
Tucking the phone back in my pocket and picking up my sidearm again, I glanced left and right while rubbing my arm to see if I could get some feeling back and finally saw a set of stairs composed of the same rock as the wall. Keeping my left-handed aim on the dark areas of overhang above, I negotiated the steps and noted a red sign to the left that read STATE GAME LODGE, ESTABLISHED 1920.
I took a breath and sighed; I suppose if you were going to hole up, you might as well do it in the swankiest place in the 71,000-acre park. If South Dakota was like Wyoming, however, the historic heritage lodges were closed in the depths of winter, while it was the newer, more insulated buildings that remained open.
The spacious porch was filled to the railings with snow, but there were footprints where two people had passed up the steps, and it looked as if someone had kicked open the door. Stepping to the left, I pressed the bar
rel of my Colt against the wooden surface and slowly pushed it wide, the hinges creaking like a crypt.
There were no lights on, but I could see wet prints on the dark, hardwood floors where the two people had crossed to the left, past the registration desk to the stairs that led to the second floor. I stared longingly at the phone deck with its multiple lines and buttons and wondered if it was working, figuring that was my next move; I just had to work up the energy to get there.
There was a fireplace to my right and a doorway to a hall that turned left and disappeared into the bowels of the massive lodge. Every surface gleamed, even in the dark, and the sheets over the furniture looked like ghosts taking a leisurely rest before a haunting.
I staggered a little entering the place, stumbled into a large wingback chair, and just stood there looking at my blood dripping onto the floor and remembering what Lucian had said about moving to New Mexico and how it was a bad idea because you could bleed to death. I felt cold, and it seemed like the entire right side of my body was numb—that, and there was a ringing in my ears that I couldn’t seem to shake.
A voice called out to me from a distance, almost as if the person speaking might’ve been outside. “Oh my goodness; you scared me to death!”
Wheeling from the back of the chair, I crashed into the partially closed door, causing it to slam, and I raised my sidearm toward a brunette woman with deep-set eyes who was standing on the stair landing—she was holding a fully lit candelabra in one hand and a raccoon in the other.
I held the .45 on her and the raccoon until she raised her eyebrows in an imperial fashion and spoke in an authoritarian voice. “Do you need help, young man?” I slumped there staring at her, and I assume she thought I was deaf because she sat the candelabra on the newel post and began signing to me with her free hand.
Entranced by those movements, I simply stood there looking at her but finally lowered my sidearm. “I’m sorry, I’m . . .” I tried to stand up straight, but my head ached and my neck hurt, so I just stayed there, leaning against the chair. “I’m chasing someone.”
Any Other Name: A Longmire Mystery Page 17