As the crow flies wl-8

by Craig Johnson

  “Buying leather in Rapid.”

  I glanced up at the calendar and noticed it hadn’t been changed over from June. “How well did you know Clarence?”

  “Well enough.”

  “Did you know he was involved with Audrey Plain Feather?”

  She paused and then continued around my heel. “I’d heard that.”

  “Did you hear that there had been an accident?”

  She traced around my foot twice, just as she’d done before, and finally looked up at me. “What kind of accident?”

  “His wife was pushed off a cliff; Painted Warrior, a couple of miles up the road.”

  She tapped my leg again, and I stepped off the paper and sat, bringing our faces a lot closer. She placed the two sheets together and tossed the pencil onto the overcrowded desk. “Pushed doesn’t sound like much of an accident.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” I pulled my boots back on. “The added tragedy is that their little boy, Adrian, was in her arms when she fell.”

  Erma couldn’t hide the fact that she was stricken with this bit of news. She wouldn’t look at me anymore, instead choosing to look out one of the tiny panes in the casement window above the rolltop. The glow of the afternoon light was prismed by the windowpane and played off her features. I could see a young girl who had jumped the Rez and headed out for the big town to a place she wouldn’t know anyone, least of all herself.

  If it was a performance, it was a damn fine one.

  She looked up the hill at her children and then finally turned to look at me. “That’s horrible.”

  “Yes, it is.” I waited a few moments and then tipped my hat back. “You’re sure you haven’t seen him in a year?”

  “Just ropers, like the ones you’ve got on?”

  “Yep.”

  She nodded and copied down my contact information, including the office address. “You’re kind of out of your territory, aren’t you?”

  I didn’t say anything, which is the most unsettling thing you can say.

  She stood and placed a hand back on the worn edge of the old desk. “And you don’t think the world is going to hell?”

  I smiled. “Like I said-I’m just trying to slow it down a little bit.”

  She remained silent until I saw no more reason to stay and took a step toward the open door.

  “We have an eight-page list. It’ll be a year and a half.”

  I glanced down the rows of boots. “I’m pretty good at waiting.”

  The Bear took a few snap peas from a paper bag that he had liberated from the young farmers he had assisted on the hill while I had been ordering boots from their mother, and handed me one as he drove on through Birney Day proper. “So how did it go with Erma?”

  I munched on the pea pod, crisp and delicious. “I ordered a pair of boots.”

  He nodded as he navigated the vintage truck down the road. “It is good that you are supporting the local economy.”

  “She knows something, but she didn’t know about Audrey.” I glanced out the window and watched the scenery flow by. “I think she’s seen Clarence a lot more recently than a year ago.”

  “She saw him yesterday.”

  I turned to look at the Cheyenne Nation. “The kids?”

  “Yes, they were very chatty.” He took out another handful and handed me a few. “I thought it was very nice that they offered us this lunch.”

  I chewed on another. “And?”

  He glanced at me. “Only the peas.”

  “About Clarence.”

  His eyes went back to the road as we recrossed the rumble strip. “He was here yesterday afternoon, and she gave him supplies.”

  “I assume we’re now on our way to Diamond Butte Lookout?”

  “We are.”

  I nodded and reached for more peas, but he slapped my hand and then took one for himself. “We have to ration our supplies.”

  I listened to him eat as we continued down the road. We came up on a skinny kid walking on the gravel beside the asphalt who was wearing only one shoe. Henry slowed, finally matching the speed of the child’s pace, and being that I was on the passenger side, I went ahead and spoke to the young man. “Lose your shoe?”

  He turned his head at my voice and looked at me. “No.” His smile was wide and beatific. “Found one.” His face brightened even more when he noticed the truck and, more important, the driver. Henry leaned on the brakes in an attempt to stop Rezdawg before it could run over the kid, who had bolted around the front and had pulled himself up on the grille guard. He stared at us from over the hood. “What’choo doin’, Bear?”

  The Cheyenne Nation laced his fingers over the wheel and placed his chin there. “Looking for somebody.”

  The kid smiled. “You’re always lookin’ for somebody-I’m just glad it ain’t me!”

  Henry smiled back at him and then gestured toward me, his partner in justice. “This is my friend, Walt Longmire.” He reversed the gesture. “Walt, this is Wiggins Red Thunder, head of the Birney Road Irregulars.”

  The boy interrupted. “The Bear says you saved his life up on the mountain.”

  I laughed, glanced at Henry, and then tipped my hat. “Pleasure to meet you, Master Red Thunder.”

  He cocked his head and closed one eye to look at me. “What did you jus’ call me?”

  “Master. It’s a formal address used for young men of undetermined age below thirteen.”

  He continued to study me. “I’m twelve.”

  “That would be under thirteen.”

  The grin broadened. “ Heeeeeeeeeeehe’e!”

  The Bear laughed. “Evoohta?”

  Wiggins shot his eyes at me. “Emasets’estahe.”

  Henry nodded, but the young man continued to look at me, uncertain as to my motives.

  “You want a ride, Master Red Thunder?”

  The smile returned. “Yah, up here.”

  He turned and lodged his rear end between the top bar of the guard and the dented hood, facing forward and banging an open palm on the rusted green surface.

  The Cheyenne Nation shouted, “Tosa’e?”

  Our impromptu hood ornament pointed to the right down a dirt road leading to a cluster of small, shabby houses and a few trailers. Henry wrapped the wheel a few times, and we eased off the paved road and down the wallow of burnt-umber dirt.

  “The Red Road?”

  He gave me the horse-eye. “I have to check in with my homies.”

  With a little direction, we pulled between a couple of the houses and found two younger children, a boy and girl, who had propped up a john-boat with rocks and filled it with a nearby garden hose, making a homemade pool. I watched as they splashed each other and then waved ferociously at us as Rezdawg parked.

  “I sometimes miss being that age.”

  “It was a good time, but now is a good time as well.”

  I smiled as I started to open the door. “That was a point I was trying to make to Erma, but I don’t think she was buying.”

  He looked thoughtful for just a moment. “Perhaps her now is different from ours.”

  “Of that, I have no doubt.”

  We met Wiggins at the front of the truck, and I noticed the rolling piece of work hadn’t pissed on the Indians. Rezdawg was obviously a racist.

  Henry gestured toward the pair in the flooded boat. “Indian hot tub.”

  The girl cried out. “We’re going to Alaska!”

  We joined Wiggins and walked over. Henry dipped a hand in. “Warm; did you pee in this?”

  They yowled with laughter until a man’s voice sounded from one of the trailers. “You damn kids better fuckin’ shut up out there!”

  Henry looked left, and my eyes followed his to where a weathered blue ’69 Dodge Power Wagon with a white replacement door that read COLSTRIP CONCRETE sat parked next to a crummy, olive-green single-wide. “Who is that?”

  Wiggins frowned. “Kelly Joe Burns.”

  I remembered the conversation at Human Services. “Herbert His Go
od Horse mentioned this individual as one of the people who might have something against Audrey Plain Feather.”

  The Cheyenne Nation’s eyes were slow to return but finally came back to us as he introduced me to the two other children. “Walt, this is Leslie S. Little Hawk and her sidekick, Charlie Shoulderblade.”

  I tipped my hat again. “Troops.”

  The Cheyenne Nation placed a closed hand over his chest. “What is our motto?”

  Wiggins and the other two did the same with their smaller fists and shouted back, “To go everywhere, see everything, and overhear everyone!”

  “Epeva’e.” He took a breath, but just as he was about to speak, a pale, bald, shirtless man threw open the door of the trailer and started off the porch toward us, pulling his belt from his pants with his head down.

  “All right, God-damnit, I told you little fuckers that if you keep makin’ a racket, I’ll whip your asses.”

  Henry squared off quickly, lowered his arms, and waited.

  The Kelly Joe Burns character was about ten feet away when he raised his head and saw what it was he was up against. Burns was thin with the obligatory tattoo of flames creeping up his neck, and he swung the belt from the buckle, but you could see his enthusiasm was waning. “You… you, you tell those fuckin’ kids to keep it down.”

  “No, I do not think I will.” Henry gestured toward the impromptu weapon in the man’s hand. “And you better put your belt back on before you lose those pants.”

  Kelly Joe took a step back. “Fuck you!”

  The Bear took a few, easy steps toward him.

  I looked around the Cheyenne Nation and made eye contact with the skinny guy, and saw no reason not to throw a scare into the probable drug dealer, who was a cliche walking. “Hey, is that your Dodge over there?”

  He drew the belt back, and I wondered what it was going to taste like when Henry shoved the thing down his throat. “Who wants to know?”

  “Sheriff Walt Longmire.”

  He looked confused for a moment, probably trying to remember who was sheriff of the adjoining county. “This is the Reservation; you’ve got no jurisdiction here.”

  I stepped up to the Bear’s shoulder. “I’m working with Tribal Chief Long on a case.”

  He took another step back and then turned quickly to get to the steps of his trailer. “Yeah, well, I don’t know anything about anything.”

  “Of that, I have no doubt.”

  Henry continued to follow him until the man barricaded himself behind the aluminum screen door. “You better get off of my property.”

  The Bear’s voice was low. “You better not come after these children with anything but a smile. Do you understand me?” Kelly Joe slammed the inside door between them, and I waited the long moment it took for Henry to turn and walk back. “Do you think he took me seriously?”

  “I do.”

  The Cheyenne Nation returned to the children, leaned his hands on the rails of the boat, and then dipped a finger in and tasted the water. “No pee pee.”

  They immediately began roaring with laughter again, Kelly Joe Burns forgotten.

  Henry turned serious. “I am looking for a man; a man driving a yellow Jeep.”

  The three talked among themselves in Cheyenne, and then Wiggins looked at me and back to Henry. “Les says she saw one go by last night.”

  The Bear pursed his lips. “What time?”

  There was another flurry of Cheyenne, and I had to admit that I was impressed that the tykes were fluent in their native language; so few children were these days. Wiggins, the official spokesman, turned back to Henry. “’Bout nine-thirty-two men.”

  The Cheyenne Nation and I shot glances at each other before Henry spoke. “Two men?”

  Wiggins questioned them again, focusing on the girl. “She says they were long-hairs, but she thought they were men; they had the top down, but it was a long way away.”

  “Which direction?”

  The boy threw a thumb over his shoulder, southeast. “Off the Rez.”

  Henry nodded, thumped his chest with his fist, and extended it to bump with the smaller ones. “Nestaevahosevoomatse.” His gaze drifted to the single-wide and Kelly Joe. “You have anymore trouble with him, you let me know.” He turned, and I followed him toward Rezdawg as Wiggins called after us.

  “Hey, when are you going to give me that truck of yours?”

  He waved the kid away. “When I am through with it!”

  We slammed the doors, and I listened as he ground the starter. On the fifth try, it caught and shuddered a cloud of bluish smoke that we had to back through.

  “He can have it now as far as I’m concerned.”

  We turned south on 566 and took a right on Hanging Woman Drive, the washboard surface of the gravel road attempting to rattle loose the fillings in my teeth. “Two men.”

  The Bear nodded. “Two men.”

  “That’s not good.”

  Henry shrugged. “For one of them at least.”

  I braced a hand against the dash in an attempt to augment the three-quarter-ton’s lack of suspension. “You think it’s Artie?”

  “Who else would it be?”

  “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question now, isn’t it?” I shook my head. “So they rolled through here last night, stopped at the boot maker’s, and continued south, which means that it’s possible that Erma knows who was with Clarence?”

  “Stoltzfus’s children said nothing about another man.”

  “Would they have told you?”

  “Yes.”

  I smiled. “Don’t tell me they’re part of the Birney Road Irregulars?”

  There was a pause. “They are now.”

  “That means that Clarence picked up the mystery man somewhere down here.” I glanced out the open window at Hanging Woman Creek, which was little more than a dried-out trough. “How far are we from Painted Warrior?”

  “As the crow flies?”

  I looked out the window, sad for the Crow who hadn’t flown straight.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  He gave me a look. “From Birney, about four miles.”

  “Close.”

  “Yes.”

  I pulled my hat down over my eyes. “Wake me up when we get to the lookout.”

  Henry had stopped Rezdawg alongside the vault toilet on the dirt parking lot. I captured my hat before it fell to the floorboards and rubbed my eyes with one hand in an attempt to get them to focus.

  Diamond Butte Lookout is situated precisely in the middle of nowhere. Just off the Rez and about a mile from Sonnette Road, near, appropriately, Diamond Butte, it was a two-story, thirty-foot masonry fire tower built on not so much of a butte as a hill. Diamond is the high point in the surrounding terrain and glowed gold in the horizontal light of the setting sun.

  The point had first been used as a fire lookout after World War II, and the makeshift structure that was erected in 1956 was rebuilt in 1968 with its own tower. It was abandoned almost a decade ago when the Forest Service had discovered it was cheaper, easier, and more efficient to scout for fires with airplanes rather than manning lookouts all over the high plains. As far as I knew, Poker Jim Butte was the only surviving manned lookout in the area. This meant that the tower at Diamond Butte was up for grabs at the remarkably reasonable price of twenty-five bucks a night, firewood provided.

  “This must be the place.”

  He looked around the parking lot. “No other vehicles.”

  “You see any Jeep tracks?”

  He pointed to the left-the wide tires of the CJ-5 had left plainly visible tracks where it had pulled in, reversed, and then circled back out. “There.”

  “So, one of them got dropped off?”

  The Cheyenne Nation nodded and pointed some more. “Yes, departed from the vehicle there.”

  “Pretty lonely spot.” I glanced around, reaffirming the obvious as he peered through the blue tint at the top of the windshield. “What?”

&
nbsp; He indicated the lookout. “Someone is still up there.”

  I crouched down and followed his line of sight; sure enough, an individual seemed framed in the corner window. “You think he didn’t hear us pull up?” I found it hard to believe with Rezdawg’s Swiss cheese muffler, but we had parked at such an angle that most of the truck was hidden behind the Forest Service facilities-maybe he was hard of hearing.

  “Perhaps.” I watched as he reached behind the seat and pulled out an old pair of Bell amp; Howell M19s from their case and focused them on the lookout. “He is armed.”

  I took the binoculars and had a look for myself. It was Clarence, and it looked as though he’d dragged a chair over to the southwestern corner of the main lookout and had a rifle barrel up near his face where the butt must’ve been resting on the floor between his legs; the weapon was short, maybe a. 30-. 30 carbine. I lowered the multi-green-colored optics and glanced at the Bear. “If you were being pursued by somebody and wanted an even chance, what would you do?”

  “It poses an interesting problem; certainly he can see anyone coming from a long way off, but he also presents a regal target up there.”

  I looked through the 7?50s and sighed. “He had to see us coming; he’s facing the road where we came up.”

  “Perhaps we are not who he is looking for.”

  I handed him back the vintage binoculars. “You think we should honk the horn?”

  “It doesn’t work.”

  “Of course it doesn’t.” I shook my head. “How about we just set fire to it?”

  He ignored me and returned the Bell amp; Howells to the case behind the seat. “We should get out of the truck before it gets completely dark.”

  I glanced back at the tiny yellow bulb in the cab light fixture, which was missing its cover. “The interior light works?”

  “Yes.”

  I gripped the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger. “Of course it does; it’s inconvenient, and that is most certainly the watchword for this piece of crap.”

  “You are hurting my truck’s feelings.”

  I gently pulled the handle and slid out, watching as the bulb in the cab glowed feebly, a light noticeable from possibly six feet away. I met the Cheyenne Nation at the back of the truck, because I was trying to avoid getting sprayed on.