Night of the White Buffalo: A Wind River Mystery

by Coel, Margaret

  It wasn’t the right thing to say. He knew by the way she flinched, by the tremor in her hand, that it wasn’t right. “He sent my boy away, and now I can’t tell him good-bye.”

  “Now, Ada, you know that’s not true.” Ned cleared his throat, as if he could make the truth disappear. “Josh wanted to try things on his own, like lots of young fellas. Get his feet wet out in the big, wide world. Learn a few lessons. It’ll do him good. He’ll be back. This is home,” he said again.

  She stared for a long moment at her husband standing at the foot of the bed, then closed her eyes, as if she couldn’t summon the strength for the argument. And what did it matter? Josh was gone and she was dying.

  “Is there anything I can do for you? I got my chariot outside if you feel up to a drive on this beautiful day. I can carry you . . .”

  The thin hand slipped away from his, and she gave a little wave, like a dead leaf, directionless, falling from a tree. “No more chariot rides for me.” She managed a smile that stretched her thin lips over the stubs of teeth, as if, for a second, she had drifted into a memory. “I was a belle once,” she said.

  “You were the prettiest girl in Mesa County,” the old man said. “Remember the ancient surrey wagon that belonged to my grandpa? One time he let me hitch up a couple horses and take you for a ride. That was because he loved you, Ada. Wanted you to be his granddaughter. Nobody else ever got to ride in that surrey.” Ned looked over at Reg. “After he died, I took a good look at the thing and hauled it to the dump. Sure didn’t look like the wonder Granddad had been hanging on to all those years. I think he was hanging on to part of himself.”

  Moisture pooled in the old man’s eyes, and he swayed slightly, as if he were trying to stand up against the wave of memories. “I been calling Josh. Sending him letters. Even got a kid down the road to text him, whatever that is. Now don’t you worry, Ada.” He looked back at the doll-like figure under the lace cover. “He’s gonna get one of them messages and drive up here any minute now. Why, when I heard Reg’s pickup coming up the road, I thought it was Josh.”

  “You get him back, you hear?” There was a fierceness in the old woman’s voice, summoned from somewhere deep within her. For an instant she lifted her head and gestured with it toward the man at the foot of the bed, then let it drop back onto the pillow. “Least you can do after you sent him off. Couldn’t let go, just couldn’t let go so he could be a man right here where he belongs. You bring him back so I can die in peace.”

  “I’m doing my best.” The old man stifled a sob. “There’s nothing in the world I want more than you feeling good again and Josh running the ranch. You and me can just sit on the porch and watch the horses and the sun setting behind the mountains. Won’t that be great, Ada? Now you think real hard on that, and no more talk about dying. You think about Josh, ’cause he’s coming back. You think about living.”

  She had closed her eyes, but Reg wasn’t sure whether she had fallen asleep or was just closing herself away from the lies. No more lies. Ned nodded toward the door, and Reg found himself tiptoeing behind the old man, not wanting to disturb the woman any further.

  “Want a beer?” Ned was already on his way across the living room and into kitchen.

  Reg went after him and sat down on a hard wood chair at the table covered in red-and-white-checkered plastic. How many times he and Josh had sat at this table. Doing homework. Josh was good at math. He had made sense out of the problems Reg had struggled with. Talking about the future. A couple of cowboys, born and bred, not good for anything else. What did they need math for? You’re gonna be running this place someday, Reg had told him. You’re gonna need to keep the accounts. Good thing you and numbers get along. Yeah, someday, Josh had said. Soon’s the old man decides to take it easy.

  High school, later, a fading memory, and Reg hiring out on neighboring ranches. No place of his own, no family place. His own father had cowboyed all over Colorado, had never gotten a stake for himself. But Josh had worked for his father. Always the hired man. “I’m no better off than you,” he’d said once. He had been in the dumps that day, downing three or four beers, crushing the cans and heaving them toward the trash basket. He had missed, and Reg could still hear the tinny sound of the cans clanking on the vinyl floor. He could see the loss in Josh’s eyes, as if life had passed him by and he had missed everything. He’d left the next week.

  The old man set a can of beer in front of Reg and dropped onto the chair across the table. He popped his can. “Don’t mind saying, it hurts to see her dying with a broken heart. I keep going over and over it. I should’ve let him take over like he wanted. Grow our herd, put in hay in the south pasture. Oh, he had all kinds of plans. Even worked out the numbers. Sure, he’d have to borrow from the bank, but he could pay it back, or so the numbers said. But my granddaddy and my own dad never borrowed a cent. Me neither. That’s why we own this place, free and clear. Slept at night without worrying when the bankers were gonna show up and run us off our own land. That’s what I wanted for Josh. Free and clear, and maybe that meant holding back on his dreams until he could pay cash.”

  He took a long drain of beer and smacked his lips. “Nothing turned out like I was hoping.”

  Reg opened his own can and took a long sip. The beer was cold and foamy, and he realized how thirsty he was. “Listen,” he said. “Maybe I can help find him.”

  “What you gonna do? Text him? Call? Send an e-mail? He’s been ignoring all that.”

  “I was thinking I could go to Wyoming.” Why not? He had been thinking about leaving the plateau anyway and trying to hire on someplace else. Two years of drought here, and ranchers cutting back on the hired help. He hadn’t had a job in almost a month. Things could be better in Wyoming, and he could get a line on Josh, wherever he was.

  “Leave here? Go to Wyoming? You got rocks in your head like my boy? It’s enough he’s missing. You don’t need to go missing with him.”

  “You know where he was working?”

  The old man scooted his chair back, set both hands on the table, and levered himself to his feet. He headed into the living room in a lopsided gait, swaying as if he were on the dance floor. Reg could hear the squeak of a drawer opening and closing, then the old man was back, carrying a small stack of postcards and a stack of envelopes tied in blue ribbon. He flopped back down, pushed the envelopes to one side, and lined up the postcards into a neat pile in front of him.

  “First we heard from Josh was in early April. He’d been gone a month, and we didn’t know if he was dead or alive. Ada worried all the time. That’s when she started getting sick, all that worrying, made the cancer grow. Take a look.” He pushed the card across the table.

  On top was a neon red-and-yellow caricature of a cowboy on a bucking bronco, hat swinging in the air. Reg turned the card over. “Getting settled in the cowboy state! Rough drive over South Pass, big spring blizzard. Winter’s still hanging around. It is what they say it is here, bad. Hope you are doing okay. Your son, Josh.”

  “He doesn’t mention a job.”

  “Hadn’t got on anywhere yet, my guess. A lot of ranchers don’t hire ’til spring comes on. All they can do in winter is keep on the help they have. He didn’t want to worry us. And my boy wasn’t never gonna admit he was a failure.” Ned pushed another card after the first.

  An Easter picture, rabbits in cowboy boots and white hats, holding baskets of candy. April 23 was scrolled at the top on the other side. “Hope this finds you doing good. Got hired onto a ranch that raises buffalo, so finally got the chance to work with those big boys. Hope you have a good Easter and will eat a slice of coconut cake for me.”

  “Could be a number of buffalo ranches in Wyoming.”

  “Three more postcards and an envelope with a picture,” Ned said, trailing the rest over the table.

  Reg picked up the envelope and shook out a photograph of a two-story log cabin house. Scrawled
across the bottom in Josh’s handwriting: “This here is the ranch where I hired on.” The postcards were more cartoonish pictures of cowboys, old pickups, and horses that looked like nags. Reg turned over the first. “Buffalo ranching is sure a hard job. Gotta take hay bales out every day, break them up and toss the hay to the herd. We show up without hay, they’d most likely turn over the flatbed and kill us. Still cold and snow on the ground. I got me a new wool muffler that covers my face. Write me at Broken Buffalo Ranch, Fort Washakie, WY.”

  “Did you write him?”

  “Came back. Marked unknown at this address.”

  Reg picked up the next card. “Spring coming on. A couple cows pregnant. Owner’s real glad, since he’s trying to grow the herd. Scratching out a living here, you ask me. Got to get back out to the pasture before the buffalo riot. Your son, Josh.”

  The last postcard had what seemed to Reg a lonely note running through it. “Sure do miss the ranch and both of you. This place is pretty isolated. Indians all around. Sure would like to hear from you. Thinking about heading home sometime soon. Your loving son, Josh.”

  “Broken Buffalo Ranch surrounded by Indians,” Reg said. “There’s an Indian reservation up there, isn’t there? You suppose that’s where he landed?”

  “I gave the kid down the road fifty cents to look it up on the internet. Yeah, my boy was on a reservation surrounded by Indians. Arapahos and Shoshones.”

  “He never got your letters?”

  The old man tossed the blue-tied envelopes toward Reg. “See for yourself.”

  Reg untied the ribbon and made a fan of six or eight envelopes. Unknown stamped on the front of each one.

  “You going up there and talk to that buffalo rancher?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.” Reg finished his beer, then took out the tiny tablet he kept in his shirt pocket. A miniature pen was hooked onto the side. He opened the tablet and wrote: Broken Buffalo Ranch, Indian reservation.

  “Someone else who might help,” Ned said. “If Josh was in trouble . . .”

  “You think he got into some kind of trouble?”

  “I’m saying if he did, he might’ve gone to talk to a priest. Ada poured a fierce amount of faith in that boy when he was a kid. He might’ve quit going to church, but he didn’t get over it.”

  10

  FATHER JOHN SPOTTED the woman in front of the blue bi-level house surrounded by pink, orange, and green bi-levels in what was known as Easter-Egg Village, the federal government’s idea of a residential neighborhood. He swung the Toyota to the side of the road. The old pickup had been balking and kicking down Seventeen-Mile Road. Now the engine gasped and went silent, like a dying patient fed up with the effort of breathing. “Di Provenza il mar” faded into the shush of the wind over the half-open windows. He turned off the CD player and got out, hoping the pickup would get a second breath in a little while.

  “Appreciate you coming over.” Miriam Many Horses watched him come up the weed-cracked sidewalk, cigarette smoke curling from the fist next to her thigh. “Lunch is ready. Dad’s waiting inside. He doesn’t know I’m still smoking. That quitting thing isn’t working so good.” She gave a little laugh and nodded him up the concrete steps to the front door. “Don’t tell him.”

  Father John smiled and shook his head. Addictions were hard to kick. Often quitting didn’t go well. “I’m trying to think what I could tell your father that he doesn’t already know,” he said.

  “He doesn’t know what’s going on on the rez.”

  Father John stopped and looked down at the woman at the foot of the steps. She came to his shoulders, drawing hard on the cigarette, cheeks caved in. “What’s going on?”

  “Moccasin telegraph’s being real cagey. Bits and pieces of information all morning, but nobody’s got the whole story.”

  “What’s the half story?” The telegraph could be erratic. Sometimes St. Francis Mission was the first to hear the news. Usually bad news. Sometimes the mission was the last, which meant this could be good news. He didn’t think so by the frown lines etched in the woman’s forehead.

  “Vacations, time off, even sick leaves canceled at the BIA police department. Getting ready for something, but not saying what. I don’t remember the last time my niece’s husband got an order like that. Get ready, it’s coming, whatever it is.”

  Father John looked out across the dirt yard. A tumbleweed skittered one way, then another. He could feel the woman’s eyes burrowing into him. Chief Banner must have called an all-departments meeting this morning and given the directive. There would be other directives. Meetings to discuss traffic control measures, the onslaught of drunken drivers from across the country, hordes of people lined up to buy gas or hot dogs at the convenience store in Ethete. How many people—hundreds? thousands?—coming to see the white buffalo calf? He remembered reading about a white calf born on a farm in Wisconsin a few years ago. Thousands and thousands of people had come. Arapahos and Shoshones had loaded up pickups and set off for Wisconsin. The minute the word was out, people would start coming here. All he had to do, he realized, was tell Miriam Many Horses what he had learned last night at the Broken Buffalo Ranch.

  “I’m sure we’ll know eventually,” he said.

  “Yeah, eventually. While we’re waiting, we might like to get prepared. Big storm? Tornado brewing? Flood?” She gave a sharp, raspy laugh; Father John laughed with her. It was hard to imagine enough rain on the dry plains to worry about a flood. “See, when we don’t know, we get crazy imagining stuff.” Miriam stamped the cigarette butt into the dirt, then picked it up and slid it into the pocket of her blue jeans. “Go on in. Door’s never locked.”

  The living room was narrow, running to the kitchen in back, but comfortable looking, with a worn sofa and chairs and a couple of throw rugs spread over the vinyl floor. Clifford sat at a small yellow table beneath the kitchen window. The old man made a motion toward getting to his feet when Father John walked over and set a hand on his shoulder. The bones felt sharp and fragile at the same time. “Don’t get up, Grandfather.” He used the term of respect for elderly men on the rez, who deserved respect for their long lives and hard-won wisdom. Just like the grandmothers.

  “Sit yourself.” Clifford waved a brown, long-fingered hand toward the chair at the corner.

  Father John started to sit down, then asked Miriam, bustling along the counter, if there was anything he could help her with.

  “Help me by eating a big lunch, make the work worthwhile.” She stopped slicing sandwiches into triangles and glanced over one shoulder. “Not that there’s much work in making bologna sandwiches. I didn’t have to butcher the cow. Coke or coffee?”

  “Coke sounds good.” A cold drink and a little caffeine might keep him alert, Father John was thinking, with the warm sun slanting through the window and laying a bright path across the tabletop.

  Miriam set a plate with triangular sandwiches, a handful of potato chips, and a dill pickle in front of her father. The elderly were always served first in the Arapaho Way. As if their time to partake in the joys of life were limited. An identical plate appeared before him. She set down two glasses of Coke. “Brownies for dessert,” she said, sliding a plate of chocolate brownies into the middle of the table. “You promise you’ll eat your sandwiches first. Dad?”

  “Yeah. Yeah.” The old man waved her away. “You done good, Daughter.”

  “Well, I’ll be back soon as I get off my shift at the restaurant.” She cupped the old man’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about supper. I’ll bring you something.” Then, to Father John: “You hear about what’s going on, you let me know, okay?”

  He smiled up at the serious-looking face. She would hear the news as soon as Sheila Carey tended to the burial of her husband. He thanked her for lunch.

  After the front door had closed, Father John waited while Clifford devoured half of his sandwich and sipped at his
Coke. It was not polite to rush the conversation and inquire as to what was on the old man’s mind. The time was not yet right. He worked at his own sandwich, surprised again at how good a bologna sandwich slathered in mayonnaise could taste. It took him back to his childhood, eating bologna sandwiches at a table not much larger than this yellow table, his mother bustling around the kitchen preparing dinner, with lunch not yet over. He shook away the memory, as if it didn’t belong to him. So long ago. Another time, another life.

  Clifford finished the sandwich and started pushing the chips around the plate with one finger. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

  “What is it, Grandfather?” Father John could feel his muscles tense. The old man was ninety. The news could be anything. A bad diagnosis, bad news about his nephew in Afghanistan, worry over someone in the younger generation following the wrong road.

  “Miriam don’t know what’s going on, but I do.”

  Father John didn’t say anything. He waited for the old man to collect his thoughts.

  “Seen a vision a couple weeks ago. Early morning, starting to get light. I was sitting out back watching the sun rise and praying, like usual.” Father John nodded. The elders prayed every day that good things would come to the people. “Then I seen a beautiful young woman with black hair and black eyes come across the prairie toward me. She wasn’t walking; she was floating. That’s how I knew she was a spirit. She had on a white deerskin dress decorated with beads and embroidery more beautiful than I ever seen. She spun around three times, and I saw that she was a buffalo. A beautiful white buffalo. Then she was gone, like she melted into the air. So I knew she came to tell me she was coming back as a white calf, like she promised to do whenever the people needed help. I knew a white buffalo calf was going to be born. She is a sign of the Creator among us. She is like a visitation of the Blessed Mother.”