Night of the White Buffalo: A Wind River Mystery

by Coel, Margaret

  “He got the message, like I said. He took off on his own.”

  Vicky slipped the legal pad and pen back into her briefcase. The pad was blank. She hadn’t written down anything. Everything Arnie Walksfast had said was imprinted in her mind. She stood up. “Stay with the rehab program. Keep your nose clean. Stay out of trouble. I’ll report to probation that you’ve begun treatment.”

  She walked back across the room and let herself into the corridor. Past the closed doors, the sound of a ringing telephone, the staccato notes of voices, and through the reception area and the glass doors that opened automatically into the bright outdoors. The thought drumming in her mind: Arnie Walksfast was lying.

  Inside the Ford, the hot breeze blowing across the open windows, the engine humming, Vicky checked her messages. One from Adam; one from Annie. She clicked on Annie’s. “Sheila Carey called. Husband’s burial today, four p.m. Hope you can make it.” Then she clicked on the message from Adam: “Cancel dinner plans. Something’s come up. Flew to Denver this morning for meeting. Talk later.”

  Vicky slid the phone into her bag, backed into the parking lot, and drove into the traffic crawling down North Federal, aware of a feeling of lightness enveloping her, as if she were floating through Riverton.

  14

  TROUT CREEK ROAD was a meandering two-lane strip of asphalt that split the north part of the reservation from the south. There was more traffic than usual this afternoon. A thin line of cars and pickups and SUVs snaked ahead; other vehicles passed in the opposite direction. Vicky flipped the visor against the sun firing the western sky and followed the SUV ahead onto a dirt road. Rolling clouds of dust peppered her windshield. The air tasted hot and gritty.

  She was aware of the tension in her back muscles. So many rumors on the moccasin telegraph. Annie had passed along at least a dozen: A white buffalo calf born on the reservation. Probably on the Broken Buffalo. People coming to see for themselves. Indians from Montana. Pueblo Indians and Navajos, Hopis, Zunis from New Mexico. The idea of a white buffalo calf being here sent chills running through her like electrical shocks.

  Vicky could still see Sheila Carey huddled on the sofa, a skin of bravery painted over her features. In shock over her husband’s murder. And now strangers would descend on her ranch—they were arriving already—demanding to see the sacred calf that may or may not be there. There hadn’t been any official confirmation, but the moccasin telegraph had an uncanny, otherworldly way of being right.

  The vehicles ahead had filtered into a rutted two-track. She could see the beds of the pickups bouncing and swaying. Then she was bouncing, gripping the steering wheel hard to keep the tires in the narrow dirt ruts. The traffic slowed, and she had to step on the brake to keep from rear-ending the SUV. A couple of pickups swerved across the borrow ditch and drove over the scraggly pasture grass that bordered the two-track. She stayed with the SUV until she was forced to stop at a gate dropped over the road. A small group of people were milling about, looking off toward the log house and the ranch buildings beyond the gate.

  “Get out of here.” A cowboy in a black hat stationed like a guard in front of the gate shouted at a lanky, frozen-faced cowboy with a tan, wide-brimmed hat pushed back on his head.

  The cowboy stood his ground. “I’m not leaving ’til I see the boss.”

  The man in the black hat threw a fist toward the dozen or so pickups parked on the sagebrush prairie next to the two-track. “Get your truck and get out of here.”

  Somewhere out of the dust and the stalled pickups and SUVs, another cowboy materialized and started directing traffic onto the prairie. Vicky followed the SUV through the clumps of sagebrush and mounds of brown earth, past a van with Channel 13 emblazoned in gold paint on the sides. The SUV pulled in on the far side of a silver truck, and she parked on the other side and got out. The cowboy’s voice reverberated in the dusty air: “Head on down the road, you know what’s good for you.”

  The lanky cowboy came toward her, tight-lipped, walking fast, propelled by anger, dust climbing the legs of his blue jeans. He yanked open the driver’s door on the silver truck. Vicky saw a man and woman get out of the SUV and hurry past him toward the small crowd waiting by the gate.

  The cowboy rounded on her. “You know the owners here?”

  Vicky glanced about. Nothing in this makeshift parking lot but a row of parked vehicles and a few people on the far side of the pickups waiting to turn in. She was alone with an angry, fist-clenched man. “I’ve met them,” she said. She had met Sheila Carey and a dead man, she was thinking. “I’m here for the funeral.”

  “Funeral?” The cowboy pushed his cowboy hat forward and regarded her out of pencil-slim eyes.

  “Dennis Carey, one of the owners.”

  “So that’s what brought all the people here? A funeral?” The cowboy seemed to relax a little, and Vicky wondered if she should tell him the rest of it—the rumor that a white buffalo calf had been born. She decided against it.

  “Reg Hartly.” The cowboy extended a calloused hand. A brown car pulled in beside them. Two Indians got out and headed toward the gate. “Just drove up from Colorado. You from around these parts?”

  “Vicky Holden.” She shook the man’s hand, feeling her own tension begin to dissolve. “Attorney in Lander. Are you looking for a ranch job?”

  This seemed to stop him a moment. “I’m looking for a buddy.” The narrowed eyes fastened on the brown car, as if the buddy might jump out of the backseat. “You ever heard of Josh Barker? Cowboy from the Western Slope? Came up here to work with buffalo and disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?” Rick Tomlin, another cowboy, had disappeared.

  “Folks haven’t heard from him in a couple months. Mom’s real sick. She’s dying, but she’s trying to hold on until she sees Josh again.”

  “Did your buddy work here?” Vicky nodded toward the cowboys at the gate, another pickup turning into the sagebrush lot.

  “Not according to them jackasses.” He twisted his head in the direction of the cowboys. “Never heard of him. Nobody by that name on the Broken Buffalo. They’re lying. Josh sent postcards saying he’d hired on here. Josh was no liar.”

  “I think those cowboys are new hires.” What was it Sheila Carey had said? With her husband dead, it would just be her and Carlos and another hand. If the white buffalo calf was here, she needed more help. “When did your friend work here?”

  “Hired on in the spring. Last postcard came around July Fourth. Like I say, his mom wants to die in peace. She wants Josh beside her, and I know my buddy. That’s where he’d want to be, if he knew.”

  “I suggest you come back tomorrow, after the funeral, and speak to the owner, Sheila Carey.” Vicky wondered how many vehicles would crowd the road and the parking lot tomorrow if the news was on TV this evening.

  “The goons won’t let me in.”

  “I can let her know you’re coming.”

  “You’d do that?” A look of astonishment crossed the man’s face. Obviously he hadn’t met a friendly welcome in these parts. “You know a campground close by? I brought my gear.” He thumped the bed of the silver truck.

  “Try Sinks Canyon. And good luck.” Vicky started walking toward the gate, stepping out of the way of another car pulling into the lot. Then she turned back. The cowboy was about to lower himself into the truck, one boot on the dirt, the other inside the cab. “There’s a bar in Riverton where cowboys hang out,” she called. “Somebody there might know about your friend. The O.K. Bar.”

  “Thanks again.” The cowboy saluted off the brim of his hat.

  Vicky reached the gate and told the man in the black hat she had been invited to the funeral. “You’re going to have to walk up to the house,” he said. “Mrs. Carey gave orders no more cars up there.” He lifted the gate high enough that, by bending forward, she was able to get to the other side. She picked her way along the edge of
the two-track, where the ground was almost level. The front porch was empty; there was an empty feeling about the whole house. She recognized the old Toyota pickup parked near the porch. She started up the steps, then decided to walk around to the back. The burial would be somewhere on the ranch.

  As she walked next to the house, she spotted the small crowd gathered in a grassy space fringed with cottonwoods out by the barn. Around the barn were several ranch buildings, paint-peeled and dilapidated looking, and an assortment of ranch vehicles: trucks, flatbed, tractor, forklift. A barbed-wire fence ran along the open expanse of pasture. In the far distance, she could make out the swaying brown humps of the buffalo herd.

  Sheila Carey broke from the crowd and started toward her. “Glad you could make it. Where’s your friend?”

  “I’m afraid Adam was called out of town.”

  “Too bad. It’s a small group.” A flash of what might have been physical pain crossed the woman’s face. Vicky looked over and counted seven people: Chief Banner and another officer in crisp uniforms, standing ramrod straight with caps laid against their waists; two cowboys and two women she didn’t know; and the cowboy who called himself Carlos, stationed between a narrow hole dug into the earth and a small mound of dirt. Walking over from a pathway that paralleled the barbed-wire fence was John O’Malley and, beside him, the elder Clifford Many Horses. She knew in an instant what they had seen in the pasture, and the chill that ran through her was so strong, it stopped her in her footsteps. It was true. The white calf was here, just as all the people at the gate believed. She caught John O’Malley’s eye and smiled.

  “Now that we’re all here,” Sheila said, “we can get started.” She ushered John O’Malley and the elder to the far side of the gravesite next to Carlos, who was holding a small wooden box. Then she fit herself into the space on the other side of the cowboy and looked out across the distance. The whoosh of the breeze filled the quiet. Clumps of grass in the pasture lay sideways, swept over the earth.

  Finally, Sheila looked up. “Dennis would be honored that an Arapaho elder agreed to bless his grave and send his spirit to the ancestors. It’s also an honor to have the Catholic priest from the mission, even though Dennis was never—what you would say?—religious. Leave all that stuff for later, he used to say.” She gave a little laugh. “Well, later is here. Used to be Catholic, though. Baptized, confirmed. Like he said, awful-tasting medicine that didn’t work on him, even though his ma dragged him to church every Sunday until he got so big she couldn’t drag him anymore. Anyway, it seemed proper to send him off the way he started. Carlos . . .” She glanced sideways at the black-haired cowboy.

  It was all that was necessary. Carlos cradled the box a moment, then, dropping onto one knee, set the box into the small grave. He stood up, hands clasped in a kind of prayer.

  Clifford Many Horses took a moment, his eyes on the open grave, before he began fumbling with the ties on the leather satchel. Vicky closed her eyes and waited. So many funerals, so many blessings for the dead she had watched the elders bestow, so many soft Arapaho prayers she had listened to. The breeze seemed to lie down, and quiet settled over the little crowd. She opened her eyes just as the elder held a lighted match to a small bunch of sage tied with a leather thong. He waved the sage back and forth, fanning the smoke into the grave and out toward the little group. Jevaneatha nethaunainau, Jevaneatha Dawatha henechauchauane nanadehe vedaw nau ichjeva. Vicky felt the words washing over her. A prayer meant to give courage and hope to those left behind: God is with us. God’s spirit fills everywhere on earth and above us.

  Hethete hevedathuwin nehathe Ichjevaneatha haeain ichjeva. The good soul will go to God to our home on high.

  The sage-filled smoke drifted past, and she took in a deep breath: The sacred smoke, a sign that even death cannot break the bonds of loved ones. She could feel the sense of peace that always came over her at a burial when the elders prayed for the dead and the living.

  The elder waved the smoking sage again, then placed it inside a small tobacco can and closed the lid. For a moment smoke escaped about the edges, then disappeared. Bowing his head, he stepped back.

  John O’Malley waited several minutes—respectful of the Arapaho Way, she thought—before he moved to the edge of the grave. “Dear Lord Jesus . . .” His voice was low and comforting. She smiled at the thought of all the times she had been comforted by his voice. “Bless the soul of your servant Dennis Carey. Look not on his sins, but accept him into your peace and love. Remember his wife, Sheila, whom he loved and has now left behind, and help her to find comfort in your presence with us. Amen.”

  “Amen.” Vicky heard her own voice, mingled with the voices around her. For a long moment, the word seemed to float above the opened grave. She kept her eyes on John O’Malley, half-expecting him to look over, acknowledge her, but his thoughts were elsewhere, she realized, in the prayers he had just offered, in the concern for Sheila Carey, a widow. He was a priest.

  Sheila Carey removed something from the pocket of her blue jeans—a limp purple flower—and dropped it into the grave. She motioned with her eyes to Carlos, who went over to the side of the barn and returned with a shovel. He began shoveling the small mound of dirt on top of the box. When the gravesite was full, he tamped the dirt into a bare, smooth rectangle, then scooped up dried sage and pebbles and scattered them over the grave until it was lost with the earth. Vicky wondered how Sheila Carey would ever find her husband’s grave.

  The woman was looking out into space. “Let us all pray that my husband’s killer will be brought to justice and will go to his own grave.” She exhaled a long breath, a kind of acceptance that justice might never be served, then stepped back, as if her thoughts had shifted away from the narrow grave. “You have all heard, I am sure, that our ranch has been uniquely blessed, or so I have been told. We have a very special calf. A few days before Dennis was shot to death, we were out feeding the herd. I was driving the tractor, and Dennis was on the flatbed throwing out bales of hay. He saw her first and shouted at me. ‘Look over there.’ I stopped the tractor so fast, I nearly threw Dennis to the ground. The calf couldn’t have been more than a few hours old, and white as snow. The mother was cleaning her up and, to tell you the truth, even she seemed a bit surprised at the look of her calf. This is not an ordinary calf. White with black eyes and black nose, so we know she’s not an albino. Folks from the National Bison Association are sending people to take blood from the dam and the bull to make sure the calf is one hundred percent buffalo and not descended from a rogue Charolais. We only have one bull, so there’s no doubt the calf is a genuine genetic mutation, or whatever the scientists call it. We call her Spirit.”

  She turned halfway around and stared out at the pasture where the buffalo lumbered and swayed through the cottonwoods. There was no sign of the white calf. A few people trailed along the barbed-wire fence after the cowboy in the black hat, looking out into the pasture as they walked.

  Sheila turned back. “As you can tell from the cars and pickups that have arrived, the news has gotten out. I was hoping to get Dennis laid to rest before I made the announcement, but people have been showing up all day, demanding to see Spirit. I have hired a few new hands, and I’m going to need more. We’ve cleared a path along the fence to keep people from wandering all over the ranch looking for Spirit. The path will take them to the place where they can see her in the far pasture. No one will walk out there without an escort. We can only take a few people at a time. Father John and Mr. Many Horses have already gone out. If you like, the rest of you can go with Carlos now. You will have to excuse me. I promised the TV reporter an interview.”

  Sheila Carey turned around and started past the barn toward the front gate, resolve in her stride. For a moment, nobody moved, then Carlos waved his arm like a baton, and said, “Follow me.”

  Vicky realized John O’Malley had moved to her side. “I heard you found the body. How are you doing?” />
  She forced a little shrug, afraid that she might burst into tears. It had been hard to come across the body of a man shot to death in the night, hard to be there with Adam protesting, not understanding. John O’Malley understood. “I’ll be fine,” she heard herself say.

  Clifford Many Horses had wandered over and stopped in front of her. “Our people have been blessed,” he said. “You must go to the pasture, Daughter.”

  She nodded and tried for a smile that would reassure the elder that she grasped the importance of the calf. She let her eyes glance off John O’Malley’s, then started after Carlos and the others.

  15

  VICKY FOLLOWED THE little group along the barbed-wire fence, past the gate with a big chain linking the posts together. Carlos in the lead, looking straight ahead, a spring in his step as if he were leading visitors to see a rare creature at the zoo. Lined up behind him, the ranchers and their wives, Chief Banner and the other BIA officer. Not from these parts, Vicky thought. He looked Navajo. She gave herself a little space behind them. It had been good to see John O’Malley, as if, because he was here, everything was as it should be. She hadn’t seen him all summer, but the moccasin telegraph kept her informed: the scholarship he had arranged for Jimmy Summer at Creighton; the Saturday morning coffees with the elders at the senior center; the new day care center he was starting at the mission. The people would miss him when he left. She pushed the thought away. She didn’t want to think of John O’Malley leaving.

  The late-afternoon sun blazed in a clear sky; the hot, dry breeze rippled the dusty path. Off to the north, the pasture ran into the sky, the earth flat and brown with tufts of grass and sagebrush here and there and cottonwoods clustered near an underground spring or tiny creek. A few buffalo meandered about the cottonwoods, at home on the dry, bare earth, just as they had been at home for centuries. Nobody knew how long. Buffalo came out of the earth. She could hear her grandfather’s voice as if he were walking beside her, his footsteps in rhythm with hers. She could imagine the excitement, the joy he would have felt to see a white buffalo calf. We are close relations to the buffalo. They gave themselves that the people might live. The people must always show respect and gratitude. If the buffalo go back into the earth, the people will die.