Night of the White Buffalo: A Wind River Mystery

by Coel, Margaret

  “Couple years on a buffalo ranch in Colorado. I know how to work around the animals. They’re tricky, require a lot of skill. And smarts,” he added. “Seems to me you need help controlling crowds right now, but ranch work has to go on. Most those cowboys out there never got close to a buffalo. Wouldn’t know what to do if one charged him.”

  “What would you do?”

  “Stay out of the buffalo’s way, and it won’t be charging.”

  The shadow of a smile played at the edges of her mouth. “You sound like my husband, Dennis. You heard he was murdered?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She nodded. Reg half expected her to say she was sorry, too. Instead, she leaned forward and dropped the phone into its cradle.

  “We pay when we butcher and sell the meat or when we sell a calf or bull. We’ve got a contract with an organic health food chain, stores all over the west. I’m telling you this so you’ll know we’re good for the money.”

  “How long would I have to wait?”

  “Don’t worry. You’ll have plenty to eat. You’ll sleep in the bunkhouse, nice and dry, plenty warm in the winter. I can let you have an advance from time to time when I get the cash. You understand, we’re a small operation and—and I’ve been forced to hire extra hands. Lot of expense with this buffalo calf, but . . .” She hesitated, then seemed to shut down, whatever she had been about to say pushed back. “You got your gear?”

  “In my truck.” He had packed up the tent and sleeping bag, the small kit of utensils, and cleared the campsite in Sinks Canyon. He hadn’t known what he might find at the ranch. Some word on Josh Barker—who had never worked here. At least that was what Sheila Carey and her hired hand wanted him to believe. Never worked on a spread that he’d written home about. Had even sent a photo of the ranch house.

  “Take it to the bunkhouse in back, then go find Carlos, my foreman. He’s at the gate. He’ll give you instructions. We have fences to mend.”

  “I’d like to see the calf.”

  “Spirit? You’ll see her when you ride the fence.”

  24

  “NOW FOR THE news. Another random shooting took place on the reservation last night.”

  Vicky had been about to turn onto Ethete Road when the news program started. She had spent the last hour meeting with Charlie Red Deer, one of the elders, confined to his bed now, a stick figure beneath the white sheets. Wanting her to draw up his will. Connie Red Deer had bustled about, delivering glasses of water, while Vicky made notes. There wouldn’t be much to leave four daughters. A hundred acres of scrub brush, a few ponies, a herd of ten cattle.

  She kept her foot on the brake and stared at the radio in the dashboard.

  “The shooter fired a rifle at a passing truck on Highway 789 north of the casino. Driver of the truck, identified as Reg Hartly, a Colorado resident, was not injured, although the bullet entered and exited the truck bed. State patrol combed the area east of the highway where the shot came from but were unsuccessful in finding any evidence. This is the fifth random shooting on the rez this year. Anybody with information should contact BIA law enforcement.”

  Vicky shifted into neutral and switched off the radio. Except for the warm gusts of wind blowing past the open windows, the Ford was quiet. She was grateful for the silence. Reg Hartly. Why hadn’t he mentioned the shooting when she’d run into him last night at the casino? Had it happened later? Another white cowboy in the area. Arnie’s friends could have assumed he was looking for a job they believed should go to them. But Reg wasn’t looking for a job.

  Someone honked behind her. She glanced in the rearview mirror at a pickup sliding in close. A cowboy in a black hat glared at her over the steering wheel, then lifted his hand and pointed toward the road. Vicky put the gearshift in drive and turned left, watching the pickup charge to the right, swinging back and forth, tires squealing. She found her cell in her bag and pushed the button for the office.

  “Vicky?” Annie’s voice was loud, tense. “You heard the news?”

  “I just heard. I need you to call the rehab clinic and tell them I have to see Arnie Walksfast.”

  “I understand.” Vicky wondered if Annie did understand. She hadn’t told Annie or anyone else what her client had confided in her about the shootings, but that didn’t mean Annie hadn’t absorbed the truth somehow. Or heard rumors on the rez.

  “What have you heard about the shootings?”

  “Nothing solid.”

  “But you’ve heard something.”

  “You know how gossip is.”

  “On the moccasin telegraph?”

  “Speculation, that’s all. Maybe the warriors decided to run off cowboys from out of state. Might be hoping word will get around this isn’t a real friendly place for outsiders. You ask me, the Indians are hoping they’ll get hired on the local ranches.”

  “Have you heard any names?”

  “Nobody’s snitching, if that’s what you mean. Besides, it’s just rumor. Could be some nutcase in Riverton shooting at folks. Tell you the truth, people are scared. So far the shooter’s targeted white outsiders, but who knows when he might decide to shoot at locals? I mean, can he always tell the difference? Somebody’s going to end up like that white rancher. You think they’re connected? The shootings and the murder?”

  Vicky could hear the sound of dread in Annie’s voice. It matched her own feeling. “I don’t know,” she managed.

  “Father John called. He wants to see you sometime today.”

  Vicky told her to call him back and say she would stop by the mission in a couple of hours. Then she ended the call and drove toward Riverton.

  * * *

  THE WAITING ROOM was cool; an air-conditioning unit hummed overhead. Vicky had tried to sit in one of the plastic chairs pushed against the wall, but she found herself pacing back and forth. The glass doors at the front radiated the sunshine. Beyond the doors was the long driveway that ran across the front of the clinic, and beyond that, the parking lot. A few cars scattered about. She had parked in the front row. The nurse in green scrubs who had met her in the waiting room said Arnie was still in physical therapy. Did she want to wait?

  She would wait, Vicky told her.

  Finally the solid metal door across from the front opened, and the same nurse—blond hair pinned into a bun, light, pale skin and light, pale eyes—motioned her forward. “He’s resting in his room.”

  Vicky followed the woman down one corridor, then another, past a row of windows that looked onto a gymnasium, patients walking treadmills and lifting weights. A mixture of Indians and whites, trying to work off alcohol and drugs. The nurse had stopped at an opened door and ushered Vicky inside. “He meets with the psychotherapist in thirty minutes.”

  Arnie Walksfast was propped up on the bed, half sitting, half lying, irritation pooling in his black eyes. “Mind if I don’t get up? Had enough frickin’ exercise today.”

  “We need to talk, Arnie.” Vicky closed the door, walked past the metal chair kept for visitors and stood at the side of the bed. “You heard what happened last night?”

  “This is rehab. It’s not the moon.”

  “Let me lay it out for you. Sooner or later the cops will track down one of the shooters. When that happens, he’ll start shouting names to save his own neck. If you are involved, you will be indicted for conspiracy to commit murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and a whole lot of other charges the prosecutor will think up.”

  “What do you expect? I’m gonna call somebody and stop the shootings? I’m not the boss. I told you, a bunch of us decided to make it tough on the bastards coming here for our jobs.”

  “You know who’s involved.”

  “I’m not gonna snitch, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “You’re going to wait until some random cowboy gets killed? A man’s already been killed. Every law enforcement agency
in the area is working the case, and sooner or later they’re going to turn up the shooter. If your buddies had anything to do with it, you could end up in prison for the rest of your life.” Vicky took a long moment, her eyes fastened on the man slumped on the bed. The smallest twitch in his cheeks, a tightening of his lips? She wasn’t sure if she imagined them.

  Finally she said, “I can arrange for you to talk to Ted Gianelli.”

  “You crazy? I’m not talking to any fed. What kind of lawyer are you? You want to throw me to the wolves?”

  “We make a deal. You tell him what you know about the shootings, and in return, he might be willing to cut you some slack.”

  “No frickin’ way!” Arnie bolted upright. Vicky felt the crack of a knee against her hip as he swung both legs over the side of the bed. “What I told you is—what do you call it?—confidential. You can’t tell anyone, or I swear I’ll find some way to ruin you. Maybe even . . .”

  “What? Shoot at me while I’m driving down the highway? Hope to frighten me enough to leave the area like you and your friends are trying to do with the cowboys? I’m trying to help you, Arnie. You can close down these shootings before it’s too late.”

  “Go to hell!”

  Vicky took a long moment. Her tongue felt dry against her teeth, miniature tombstones in her mouth. “I think you had better find another lawyer. I’ll inform your probation officer I’m no longer representing you.” She swung around and started for the door.

  “Wait a minute.” She glanced back, holding on to the doorknob. “They’ll take me out if I snitch.”

  “Who?”

  “What does it matter? You snitch, you die. Maybe not next week or next month. But nobody forgets. I’ll be driving down the road some night and a truck will crowd me, force me into a ditch. I won’t see the guy coming for me. Most I can do is get a message to one of my buddies to knock it off.”

  Vicky didn’t say anything. Admitting he had the influence to stop the shootings meant Arnie was involved. Sooner or later Gianelli or the state patrol or some other cop from some other agency would break the case wide open, and Arnie’s mother would be in her office, begging Vicky to save her son.

  But Arnie Walksfast would be alive. She turned away, flung the door open and retraced her steps down the corridors. The nurse in green scrubs glanced up from the clipboard in her hand. “Everything okay?”

  Vicky kept going.

  * * *

  SHE SAT IN the Ford, breeze blowing in her hair, aware of her heart thumping against her ribs. Why did she care so much? Another Indian, a warrior, on his way to life in prison, and there was nothing she could do. Nothing right. She had been hoping to appeal to his sense of self-preservation, and maybe she had. He knew how to stay alive, and he understood he would be dead if he talked to Gianelli.

  She turned the ignition, backed into the lot, and drove onto the street, heaviness weighing on her. There was nothing she could do except forget he had told her about the random shootings. And Dennis Carey’s murder had been different; he had pulled over and waited for his killer.

  The afternoon heat was unrelenting, a fireball falling out of the sky. She drove through town. People everywhere, wandering the streets, stacking up outside shops and cafés. How many more on the way? When she had checked the internet this morning, she’d been stunned by the number of sites on the white buffalo calf. Bloggers in Venezuela and Geneva talking about the calf. My God, would they all come? The rez could collapse under the weight. And how could Sheila Carey handle the crowds?

  She drove south on 789, where she settled behind a pickup taking its time, the cowboy behind the wheel looking about, as if to get his bearings. She wondered where the shooter had hidden in wait for Reg Hartly. She understood the truth now. The shootings were not random. Arnie had admitted his buddies had shot at Rick Tomlin to force him out of the area. And now Reg Hartly, another white cowboy who could be taking a job. Maybe Josh Barker had been a target.

  She slowed for a right turn and headed west. Looming over the road against the heat-whitened sky was a blue billboard with large white letters that shone in the sun: ST. FRANCIS MISSION. She made a left, plunged into the long shadows through the cottonwoods, and took a deep breath. The air was cooler here, the heat at bay. Then out of the tunnel and back in the sunshine as she curved around Circle Drive. Annie would have called the mission, but John O’Malley could be anywhere: visiting elders at the senior citizens’ center, stopping by to see the shut-ins, making the rounds of parishioners in the hospital. Anywhere. But the old red Toyota pickup that looked as if it had escaped from a junkyard stood in front of the administration building.

  She pulled in alongside, found her cell in her bag, and called the office. “I need some information,” she told Annie. “See if you can get the names of the people whose vehicles were shot at.”

  Annie said she would get on it, and Vicky was about to hit the end button when she remembered something else. “See if you can find out where Lucy Murphy is staying.”

  She let herself out of the Ford and made her way up the familiar concrete steps.

  25

  “SEMPRE LIBERA” DRIFTED through the office like white noise, punctuated from time to time by Bishop Harry’s voice down the corridor. Phone calls were still coming in. And, Father John had to admit, the old man had the patter down, encouraging people to go and see the white calf for themselves. So many sacred things in the world, it is good to see them.

  He finished going over the numbers for this month’s budget, checking and rechecking the columns on the laptop in the faint hope the sum might land somewhere outside of the red zone. No matter how hard he tried to keep the expenses within the mission’s income—a nebulous amount that depended on the generosity of strangers—there were always unexpected expenses. Sandy Moon’s new baby, born last week without an esophagus, flown to a hospital in Denver. Last Sunday he had taken up a special collection so Sandy could stay in a motel close to her baby, but in the end he’d had to take money out of the mission budget. The so-called budget. He laughed out loud, as if St. Francis were a business with defined income and expenses.

  He had just closed the program when he heard the scrunch of tires on Circle Drive. The noise stopped. A moment later a door slammed. There was the tap-tap-tap of familiar footsteps on the concrete steps. The wind must have caught the front door, because it cracked shut, sending a tremor through the old floor. He got to his feet as Vicky walked into the office. “Have a seat. What can I get you? Coffee? Coke?”

  “Water.” She dropped onto a side chair.

  “I can do that.” Father John went out into the corridor and took the first right into a little hallway that led to the archives and what passed for a kitchen. Nothing more than a closet, really: sink, small refrigerator, one cabinet stuffed with paper cups, a can of coffee, and an assortment of mismatched glasses. He filled two of the glasses with cold water, then added a couple of ice cubes from the freezer tray, which sent the water cascading over the sides and into a puddle on the floor. He found a towel, swiped at the puddle, and carried the glasses back into the office.

  “Annie said you wanted to see me?” Vicky took the glass he held out for her. No longer sitting; pacing in front of the window, a small, shadowy figure backlit by the sunlight. He was used to the way she liked to talk and walk at the same time. So many things about her he had become accustomed to.

  He sat on the edge of the desk and took a drink of the cold water. Even the thick old walls hadn’t kept out the day’s heat. “I spoke with Steve Mantle at Ranchlands Employment. Do you know him?”

  Vicky shook her head. “But I’ve heard of the business. They place cowboys on ranches in the area.” She sipped at her water, watching him over the rim of the glass. “Did they place anyone on the Broken Buffalo?”

  “Six cowboys in the last year and a half. Jack Imeg and Lou Cassell were the first hired. Then, last fall, Ja
ime Madigan and Hol Hammond. In April, the ranch took on Rick Tomlin and Josh Barker.”

  “Let me guess,” Vicky said. “All from somewhere else.”

  “That isn’t the only pattern. In each case, two cowboys were hired together and left together. Mantle said that was unusual. Cowboys might decide to move on, but not at the same time as the guys they were hired on with.”

  “Josh Barker? Mantle has records that Barker was hired at the Broken Buffalo?”

  “He and Rick Tomlin worked there two months.”

  Vicky swung around, walked to the door, then came back. She finished the water and set the glass down on a tablet at the corner of his desk. “A cowboy by the name of Reg Hartly has come here to find Barker. I asked Sheila Carey about Barker myself. She flew into a rage, told me to mind my own business.” She started pacing again. From the desk, past the window, to the door. Around and around. “Barker’s disappeared. No one knows what happened to him. He’s not the only one. Rick Tomlin was the main witness against my client, Arnie Walksfast . . .”

  Father John nodded. He had heard that Rick Tomlin hadn’t shown up for the trial. He told her that Reg Hartly had stopped by the mission hoping he might know something about his buddy.

  “The prosecutor tried to find Tomlin, but Dennis Carey insisted he had packed his gear and left.”

  “That’s what the Careys told Mantle about the other cowboys. Decided to move on to Montana or Idaho. Jaime Madigan’s fiancée came to the mission last winter. She was also hoping I might have heard where he’d gone. I have a call in to her now. The woman I spoke with thought I was calling with news about Jaime, which means he is still missing.”

  “Rick Tomlin. Josh Barker. Jaime Madigan. Three out of six cowboys missing from the Broken Buffalo. The others may also be missing, but no one has come looking for them.” Vicky stopped pacing and put up one hand to stop the objection he was about to make, as if she had read his mind. “I know there’s no proof that anything happened to them. Cowboys move around. Isn’t that the cowboy myth? Riding toward the sunset? What about Jaime’s fiancée? Did she file a missing person report?”