A Serpent's Tooth: A Walt Longmire Mystery

by Craig Johnson

  I turned back to the proprietor. “Who’s Roy Lynear?”

  She shook her head. “I guess he’s the one everybody’s been having trouble with the last few weeks. Some of his men . . .”

  She was interrupted again by the sound of the door behind me, and this time I turned with my hand resting on my Colt, just in case. The sack-of-bones trapshooter wasn’t there, but in his place was another odd-looking individual who was a hell of a lot more impressive in both stature and dress. He was a tall, well-toned Hispanic man in black jeans and a dark suit jacket, his pork-chop sideburns sticking out almost as far as the brim of his black cattleman’s hat.

  He quickly slipped it off to reveal full locks of curling, dark hair. “Hola.”

  I stood there looking down at him. “Hey.”

  “I would like to apologize.” He gestured with the hat. “My compadre learned his social graces from cows.”

  I nodded. “So, are you Roy Lynear?”

  He laughed, obviously much amused by the thought. “Oh no, I simply work for Mr. Lynear.” He extended his hand toward me. “I’m Tomás Bidarte. I am the poet lariat of Nuevo Leon.”

  “Lariat, not laureate?”

  He smiled, and it was a dazzling display, revealing some creative dentistry with more than twenty-four karats. “My poetry is more for the cantina than the parlor.”

  I took the hand. “What do you do when you’re not rhyming?”

  We shook, and his grip was like cast iron. “Work for Mr. Lynear.”

  I looked around the vaquero toward the truck with its running lights on, sitting in the half-light of the approaching night. “Well, it’s an odd time to come visiting, especially armed. Is Roy out there, because I’m dying to meet him.”

  He continued smiling, studying me. “And I’m sure he’s going to want to meet you too, Sheriff.”

  “Send him in.”

  Bidarte turned his matinee-idol profile toward the door and then back to me. “That, señor, might be a little easier said than done.”

  • • •

  The man in the back of the brand-new King Ranch one-ton diesel was testing its rear suspension—he must’ve tipped the scales at an easy four hundred pounds. He was comfortably seated in what must’ve been a custom-built La-Z-Boy throne, complete with his sheepskin slippers prominently displayed on the foot extension. He wore an oversized, expensive-looking bathrobe draped over a snap-button shirt with a large turquoise bolo tie and a pair of TCU purple sweatpants. On his head was an honest-to-God sombrero.

  “‘The harvest has passed and the summer has ended, and we are not saved.’”

  Vic and Eleanor had joined me at the edge of the wooden walkway, an advantage that made us the same height as Roy Lynear.

  “Jeremiah, chapter eight, verse two.”

  He turned his head and looked at me. “You know the word of God, Sheriff?”

  “I know entire sentences.”

  He continued to study me, unsure if I was the real deal or if I’d only stumbled upon a line of scripture, then gestured toward one of his massive legs. “Inconvenient gout; I apologize for having you come out here into the night like this, but my joints are hurting so bad I’m afraid I wouldn’t make it up those steps.”

  I watched as John Deere in a ball cap stayed on the other side of the truck bed with the shotgun in his hands.

  The massive man in the chair settled his eyes on me. “I suppose I should introduce myself—I’m Roy Lynear.”

  Vic was quick to respond. “We’ve heard a lot about you lately.”

  He studied my deputy, and I was pretty sure he was both attracted and annoyed. “Have you, now?” He glanced at the sullen one behind him and to the caballero who had propped an ornately inlaid, pointy-toed boot on the rear bumper of the chariot near the Texas plate. “From these two?”

  To my surprise, the Hispanic fellow spoke freely. “You are the company you keep.”

  The giant man laughed until he wheezed. “Tomás Bidarte here is one of the great vaquero poets. He’s in all the anthologies, aren’t you, Tom?”

  He tipped his hat. “There’s no accounting for taste.”

  Lynear issued a command. “Give us one, Tom.”

  Bidarte slipped an elongated knife from the back pocket of his jeans and pushed a button, the stiletto blade leaping out into the running lights a good eight inches. He cleaned his fingernails as he spoke.

  “Have more than you show,

  Talk less than you know.

  Lend less than you owe,

  Ride more than you go.”

  The older man shook his head and kicked a slipper at the poet. “That wasn’t one of your best.”

  “Well, Patrón, you get what you pay for.”

  Lynear gestured quickly and nodded at the man behind him. “One of my dim-witted sons, George.” He hunched himself a little forward and looked past me. “Excuse me, Sheriff. Mrs. Tisdale?”

  She took a step forward and crossed her arms. “That’s me.”

  “We haven’t met formally, but I understand there was an altercation about the exact location of some fence?”

  She glanced at George, the one who had just been dismissed. “My men said that they were restringing barbed wire near Frenchy Basin when a group of yours came up and threatened them.”

  We all stood there listening to the crickets rubbing their legs together as Eleanor’s words hung in the crisp night. I was having one of those this-could-be-happening-a-hundred-years-ago moments when Lynear turned his shoulders and glanced at his son. “That won’t happen again.” He returned his gaze on all of us. “That, I can promise you.”

  I looked back at him, his eyes sunk into the fat of his face. “You travel well armed.”

  “Oh . . .” He reached up and shifted back the brim of his enormous hat. “As you can see, we’ve spent a lot of time down on the border; Hudspeth County to be exact. Do you know the area, Sheriff?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “‘Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.’” He shook his head. “It’s a war zone down on the border—Godforsaken country—and we’ve just gotten in the habit of being prepared.” He pointed at my sidearm. “As are you.”

  I put a hand up on one of the building’s support poles and thumbed the grain of the wood. “There’s a difference between preparing and provoking, Mr. Lynear.”

  He smiled. “Are we provoking you, Sheriff?”

  “It sounds like your men might’ve been provoking Mrs. Tisdale’s men, and I’d just as soon not have a range war in the southern part of my county.”

  His eyes remained immobile as he continued to smile, and it wasn’t an attractive expression on his wide face. “Your county.”

  “Till the next general election, the people of this county have elected me to uphold the laws they deem fit to enforce.”

  “What about the law of God, Sheriff?”

  “Not particularly my jurisdiction, Mr. Lynear.”

  He actually chuckled. “Oh, that’s all part of our jurisdiction, and beside that fact, I happen to own a portion of your county, Sheriff. Almost twelve thousand acres, and as far as I know this is still a free country.”

  I sighed, suddenly tired of the man and his jingo philosophies. “Abide by the laws of the county, state, and federal government, and we won’t have any trouble, Mr. Lynear, but if you start anything down here with your neighbors you’re going to see me again.”

  He raised a hand. “I’m a God-fearing man in search of peaceful solitude in which to raise my family—I want nothing of the world, and the world wants nothing of me.” He nodded as if giving a benediction. “There is a day of reckoning coming, though, a day when all men must take a side and the freedoms of some may impinge on the heresy and Godlessness of others.”

  I let George come around the truck before I spoke, specifically to him. “You need to register this vehicle in Wyoming.”

  He looked at his father, back to me, and then gave the slightest of nods be
fore yanking open the driver’s-side door; Tomás Bidarte folded his knife and climbed in the bed with his benefactor.

  Just before George had time to preheat the coil and fire up the diesel, Vic waved and delivered one of my lines: “Happy motoring.”

  Roy Lynear looked thoughtfully at us from the bed of the truck as they backed up and pulled away in a cloud of smoke, sans a hardy Hi-yo, Silver. We watched as the big Ford skimmed out of the town proper and then took to the county road, its taillights looking like afterburners headed south.

  “That was one fucker from strange.”

  Eleanor Tisdale sighed. “Which one?”

  “Pick.”

  • • •

  It was close to midnight when we got back to Durant, and once again all the traffic lights were blinking. Across Main Street there was a newly hung large banner, orange with black trim, that advertised Friday’s big game between the Durant Dogies, whom Vic continually referred to as Doggies, and the Worland Warriors in their epic tiff—and the retiring of one Walt Longmire’s jersey and that of Henry Standing Bear, both dutifully displayed on either side of the banner.

  “Sixty-nine—really?”

  I shrugged and thought about how I hadn’t promised Nancy that I would be there. “I’d forgotten my number.”

  “Gives me ideas.” I didn’t rise to the bait, so she continued. “I bet you were popular.”

  I shrugged again. “I did all right.”

  She smiled, reading the banner as we drove underneath. “I bet ol’ number thirty-two did better.”

  I thought about the Bear and how I’d better make a call out to The Red Pony Bar and Grill if I didn’t want to face this ignominy alone. “Henry did better than everybody. He still does.”

  “I still want a corsage in the orange and black of the Durant Doggies.”

  “Dogies.”

  “What the hell is a doggie, anyway?”

  “A dogie is a motherless calf.”

  She studied the storefronts as we drove through town, her thoughts darkening like the windows. “How appropriate. Do you find it worrisome that Cord escaped from or was expulsed by a religious cult and now we have one setting up camp in our own county?”

  I glanced at her. “Our county?”

  “Yeah, well . . . I wasn’t elected, but I’m de facto.”

  “I thought you were a Moretti.”

  “Ha ha.” She poked my shoulder with an index finger. “Answer the question.”

  “Yes, I do.” I watched the buildings go by and had to admit that I liked the county seat quiet like this. “And it’s even more worrisome since Tim Berg says the head honcho up at that place in his county also goes by the name of Lynear.”

  She turned to look at me. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope, but we also don’t know for sure that our Lynear’s place is a cult.”

  “Uh-huh—that conversation had more Bible quotes than a revival meeting.” She thought about it. “You think Cord’s mother might be mixed up with this bunch rather than the one in South Dakota?”

  “Not with Sarah coming into the Butte County Sheriff’s Office and the pants Cord had on from Belle Fourche, but there has to be a connection explaining why Cord showed up here.”

  “Other than a grandmother in Short Drop who obviously didn’t know that he exists?”

  “Yep.”

  “Considering the newfound information, I think it was very politic of you to not bring up the familial connection between the interstate Lynears with Eleanor Tisdale.” She readjusted, tucking one boot under the other leg. “So, it sounds like you’re getting ready to have a wide-reaching conversation with young Cord.”

  “I am now that the county psychologist says I can.”

  “What are you going to do about Roy Lynear and his bunch?”

  I sighed. “Not a lot I can do until they do something against the law.”

  “Like walking around shoving their guns in people’s faces and cleaning their fingernails with illegal knives?” She mused on the supposed compound to the south. “Your worst nightmare come true.”

  “And Eleanor Tisdale’s, since apparently her husband sold the place to them.”

  She nodded to herself and smiled. “So, when are we going to go poke around the East Spring Ranch?”

  I really didn’t have the right, but I was curious, especially with the probable connection with the compound in South Dakota. It was also possible that I just didn’t like Roy Lynear and his gun-toting son; either way, it was important to know what was going on down there in one of the neglected corners of my county. “First thing in the morning.”

  “What do you make of the Spanish blade?”

  I thought about the man. “Doesn’t fit, does he?”

  “One severe case of badass, if you ask me.”

  “Why is that?”

  “He wasn’t scared, Walt. Considerate, yes, but not scared at all. Anybody else in that situation would’ve been just a little bit intimidated, but he wasn’t.” She waited to make the next statement after I passed the sheriff’s office and took a left on Fort. “You’re taking me home?”

  “I figured that’s where you’d want to go.”

  “Where are you sleeping?”

  “The amazingly affordable and surprisingly comfortable Absaroka County Jail.” I glanced at her. “I figure I better spell Double Tough since he’s been babysitting Cord all evening.”

  “Then what’s he supposed to do?”

  It was true that my deputy’s house was in Powder Junction, a forty-five-minute drive south. “Don’t you think he’d like to go home?”

  “Not particularly, considering that Frymire’s girlfriend is visiting.”

  I thought about it as I took a right onto Desmet. “Yeah, I guess they share a house.”

  She nodded. “A run-down, two-bedroom rental by the creek, from what I hear. What, you think we can all afford houses on what the county pays us?” We drove along in one of those silences only women can produce, a ponderous, heavy quiet. “For your information, I’m aware that you arranged the financing for my house behind my back.”

  I pulled up in front of the little gray craftsman with the red door. “I have no idea what it is you are talking about.”

  “I saw the papers.”

  I sat there for a moment and then tried a reverse in the backfield. “I may have signed something that said you were an employee in good standing with the sheriff’s department—in short, I lied.”

  She didn’t laugh but sat there studying her hands. After a moment she unsnapped her safety belt, nudged her knees up onto the seat, and, slapping my hat into the back, she slid herself across my lap. She grabbed the back of my hair and yanked it, locking her mouth over mine, and I could feel the waves of heat from her body pounding me like surf on a coastal rock.

  • • •

  I snuck in the front door of the sheriff’s office like a teenager getting in after curfew and could hear Double Tough snoring on the bench in the reception area. I gave a salute to the painting of Andrew Carnegie, a relic from when our building had been the town library, and quietly climbed the stairs past the 8×10s of all the sheriffs in our county’s history, sure their eyes were watching me as I passed.

  My deputy had dragged out a few pillows and a blanket from the supplies. The noise that he made was horrific, and I figured it was probably for the best that he wasn’t sleeping in the holding cells with Cord—the poor kid would be deaf by morning.

  I also reminded myself that tomorrow was Tuesday and that I would need to call my old boss, Lucian Connally, at the Durant Home for Assisted Living and cancel chess night if I was going to the southern part of the county to loiter with intent.

  All of these things were roiling in my mind as I kicked an empty Mountain Dew can that Double Tough had left on the floor.

  I stood there quietly as his snoring stopped, and he spoke. “You’re grounded.”

  I turned and looked at him, or rather at the lump of gray wool blanket that
passed for him. “How’s our charge?”

  “Asleep.” He shucked the blanket and blinked at me. “Chief, you’re not going to believe what we did tonight.”

  “I’m afraid to ask.”

  “You know the old TV and VCR down in the jail?”

  “Yep.”

  He smiled. “I was walking by and saw a box of tapes in that stuff that Ruby’s sending off to the church. I was feeling bad because the kid is just sitting in the cell reading his Bible like he’s in solitary confinement, so I thought, What the heck, I’ll make popcorn in the microwave and we’ll watch a movie.”

  “What did you watch?”

  “Well, it’s not like we had a lot to choose from; I mean it was church lady movies. . . .”

  I leaned against the dispatcher’s counter. “Maybe that was for the best.”

  “My Friend Flicka, the one from a million years ago.”

  “Set in Wyoming—Mary O’Hara wrote the book.”

  “Yeah, well they filmed it in Utah. . . . But that’s not the point.” He swung his legs down and gathered the covers over his shoulders like a serape. “Chief, I don’t think that kid has ever watched TV or a movie before, I mean ever.” He stood and leaned an elbow on the counter with me. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I about fell asleep every ten minutes, but that kid was glued to the screen; he laughed and cried like the stuff was happening to him right there in the chair.”

  “I guess it’s possible that . . .”

  “He watched it three times.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay; after the first time I just started watching him.” He leaned down and picked up the can I’d kicked, crushing it effortlessly in his hand and tossing it into Ruby’s wire trash can. “I hope Ruby don’t mind, but I gave the kid the tape. I tried to explain that they had these new things, DVDs, but he didn’t care. . . . You’da thought I gave him the friggin’ horse.”