I drew up beside him with the thought that the Hanging Road was the Crow path to the other side and referred to the horizon-to-horizon bow of the Milky Way in the nighttime sky. “I sure hope not.”
His wide hand lifted and a finger pointed down the hill into the whiteness. “They have left the trail and are now going across Paint Rock Creek.”
“Then what?”
His breath condensed, and it was as if Virgil was exhaling clouds. The twin heads rose, and I knew he was looking at the top of the Bighorn Mountains.
“Up.”
14
Whiteout.
Not only did it sound as if I were hearing through cotton, now it looked like it, too.
The falling snow had increased to the point where we were now in a true whiteout—not the two to three inches an hour sometimes mistaken for a whiteout, but the honest-to-goodness, mountain-effect, windless blizzard where you couldn’t differentiate between the air and the ground. Visibility was cut to less than twenty feet, and the only thing that kept us going was Virgil throwing his war lance ahead and then the two of us following.
He’d made me stop and put on my snowshoes again, but he still seemed to be punching through the drifts faster than I could walk over them.
I knew it was a quarter of a mile from Solitude Trail across the creek and through the meadows to the falls and the ascent inclines that led up the west ridge of Cloud Peak. As near as I could tell, even though it felt as if I were still falling forward, we were on the flat and approaching the first climb.
Virgil tossed the lance ahead of us, and I watched as the feathers and deer toes spiraled with its trajectory. We walked after it, and he trailed a hand down and picked up the lance again.
“We used to use snowballs when I was growing up out on the Powder River. Everyone in this country has lost someone to these kinds of conditions.”
He stood and inclined his head upward toward the cliffs and ridgeline I couldn’t see. “Why do you suppose my great-grandmother was the one they sent to fetch me from this life?”
I should’ve guessed; it seemed that all he wanted to talk about was his theoretical impending death, but I was amazed at his ability to distract himself from the exhaustion that was continually causing my chin to stab my chest. I sighed. “I don’t know, Virgil.”
“You would think that they would’ve sent someone I knew—someone I’d met.”
He turned and looked straight at me. “Which leads me to believe that she was not really the one sent to take me to the Beyond-Country.” He shook his two heads. “What is it the Cheyenne calls it?”
“Calls what?”
“The afterworld.”
“Henry and a friend of his, Lonnie Little Bird . . . they call it the Camp of the Dead.”
“Yes, that’s it.” He gestured with the lance. “We can climb beside the falls—there.”
I looked up but could see only vague shadows through the amber lenses of my goggles. I began thinking that perhaps they were more of a hindrance than an asset, so I lowered them and was immediately blinded. I yanked them back in place. “Whatever you say, Virgil. I learned a long time ago that you don’t argue with the Indian scout.”
He nodded. “It gives me hope.”
I blinked, aware that I was becoming more and more confused. “What?”
“That it was my great-grandmother who came for me. When they’re serious, I imagine that they’ll send someone I know.” His head was very close to mine as he hunkered down to stare into my face, and it was as if he was blocking out the rest of the world. “I’ve thought about this, and I think they should send my wife. Don’t you think that’s a good choice?” I could smell the Mallo Cup on his breath and maybe even a little of the bourbon he’d poured onto the flaming log. “You don’t look so good, Lawman. White—whiter than usual.”
I laughed and converted the next series of teeth-chattering shivers into a nod. “I’m cold and kind of tired, but I’m all right.”
He bent down and unstrapped my snowshoes. “You won’t need these for this part, but you’ll need them farther up.” I stepped off them like a dutiful child, and Virgil drove the butt ends into the snow next to the trail; it looked as if someone had been buried there head first. “This will help the Cheyenne and the Arapaho find you.”
“I thought you said I was going to need them.”
He turned his great bulk toward the rocks. “We will get you another pair.”
“How?”
He ignored me, and I gestured toward the granite escarpment with my chin. “Up?”
He brushed away some of the snow to reveal a good foot-and handhold at his shoulder level—it must have been where the others had gone. “Up.”
Even with the expedition pack on his back, he had no trouble and disappeared into what the old-timers called a buttermilk sky. I made the mental note to remember where he placed his hands and moccasins, aware that in my depleted condition, his judgment was better than my own. After the first shelf there was a gully, which made for easier climbing, and I just used the giant’s prints as footholds.
A few times I could see the cairns jutting from the snow that pointed out the classic route to Cloud Peak, and we followed them when they were visible, taking the lesser drainage along the base of the southwest ridge. The climb became real and more strenuous as we got to the northeast ridge and continued east and up, ever up.
I stopped by one of the rock pillars to take a breather. Virgil continued on, first blending into the falling snow and then disappearing. “Virgil.”
There was no response.
“Virgil!”
I was just beginning to think that my hearing was going again when his voice drifted back from above. “Who would you want to see? If someone were to show up to guide you to the Beyond-Country, who would you choose?”
I shifted my weight; luckily the dry-stacked stones stayed solid, probably frozen together. “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”
“You should be, Lawman.”
We fell into a steady, silent rhythm and arrived at the first scree field where there was a large overhang looking like the capsized hull of a ship.
There was a bit of light that just penetrated the veil of low-flying clouds and I thought that maybe those last horizontal rays of the sun were defining the highest portions of Cloud Peak and Blacktooth and Bomber mountains even though we couldn’t see them. I thought about the rays’ warmth, how it felt when they left the sky and you forced yourself further into your sleeping bag. I was thinking about all of these things as we traversed the ridge and followed the trail that led toward the vast boulder field that rose above us like the fallen city of Dis.
As near as I could tell from the voice that echoed back to me from the cirque, Virgil was reading from the Inferno, the words sometimes drifting back to me through the storm.
“In that still baby-boyish time of the year,
when sunlight chills its curls beneath Aquarius,
when nights grow shorter equalling the day,
and hoar frost writes fair copies on the ground
to mimic in design its snowy sister . . .”
Virgil’s voice lulled me into a stupor, and I found myself trudging along allowing the cold and snow to envelop me like cotton ticking. I was asleep on my feet, and the boy’s dreams once again became my own.
The almost-man stops the truck near an old wagon with a rounded top alongside a creek bed, high in the mountains. He flings the door open and yanks the boy out by his arm.
Skidding in the gravel as he falls, the boy looks around but there is no one else there. He stays without moving, judging the distance between them and thinking of what he should do, but his mind is like an empty sack—the only thing he can think of is a joke another boy told him on the playground. What is it when an Indian kills another Indian? Natural selection.
He had made up his mind to not give him the satisfaction of his tears; instead, he will be a warrior—what is the worst this almost-man can do to him?<
br />
I ran into Virgil’s back again.
I straightened my hat and, coming back from walking sleep, fumbled for my words. “Why’d you stop?”
We were in the shelter of a large crevasse, the blowing snow having arched a bridge over us, providing sanctuary in a false cave. “Someone is up ahead.”
In both a physical and metaphorical sense, I froze in my tracks. I tried to look around the White Buffalo, but visibility was limited and I couldn’t see anything, not even shadows. “How far?”
His voice was quieter than it had been. “Not far.”
I slipped the binoculars up and scanned the area ahead as he leaned against one of the rock walls. After a moment, I tracked something a couple of hundred yards ahead, something darker within the white. It disappeared, so I kept the binoculars on the area and waited. After a moment the fog and snow thinned a bit, and the outline reappeared; I quickly readjusted the power on the Zeisses.
“It’s a cairn.”
“A what?”
“One of these piles of rocks we’ve been following that mark the trail.”
He looked back at the scree field that tilted upward to the right. “No, there’s something else.”
I squinted across the incline with its thousands of pebbles, stones, and boulders. I was looking for a shape, a shape different from the ones I was seeing. I continued to pan my way up the sides of the cliff and across the horizon, dipped down along the valley that led toward the east face and the Wilderness Basin, and lowered the binoculars again. “I don’t see anything human.”
“Huh.”
“Virgil, there’s nowhere else for him to go. He’s boxed himself in on all sides.” I slung the rifle farther onto my shoulder and jammed my hands into my pockets for extra insulation. “Any other direction is a drop-off of a couple of thousand feet.” I could feel the bone in my pocket, and the burden of it was as great as the conditions. Here I was risking Virgil’s life, and he didn’t know that there was any connection with my chase and his family.
I’d just about committed myself to telling him the truth when he spoke. “My grandson.”
I didn’t look at him. “What?”
From the direction of his voice, I knew he was staring down at the side of my face. “I had a grandson, the son of my boy.”
The women in my life have told me that I am the singularly worst liar ever. They also say that this is one of the reasons that they love me. I suppose it was that and the fact that I owed the man that I decided to do what I normally did in situations when I had cataclysmically bad news for somebody I cared about—I dissembled. “What happened to him?”
“I don’t know.”
The crusted snow had built up to where I was feeling like a living, breathing snowman. I coughed and could feel something liquid in my chest. In need of some type of movement, and because I wasn’t willing to take my word over his, I brought the binoculars up to my eyes again, even going so far as to lift my goggles onto my forehead and to pull the balaclava down around my throat. “What was his name?”
The muffled quiet surrounded us. “Owen, his name was Owen White Buffalo.”
I concentrated on the aperture and stayed as still as I ever have in my life. “Did you ever meet him?”
I could feel the steady vapor of his breath on the side of my face. “Yes.”
“When . . .” I tucked my chapped lips into my mouth. “When was that?”
“I was taking care of him many years ago. I had periods when I wasn’t in prison or in the hospitals.” He chuckled. “Sometimes even when I escaped.”
“Uh huh.” The scree field was more visible now, and rather than face him, I continued to look through the binoculars; it was safer there.
He shifted his weight, and I could feel the bear fur brush against my shoulder; it was almost like having a grizzly for a spotter. “I was caring for him on a Sunday afternoon. His mother and father went to Billings, and I took him fishing; we had a deal, and I made him play chess with me the night before. It was one of those warm days at the end of the Hunter’s Moon when the leaves have turned but before the first snowfall—a day that seems to make the promise that winter will never come.”
“Indian Summer.”
“Yes.” He paused for a moment and then continued speaking into my ear. “He was tenderhearted—didn’t like putting the hook through the worms. We’d used up all the bait because he had set the worms free, and he didn’t want to go back to the bar at the landing to get more. I made him go with me in the truck, but he wouldn’t go in.”
I swallowed and lowered the binoculars.
“When I came back to the truck, he was gone. I remember the seat cover; it was one of those saddle blanket ones that you can buy anywhere.”
He wasn’t looking at me any longer but had his eyes focused on the snow.
“I remember the weave of the fabric—what it looked like with him not there, the depression in the seat.” The great bear head lifted. “It was the last time I ever saw him.”
It seemed like time was holding its breath; I could feel the pressure on my lungs and against my eyes, and it was almost as if I was back underwater.
“I don’t know why they didn’t send him. I know that he’s dead. Maybe it’s because he’s not with my people; perhaps his spirit is uneasy and they can’t find him—maybe he can’t find me.” I couldn’t see his eyes under the maw of the grizzly mantle, and the only part of his head that was truly visible was his jaw and the scar that dissected the side of his face like an erosion in an emotionless desert. “If that’s the case, then his body will have to be returned to my people, so that someday I might see him again.”
It was at that moment that the Crow turned and stepped outside the safety of the crevasse, and I heard the only other steady sounds I’d been able to hear besides the voices since I’d crawled out of the pond—two three-thousand-feet-per-second rounds passing through Virgil’s body.
Thwup.
Thwup.
It took a second for my dulled wits to understand what was happening, but when I did, I threw myself into him in a behind and to the side body block, forcing him onto the snowbank to our left. “Damn it to hell!” I yanked the rifle up as I lay over Virgil and, closing my finger around the trigger, trained the sights on the overhang and the ridge.
I played the Sharps along the horizon and could make out just the slightest aberration on top of the outcropping—the outline of something that just didn’t look right. I waited and hoped he would shoot again and miss so that I could be sure that he was where I thought he was. I saw the muted muzzle flash along with the spectacular illumination of the snowflakes between us as another round buried itself into the snow alongside Virgil.
I aimed at the exact spot where I’d seen the four-point flare, squeezed the trigger, and the big-bore kicked. I was certain that if I didn’t kill him, I hit part of him. I jacked the lever action, replaced the round from the butt stock, and slammed it home, placing another round at the ready.
I held the sights on the exact spot where I’d fired. If he was still alive, he might try for another, but if he was smart and ambulatory, he’d move. There hadn’t been much of him revealed, but even a fragment shot off the edge of the rocks would’ve done the trick.
I lifted my head a little and became aware of the beer-barrel chest of the giant Crow rising and lowering. “Virgil?”
He coughed, grunted, and then strangled out a laugh. “I told you I saw something.”
“How bad are you hit?” I adjusted my weight so that I wasn’t lying on him, then reacquired my target as much as the whiteout would allow.
His voice was strange. “Bad enough—don’t let him shoot me again.”
“I promise.” I kept my eyes on the rimrock.
I noticed that my shivering had stopped and that my mind was now relatively clear, evidently the side effect of every bit of adrenaline in my body being dumped into my nervous system. I wondered abjectly how long the high octane would last.
> His words were slurred. “Did you get him?”
“I’m not sure.”
There was a pause. “I would like to think that you got him.”
“Me, too.” There was no more movement on the granite shelf, and if I hadn’t gotten him, he’d moved to another spot or retreated. I thought again about the old maxim that had crossed my mind when Raynaud Shade had fired on me back at Deer Haven Lodge: “The first one to move is the first one to die.” Shade held the advantage in that I wanted to check Virgil’s wounds and possibly move him to the overhang ahead, but I had to be sure that we weren’t drawing fire while I did it.
So, I waited.
“How do you feel, buddy?”
He grunted again. “Not so bad; I think only one got me good. The other one deflected and climbed up my chest and face.”
The original 55-grain lead-core round had a propensity to fragment at the cannelure at certain ranges, but that was crazy. “A tumble round? I haven’t seen that since Vietnam—they haven’t made those since ’67. You must be imagining things.”
“It climbed over my face, so I think I would know.”
I suppressed a smile. “Sit tight, and I’ll take a look at you.”
He was breathing regularly, talking, and even joking, so I figured our situation must not be too bad. Trying to carry the monster to the overhang was going to be the hard part; as near as I could estimate, Virgil White Buffalo probably tipped the scale at almost four hundred pounds.
I hoped his legs worked.
I growled in my throat, knowing every passing minute wasn’t doing the big Indian any good. “Virgil, I’m going to check you and then try and move us to that overhang.”
“I would like to sit up.”
“Okay, here we go.” I lowered our only defense into my lap and turned, watching in amazement as the giant pushed off with one arm and rolled up to a sitting position. He turned to look at me, and the effects of the .223 round were evident. The bullet had ripped up over the surface of his jawbone, had continued across his cheek, and deflected from the ridge of his brow toward his hairline. The wound was deeper at the side of his face where the distended tissue was opened like a flap, and the majority of the blood was coming from there. The socket was already swollen but appeared operable. “Can you see out of that eye?”
Walt Longmire 07 - Hell Is Empty Page 20