Death Where the Bad Rocks Live

by C. M. Wendelboe

  “Damn it,” he sputtered, wiping his face with the back of his hand. “You got me spooked with talk of some damned rocks killing people. About how folks come into this part of the Stronghold and never come out.”

  Moses chuckled. “You’re pretty brave for a war vet.”

  “Cut it out.” Clayton capped the flask, his attention still somewhere past the cracking campfire flames.

  “All right. But I never said the rocks kill people. I said men don’t come back from here once they see them. Maybe they come to the place where the bad rocks live and just decide to stay. Maybe it’s the paradise you wasicu always seek.”

  “Well, I got other places I want to live my life out, and it doesn’t include a damned desert full of rocks that kill and crawly things that bite the hell out of me.”

  “Don’t forget the mountain lion that might sneak into camp and take a chunk out of your White butt. Besides, this desert will make you rich, if what Ellis says is true.”

  “It’ll make us both rich.”

  Moses spat in the dirt. “Told you before, I don’t want any of your money.”

  “All right then. It’ll make the tribe rich.”

  “If things go as you plan.”

  “If? What makes you think they won’t? You got the mining permits approved, didn’t you?”

  Moses nodded and tamped the faint embers of his pipe on the bottom of his boots. “But I’m not so sure it was the right thing to do.”

  Clayton tossed another log onto the fire. It crackled and spit, tiny embers shooting upward into the dark, cold night like miniature meteors. He dropped in the dirt beside Moses, staring into the darkness, flames reflecting off his cold blue eyes. “Now what’s changed your mind?”

  Moses looked sideways at him, and went back to studying the flames licking the logs. “I had a vision that you treated the tribe on this mining deal like you’ve treated the people you sell whiskey to.”

  “We’ve been through this for the eleventy-eighth time—I had to raise money somewhere to get elected. And haven’t I done more for the Oglala than any other senator? And suddenly you don’t trust me?”

  Moses frowned. “That’s my problem—I do trust you. Despite what my vision tells me will happen, I trust you to do right by the tribe.”

  “That’s the spirit.” Clayton slapped Moses on the back and took a last pull from the whiskey flask for the night. “Things will be all right for all of us. Trust me.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Willie parked the Durango off the trail running along the hill overlooking Marshal’s cabin. Manny unloaded their supplies one arm at a time, the shot shoulder throbbing with the effort. Each had thrown in an ALICE pack with enough MREs and freeze-dried entrees and water to last a week, even if they didn’t kill any game for meat.

  “Sure the outfit will be all right here? They might see it.”

  Manny adjusted the hip strap on his pack and tested the weight on his shoulders. “They’re both gone over more hills, farther than I’d like to think about. Only way they’ll see your Durango is if they come back here. Marshal might, but we can live with that. He’s not a…”

  “Suspect?” Willie finished. “Hard to think of a federal judge as a murder suspect, enit?”

  Manny adjusted his holster so the pack’s hip straps rode lower. “I still don’t think he’s our man. But it is suspicious he disappeared at the moment we needed to talk with him. And Sophie driving his Suburban somewhere out here to pick him up, I’m thinking.”

  Willie let out the hip strap on his pack, as if he had gained some of the weight back he’d lost since he started falling into whatever mental abyss guilt falls into.

  They dug their heels into the loose gravel and alkaline dirt leading to Marshal’s cabin, top heavy with their packs. When they reached the shack, they took a breather and walked to the porch and bent down. He studied the tracks on the wooden planks of the porch floor. Nothing had disturbed the dust today.

  He opened the door, not expecting to find anyone. He relived that night when he’d cowered against the wall, gun on the floor beside his leg, waiting for his attacker to burst through the door for an old-fashioned western shoot-out that never happened. He vowed not to back away from such danger again on this trip.

  Two coffee cups sat on the table, dark rings crusted to the rims, and Manny grabbed the percolator atop the woodstove. He opened the lid and sniffed: old, perhaps a day, maybe more, coffee burnt, acrid. Ham and Marshal had a good head start on them.

  Willie yelled and Manny ran from the cabin as a beat-to-hell Studebaker pickup pulled up, gas can and spare tire and odd tools jostling around and bouncing off the bed as the truck bounced between ruts on its way down the hill. Janet sat behind the wheel, a terrified look etched on her face as she skidded the pickup to a stop beside the OST Dodge. Dust pelted the clean, white finish of Willie’s Durango.

  Janet flung the door open and caught herself climbing out. She used the fender to stand as she batted dust from her hiking shorts, and grabbed a small, multicolored day pack that looked like she’d bought it at Macy’s rather than Cabela’s.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Willie nodded to her ensemble. Khaki shorts that stopped just above her knees color coordinated with her too-tight pink and lavender tank top. Her Nikes looked more suited for a day trip at a tourist site than a week in the most unforgiving country in the west.

  “I’m coming along.”

  “Bullshit!” Willie motioned for Manny to adjust the straps on his ALICE pack.

  “Uncle Leon will not like that. You’re ordered to take me.”

  Willie, a resigned look on his face, looked to Manny for help. Manny shrugged. “I don’t work for your Uncle Leon, and I can’t stop you from coming. But if you hang back and can’t cut it, I’ll leave you to the coyotes. Or to that mountain lion that I heard the other night. This is no mall outing.”

  Janet’s face reddened and her lips pursed. She drew in a long breath before she spoke. “I won’t get in the way.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Manny unfolded the map and oriented his compass to the trail leading from Marshal’s cabin. Without another word, he started along the path Reuben felt Marshal and Ham would have taken. As they crossed the streambed, Janet yelled. She’d fallen into tall sage, the thick roots gouging her legs, blood dripping onto the ashen dirt. Willie squatted beside her, hefting her erect while her dimples showed through a broad grin. This is going to be one great little adventure.

  They unrolled their bedrolls that night under a sandstone overhang. Lightning, faint in the west but growing more intense, illuminated fingers of stone jutting skyward. But it wasn’t the lightning that brought rain, rain that would threaten to fill deep gullies in minutes and drown a man in moments. This was what Unc had called heat lightning. “When you see heat lightning,” Unc would say, “the Thunder Beings aren’t so angry. They just want us two-leggeds to remember they exist and can harm us at any moment. They won’t bring us a lot of rain, just enough that we don’t forget them.”

  Unc’s teachings were forever stored at the fringes of Manny’s mind, waiting for the chance to surface when Manny needed Unc’s help. Like now. Manny scooped out depressions in the dirt, like Unc had taught him to do, so that his head and shoulders were more comfortable when he slept.

  Unc’s Good Red Road had always been an example for Manny, yet he’d fought so hard to suppress Uncle Marion’s traditional teachings. The man had died penniless, in a shanty he didn’t even own on the outskirts of Pine Ridge, both legs amputated, body racked by diabetes. But Unc had been the richest man Manny had ever known, rich in the warrior spirit that lived in all Lakota, just waiting to be brought to the surface by prayer or ritual.

  “Never thought about doing that.” Willie watched as Manny finished scooping out dirt with the small folding shovel he’d strapped to his ALICE pack.

  Manny handed Willie the shovel. “I’ll let Janet in on this little trick when she gets back.”

/>   “Back from where?” For the first time, Manny realized she was gone. “She was just sitting around the fire a moment ago.”

  “She took her Glock and went to get supper. I told her she didn’t have to but she insisted. Said she wanted to pull her weight. She took off south with my GPS unit, so I know she can make it back.”

  “Shit! The last thing we need is for her to go blasting away and alert Marshal and the judge we’re on their back trail.”

  As if to punctuate his concern, a single shot bounced off canyon walls somewhere to the south, or the west, it was difficult to tell in the still night air, the sound bouncing off cliffs and spires, fading as if the Stronghold wouldn’t allow the sound to go farther. Manny struggled to hear another shot, but all that was left was silence.

  Willie grabbed his own Glock and strapped it on.

  “Where are you going?”

  “After her.”

  “She could be anywhere,” Manny reasoned. “All you’d do is manage to get yourself lost at night.”

  “Well, we got to do something.”

  “We will.” Manny tossed another branch into the fire. “As soon as our MREs heat, we’ll have supper. Hope she knows how to use that GPS unit.”

  The rain came gentle, dripping on Manny’s exposed neck. He pulled his poncho hood over his head while he retreated to the sanctuary of the overhang just as Janet yelled from over the small hill fifty yards distant. Manny thought for a moment about leaving the dry sandstone enclosure. But just for a moment, and sat dry, his hands wrapped around the warm coffee cup.

  Janet burst through sagebrush and stumbled, falling onto the wet sand. Willie ran to her and helped her up, but she threw his arm away and fell again. Willie shrugged and returned to join Manny under the overhang.

  “What you two looking at?”

  Manny warmed his hands by the fire just outside his reach. “The great hunter. Where’s supper?”

  “Missed the damned deer.”

  “Good.” Willie took off his raincoat and slipped on a hooded sweatshirt against the cool, damp air. “’Cause they’re not in season. I would have had to sign out a warrant for poaching.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “He’d have to. I’m a witness.”

  Janet stood openmouthed until Willie snapped her trance. “Get in out of the rain or you’ll get soaked.”

  She snatched her sleeping bag and day pack and scurried under the overhang. She dropped on the ground between Manny and Willie and ran her hand through her wet hair. “I’m starving. What’s for supper?”

  “What did you bring?”

  “Bring?” She looked at Manny like a cow looking at a new gate. “All I got is some Tanka Bars for energy. I figured you’d at least take us someplace where we could kill our supper.”

  Manny shook his head. “This is no slumber party with the girls.” He reached around his pack and came up with a can of Spam and a fork. “Heat it over the fire.”

  “Spam? Ugh.”

  “Squirrel, Possum, and Mice. If it was good enough for our combat troops, it’ll get you by. Heat it over the fire.”

  “And chew this when you’re done.” Willie reached into an open bag of MREs and tossed Janet a packet of gum. “It’ll keep you moving.”

  “I hate gum. Besides, I got enough energy to keep me moving.”

  “That’s not the moving I’m talking about.” Willie grinned. “It’ll keep your plumbing moving so you can at least make an effort to keep up tomorrow.”

  Janet jumped at a thunderclap that bounced off the inside of the overhang, and she looked at the rain pelting the fire outside the safety of their enclosure. “Maybe it’ll rain too much and we’ll have to go back in the morning.”

  Manny arranged his bedroll over the scoops in the sand. “Not likely. In an hour, it’ll be all soaked in and you won’t even know it had rained here at all. Tomorrow you get lesson two of police work—come a little more prepared.”

  “What’s he doing out there?” Janet, hungrier this morning, devoured the can of Spam she was too good to eat last night. Cold. She wiped the jelly packing off one cheek and motioned to Willie standing, face to the sky, thirty yards from the overhang, his trilling voice rising and falling with the motion of his arms. “Rather than wasting time, we could be looking for the judge and Marshal. The sooner we find them the sooner we can crawl back to civilization.”

  “For an Oglala, you don’t know much about your culture.”

  “I’m Sincangu,” she corrected. “And it still doesn’t answer my question.”

  Manny nodded to Willie in the clearing between two boulders. Dust swirled around him as he turned to the south and tossed a pinch of tobacco into the air. The wind took it somewhere the spirits could use it. “He’s praying to the four winds. Offering tobacco.” Always sanctify the west wind first, he heard Unc’s voice whisper from the Spirit Road. Still teaching Manny the ways. He repeated the advice for Janet.

  “Well, the west wind can stop blowing anytime. I’m sick of it. Besides, I had other things in school to worry about than my culture.”

  “Like how to get in trouble?”

  Janet grinned and dabbed at the corner of her mouth with her shirttail. “Not me. I was too smart to get caught.”

  “Like that shoplifting charge in Hot Springs? Or selling pot to that state DCI agent in Rapid City?”

  Janet tossed the can aside, but picked it up when Manny glared at her and held his hand out. She gave it to him, and he set it beside their trash from the night before. “So I got caught a few times. Ever heard practice makes perfect?”

  “So you perfected being a criminal?” Manny grabbed his folding shovel to dig a hole to bury their trash. “Hardly the makings of a good law officer.”

  “Let’s just say I was on my own during those school years. Uncle Leon convinced me that former bad people make the best police officers. That they know best how the criminal mind works. They think like their adversary and catch them.”

  “Like catching Henry Lone Wolf after he busted Willie’s truck and stole his flashlight?”

  “Just like that.”

  “Even though Henry wasn’t available to do the dirty deed?”

  “What you talking about? I caught him with Willie’s SureFire.”

  Manny shoved dirt over the dirt and patted the sand with his shovel. “I called a lieutenant I know at the Rapid City PD. I had some issues with the way they treated Henry after an arrest.” Manny left out the ass cleaning Henry had received. “And I told him Henry had broken into Willie’s truck, and about the Durango getting keyed.”

  “Is there a point to this?”

  “Henry had a previous engagement during both those times. Henry was sitting in the Pennington County hoosegow on a pissing-in-public charge. He couldn’t have been the one.”

  “All I know is that I got Henry dead to rights with the flashlight.”

  “And credit for the collar?”

  “You got it.” Janet watched Willie tuck his medicine pouch inside his shirtfront as she grabbed a roll of toilet paper and slung her canteen over her shoulder. She started for some dead cottonwood in a dry creek bed. She disappeared over the dirt bank as Willie walked back to the campfire.

  “She give up and go home on her own?”

  “You don’t want to know. Let’s take a look where we are.”

  Manny spread Micah’s wrinkled map out beside the Park Service map and weighted the edges with pebbles. “We’re close to where Reuben—and everyone else until now—thought that Moses fell to his death. No one knew for certain, it’s such a vast area. But this is where Moses often went to pray. This is where it was rumored he went missing, a mile along this trail. Maybe less.”

  “Then we better keep sharp. Last thing I want is for the next generations to think this holy-man-in-training fell to his death instead of getting shot. If Marshal or the judge is our shooter…hear that?”

  “Hear what? There’s nothing except the wind.”

  “T
hat’s ’cause you’re getting old. Listen.”

  The shifting wind brought a woman’s wail with it. “Janet,” Willie said, and turned his head into the wind. “There.” He pointed to a spot over the hill where she had disappeared with her roll of TP. Willie started down the trail and Manny had to run to keep up. Willie paused for a moment, cocking his ear, altering his direction as Janet’s cries grew louder.

  Willie scrambled up a popcorn-gravel hillside and lost his balance and slid down, and Manny grabbed his arm and helped him up. They crested the hill above Janet. She sat on the ground, her arms wrapped around her bent knees, face buried in her arms crying and eying a body ten yards in front of her.

  They half slid down the other side, and Willie dropped on his knees beside her. He wrapped his arms around her as he glanced at the man with his legs sticking from beneath a gnarled, dead cedar log. “What happened?”

  “Dead,” Janet cried into Willie’s shoulder. “I came over the hill to do my morning thing. I didn’t see him at first until I finished and got around that bunch of downed cedar. Terrible. Man must have died a slow death out here all alone.”

  “He’s not dead.” Manny squatted beside the man and rolled him onto his back.

  Janet chanced a peek around Willie. “He’s got to be dead. Look at all that blood.”

  Manny brushed the dirt and flies away from Marshal Ten Bears’s face. His breathing came slow, shallow. Manny checked his pupils: even and reactionary. But for how long? “Give me a hand here.”

  Willie left Janet and crawled to Marshal. Willie’s hand came away with dried, frothy blood, and he wiped it on his trouser leg. “Lung shot for sure.”

  Manny probed the dirt and let the sand sift through his fingers to age the blood. “Yesterday. Last night at the latest. Hard telling in this heat.” He called to Janet over his shoulder. “And you didn’t see him last night?”

  “How would I see him? It was dark.”

  “This is the way you stormed off last night when you said you were going to find something to kill for supper.”

  “Well I wasn’t looking for a man. I told you I shot at a deer.”