A Serpent's Tooth: A Walt Longmire Mystery wl-9

by Craig Johnson

  I navigated the furrows and tried to avoid the areas where there might be irrigation lines and a center pivot as we made our way along a rapidly flowing creek bed. Vic kept an eye out for the pickup in question.

  “What the hell are scours?”

  Henry was quicker to answer, even though his nose was still in the Book of Mormon. “Calf diarrhea.”

  “Oh, gross.” We bumped along in four-wheel-drive low, so as to do the least amount of damage to the rancher’s field. “So, I’m looking for a truck the color of butt butter?”

  “You got it.”

  “Have I told you how disenchanted I’m becoming with the romantic vision of the American West?”

  I gestured toward the limitless vista outside the windshield. “And here you are in the very heart of it.”

  I steered us across a bridge that had been made from an old freight car, a common practice in our part of the world, and pulled up to a number of strands of barbed wire with a steel sign affixed, which read KEEP OUT, PRIVATE PROPERTY, followed by TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.

  I slowed the truck to a stop and looked at the shiners riding shotgun. “Feel like doing something unlawful?”

  She cracked the passenger door open and climbed out. “Always, and all ways.”

  I was surprised that there was no padlock and watched as she pulled the lever, releasing the pole the fence was attached to and pulling it wide so that I could drive through as the Cheyenne Nation intoned from the back. “So, how did she get the black eyes?”

  Vic’s shiners had turned out to be not as bad as I’d thought, but there were still traces of a rainbow underneath her eyes. “The runaway ran over the top of her.”

  “And she did not shoot him?”

  “She was unarmed at the time.”

  The Bear grunted. “Lucky kid.”

  I drove through the opening and then watched as she started to reattach the gate, stranding herself on the other side, but then realized her mistake and quickly stepped through, capturing the pole in the loop and leveraging it shut.

  She climbed back in. “Don’t say it.”

  The trail was rough with more than a few large boulders we had to ease over, but we finally got to the ridge, a desolate spot with only a few copses of Black Hill pines, stunted and bowed from the crippling wind.

  I pulled the Bullet to the right, where there was a space between some of the ragged trees, and parked. The wind was blowing so hard that it was difficult to open the door, but once I did I snagged my field glasses from the pocket in the back of my seat. I cranked my hat down tight and stared off through the binoculars to the northwest, the direction from which the gusts seemed to be coming. I could see the fresh-turned earth where the Bakken pipeline Tim had mentioned had been bored along the surface of the land, cutting diagonally from northeast to southwest toward Wyoming. Deceivingly durable, the surface of the high plains held the marks of man almost as long as the land itself marked those same men.

  Henry drifted toward the center of the ridge, and Vic joined me at the tailgate. “NFW.”

  “It is pretty desolate.”

  The Cheyenne Nation had walked toward a small wreath of rocks to the west so I followed a broken path and stopped before entering the bowl of soft earth. From this vantage point, I could see that Henry was staring at one of the towers that Tim had mentioned. It sat at the corner of another county road near the hillside leading to the ridge. There were a few trees in the area that were making believe they were green, and it was painted to blend in. “See anybody?”

  “Yes, someone watching us with a pair of binoculars.”

  Henry, of course, didn’t need binoculars, but I couldn’t see any movement in the area, aside from a small cloud of dust on the far horizon.

  I raised my own and adjusted the eyepieces enough to see an individual at one of the windows of the tower before he darted away. Then my eye was drawn to a vehicle racing down the powdery road, but still too far away to make identification. I handed the binoculars to Vic as she joined us. “Keep an eye on that, and let me know if it’s who I think it is.”

  She raised the glasses. “How could they have found out about us so quickly?”

  The Bear pointed toward the tower and then turned and approached the dirt bowl we’d walked past. I followed him and then his gaze. There were boot prints in the area, and tire tracks where you could see they had backed in.

  His voice was low. “Why back into a place with a pickup unless you were unloading something?

  A small line of powder on the lee side of a fist-sized clump of dirt stuck with a few stalks of buffalo grass caught my eye.

  Vic’s voice challenged the wind as she called over her shoulder. “Are scours a kind of muddy yellow?”

  “Yep.”

  “It’s them.”

  I sighed. “How long to get here and up the road we came in on?”

  “At the rate they’re going, ten minutes, tops.”

  Henry’s eyes narrowed. “Not enough time to exhume what could be a body, even if we knew where to dig.”

  I walked over to my undersheriff. “Hey, have you got a lipstick on you?”

  She lowered the binoculars and looked at me. “I do, but I don’t think it’s your shade.”

  “Gimme the top, would you?” She did, and I walked back and kneeled, gently pushed a little of the white powder into the elongated plastic top, and then smelled my finger.

  “Quick lime?”

  “Yes.” I carefully put the makeshift container in my shirt pocket, started toward my truck, and called back to Henry. “C’mon, we better not let them catch us at this exact spot.”

  We set about the business of getting off the ridge, unable to hurry because of the boulders. We’d gotten to the last straight, but I was pretty sure we weren’t going to make it. We arrived at the gate, and I could see them approaching from the access road on the other side. I figured they’d meet us on the bridge, if we gunned it.

  When I got to the gate, I rolled to a stop and turned to Vic. “Undo the gate but don’t bother with putting it back; just throw yourself into the bed as I drive through.”

  “Got it.”

  She was out like a Philly flash. The Bear climbed out, too.

  “Where are you going?”

  He grinned the wolf smile. “What, stay in here and miss all the fun?”

  Henry shut the door behind him, and I watched as Vic popped the lever on the gate and threw it aside with enough force that I had no trouble driving through. I heard the two of them clambering into the bed as I got to the bridge, but the Chevy roared up the incline and halfway across before I could get that far. He slid to a stop about a foot from my bumper and leaned on the horn.

  There were four of them, two in the cab and two standing in the bed. The ones there were holding Winchester carbines while the passenger displayed a revolver and threw me what he considered to be a dangerous smile. The driver was probably the oldest of the bunch at maybe eighteen, and he popped the clutch, jumping the two-wheel-drive half-ton forward in a threatening manner.

  Evidently, they weren’t intimidated by the stars on my doors or the light bar on top.

  Advance party.

  A pack.

  I heard a clattering on the top of the cab and looked in the rearview mirror, and was treated to Victoria Moretti’s legs spread in a shooting stance, Henry next to her, leaning against the roof. I turned my eyes back to the Chevy and sat there waiting, looking at them.

  After a moment, the passenger, who had a mop of black hair falling over his face, leaned out the side and yelled, “Back up!”

  I shook my head no.

  There was a brief conference with the driver, who had the same hairdo as his passenger, only blond—must’ve been the style of the month. “We can make you!”

  I didn’t move, and the driver leapt the half-ton forward again, now only inches from the front of my truck. He revved the hopped-up engine, the exhaust brapping—no mufflers.

  The problem
with the younger generation is that they confuse horsepower and torque. Most people think horsepower, which can lead to higher top speeds, is the most important—but the thing that gets you there is torque. Neither one of us was likely to reach top speed on the limited length of the bridge, and I was reminded of Mark Twain’s adage: thunder is impressive, thunder is loud, but it’s lightning that gets the job done, even in one-mile-an-hour increments.

  I pulled my transmission selector down and inched forward in granny gear, four-wheel low. He answered by unleashing the clutch on the half-ton and crunching into my rubber-padded, traffic-pushing grille guard.

  I kept an even pressure on the accelerator, just enough to hold the three-quarter-ton in place. He was getting angrier as I held him steady, and he gunned probably four hundred horses forward, causing the rear end the Scours Express to emit blue smoke and kick its heels slightly sideways.

  Mistake.

  I waited until he’d reached the farthest point on the pivot and then nudged the broad nose of my 450-foot-pounds of torque forward.

  He had two wheels pushing—I had four.

  It was time the young men had a lesson in physics.

  Slowly and achingly, I drove him back at an angle. He slammed on the brakes, but I already had him moving and there was little chance that, with my extra weight, I was going to be stopped.

  The driver’s-side rear wheel was the first to go off, and I have to admit that I found the looks on the faces of the boys who were standing pretty amusing. I kept the pressure on and watched as they leapt from the truck onto the surface of the bridge. The Chevrolet kept going backward.

  There was a pretty heated conversation going on between the two in the cab, especially when the driver’s-side front wheel also went over the edge. I kept pushing, and the Chevy looked as though it was just getting to the point where I thought it might go over and fall on its side into the shallow creek four feet below. The conversation had reached the screaming-teenager stage when the mouthy passenger started making moves to open the door and climb out.

  It was then that I heard someone walking over the top of my truck and watched as a pair of moccasined feet stepped down onto the cowl and strode across the hood. The Cheyenne Nation placed a hand on the grille guard and then lightly leveraged himself onto the wide, wooden planks of the bridge.

  I let off the accelerator and watched as he made it to the door of the tipping truck before the kid could get it open.

  The two who had abandoned ship were standing a little ways away, still holding their weapons but unsure as to how to proceed. One started to take a step forward but then thought better of it.

  The mouthy passenger made the mistake of shoving his pistol toward the Bear, but he simply snatched it out of the kid’s hand and casually tossed it into the water. I could see the veins in the young man’s neck as he screamed at Henry, but the Bear just stood there looking at him. After a moment, the teen had to pause to catch his breath, and Henry took the opportunity to say something, which caused the driver to join the high-volume vitriol.

  The Cheyenne Nation turned to look at Vic and me, shrugged his shoulders, and then casually, almost dismissively, reached down and grabbed the rocker panel in both hands. I don’t know how much weight it was or how much effort it took, but the Chevy rose in his grip, jerked once, and then gracefully tipped over the side, landing in the mud with a tremendous splash.

  The near wheels were only a few feet from the bridge, and the dry side of the USS C-10 was a couple of feet higher than the wooden surface. The two still in the truck were scrambling to get out the passenger-side window as Vic and I joined Henry in surveying the damage.

  “I thought you were trying to save them.”

  He sighed. “Me, too.”

  The passenger’s legs and feet were wet, but the driver was soaked as their truck bucked a few times and then died in its watery grave. The passenger, who on closer inspection might’ve been Hispanic, was, of course, the first to speak. “You’re gonna have to pay for that!”

  I glanced at the pair who had been in the bed and who were still standing at the far end of the bridge, and watched as Vic, with her sidearm hanging in her hand, turned to face them.

  I swiveled my gaze back to the two U-boat commanders. “I doubt it.”

  The driver whined. “You pushed us off the bridge!”

  I threw a thumb at the Cheyenne Nation. “Actually, he did.”

  The passenger was back at it. “Well, somebody’s gonna have to . . .”

  I held up a finger. “You know, back when I was doing my initial training at the Law Enforcement Academy in Douglas, Wyoming, long before either one of you were born, one of the first things a crusty old instructor taught me about dealing with the public, and that would be you, is that we can argue as long as you’d like—and then I win.”

  They didn’t seem to know what to say to that, so I continued.

  “If you keep running your mouths, I’m going to haul the bunch of you down to Belle Fourche and throw you in jail for interfering with a law-enforcement official and his sworn duties, let alone brandishing weapons in an unlawful manner.”

  I could feel Vic looking at the side of my face; she loved it when I made up laws, and I could almost hear her wondering if there was a way to brandish weapons in a lawful manner.

  I let the dust on that one settle before sticking my hand out. “Would you like some assistance in exiting the vehicle?”

  The passenger spit in the distance between us. “We don’t need no help from you.”

  I shrugged and gave the cadre of gunmen at the end of the bridge a hard look and then started back toward my truck with the Cheyenne Nation and my undersheriff in tow as the driver called after us. “Hey, could you give us a ride?”

  I stopped and looked at Henry and Vic and then back to the kid. “Where?”

  • • •

  There wasn’t much room with all four of them in the cab with us, but at least I’d made them give up all their weapons, which were now in the toolbox in the bed of the Bullet.

  The Bear had his arms draped over the shoulders of the kids in the backseat, which included the driver of the pickup. The passenger who had brandished the pistol was seated between Vic and me, and I had to admit that I found it pretty humorous that the mouthy one, who seemed indifferent to all the trappings of authority, was completely buffaloed by my very attractive deputy. We’d been driving for ten minutes, and I wasn’t sure he’d made eye contact with her yet.

  She propped an elbow on the armrest and supported her chin in the web of her hand as she looked at him, and I could actually feel him crowding me in the seat in an attempt to put some distance between the two of them.

  I cleared my throat and decided to throw the kid a lifeline. “So, what’s your name?”

  He cleared his throat. “Edmond.” He glanced at Vic. “Eddy.”

  “Eddy what?” I asked, half expecting him to say Lynear.

  “Lynear.”

  There was a chuckle from the back, but I wasn’t quick enough in the rearview mirror to see who had thought that was funny.

  “And what are the names of the rest of your Merry Men?”

  “Well, that’s my older brother, the one that was driving the truck before it went in the creek. His name is Edgar Lynear. . . .”

  To my trained eye, they didn’t look anything alike. “The two of you are brothers?”

  He shrugged with one shoulder. “Well, more like half-brothers.”

  “I see.”

  He turned. “The other one in that corner is Merrill Lynear, and this one on this side is Joe.”

  Joe even went so far as to produce a hand on my shoulder, which I shook. “You’re a Lynear, too?”

  He nodded. Eddy stayed turned in the seat, and I could guess who he was looking at; evidently six-and-a-half-foot-tall Cheyenne warriors were safer to gaze upon than five-and-a-half-foot Italian deputies who filled out their uniform shirts in interesting ways.

  “Are you a re
al Indian?”

  Henry waited a moment and then replied, “Honest Injun.” He extended a hand to him. “I am Henry Standing Bear, Bear Society, Dog Soldier Clan.”

  Eddy shook his hand. “Wow.”

  Joe asked the next question. “Are you under arrest, too?”

  Vic laughed, and Henry’s voice took on a gentle tone. “No, the sheriff is a friend of mine.”

  Eddy turned to look at me. “You’re not the sheriff; we’ve met him and he’s got a great big beard.”

  “I’m a different sheriff, from another county—another state.” I paused a moment. “Didn’t you guys read the emblems on my truck?”

  There was no response, and a depressing thought crossed my mind. “You fellows mind if I ask you a question?” Nobody voiced an objection, so I continued. “It’s a school day; how come none of you are in class?”

  “We don’t go to school no more.”

  I glanced around at them—they looked about Cord’s age. “None of you?”

  Eddy, obviously the spokesman of the group, shook his head. “Nope, we all graduated, and now we’re the First Order, guaranteed seats in the Celestial Kingdom.” He looked out the window and went into a now familiar autospeak. “We guard the perimeter of the Apostolic Church of the Lamb of God, keeping the faithful safe: the shepherd unto his sheep.”

  “Baaahh . . .”

  He turned and for the first time made eye contact with Vic, the one emitting animal noises. “Are you an unbeliever?”

  Vic sighed. “Don’t fuck with me, kid. I’m a recovering Catholic, and we owned most of the known world when your bunch started promising people planets and wearing funny underwear.”

  Thankfully, Eddy interrupted the theological debate by raising his hand and pointing to a T in the road just beyond a plastic-flowered cross, the kind that marks vehicle fatalities—I’d seen enough of those, especially on the highways to the Rez, to last me into eternity. At the other side of the turnoff there was a girl, looking fragile and unprotected in a homemade prairie dress and bonnet, who was sitting behind a card table with what looked to be baked goods. “You take a right here.”