Cold Dish (46 page)

George continued to sob, and I was glad that he was alive. After a few moments, I became vaguely aware of Henry as he took the rifle away from me and leaned it against the bank. He stood there for a moment, and I think he touched my arm. He continued on into the river. The voices of the Powder would continue to tell the stories they had told before I was born and would tell long after I was gone. Henry carefully picked his way on the large, flat rocks that George had had no time to look for. I watched him for a moment and then looked back in the direction of the shot. My jaw set, and sadness overwhelmed me.

I knew who it was.

The bullet had shattered the clavicle, passed through the muscle and tendons of the shoulder, and had exited through the blade, taking most of it as it went. The tissue damage was tremendous, and it was unlikely that George’s arm would ever operate properly again. His pulse was weak and rapid, his breathing was shallow, and it seemed as if he was doing everything possible to lower my odds below fifty-fifty.

We had wrapped him in the wool blanket that I kept behind the seat of my truck and had carried him back to the tailgate. He lay there, trembling from the cold of the water and the loss of blood. Shock had dulled his eyes, and the pupils were dilated as he stared into the late afternoon sky. He had lost a lot of blood in the river and continued to ooze his life out onto the scratchy surface of the gray blanket. I folded my fleece jacket around his shoulder in an attempt to compress the wound and quell the blood flow. I leaned over him and smiled with my mouth, even though my eyes refused to join in. “You’re going to be okay, George.”

Along with the difficulty in thinking clearly that accompanies shock, his jaw was still wired shut, and his lips shuddered along with the rest of him, so that it was doubly difficult to understand what he was saying. “Shoshmeee . . .”

“Yep, somebody shot you, but I shot them. You just relax, everything’s going to be okay.” I pressed on the jacket at his shoulder and calculated the miles back to Durant. If you continued down the Powder River Road to Tipperary, you could cut back up 201 and get to town faster than doubling back to 16 and the paved roads. I couldn’t help but think that time was more important than macadam. Henry returned from the front of the truck where he had gone to raise Vic on the radio. “Henry’s here. He was with me in the truck when we were trying to find you.”

“Ya te he, George.” He put his hand down on the dying boy’s chest and smiled with his whole face. “You really had us scared there for a moment.” George was bleeding and would continue to bleed until he got to an emergency room. The important thing now was to keep his mind working in a positive direction, to speak calmly, and to reassure him, so that he could counter the effects of the shock. We had to get him thinking about other things, and I truly believe I could have searched the world over and never found someone better at diversion than the man who now stood beside me. George’s life hung on Henry’s every word, and I watched as the dark eyes peered into the dilated pupils and scooped up a subject that would carry the young man to safety. “George, I need to talk to you about being an Indian . . .” He glanced toward me and whispered, “She will be here any minute.” He looked back down. “George, if you are going to live on the reservation with us I have to teach you some things . . .” We transferred hands, and he held the makeshift bandage against George’s crushed shoulder. He continued to talk to him in a hypnotic rumble. “We need to talk about finding a harmony and a wholeness within yourself that you can share with all your relations, but I need you to listen carefully because the things I am going to say to you are very important. You need to hear every word, yes?” The trembling subsided, and George actually nodded his head. “Good.” Henry continued to smile. “You are going to make a good Indian.”

I tried not to think of the rest of that old statement and pulled away to look back up the road in time to see Vic’s unit come over the hill. She barely made it through the curve where George had gone off the road, cut her truck through the opening, and pulled up alongside the Bullet. With her sunglasses, she looked like a fighter pilot; she drove like one, too. “You shoot him?”

“No.”

“Who did?”

“I’ll tell you later. We need to get him into Durant. Now.” She followed me around her truck and opened the passenger-side door, and we laid George across the backseat and trussed him up carefully with the seat belts. I looked at Henry as she rounded the truck and got in. I noticed he was holding something out to me. It was another .45-70. I stared at it for a moment, then back up to his face. His eyes were grim. We both knew the ending, and it was a bad one. “This land used to belong to the Espers . . .”

He didn’t move. “Yes.”

“You know who it is.”

He nodded and then looked off into the distance of the shot. “Yes.”

I took the bullet and stuffed it in the pocket of my jeans. “Get him in there alive, would you?”

“Do not worry about him.” He climbed in and sat on the floor beside George. He continued to apply pressure to the wound. I closed the door as he turned back to me and looked through the open window. His eyes were a warning. “Be careful.”

Vic looked at me questioningly, but I only nodded to her and slapped the side of the door in dismissal. I turned and walked back to the river and the rifle as she backed around the corner of my truck and rushed away to Durant. She took a left and continued down Powder River Road without my even telling her. I watched as the dust receded into the distance, and then the only sound was the water and a wandering band of Canada geese staging a late season getaway south. I watched them for a moment as they made their way along the water, keeping a steady pace between the darker hills on both sides of the storied river. The hills were contusion purple, and there were lengthy wounds of burnt-red scoria. It seemed like the whole valley was bleeding.

I picked up the Sharps at the cut bank and noticed a slight discoloration around the breech as I held it. It was still warm. I looked into the distance of the shot but could see nothing but rough terrain. I pulled the lever down, plucked the spent shell from the receiver, and replaced it with the live round Henry had given me. I tossed the empty into the river so that it would never be reloaded again. I crouched over the three inches of rushing water, cradled the rifle on my legs, and took a moment to wash George’s blood from my hands. The blood mixed quickly with the clear, cold water and disappeared north toward Montana.

I crossed the river and kept a straight path, even as the current attempted to drift me northward in its direction. When I got to the other side, I paused to steady myself and to breathe away the nausea that had overtaken me. I looked back at the Bullet to triangulate my shot’s trajectory, took a reading on the horizon, and began walking. I could feel the warmth of the setting sun on my back as I negotiated the clumps of sage, buffalo grass, and cactus, and I scared up a few western cottontails as I went. Just at the foothills, there was a small band of pronghorn antelope.

It didn’t take as long as I had hoped. I stood there with the rifle in both hands and looked at the elevated section of tracks marking the coal freight line’s direct path farther on east toward Gillette. It was lonely country and was a good spot, no matter what your intent, with a clear line through the wash that made for a perfect view of the river.

I kneeled down by the dark stains in the dirt and pressed my hand against the coarse texture of the land. It was sticky where blood had already begun drying into the earth. The Powder River country would accept moisture from any source, no matter what the cost. There wasn’t a lot, but there was enough. I stood up and took another look around before checking the road. There was a depression on the ground where the shooter had fallen, and I could tell from the pattern of the blood that the shot had hit left. Vasque, size nine tracks were all over the place, and as I knelt to examine one I saw the faintest glint of brass underneath a patch of sage. I went over and picked up the empty casing. There was no need for gloves or pens, so I held the spent shell up to the fading sun and looked at the dented primer and the base, which read .45-70 GOVT. I was feeling a little sick again, so I stood and deposited the shell in my shirt pocket.

I followed the blood trail back to the access road and knelt by the last splatter. In the dry dust it looked black, just like the ones at the center of the road. A vehicle had been parked here long enough to leave traces of motor oil and transmission fluid; a vehicle with a pretty wide axle spread and, from the spin, it wasn’t positraction. The tires were a narrow ranch ply, and the depressions told me it was heavy, approaching a ton at least. There was a single exhaust blow where it had been started: carbon and condensate, with a little oil mixed in. I was willing to bet it was an older truck, and I was also willing to bet that it was green.

The shadows were lengthening, and I had someplace to go. I worked my way back across the Powder and to my truck, leaned against the bed, and thought about what was going to happen in the next few hours. My stupor was broken by the radio.

Static. “Come in, Unit One.” Static and a worried, “Walter, are you there?”

I swallowed, reached in, and grabbed the mic. “Yep. What’s the word on George?”

Static. “They made it in; he’s at the hospital right now.”

“Alive?”

Static. “Yes. Ferg took the Espers over there just a few minutes ago. Turk is getting ready to leave now, on his way out to you.”

“Don’t send anybody out. I’m on my way in, but I’ve got to take care of a few things.” I waited for a moment. “Is Lucian there?”

Static. “I think he’s still in the back with Bryan.”

“Will you get him for me?”

As I waited, I thought about how personal and ugly things had gotten over the last forty minutes. A breeze picked up a little in an attempt to scour the countryside. I wished it all the luck in the world. Static. “What the hell do you mean don’t send anybody?”

I smiled. “Good to hear your voice, old man. How’re you doin’?”

Static. “You woke me up to ask me that?”

I took a deep breath and laid the Cheyenne Rifle of the Dead on the seat. “Lucian, do you remember back when Michael Hayes killed himself?” A long pause.

Static. “What the hell does that have to do with the price of tea in China?”

“What kind of gun did he use?” There was another long pause.

Static. “Son of a bitch.”

 

There were clouds at the mountains, and the snow pack reflected the sour-lemon sun into one of the most beautiful and perverse sunsets I had ever seen. The clouds were dappled like the hindquarters of an Appaloosa colt, and the beauty kicked just as hard. The head wind rattled the bare limbs of the cottonwoods as the longer branches swayed, and the remnants of grass and sage shuddered close to the ground. The buffeting of the wind against the truck reminded me that I had lost both of my jackets.

I started at the beginning, working with the most innocent facts and making my way toward the most damning. I thought about the history first. No one knew exactly why Michael Hayes had killed himself. I was just a teenager when it happened, but I remember her saying that he had killed himself in the tack shed. Someone at the time had said he had done it with a large-caliber rifle, and anyone who knew Mr. Hayes would be happy to tell you he was not the type to take half measures. I remember someone making the statement that his brains had been scattered all over the walls.

I thought about the night I had gone to her house for dinner, and how she had made me leave the rifle by the door. Could she have been responding to the weapon itself? I remembered how the dog had continually looked at the door that evening. Could he have seen the Old Cheyenne?

I thought about the Vasques, size nines, and about holding those lengthy, supple feet in my hands. I thought about how she was only a head shorter than me, and how that sandy hair hung past her shoulders. It could have easily been she in the early morning light at Dull Knife Lake, and it would have been easy for her to carefully wind her way through the twisted branches at the second crime scene.

I looked longingly at the bar as I passed. The lights were on, and there were a few aged pickups parked in equal distance around the building; in Wyoming, even trucks have personal space. Dena was in there, fleecing the local cowboys out of their $163 a week. I guess with the current events, she had decided to bag the Las Vegas tournament and take care of some of the local talent. It was well past the end of the working season; for some of the cowboys it would be the last check they would see until things picked back up in the spring. It would be a hard winter for them too, but for now, they were having fun losing their money to Dena Many Camps. I envied them the privilege.

 

When I got to Portugee Gulch at the Lower Piney, the gate to the house was open. I picked up the rifle and listened for drums, bells, or voices of any kind, but the only sound was the wind as it swept down, undulating along the foothills of the mountains. I stepped out of the truck, and the halogen spotlights of the courtyard tripped on. It took me a second to remember how they had done the same thing when I had brought her home a couple of nights ago. The red shale crunched under my feet as I approached the house. When I got to the door, it was unlocked. I pushed it all the way open and looked in at the empty living room. Things were a great deal as they were when I had made my hasty departure the other night. The blanket was still crumpled on the sofa, but the fire was dead and cold. I thought about the dog and looked behind me. I listened very carefully as I glanced across the openings of the archways to the dining room and looked down the hallway that led to the kitchen. This was where I had seen him the first time, but the only sound was the wind in the courtyard and a soft whistling coming from the still open flue of the fireplace.