The Highwayman: A Longmire Story (12 page)

Mike Harlow.

“Boy, you guys sure live dangerously.”

With the tunnel still blocked, Sam, Kimama, and Rosey were taken south to Riverton, while Coleman, the tanker driver, was brought north to Thermopolis.

Both occupants of the Toyota were concussed, but other than a sprained neck on Kimama and a broken wrist on Sam, they would be fine. The truck driver had a broken leg and nose along with some other complications but would likely be all right, too. Which left us with Rosey, who had whiplash, a dislocated hip, two broken ribs and a broken collarbone, three shattered fingers on her left hand, and a black eye. All in all, I thought she’d gotten off easy.

With blankets layered over top of us, we had waited
in the shelter of the middle tunnel as we watched the EMTs load the wounded, all of us drinking strong coffee provided by the Shell station in Shoshoni. Mike Harlow had assisted and then stood a little away, watching the snow collect on the Toyota still sitting in the opening between the tunnels.

“Why?”

It took a second, but the trooper finally turned to look back at Henry and me. “What.”

“The radio calls, why?”

He took a deep breath and pulled his slicker apart, and I could see he was dressed in the same sort of clothes I’d seen him in a few days ago. “It was pretty easy. I used a minimal power setup, a scanner with a mic, and hooked it up to a trunking device of my own. I used the tower up there as my transmitter—it’s only a half mile from my house. If anybody had tried to triangulate, they would have just come up with that tower at the top of the hill.”

“I didn’t ask how—I asked why.”

He scuffed his boot on the road and walked closer. “I was watching from my place up the canyon and saw the wreck and thought you might need some help.”

“That’s not the question I asked.”

He popped the flat brim of his hat back and shot me a glancing look. “He was my TO, but he was more than that. I’d been back from the military a few years and was working full time at screwing up my life when I put in with the HPs. I was lucky and got Bobby.” He shook his head. “One hell of a human being. He helped me straighten myself out and get my shit together in a major way.”

I stared back at him but said nothing.

The retired trooper took a step out into the snow, looking up and allowing it to gently strike his face. “He never stole that money, and they treated him like crap over it, never let him live it down. Then, when he died . . .”

“How did he die?”

Harlow laughed and then gestured toward the wreckage in the tunnel. “You just saw an encore performance of it.” His arms dropped, and he turned away. “Him and Kimama had this thing going, and she’d come up here to spend a little time with him in the evenings.”

“Even when she was babysitting Rosey?”

He turned, nodding his head. “Yeah, he treated that little girl like she was his own, and he’d’a married Kimama except for that asshole husband.” He looked back at the crumpled Toyota. “She was driving this
crappy Buick station wagon, about as useless as that piece of shit there—stalled out at the same spot, right at the north opening of that tunnel.” He paused, collecting his thoughts—or his passions. “Bobby Womack was the bravest and best man I ever met.”

“So you wanted to clear his name?”

He turned, savagely this time, a finger pointed at us. “At least keep the legend alive.” The hand dropped, and he looked back over his shoulder at the EMTs as they loaded Rosey. “I figured if I made a campaign of it they’d just write me off as some disgruntled retiree. I knew that if Kimama told the story and Rosey remembered, they could clear Bobby. He didn’t kill himself, and they were the only ones. He deserved better.”

I threw a thumb over my shoulder. “So does she.”

He watched as they collapsed the legs on the gurney and pushed Rosey into the van headed for Riverton. “What would you have done? That tanker came around that curve at seventy-five, eighty miles an hour. . . . Everything you love sitting in that conked-out Buick.” He turned to look at us again. “What would you have done?” He waited for an answer, but neither of us had one. “I didn’t want it to end like this. I never wanted anybody to get hurt, you’ve got to believe me.”

“I do.”

He took a deep breath and studied me. “You do?”

I nodded. “I don’t approve of your methods, but I’ll forgive you for your motive.” I sipped my coffee. “That’s the problem with actions like this, you never know where they might end—or who might get hurt.”

One of the EMTs approached, but then, seeing the seriousness of the conversation, stopped about ten feet away, glancing between Harlow and me. “Sheriff Longmire?”

I answered without looking at him. “Yep?”

“Ms. Wayman says we can’t take her until she gets a chance to talk with you.”

“Okay, I’ll be right there.”

Dismissed, he hurried back toward the van. I started after him, Harlow’s voice carrying to me in the echo chamber of the tunnel. “You’re not turning me in?”

I stopped and tipped my hat back. “I don’t see what would be gained by it.” I pointed at the Toyopet Crown. “Anyway, you saved us all by helping to push that damn car out of the tunnel.”

He was silent for a moment and then did a quick double take at the import. “I doubt I was much help pulling
on the door pillar, but at least I got the wheel turned and pointed straight.”

I waited a moment before taking a step toward him. “No, I mean before, when you were at the trunk helping push.”

He made a face. “What are you talking about?”

I looked at Henry, but he kept his head down and ignored us. “When you came through the tunnel . . .”

He pointed again at the debris-strewn north tunnel, where they were just now using a brace of tow trucks to pull the wreckage from the opening at the far end. “
That
tunnel? Hell no, I came around the path at the other side of the guardrail.” He chortled derisively. “No human being could’ve walked through that.”

Unsure of what to say, I turned and moved toward the EMT van as Henry followed, and paused only to ask, “Did you . . . ?”

“What?”

I stared at him as we continued walking. “Did you see . . . ?”

“See what?” He continued to sip his coffee, not making eye contact with me.

I stopped. “The . . .”

“The what?”

I stood there for the briefest of moments and then continued on toward the van and Rosey. “Nothing.”

 • • • 

“How do I look?”

I leaned in over the gurney. “The black eye is very becoming. Unfortunately, it’ll probably be the first thing that heals.”

She smiled, and I could see a little blood tracing her gums. “Thank you.”

I brushed away the sentiment. “Didn’t do anything—at least nothing like you.”

“Are they all right?”

“Yep, they’re fine. Already on the way to Riverton.” I started to straighten. “Where you should be going right now.”

I watched as the blanket bulged where she tried to reach out to me with her good hand. “Thank him for me?”

“Who?”

“The trooper.”

I laughed. “Harlow? You’re lucky if I don’t punch his lights out.”

“You know who I mean.”

I stared at her and then glanced at the Cheyenne Nation, who leaned against the inside of the van, still sipping his coffee.

“We’ve got to get rolling.”

I looked up to see the EMT connecting an IV to Rosey’s good arm as two more medics waited at the back doors. “Right, right . . . We’ll get out of the way.”

The Bear and I backed out of the van as I gave Rosey’s good hand a quick squeeze and then watched as they piled in and closed the doors, switching on the lights and siren and heading south toward Riverton Memorial Hospital.

As we turned and walked back, we saw that they had successfully pried the wreckage from the north tunnel and had dragged it back a good forty feet to where the roadway was now clear. “I guess we can get to my truck now.”

Walking through the slushy section between the tunnels, the Bear trailed his hand along a stem of grandfather sage, stripping the leaves from it and holding them up to his nose to smell. “I vote we stay in Thermopolis and head home in the late morning.”

“Agreed.”

Our footsteps echoed against the black, scorched granite of the tunnel walls as we approached the opening, our boots sticking to the surface of the still-warm asphalt.

The stench was tremendous, so it was good to get to the open air on the other side, making it all that much more puzzling when Henry extended an arm and stopped me just as we stepped out onto the thin layer of snow, stained red, green, and black from the leaking wreckage.

I looked down at the back of his fist against my chest and then at him.

He thumped the fist against me again, holding it out as if it held something. “Toss this into the tunnel and then say your piece.”

I opened a hand under his, and he dumped the sage leaves into it.

“Always have incense.” He started off toward my truck, turned slightly as he went, and looked back at me. “You can tell Heeci’ecihit you understand him, if you think it means anything to him.”

I stood there for a moment watching him go and then thought about just tossing the leaves and following, but then I remembered Kimama’s warning that I needed
to respect the beliefs of people who had been in this part of the world thousands of years before mine.

Turning back, I planted both feet and made ready to speak when I noticed the same great horned owl sitting on the rocks above the opening of the tunnel. “Well, hello, you. I would’ve thought that all that sound and fury would’ve driven you off.” His large head turned, and the great golden eyes looked down at me. “I don’t suppose you’d like to deliver a message, would you?”

He only blinked once and continued to watch me.

“I guess I’ll have to do it myself.” Gazing into the tunnel, I cleared my throat and called out, “Heeci’ . . . Heeci’ecihit.” Giving up on the Native pronunciation, I dropped it and just spoke. “Bobby, if you’re in there, and I don’t think you are, then, um . . . thanks.” I took another step forward and looked around in the scorched darkness. “You did good. You always did good, but it’s over now and you can move along.” I tossed the sage leaves in, a few of them sticking to my hand, and stood there looking into the darkness. “And here I am, talking to an empty tunnel.”

Shrugging, I turned and started to walk away as a single 1888-O Hot Lips Morgan silver dollar fell out of the darkness; it bounced and rolled toward me, stopping
on the thin layer of new snow and then falling over faceup just as the great horned owl unfurled his prodigious wings and batted them twice before sailing over my head and gliding up the canyon out of sight.

Now, a lot of people might believe that it was something else that caused what happened next, but I’m firmly of the belief that the concussion from the impact of the two vehicles and the subsequent explosions must’ve loosened their resting place, as close to a thousand of the same coins cascaded from the ceiling of the tunnel like a jackpot, bouncing and rolling in every direction.

At least that’s our story, the owl and
me.

Craig Johnson
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of the Longmire mystery series, which has been adapted for television by Warner Bros. as the hit show
Longmire
. He is the recipient of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for fiction, the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award for fiction, the Nouvel Observateur Prix du Roman Noir, and the Prix SNCF du Polar. His novella
Spirit of Steamboat
was the first One Book Wyoming selection. He lives in Ucross, Wyoming, population twenty-five.

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