Badlands (17 page)

Du Pré moved quickly toward the edge of the cap, where he thought the slit he had gone into began. His moccasins held to the rock. They almost felt sticky.

Du Pré went down on his belly and edged toward the lip and at an inch a minute he poked his head out. Then he turned his eyes side to side.

Waters roiled, thick with mud.

Du Pré looked at the rocks below.

A man sat there, shivering. He held a light assault rifle. The man was looking around, slowly.

“Above you, Mike!” someone screamed.

Du Pré jerked his head back and rolled to a dip in the stone. An automatic rifle ripped and slugs whacked into the lip of the cap of rock. Some went right overhead, going
crack!

Du Pré wriggled backward, and then he stood and ran for the far, north end of the capstone. He jumped over a few shallow small pools. Looking down, he saw the stars reflected in one. He got to the edge and fell on his belly and wriggled to the lip and looked down.

The waters were sinking into the earth.

“Over here!” someone shouted, back toward the other side of the rock.

Du Pré swung his legs over the lip and slid down, holding the rifle high overhead. The scarp wasn’t steep and it was very wet. Du Pré left only a little skin on it. His feet hit the pavement stones at the bottom and he crouched and turned.

No one was there.

Du Pré ran across the watercourse. There was another narrow slit in the rock. He went into the deep shadow. The cleft went through and out the other side. Across another wide flat pan there was another cleft. Du Pré dashed for it.

A helicopter whacked overhead, a searchlight stabbed down from it. Du Pré trotted through the cleft, a good four feet wide. The helicopter moved off to the south. Du Pré splashed through a pool of water. He went out the other side of the stone.

Du Pré stopped.

His cruiser was sitting there. A cigarette glowed in the front. Du Pré walked to the car and got in.

“You don’t dance so good,” said Benetsee. “Here, have something to drink.”

D
U
P
RÉ PARKED IN
the tall grass near Benetsee’s cabin. The old man had sung on the drive home, his head hanging, his cracked voice gathering strength and then fading away. The words were in a language Du Pré didn’t know.

Du Pré thought that he had heard drumming, but then it could have been the tires on the road.

They sat in the car and Benetsee sang.

The old man stopped and raised his head and grinned. He held up his hand. There was a deep gash across the back of it, and Du Pré could see tendons white against the dark red wound.

“I take you to the doctor,” said Du Pré. He reached for the key in the ignition.

Benetsee laughed.

“Needs new flesh,” he said. “Me, I will take care of it.”

Benetsee opened the door and got out, yawned and shook himself. He went to the cabin door.

Pelon opened it. The cabin had been dark.

Du Pré got out. He reached under the seat for his plastic flask of whiskey. He had some and rolled a smoke and another for the old man. He lit both of them and walked to the cabin and up the two steps to the sagging porch. Pelon opened the door again. The night was cold, but inside the cabin it was warm. A fire raged in the old woodstove, the flames danced behind the isinglass windows in the door.

Benetsee sat at the little table. He had a basin of water and a rag and he bathed his wound and he sang.

He put his fingers into a steer’s horn bottle and got a gob of dark jam. He smeared this on the wound and he sang.

Pelon lit a small twist of sweetgrass and the smoke curled up, pungent and holy.

“One of them big Band-Aids,” said Benetsee. Pelon got a huge one from a first aid kit under a badger’s skin. He peeled away the paper wrapping and took the plastic covers from the stickum and put the big patch over Benetsee’s hand.

“Whiteman’s Band-Aids, duct tape,” said Benetsee, “they don’t do much right, but them I like.”

Du Pré laughed. He went to the table and picked up the steer’s horn bottle. He smelled the paste.

Balsam of Peru.

He looked at the horn. It was old and badly cracked. There was a metal band around it, with a ring on one side. The stopper was new, carved of dry cottonwood. Du Pré put the stopper in and set the horn back on the table.

Benetsee smiled. Then he put his head down on the table.

He snored.

Du Pré and Pelon went outside. They looked off toward the east. Helicopters were circling something, their red and green running lights winking many miles away.

“Strobes,” said Pelon. “Got some candlepower.”

Du Pré rolled two smokes and gave one to Pelon.

“We go, that ranch,” said Du Pré. “Me, I do not know how.”

Pelon laughed.

“Yah,” he said, “I watch you. You dance pret’ good. Dance like the blue jay.”

Du Pré looked at him. Pelon grinned.

“I was sweating for you, singing,” he said.

Du Pré nodded.

A car was coming up the county road, fast. The sound of the engine carried far in the empty night.

Pelon looked at Du Pré.

“We sweat, sing tonight,” he said.

Du Pré nodded.

“Sweat a long time.”

Du Pré nodded.

“Them Host of Yahweh,” said Pelon, “they are in some big trouble now. Got no place to run to, them. Big fight. You don’t get killed maybe.”

Du Pré shrugged.

“Come,” said Pelon, “we put the old man to bed. They will be here in a minute. Him, he need sleep.”

They went inside and picked up Benetsee and they carried him out of the door and down past the sweat lodge. There was a bedroll hidden in the willows and alders by the creek. They put Benetsee in it. The old man smelled of woodsmoke, wine, tobacco, and balsam of Peru.

“Him maybe don’t want to talk, them,” said Pelon. “He want to change and hide, him can.”

Pelon’s Coyote French was getting much better, Du Pré thought.

He looked older, too. All of the city fat was gone.

“What he do now?” said Du Pré.

Pelon laughed.

“Nothing we think of,” he said. “Him, he will make his joke. Always does. Us, we get to be punch lines.”

Du Pré nodded.

“Benetsee is not there,” said Du Pré, “so how is he hurt?”

Pelon laughed.

“Slapping something away,” said Pelon, “you maybe itch someplace?”

Du Pré looked at him. He did itch, just to the right of the bottom of his left shoulder blade.

Just above my heart.

“Jesus,” said Du Pré.

“He is old,” said Pelon. “Makes him tired, that.”

Du Pré blew out smoke.

The car was getting near. A cruiser. The light bar was flashing. No siren.

“We sweat,” said Pelon.

Du Pré nodded.

The lights flashed and blinked and the car turned in to the track that led up to the cabin. Benny Klein’s cruiser. The car came to a stop and both doors opened. Benny stood up slowly. Ripper shot out and began to run to Du Pré and Pelon.

Ripper stopped. He danced a little on his feet.

“Where the hell you been? As if I didn’t know,” he said.

“Long sweat here,” said Du Pré. “We just stop, hour ago maybe.”

Ripper looked at him.

He walked over to Du Pré’s cruiser and put his hand on the hood.

“Cold, Benny,” said Ripper. “Hasn’t been run for six hours at least.”

“That’s good,” said Benny.

“Knew you’d like it,” said Ripper. “Now, somebody blew up a cache on the Host of Yahweh ranch. Blew it up good. Killed two people, we can tell ya, and scattered parts of ordnance for quite a ways. Heard the racket in town, we did, and so out we went. Know what happened? We were told we couldn’t come in, take a look.”

Du Pré nodded.

“So,” said Ripper, “I said we goddamn well would as large explosions were de facto evidence of large explosives which are illegal to possess.”

Du Pré nodded.

“Standoff for a while,” said Ripper.

Benny was chewing some snoose. He spat.

“Now,” said Ripper, “the guards at the gate were flunks, and they had their orders, and then something extraordinary happened.”

Du Pré waited.

He looked over at Benny’s cruiser. There was a long crease in the hood, showing black against the white paint.

“They shot at us,” said Ripper, “can you imagine? Now, give ’em credit, they weren’t really trying to hit us, I don’t think, and so we left.”

“Where is Harvey?” said Du Pré.

“He was in Billings,” said Ripper, “but he came right back.”

Du Pré rolled a smoke.

“So,” said Ripper, “Harvey says to me, Ripper, I smell something here. Maybe you would go and ask Du Pré what that smell is.”

Du Pré waited.

“And here I am,” said Ripper.

Du Pré spread out his hands palm up.

“Right,” said Ripper. “Well, Pidgeon is on her way, and I know you would like to stare at her ass.”

Du Pré shrugged.

“The troops are arriving by the platoon,” said Ripper.

Du Pré shrugged.

“Officer Parker is in there,” said Ripper, “and that’s a story all by itself.”

T
HE HOST OF
Y
AHWEH
compound was brightly lit. Every mercury lamp blazed.

No one moved in it.

Harvey Wallace looked grimly at the metal buildings and the partly completed mansion.

“We could,” he said, “be here for quite a long time.”

Du Pré snorted.

For a long time. After Waco, they don’t charge in anymore. That is good.

“Waco,” said Harvey. “Monumental stupidity. Sheriff over in western Montana, had one of his deputies killed by some nutbar, guy lived in a fort in the woods, so you know what that sheriff did?”

Du Pré looked at him.

“Waited, what he did,” said Harvey. “Told the state police and us ever-helpful feds to please fuck off. Waited the guy out. Waited a
year and a half,
he did. Finally the bastard got careless, figured his murdering the deputy had been forgotten or something, drove out of his fort to take a little fresh air, and wham, that sheriff got him. No gunfire. No tanks. Nobody killed. Guy, we could use a director. You know him?”

Du Pré shook his head.

“So we may be here a long time,” said Harvey. He looked bleakly at the brightly lit compound. “Here in the fucking cactus.”

Du Pré laughed.

“Ripper tells me,” said Harvey, “that you were peacefully worshipping in the sweat lodge, there at Benetsee’s. Engine’s cold, so it could not possibly have been you touched off the bang there.”

Du Pré nodded.

“I believe everything Ripper tells me,” said Harvey. “Thanks anyway. That we got covered. They had enough weapons and explosives in there to kill a whole lot of people.”

Du Pré looked at him.

“ATF’s all over it,” said Harvey. “Got here in a hurry they did. So the arsenal there is blown. Now what, I wonder, have they got in there?”

“Whatever they got,” said Ripper, “they got less of it now.”

“A good thing,” said Harvey, “but I still worry.”

“Pidgeon will be here shortly,” said Ripper.

“Driving?” said Harvey. Pidgeon drove flat out and so far had fried three government cars Du Pré knew of.

“Flying,” said Ripper.

“Well,” said Harvey, “it’s slower for her, but probably safer.”

“Harvey,” said Ripper, “you want to move at horseback speed, you got to ride a horse.”

“I got a job for you,” said Harvey.

“Harvey,” said Ripper, “fuck off.”

“See?” said Harvey, looking at Du Pré, “this is what happens when you let up. Time was, he prefaced everything with
sir.”

Suddenly all of the lights in the compound went off.

“They here yet?” said Harvey.

“Nope,” said Ripper, “be another couple hours. You know how it is. National Guard, they have to find their searchlights, then find the batteries, takes time.”

“So we didn’t do that?” said Harvey.

“Nope,” said Ripper.

Du Pré looked to the west. A helicopter was headed right for them. Its light stabbed down.

Harvey looked at it.

“That’s Pidgeon,” said Harvey, “no doubt. You need to click a light at her or something?”

“Nope,” said Ripper, “she’s on the phone. You wanna talk with her?”

He handed his cell phone to Harvey.

“Hi, gorgeous,” Harvey said breathily.

Pidgeon said something and Harvey laughed. He handed the phone back to Ripper.

The helicopter descended on a flat open meadow a hundred yards back from the front gate of the Host of Yahweh ranch.

Pidgeon ducked out of the door and ran crouched over till she was well past the rotors. Two men carrying aluminum cases followed.

Harvey took another look at the dark compound.

Nothing moved.

Du Pré squinted and he looked to the south. There was another helicopter circling far away.

Two dark figures burst out of the shadows near one of the metal Host of Yahweh buildings and they ran to shadows by another and disappeared.

Pidgeon walked up to Harvey, puffing a little.

“Whadda we do now?” said Harvey. “Call in an airstrike?”

Pidgeon ignored him. The men came up behind her.

“You got a commvan for me?” she said.

Harvey nodded and Ripper spoke into his cell phone. An engine started and a dark van with a satellite dish on it came slowly up. It had been parked back with the cop cars.

“Where are the TV folks?” said Pidgeon.

“Roads are blocked,” said Harvey.

“Harvey,” said Pidgeon, “I keep tellin’ you not to work so hard at pissin’ them off.”

“For all I know,” said Harvey, “the Host may come out shooting. No TV, no reporters, no nothin’ till we know a bit more.”

Pidgeon nodded.

“Hi, Du Pré,” she said. “Long time no see.”

Du Pré laughed.

“I’m here, too,” said Ripper.

“So you are,” said Pidgeon. “Nothing’s perfect.”

“Pidgeon!” said one of the men in the van. “We got something!”

Pidgeon turned and ran to the van. She got in and slid the door shut.

“Wonders of modern communications,” said Harvey.