The Walt Longmire Mystery Series Boxed Set Volumes 1-4 (138 page)

I was curious, not only about the artifact but also about Lee, whom he rarely mentioned. I knew he had just seen him on his way back from Philadelphia, but I hesitated on the personal front, familiar with the frontier between red and white, where there was no pink. “What about the Sacred Cap?”

He seemed pleased to leave the subject of the Autumn Count and Lee. “Matriarchal in nature, the
Issiwun
typifies the buffalo and harvest.”

“And the arrows?”

His eyes lowered and stared at the space in the floorboards between us. “Four stone-headed arrows wrapped in a coyote skin. I was a small child and brought by my father to a lodge where they were revealed to me; I remember that my mother waited outside and was not allowed to look upon them. Periodically they are renewed with fresh sinew and feathers. They are kept, like the other items, by an individual who holds the office for life or until it is voluntarily relinquished.”

“So, let me guess, the White Buffalo were keepers of the arrows?”

“No, the keeper of the arrows must be full-blood, and to my knowledge the arrows are with the Southern Cheyenne in Oklahoma.”

“What about the Sacred Cap?”

He breathed a short laugh. “The cap is adorned with a Crow scalp; it is unlikely that it would be entrusted to a Crow warrior.” His face stiffened, and I knew he was thinking of his brother Lee. “The Autumn Count’s location is unknown, so the medicine that Eli spoke of must be the medicine bundle that was found with Virgil.”

“The one he had around his neck?”

“Yes.” He stood. “It would appear that Eli feels his father’s actions have tainted his stewardship of a holy item.”

“Hence
blooding the medicine
?”

His face was still. “Eli has no doubt that his father has committed these acts.”

I sighed. “That’s unfortunate.”

“Yes.”

I thought about the photograph of the boy. “So, Eli is Virgil’s son.”

“Yes.”

I thought about the pink plastic wallet. “What about the rest of the family, the woman and the girl?”

“Sandra and Mara, both dead.”

“How?”

The trials of his people wore heavily on the broad shoulders, but he spoke without emotion. “Head-on with a drunk driver. They died in January of ’71.”

“And Eli survived?”

“I understand there were behavioral problems even then, and he was shuttled off to foster homes. He now has his own gallery over in Hot Springs, South Dakota; Native abstracts, but things are difficult.” I nodded and, after a moment, he turned to watch me. “What?”

I took a deep breath and set the cruise control at ninety. “So blooding the medicine is like a curse?”

The Cheyenne Nation frowned. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

I felt my face tighten. “Well, it appears to be holding.”

I noticed that one of the highway patrolmen had pulled a green vehicle over at the top of a far hill and hit the brakes. I slowed my truck and slid in behind the Dodge as the shapely blonde in mirrored glasses placed a hand on her hip, near the Glock, and looked back at us from the driver’s side door of Tran Van Tuyen’s Land Rover.

Rosey wore short black search gloves, with undone pearl snaps that revealed pale skin at the wrists of her tanned arms. She straightened her campaign hat as she walked toward us with Tuyen’s license, registration, and insurance card in her hand.

I liked how she walked and smiled. “How you doin’, Troop?”

She tipped her sunglasses down and looked at me. “Have we got some kind of Vietnamese migration going on?”

“He’s the grandfather.”

Her demeanor changed immediately. “Oh.”

I glanced up at Tuyen, who was still calmly seated in his vehicle, but who was adjusting his rearview mirror to look at us. “How fast?”

She leaned an elbow on my truck and glanced back at him. “Borderline, eighty-three.”

“Let him go? He’s had a rough couple of days.” Her eyes came back to mine, and the delicate parchment of the skin at her high cheekbones reminded me of someone else who had been beautiful.

She nodded, and the eyes went down only to come up slow. “You owe me one.” She handed me the paperwork and smiled crookedly. I was feeling a little warm, and I don’t think it had anything to do with the temperature.

As she strutted back to the black Dodge and climbed in with one last glance, I turned to Henry. “It’s you, right? I mean . . . it’s not me.”

He frowned. “No, it is you. Some women have very peculiar tastes.”

I climbed out and walked up to Tuyen’s vehicle as Rosey slipped back onto the highway like a glossy panther looking for prey and disappeared over the hill. Tuyen turned to look at me as I leaned on his door. I noticed that the hard case I’d seen at the ghost town had now gravitated to the passenger floor. I handed him his identification and then looked up and down the empty highway. “Headed back to your motel?”

He stuffed the license back into his wallet and flipped the other papers into the center console. “Yes.”

“Mr. Tuyen, would you have any idea if Ho Thi was traveling alone?”

He looked at me, his face unchanged. “What?”

“I got some information that your granddaughter may not have been traveling alone and was wondering if you would have any idea who might’ve been with her in the car.”

I watched as he stared at the steering wheel. “I . . . I have no idea.”

I crouched down and placed both arms on the sill. “Do you think you could contact your organization back in California and see if there’s anyone else missing?”

“Certainly.” He began reaching for his cell phone, which was plugged into his dash.

“That’s okay, you’re not going to get service till you get down into Powder Junction.”

He tried to smile, but his face remained grim. “Outside the veterinary office?”

“Yep.”

He took a breath. “You think that Ho Thi might have been traveling with someone?”

“It’s possible.” I nudged the brim of my hat back.

He nodded. “I will contact Children of the Dust and see if anyone else is missing.” He glanced at me and then to the rolling hills that seemed to recede in the distance, a terrain so broad it hurt your eyes. “This is most distressing.”

“Yes, it is.” I stood and gestured back toward Henry. “My friend and I are going down to Powder Junction and ask a few more questions. Are you going to be in your room?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll have lunch at around one?” He looked up at me with a questioning expression, and I called back over my shoulder. “There’s only one restaurant in Powder Junction. It’s the one connected to the bar.”

Henry studied the side of my face as I pulled around Tuyen’s vehicle and jetted back up to ninety. I glanced at my best friend in the world as I thought it all through, watching as Tran Van Tuyen pulled out after us and followed at a slower speed. “Do you think I’m prejudiced? Really?”

“Yes.” I glanced at him, and his smile was sad. “We all are, to a certain point—unfortunate, is it not?”

As he watched me, I watched the green Land Rover recede in my rearview mirror. We were both silent the rest of the way to Powder Junction.

* * *

The Dunnigan brothers were easy to find—they were now haying the opposite side of the highway, the giant swathers working like prehistoric insects along the gentle slopes of the barrow ditch. I turned on my light bar emergencies, slowed my truck, and pulled in ahead of the big machines.

Den slowed his swather and stopped only inches from my rear quarter-panel. I got out and looked up at him, but he didn’t move from the glass-enclosed cab of the still-running machine. James was already out of his, had climbed down, and was hustling to get to me. He raised a hand, his thin arm hanging in the frayed cuff of his shirt like a clapper in a bell. I glanced up at Den, who pushed his ball cap back on his head and didn’t look at us. James smiled nervously. “Hey, Walt.”

Figuring it would unsettle him, I leaned on the front blades of Den’s machine. “Hello, James. I’ve got a few more questions for you and your brother, if that’s okay.” I watched as he took off his sweat-soaked straw hat, the red clay trapped in the perspiration on his forehead looking dark as bloodstain. James gestured to Den, who reluctantly shut the swather off, threw open the glass door, and walked toward us on the front frame of the machine. I allowed the Dunnigans to assemble before asking my questions.

Den looked down at us; he had pulled out a small cooler from the cab, sat, and started to eat his lunch. “We haven’t found any more bodies, if that’s why you’re here.”

I ignored him. “James, when you met Ho Thi Paquet, the young woman in the . . .”

“Was that her name?”

I studied him for a moment. “I’m sorry, James. Yes, it was.” He nodded and looked at his scuffed-up ropers, which were wrapped twice with duct tape. “When you met Ho Thi at the bar, was she alone?” They both looked at me, but the only emotion I could read was confusion.

Den unwrapped a sandwich and opened a bottle of Busch, squeezing the cap between his fingers and pitching it into the high grass, before he finally spoke. “In the bar?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Well, yep. I mean the bartender was there.”

“Anybody else?”

They looked at each other, and then James answered in a soft voice. “No.”

“When you came outside, was there anyone else in her car?”

Den squinted into the sun and chewed a bite from his sandwich. “No.”

I nodded. “Guys, the next question is going to be a little personal. Where did you have sex with her?”

James looked worried and glanced at Henry, who had gotten out of the Bullet and had become more interested in farming equipment than I’d ever seen him. “In the truck.”

“Your truck.”

“Yep.”

I nodded. “Parked where?”

“Out near Bailey.”

“She rode with you?”

“Yep.”

“Then what?”

James’s neck was turning red as he glanced back at the Bear. “Well, I went first . . .”

“No, I mean after.” He looked up at me. “After you and Den had sex with her, did you drive her back to her car?”

They replied in unison. “Yes.”

“And you didn’t see anyone in the car with her?”

They replied in unison again. “No.”

“What time was it when you let her off?”

The two brothers looked at each other, and James started to speak before being cut off by Den, who threw the remainder of his sandwich into the open cooler and snapped it shut. “How in the hell should we know what time...”

James silenced him with a hand, the other clutching the brim of his hat as he thought. “We stopped cutting at about three, spent a couple of hours with her in the bar; then a little over an hour with her out at Bailey, and then brought her back to town.”

“So, six, six-thirty?”

“Yeah.”

I nodded. “All right, if you fellas see or hear anything . . .”

James shifted his weight toward me, and I stopped speaking. His eyes welled up. “Walt, there’s somethin’ else.”

Den’s voice exploded as he crouched down between us, still on the front rail of the swather, with the beer bottle dangling from his fingers. “James, God damn it, he don’t want to hear that shit!”

I looked back at James as he cleared his throat. “I been havin’ some strange things happen, seein’ things, I mean.”

Den climbed down. “James.”

The older rancher worried the corner of his mouth with an index finger. “After we found her on the side of the highway . . .”

Den yanked off his ball cap. “God damn it! ”

James leaned in a little, and I got the first whiff of blackberry brandy. “After you talked to us the first time?”

I nodded. “Yes?”

“And we all knew she was dead?” I waited but said nothing. A few cars passed by on the highway, but James’s eyes stayed steady with mine. “Walt . . . do you believe in ghosts?”

Of all the things I was thinking James Dunnigan might reveal, a steadfast belief in the paranormal might’ve been close to last. I ignored Henry, who redirected his gaze from James to me. “I’m not sure I understand.”

James interrupted, and his voice carried an edge. “It’s a pretty simple question—do you think dead people come back?”

I thought about recent circumstances and felt an unease growing in the tightness of my chest. I thought about seeing Indians on the Bighorn Mountains during a blizzard, whose advice was that it was sometimes better to sleep than to wake. I thought about a battered cabin on the breaks of the Powder River, with floating scarves and brittle paint that flaked away from the whorls of cupped wood like sheet music. I thought about Eagle helmets and ceremonies and cloud ponies. “James . . .” My voice caught in my throat like a vapor lock and sounded strange, even to me. “To be honest, no, I don’t think the dead come back.” My voice caught and his head dropped, just a little. “Because I’m not so sure they ever leave.”

He looked back up. “I seen her.”

“Who?”

“I swear I seen her.”

Den erupted again. “God damn it, James! They’re gonna put you in a home! ”

“Ho Thi, I seen her.”

I placed my hand on the old rancher’s bony shoulder. “Where, James?”

“Bailey.” He looked to the left and a little north, as if somebody might be listening. “In the ghost town.”

12

I released the button on the microphone again but still heard nothing. The Cheyenne Nation stepped up on the boardwalk out of the sun and pulled the brim of his ball cap down low on his forehead. “Anything?”

I hung the mic back on the dash and shut the door. “No. It must be the rock walls.”

He leaned against one of the support posts and looked down the ancient ruts of Bailey’s main street and then up to the cliffs hanging over us like red waves. The sun was high, there was no discernible shade, and somehow it seemed even hotter out here. “There are a number of footprints, along with yours, up near the cemetery.”

I had canvassed the town while Henry had headed up the rocky outcropping near the union hall. I nodded and hung my Ray-Bans in my uniform pocket to rest the bridge of my nose. “That’s where I found Tuyen, at the cemetery.”

“There are rattlesnakes up there.”