Wild Inferno (17 page)

Friday, 0600 Hours
Morning Briefing

“We've had some bear trouble. I'm going to let the local Division of Wildlife representative talk about that in a minute. But before I do, let's have a little good news,” Roy said. “One of the Three-Pueblos Hot Shots is getting out of the hospital either later today or in the morning, and he's going to come back here to Fire Camp.”

The crowd erupted in applause. The woman standing next to me contorted her face to keep from crying and lowered her head. I saw her lips mouth the words
thank you.
Some of the hotshots hugged one another, shook hands, slapped one another on the back. There were few dry eyes in the crowd.

“Now, let's get back to the bear,” Roy said. “The Blackfeet Hotshots Number Three are up on the top of Division Bravo. They've had to coyote up there, and last night a big black bear got into their food cache, tore into a mini blivet of water, and challenged the lookout. We think she might have gotten trapped with the fire between her and the river. I say
she
because they saw tracks—she's got a cub.”

I was standing next to Charlie Dorn. I elbowed him and whispered, “You didn't tell Roy about my bear encounter?”

“You know how Roy is about you and trouble,” he muttered under his breath. “He would have called out the National Guard.”

The wildlife agent took over the briefing: “This she-bear may be reluctant to take her baby near the highway or down through the black where it's already burned. And they're starving. We're going to try to get up there and bait some traps so we can capture them and transport them to someplace safe. But in the meantime”—he held up a double-barrel pump—“we need to talk about these shotguns—a couple of these have already been issued to the crews in that area.”

Some of the firefighters laughed and joked about bear hunting season being open, but the wildlife agent held up his hand to stop them.

“These shotguns will only be used to fire a beanbag round. That's a strong nylon pouch with about forty grams of lead shot inside. The beanbag is inserted into a standard twelve-gauge shotgun shell. When that shell is fired, the bag is expelled at around two hundred ninety feet per second. In flight, it spreads out and distributes the impact over about six centimeters of the target. It is meant to deliver a blow that will minimize long-term trauma with no penetration, but will briefly render the animal prone and immobile. Now, this beanbag round has a maximum range of around sixty-five feet, but it's inaccurate over about eighteen or nineteen feet. The idea here is to stun the bear and give you time to get away, not to harm the bear.

“This is just for your safety. We don't have enough of these shotguns for every crew, so you have to hand off to the next crew coming on when you go off shift. I want the two lead resource advisors to each carry a rifle, though, if you feel comfortable—I know some of you guys carry a gun in the field to scare off varmints. Since you're out ahead of the crews scouting for sites, you need the extra defense. But—all of you—please don't shoot her unless it's a life-or-death matter. Remember, this she-bear is scared, too, and she's trying to take care of her cub. That's a dangerous scenario. If you can, keep alert and try to avoid crossing her path. Radio back to the ICP and let us know if you see any sign of bears, and we'll come in and take it from there.”

After the briefing, Roy asked me to stay and speak with him. “I want you to do a couple things for me,” he said, hurriedly.

“Sure, what's up?”

“Go into Pagosa Springs and get some flowers. Take them to the victim's family.”

“He just had the one daughter. No wife or anything.”

“Well, take them to her, would you? Tell her they're from the firefighters and the team.”

“Okay.”

“And get something for that hotshot, too, to give him from all of us. One of the Information gals said to get him a great big teddy bear, and we'd name it after the bear that's been hanging around the fire line.”

“What's the name of the bear on the fire line?”

“I don't know. You name her.”

“Ursula.”

“Okay. I'll tell Info her name's Ursula. Anyway, when that injured hotshot gets here from Albuquerque, I want you to take care of him. Take him around, let him talk to the firefighters if he wants to. Show him that shrine they made for the Three-Pebs over by the supply cache. Make sure he has everything he needs. He'll be on crutches. But he wanted to come back to Fire Camp, so you escort him, okay?”

“But isn't it Information's job to escort VIPs?”

He scowled at me but didn't speak.

“All right. You'll call me when you find out when he's going to be here?”

“Yes. I think Information has a big welcome party planned. They're getting a band and everything—some group of Forest Service folks who play bluegrass.”

I cleared my throat. “Hey, Boss? The FBI has asked me to cooperate with them in the investigation.”

“I thought you already did.”

“They want me to talk to a couple people for them.”

“Why you?”

“I think it's that thing about me and Indians.”

He winked. “Ron Crane already called me about it.”

“What? Why didn't you say so?”

“I wanted to see what you'd say.”

“Nice. Real nice, Boss. So, what did you say?”

“I told Crane that I guessed a fire wasn't enough trouble for the likes of you. You had to get involved with a murder investigation, too.”

I balled up my fist and punched him in the arm.

“Ow!” He grimaced, grabbing his biceps and rubbing.

“You deserved it,” I said as I started to walk away.

He called after me, “You know I'm right.”

Friday, 0900 Hours

I went to several stores in Pagosa Springs looking for a large teddy bear that looked like Ursula. One place had teddies in neon colors with plaid bows. Another had nothing but small stuffed animals. The gift shop in the public lands ranger station had a huge, lifelike bear, its fur the color of butter. The fur color wasn't right, but she was wearing a wildland firefighter outfit—a yellow shirt, green pants, little vinyl boots, and even a yellow helmet and Smokey Bear badge. I bought her.

When I set her in the passenger seat of my Jeep, she sat almost as tall as me. It was amusing at first to have a life-sized companion, but as we drove, the weight of her plastic helmet kept tipping her over onto me. I figured I'd have to strap her in when I had a minute.

Nuni White Deer Garza answered the door of her own home. I had called before coming, and I was carrying an armload of flowers from a florist in Pagosa Springs. I handed them to her. “From the firefighters and the incident command team,” I said.

She fought to keep her face arranged. “I'll be right back,” she said. “I want to put these in some water.”

She went to the back of the house, leaving me standing in the small entry area off the front room. I waited quietly. I could hear cupboard doors opening and closing.

On the wall to my right were several framed photos and mementos. One of them was a yellowed newspaper article featuring a large picture. I bent down to look more closely. The caption beneath the photo read:
The Queen and Her Court.
The discolored newsprint revealed the faces of several beautiful young women wrapped in fringed shawls. In the center, wearing a tiara and holding a bouquet of roses, was a young Nuni Garza. I checked the date on the paper's header, however, and realized that it was before Nuni could have been born. I started reading the article:
Clara White Deer was crowned queen of the Bear Dance ceremonies…

Nuni came toward me with a pottery vase containing the blooms I'd just brought.

I straightened. “I'm so sorry for your loss,” I said.

She dropped her chin to her chest and took a big breath. “I only just got to know my dad. That's the part that hurts the most. I just found him, and now he's gone.” She set the container on the coffee table. “Sit down,” she said, gesturing to the sofa.

I took a seat. “Your home is lovely.”

She perched on a nearby chair, her back rigidly straight, hands clasped in her lap. “They won't let me in my dad's place. I was trying to help him clean up his place, clear everything out. My dad and I were trying to do that together, before…Anyway, the silly old fool, you saw how he saved everything. He knew it had gotten out of hand, and he asked me to help.”

“You said you just found him?” I asked. “How did you find out that Grampa Ned was your father? Did your mother tell you?”

She snorted. “My mom? You've got to be kidding. My mother is the proudest woman I know. She never told a soul who fathered her child, not even me. When I was a teenager and started having questions, she just told me the wind blew really hard one day, and the next day, she was pregnant.”

I gave a little smile. “It must have been hard for her.”

“Well, it was hard for me, too. Anyway, to answer your question, Dad contacted me. Through his lawyer. He asked me to come back home to the rez, so we could get to know one another before…” She turned away and started tidying a stack of magazines on an end table.

“Before what?”

She raised her open palms in resignation. Her voice quivered. “I guess it doesn't matter now. He had lung cancer. They told him a couple months ago that he only had six months to live. He didn't want anyone to know. He was trying to do some things…to make amends.”

“You mean like recognizing you as his daughter?”

She smiled a sad little smile. “Yes, that. And a few other things, too. He knew he hadn't led a good life. He wanted to make it up. Like the other day, the day he…died. I was there when he left the house that morning. I'd just made him breakfast. He told me he had to go someplace to return something, and then after that he was going to meet his attorney. But he never made it to the appointment. I don't know what he was doing inside the fire line.”

“He was going to meet his attorney? Do you know who that was?”

“Yes. It's Edgar Johns. Everyone calls him Jimmy.”

“I see,” I said, remembering the storyteller from the night before. “Do you know what it was that your father was going to return?”

She shook her head.

“Do you know whom he had taken it from?”

“I don't know that either. He didn't tell me anything specifically. I just know he felt like whatever it was had cursed him.”

“Cursed him?”

“Yes. When I first came back to the rez, he wanted me to help him clean up the house because he couldn't find it. He said it was something he took a long time ago, and he had to return it. That's why we were trying to clear out his clutter. Otherwise, I don't think he would have bothered, not with so little time left.”

“But you didn't know what you were looking for?”

“No, not really. I think he took whatever it was from a woman, though.”

“Really? Why do you say that?”

“When we were going through his things, he would often mumble, ‘She's going to haunt me even after I die if I don't give it back, Nuni. We've got to find it.'”

I remembered what Clara White Deer had said about wanting something back from Grampa Ned. “Do you think the woman could have been your mother?”

Nuni looked me right in the eye. “Now, why would you say that? Does my mother seem like some kind of a witch or voodoo priest to you? How could she possibly haunt my dad? She never even spoke to him.”

“How do you know that?”

“After my dad's attorney contacted me, I confronted my mother. She told me that Ned Spotted Cloud was as good as dead to her the day he left her pregnant and alone, and she'd never seen fit to resurrect him since.”

“I see,” I said, carefully masking my expression. “So you don't think it could have been something of your mother's he was concerned about returning?”

She shook her head. “No way. Neither of them ever spoke about the other. Not even one word. Not to me, and not to anyone else. Whatever happened between them before I was born, it was over.”

“Do you know anything about the Three-Pueblos Hot Shots?”

She drew her head back. “No, why?”

“Do you have any family at Taos Pueblo, or Tanoah, or Picuris? A first or second cousin, maybe? A great-aunt or-uncle?”

“We're Southern Ute,” she said. “All Indians are not the same…”

“I know. But they marry sometimes into other tribes.”

“We don't have anyone I know of at any of those places. It's pretty much just my mom and me. And now, my dad. And my husband, of course, but he's not from here.”

“And do you have any children?”

A look of surprise took over her face. “No, why?”

“Never had any?”

Her tone grew stern. “I guess I don't understand where this is going.”

“Never mind,” I said, shaking my head. “It was a long shot anyway.”