Dry Bones: A Walt Longmire Mystery (23 page)

I knelt down and spoke to the older man as Henry ministered to his wounds. “How are you doing, Enic?”

He replied through gritted teeth, “Hurts.”

“I bet it does.” I grunted, “You shouldn’t shoot at people; it pisses them off, and then they shoot back—it’s a lesson we learned in Vietnam.”

“I didn’t mean to hit any of you.”

“That’s the problem with shotguns in the dark—they’re kind of an indiscriminate weapon.” I pulled up the tinderbox and fed some twigs and crumpled, yellowed newspapers into the stove in an attempt to get a fire going. “Did you shoot at the helicopter, Enic?”

He winced some more and then settled as Henry studied the damage. “A little.”

“Hmm.” Omar handed me a fancy lighter, and I started the fire, slowly adding a few larger pieces, including the broken stock of Enic’s 20-gauge. “Last time I was here you hit me in the head with this thing, then you shoot our helicopter down and fill Omar here full of lead.” I broke off the rest of the stock and threw it in the stove. “There, that should slow down all the shooting.”

The older man jerked a little as the Cheyenne Nation poked at his side. “I did it.”

“Did what?”

After a moment, he spoke again. “Killed my brother.”

“And why would you do that?”

“I . . . I got tired of him.”

“After seventy years, you got tired of him?”

“Yes.”

I sighed. “Enic, you may be the worst liar I’ve ever met, and that’s saying something ’cause I’ve met some doozies.” I studied him, but he wouldn’t make eye contact with me anymore. “Who are you protecting? I mean, this can’t be just about helping the two young people, can it?”

The Bear stood and looked down at him. “You need proper medical attention, something you are not likely to get unless you start answering Walt’s questions.”

Enic turned his face away from us and remained silent.

The Cheyenne Nation held his hand out to me. “Do you have your pocket knife?”

“Actually, he’s got a nifty skinning knife, don’t you, Enic?”

The Cheyenne Nation extended a hand, and the older man struggled to slip the weapon from his back pocket. The Bear held the blade into the fire as Enic’s curiosity got the better of him and he turned back to look at us. “What are you doing?”

“Sterilizing this knife before I cut the lead out of you.” Henry watched the older man’s eyes widen just a bit and then pulled his own elk-handled bowie from the small of his back. “Or I can use this one.” Enic studied the eight-inch blade. “It is sharper, but I do not think it is made for delicate work.”

I joined in, helping to make the case more intimidating. “We have to get the pellets out because of lead poisoning.”

Enic gestured toward Omar. “What about him?”

I shrugged. “He’s got only two pellets in him and you’ve got five, so you get to go first.” I smiled. “That way Henry can practice.”

He scooted a little away as the Bear drew the blade from the fire. “I think I would rather wait for a proper doctor.”

I shook my head and rose, implying that I was going to hold him while Henry did impromptu surgery. “We don’t know how long we’re going to be out here looking for your family, so I guess we’re going to have to get all western on this, as Doc Bloomfield would say.”

Henry approached with the skinning knife held at the ready. “Time to get the lead out.”

The older man was sweating and had somehow plastered himself into the corner with his back against the wall, his heavy boots turned toward us. “It was Taylor.”

“What?”

He swallowed. “Taylor thought that he had killed his grandfather by giving him the alcohol—I don’t know where he got the idea.”

I slumped and looked at Henry. “Where are Taylor and Jennifer?”

He had an answer for that but not a particularly satisfactory one. “I don’t know.”

I gestured for Henry to tend to Omar as I sat on the edge of the cot and palmed my face with my hand. “Enic, as I’ve said, I’ve got a lot of personal drama going on in my life right now, and I haven’t gotten a lot of sleep, but the thing I’m really tired of is your family, and if I don’t start getting absolute compliance from you, I’m going to lock all of you up for the rest of your squirrelly lives.” I took a long pause and snuck a look at him through my fingers. “Now, I’ll ask again, where are the rest of your family?”

“We can call the house.”

I stared at him. “What?”

He fumbled in his pocket. “I have Taylor’s cell phone.”

I took it and looked at the blue and white Cheyenne flag cover. “What good is that going to do us?”

“This is the only spot on the ranch that gets reception.”

I turned in time to see that both Henry and Omar had their phones out and were looking at me with affirmation on their faces. “It is true, I have three bars.”

I sighed. “One of you call 911 and then get Ruby and the other try and get the Bobs and find out where they are.”

Quick on the dial, Omar hit 911 and looked up at me. “Who are you calling?”

I handed the thing back to Enic. “Eva, please.”

Henry was dialing as Enic hit a single button and handed it back to me. “What would you like me to tell the Bobs?”

Holding up a finger, I took the phone and held it to my ear. It rang three times and then went to a message, whereupon I disconnected and handed it back to Enic. “No one’s answering. Where’s the nearest road leading to this trailhead?”

He raised a hand and pointed over my shoulder. “The one to the Turtle Pond, four miles that way.”

Back to the beginning. I reached for Omar’s phone. “Bobs?”

“As per your request.”

I held the thing to my ear. “Robert, are you guys at the Lone Elk place?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you seen Eva and Randy?”

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

There was some talk in the background. “In the backseat of our unit—Randy got a little mouthy, so Bob cuffed him.”

“Do you guys think you can find the Turtle Pond?”

“The Turtle Pond?” There was more noise in the background, and I could hear whichever Bob it was on the line speak to the detainees in the backseat. “Well, we can go there, or we will not pass Go and not collect two hundred dollars and go straight to jail. Which would you prefer?” There was some more conversation. “We’ll meet you at the Turtle Pond. You need anything else?”

“EMTs and such, but I think I’ve got Ruby on the other line.”

“Roger that.”

“Or Bob that, whichever comes first.” I handed the phone back to Omar, exchanging it for Henry’s. “Ruby, we’ve got two men with shotgun wounds and need medical personnel out at the Turtle Pond where we found Danny Lone Elk—can you get somebody out there?”

McGroder’s voice broke in. “What happened to the helicopter?”

“It’s, um, indisposed.”

Ruby came back on. “Is it you and Henry who are shot?”

“Amazingly enough—” I glanced at the two wounded men. “—no.”

I listened as she spoke with McGroder and then returned. “The AIC says he’s pinpointed where you are from the four cell phone signals and can plot where the Turtle Pond is exactly, so there will be no problem in finding it.”

I shook my head at the far-ranging abilities of modern technology. “That’d be great. We’ll get there as quick as we can.” I ended the call and looked at Enic, something niggling at the edges of my thought processes. “Okay. They must be around here somewhere if you’ve got her dog.”

“No, I’m keeping him, but they’re gone.”

“Do you have a number for Jen?”

“No.”

“When did you get Taylor’s phone?”

He paused for a long moment, too long. “He gave it to me so he could call when they were safe.”

The niggling kept working as I tried to get an answer out of the old coot. “Enic, at this point I’m not after either Taylor or Jen concerning any criminal offense. I just want to make sure they’re safe and maybe get them home.” He said nothing, and I was stuck, standing there with the niggling thought and nowhere to go. It was something on the phone, something McGroder had said. Or was it Ruby? Or maybe something Ruby had said about McGroder.

Four cell phones.

I turned and looked at Omar, then at Henry’s phone in my hand, then at Enic, and then down at the trapdoor on which I now stood.

“If he tries anything, can I shoot him?”

I pulled the trapdoor but avoided looking down into the darkness I’d escaped only a day ago, listening to the rain continue to pound the shack’s corrugated tin roof. “No.”

Omar straightened his leg and made a face. “Can I shoot him if he doesn’t try anything?”

I dropped down on one knee and stared into the abyss. “No, Henry says we can shoot as many white people as we want, but no Indians.”

He slumped back in his chair. “Oh, all right.”

The Cheyenne Nation crouched at the other side of the opening, his Benelli cradled loosely in his hands as I asked Enic one last time, “They’re not armed, right?” The older man didn’t answer. “I don’t suppose you’d like to give them another call and warn them that we’re coming down just to bring them back to safety?”

The older man pointed at Omar but still didn’t say anything.

“Look, nobody is going to hurt anybody, okay?” I stood and took the 12-gauge from the multimillionaire.

“Hey!” He reached after it.

“I need it—it’s got a flashlight.”

“You’re going to leave me here without anything to defend myself?”

I glanced at Enic. “He’s over seventy years old and has been shot a multitude of times.”

Henry looked up at me. “What are we looking at down here?”

“I think it was an old coal mine, but Enic said that back in the day the Hole-in-the-Wall boys used it to evade the law.” I thought about what it had been like in the tunnels. “There are a few narrow spots, but I made it through—there’s water, which has probably gotten worse since it’s been raining for days now.”

“How deep?”

“Up to your shins, but like I said, probably deeper by now.”

“Any big drop-offs?”

“Not that I saw, but I was stumbling down there with a flaming mop in my hands, so it’s possible I missed something.”

Henry turned toward Enic and spoke in Cheyenne in words I did not know, but in a tone I did. “
Áahtomóne˙stse . . . Hena’háanehe, ma’háhkéso. Né’áahtovve˙stse néstaéváhósévóomåtse
.”

The older man looked at him for a long while and then replied in a low voice with more words I didn’t know. The Bear interrupted him once, but then Enic repeated what he’d said and after a moment, Henry nodded and began climbing down into the hole.

“Be careful of the ladder, it . . .” As these words came out of my mouth there was a loud cracking sound and the splashing thump of my friend hitting the water. “. . . has some weak rungs.”

His voice echoed up. “
Hahóo, ma˙xhevéesevo˙htse ooa˙hé’e
 . . .”

I didn’t know what that meant either, but Enic was smiling as I lowered myself over the edge and eased my weight onto the ladder, careful to negotiate the broken steps. “Make a hole and make it wide.” By the time I got to the bottom, I was knee-deep in the water. I turned and faced the dripping Cheyenne Nation. “You all right?”

“Nothing is hurt beyond my pride.” He began casting the beam of his shotgun flashlight down the cavern behind me. “Where does that go?”

“I don’t know, I got to here and went up. I was following the smoke marks on the ceiling from the other direction.”

“And what is there?”

I thought about the layout of the caves and tried to remember. “It circles around to the right where there’s a larger area, but then it squeezes in and turns to the right again and comes out of the hillside below the shack.”

He shone the beam of the light on the surface of the water. “There is a current moving past you toward the area of the cave in which you have not been. If the water is flowing in that direction it must be lower and most likely of a larger capacity than the area you described.”

“So you think the cave gets bigger in that direction?”

“I hope.” He moved past me, shining the muzzle of the shotgun and consequently the flashlight ahead of him. “Neither one of us are exactly tunnel rats.”

I followed, shining the light behind me only once and then flashing my own beam to the sides just in case we might’ve missed something, but he pulled up short, and I almost ran into him. “What?”

He stood there, silent, but then finally spoke, “Do you hear something?” He leaned forward, pointing the shotgun down the cavern, the light bouncing off the walls ahead.

“Nope.”

He took another step forward but then retreated a half stride. “It is deeper here.” The Bear continued to shine the beam into the darkness but eventually the light was swallowed up. “Did you hear that?”

“What?”

He said nothing but pointed the beam along one side of the tunnel where another jagged ledge protruded from the side like the one I’d encountered before. The ledge continued on into the darkness.

There was a sound in the distance.

“Did you . . .”

“Yep, I heard that.” I swallowed. “Someone shouting.” I moved past him onto the ledge, the sharp edges breaking off with my weight and falling into the water. I pressed my back against the rock and sidestepped my way down the narrow area, alternatively shining the beam attached to my shotgun onto the ledge and then into the darkness ahead.

Henry moved in behind me, and as we made our way slowly forward, I could clearly hear someone yelling. Cupping a hand near my mouth, I yelled back. “Taylor, is that you?” Thankfully, the ledge got broader, and I could concentrate the light forward where it appeared to hit a wall of solid rock on the far side of an open pool. “Hang on, we’re coming!”

The voice came from my left. “We’re over here!”

Creeping forward a little, I could see around an abutment where the two young lovers were clutching each other on a much larger ledge that slanted back into the rock, illuminated by another Coleman lantern. “What the heck are you doing over there?”

He stood and nodded toward the water twenty feet between us, sipping something from a Styrofoam cup and holding the fourth cell phone. “We waded over a little way back when the water was shallower.”

I nodded. “Well, we’ll get in and bring you two back over to this side.”

He pocketed the phone. “You can’t.”

“Why?”

In answer, he tossed the white foam cup into the water between us, and we watched as it circled briefly and then submerged with a shudder and disappeared. “It’s a sinkhole—it’s where all the water goes, and I don’t think it’s a good place.”

The Bear stepped up to the edge and then kneeled, dipping his arm in as far as it would reach. There was a sudden tug, and I grabbed his shoulder with my good hand to keep him from pitching in. He looked up at me. “The current is strong just beneath the surface, which leads me to believe that the hole is not small.”

“Large enough to be sucked down into?”

He breathed a laugh. “Possibly, possibly not.”

I looked at the distance between them and us. “Well, hell.” Once again, I found myself willing to negotiate a timeshare on a portion of my soul, this time for a twenty-eight-foot, forty-eight-thread, right-twist lariat. Looking for anything that would be helpful, I played the beam of the light around, suddenly reflecting on the wires of the old electric lights that draped across the ceiling, the empty sockets looking like exclamation points.

I turned to Henry. “If I boost you up, can you grab that electric cable and yank it down?” I held the light on my face with the barrel of the Benelli shotgun alongside it and looked at him. “If you’ve got a better idea, I’d love to hear it.”

Setting the shotgun to the side and making a stirrup with my laced fingers, I watched as he steadied himself by grabbing a rock nub and reached out and up to take hold of the end of the seventy-year-old conduit. He yanked, and the clips driven into the rock pulled away, the length of wire holding together.

The Bear held the cable in his hands and started looping it. “I find it hard to believe that this wire is still whole.”

“Solid, braided copper cable—unless there was a break in the rubber housing it couldn’t corrode and degenerate.”

“Like what the helicopter blades hit?”

I nodded.

“We go over there, or they come over here?”

I looked at him. “I said it probably hadn’t degenerated too much—I didn’t say that it was indestructible.” I glanced at the young couple. “They weigh a hell of a lot less than the two of us.”

I stooped by the water and looked over at them. “Taylor, you two are going to have to come to us.”

“And how are we going to do that?”

“I’ll throw you this wire. Tie it off on one of the rock outcroppings on your side and make sure it’s solid. Hold on to the cable and don’t let go, no matter what happens.”

“Okay.”

“Have Jennifer go first.” He nodded, I tossed, and we watched as he fastened the cable and assisted her in getting ahold of it as I pulled it tight and looped it over a cornice to my right. “You’re going to have to work your way across the wire, and we’ll grab you when you get close enough, but most of the time you’re going to be on your own. You might dip into the water, but whatever you do, don’t let go of the cable—got it?”

She nodded and then looked at me. “What about my camera?”

“What?”

“My video camera—I don’t want to drop it in the water.”

“You’ve got it with you?” I thought about throwing her in the water but then had a thought. “Just out of curiosity, does that thing still have evidence on it?”

“Yes.”

“Toss it to me.”

“You’ll drop it in the water.”

“Why would I do that?”

“So that the federal government can have Jen.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“You’re all working together against us.”

I cocked my head. “Who is us?”

“The Lone Elk family.”

“And when did you become a member of said family?”

She held out a hand with, what I assumed, was a wedding ring on it. “Taylor and I were married yesterday.”

I sighed and thought about how even more complicated things had just gotten. “Throw me the damn camera.”

She looked at the rushing water for a moment. “I can’t—I’m not that good at throwing things.”

“Have Taylor throw it.”

She looked dubious but then handed it over to him in a moment of trust. I watched as Henry moved to the edge and prepared to catch it, catching items being in his background. Taylor tossed it, and the Bear swiped it in midair. He gave it to me, and I carefully put it in the breast pocket of my jacket with the thought that being the highest spot, it would be the safest.

I motioned for Jennifer to get with it. “C’mon, the water’s doing nothing but getting deeper and swifter.”

She was in pretty good shape and relatively athletic, so she didn’t have too much trouble shimmying along the cable with only her back and rear end getting dipped. “This water is cold!”

“Just keep moving.” The Cheyenne Nation reached out a hand and grabbed her by the scruff of the neck, the collar of her jacket safely in his iron grip. Like a crane, the Bear easily lifted her onto the ledge beside me.

We all turned to look at Taylor, who stood there without moving, and I could tell something was wrong. “C’mon, it’s your turn.” He didn’t move but just kept looking at the swirling water that led to nowhere, and I was getting a bad feeling. “Let’s go, Taylor.” He nodded briefly, as if he were making his mind up about something, something that was embedding a terrible resolution in him. “Taylor?”

His face rose, and I was sure he’d made up his mind. “I killed my grandfather.”

Jen stepped forward. “No!”

I held her with one arm as Henry, looking at the young man, stood in front of us. “What are you talking about, Taylor?”

He swallowed. “I gave him his whiskey just that once.” He looked at us for a moment, but then his eyes went back to the water. “I thought it would help, you know, make him feel better . . .”

He didn’t say anything else but just kept looking into the swirling darkness and then turned his eyes to Jennifer. “I really love you, you know?”

She pulled against my arm, but I held her fast. “Taylor?”

I watched as he leaned forward a little, almost as if ready to jump. “The whiskey was laced with mercury. Your grandfather died of mercury poisoning. It had nothing to do with the liquor itself, honest.”

“You’re just trying to keep me from doing what I need to do.”

I gestured toward the Bear. “Henry was there when Isaac Bloomfield told us, right?”

The Cheyenne Nation stood at the edge, and I knew what he was contemplating, but it was too far. “Yes.”

“The whiskey wasn’t the cause of his death, Taylor—we wouldn’t lie to you.”

“Tell my mother I’m sorry.” With that, he stepped into the void and dropped into the fast-running water.

Henry leapt in after him like a war lance and disappeared after the young man faster than a great white shark could’ve ever hoped to.

I pulled the loop from the cornice and let it drop into the water after them and then relooped the thing in hopes that the Bear would be able to grab the young man and the cable. Jennifer was screaming, and I was about to make the dive myself.

I pushed her back and moved forward, thinking that my next breath was probably my last when suddenly Taylor was thrust from the surface in a military press and handed to me.

I grabbed the wayward youth and extended my hand to the giant that rose up from the depths, the water at his waist. He stood there with his wet hair draping his head like a cloak. “It is only deep on that end, and as near as I can tell the drain hole is about the size of a small trash-can lid.”

 • • • 

We pulled my truck up to the Turtle Pond just as dawn began to break and a few shards of pewter began chipping away the ironclad underside of the clouds. The Wyoming Highway Patrol cruiser sat with its warning lights tracing the hillsides and reflecting their colors onto the surface of the pond as Bob Delude came over and dripped in my rolled-down window. “Looks like it might rain.”

I thanked him for thinking of us and parking my truck on the road as close to the shack as possible. “I appreciate that both of you uphold the eight core values of Integrity, Courage, Discipline, Loyalty, Diligence, Humility, Optimism, and Conviction that are integral to the success of the agency and a hallmark of the Wyoming Highway Patrol.”