Night of the White Buffalo: A Wind River Mystery (6 page)

SHEILA CAREY WAS
the picture of a grieving widow. Face drawn and blanched, red hair haphazardly knotted in back with strands poking into the air. Her gray western shirt and blue jeans looked worn and crumpled, as if she had slept in them. She didn't say anything until they had crossed the entry into the living room, where she nodded at an upholstered chair as worn-looking as her clothes. “You want coffee or something?” She might have been talking to herself the way her eyes flitted about the room.

“Nothing, thank you. I'm sorry to intrude.” Vicky sat on the edge of the cushion. “I thought you might like to know how we found your husband.” A pounding noise outside sounded muted and far away.

“I need some coffee.” Sheila started toward the kitchen in back. “You want to change your mind?” The question was tossed over one shoulder.

“All right. Thank you.” In the Old Time, Vicky was thinking, it was unthinkable to turn down any offer of sustenance, and no one who came to the village left hungry. You never knew when you might eat and drink again. She glanced about the living room. Typical of a ranch house, familiar even. Overstuffed sofa in a wood frame, wood armrests nicked and stained. Gray carpeting with pathways worn silver and, in the middle, the kind of rag rug that had lain on the floor of her home when she was a kid. A square pine coffee table littered with coffee-stained mugs and plates covered with crumbs. From the kitchen came the faint sounds of clinking glass and shuffling footsteps. A cabinet door slammed.

Sheila Carey was back, carrying two mugs of coffee. She set one down on the table close to Vicky. “I didn't ask. You take anything?”

“This is fine.” Vicky lifted the mug and took a sip. The coffee was hot and strong and smelled of cocoa. She waited as Sheila settled herself on the sofa and sipped at her own coffee. When the woman was ready, Vicky knew, she would start the conversation.

“The cops told me two lawyers came across Dennis's body. You and . . .”

“Adam Lone Eagle. He's my . . .” Vicky hesitated. He was nothing to her, no relation that could be categorized. Husband, fiancé, brother, uncle, cousin. He was none of these. He was her lover. “Friend,” she said. Then she told the woman about last night, how they had left the tribal college at ten thirty, saw the two trucks parked on Blue Sky Highway about eleven.

“Two trucks? You saw two trucks? The cops didn't say anything about two trucks. Neither did the fed.”

Because they are investigating your husband's murder, Vicky started to say, then stopped. Investigators gather information; they don't give it. “Yes. A large, dark-colored truck was parked ahead of your husband's truck. It took off as we approached.”

“You saw the truck?”

“It was very dark. We couldn't make out the model. It was like a large shadow that sped past in the oncoming lane.”

“You saw the driver?”

“Only a glimpse. It looked like a man.”

“The man who killed my husband.”

“It could have been a passerby who didn't want to stay. I'm sure the police and the fed are trying to find the truck and get some answers.”

“Please.” Sheila coughed a little laugh. She leaned over and set her mug on the table. Her hand was shaking. “The cops can't even find the crazy shooter that's been terrorizing the highways. I begged Dennis not to go out. ‘Don't go to that stupid meeting,' I told him. Those ranchers don't care about raising buffalo. They think we're nuts running a buffalo herd. Nothing but trouble from the . . .” She lifted one eyebrow. “Keeper of the animals, or whatever you Indians call buffalo. Takes dedication and persistence to raise buffalo. Nobody gets into this business without a strong back and a big wallet. One bull, one bull can cost eighty thousand. Who wants to take that on? Oh, the environmentalists, they think we're saints. Last year a blogger came out here and interviewed Dennis. Heaped on the praise for raising buffalo that graze lightly and don't destroy the Earth. And meat that's good for everybody's health. That's not why we got into this business. Dennis liked the fact that buffalo are wild, can't be tamed. The Broken Buffalo was Dennis's dream, and I went along like always. You know how that is?”

Vicky didn't say anything. Was that what she had done? Gone along with Ben Holden until she had summoned the courage to leave? Was that how it was with Adam? Going along?

Finally she said, “We called 911 when we saw your husband had been shot. We stayed with his body until the police came.”

“What if the killer had come back?”

“We weren't thinking of that possibility.” Except that Adam had been thinking of it.

“It was foolish of you. But thank you for staying with him. I don't mean to be rude.”

Vicky took another drink of coffee. Had she expected Sheila Carey to thank her for watching her husband in death? She wasn't Arapaho. What were the white rituals for death? Vicky had attended the funerals of friends and colleagues in Lander. Memorial services, graveside rites. She had been the outsider, wondering about the rituals that touched these white mourners.

She said, “Do you think the random shooter killed your husband?”

“I know who killed my husband.”

“You know the killer?”

“It's obvious. I told the cops. I told the fed. I told anybody who would listen. One of the two hands used to work on the ranch. Dennis had to fire them in June. Too unpredictable, out drinking and fighting in town. One got involved in an assault case. Bar fight in Riverton.”

“Tomlin?”

“You know him?”

“I never met him. I represent the man accused of assaulting him. The trial was this morning, but Tomlin didn't show up.”

“Sheriff's deputies came here looking for him. I told them, ‘Go look in Montana or Canada.' You ask me, that cowboy couldn't get away from here fast enough. Same for the other hand we took on last fall. Worst mistake we ever made, hiring on hands. We'd tried to run the ranch ourselves, Dennis and me, but Dennis said it was too much. So a year ago last spring, Dennis hired the first cowboys that drove up. That was a mistake. Always wanting money. Advances on paychecks. Do we look like we're made of money? Dennis told them, we harvest some of the herd or sell a bull, and you'll get paid. But that wasn't good enough for Tomlin and the other hand. Accused us of trying to cheat them. Dennis paid them as much as he could, and they took off, mad as hornets. You could tell they weren't going to let it go.”

“You believe they came back . . .”

“Tomlin. He drove a big, four-door Chevy truck. Blended right in with the darkness.”

“You've told the fed?”

“I didn't know you saw the truck. I'll be sure to tell him. That bastard Tomlin deserves to rot in prison. If the cops can find him. So far the Broken Buffalo's been nothing but bad luck. Things had just started to look up.” She hesitated and dropped her gaze to the table, as if she were considering whether to continue. Then she seemed to shake herself back into her line of thought. “Enough of that. We have to go on, like Dennis would've wanted. Carlos and Lane, the new hands, are hard workers. Been repairing the fences, getting the ranch ready.” She stopped again and pinched her lips together a moment. “For the burial,” she went on. “I plan to bury Dennis's ashes on the ranch. It was his dream,” she said again, looking off into a space somewhere in the middle of the room. “As soon as I can get the fed to release his body. Why does it have to take so long?”

How many times had she been asked that question? Vicky was thinking. The anguished voices, the survivors, and even that word,
survivors
, was suffused with anguish. In the Arapaho Way, the body had to be buried in three days so the spirit could go to the ancestors. Perhaps it was the same for whites, wanting the body of their loved ones to be at peace.

“I can make a call to Gianelli, if you'd like.”

“Oh, would you? We're anxious to . . . you understand, we're anxious to get on with it. There's a lot of work on the ranch. Too much for a single person. I'll have to work with the hands. Taking care of the herd doesn't stop just because . . .” She halted again. “I don't mean to sound hardhearted. It's just that we have to pay the bills. We have to eat.”

Vicky tried for a reassuring smile. The woman's husband hadn't even been dead for twenty-four hours, and Sheila Carey was eager to get on with it? People were different; you could never anticipate reactions. She slipped a business card out of her bag and set it on the table. “If there is anything else I can do, please call me.” Then she stood up and walked to the door. Opening it, she looked back. The woman remained on the sofa, slump-shouldered, hands grasped between her knees, which rose over the top of the table.

*   *   *

VICKY GOT INTO
the Ford and was about to back around when she saw the dark, husky-looking cowboy with a straw hat pushed back on his head walking over. He had short, bowed legs, which gave him the hip-hop walk of rodeo riders. She rolled down the front windows. The hot smell of manure and wood clippings spilled into the car.

The cowboy set his arm across the top of the door and leaned into the open window. “I hear you found Mr. Carey's body.” He had large teeth, tobacco stained in various shades of brown.

“That's right.” There's no way he could have known that unless he had been in the kitchen eavesdropping. She thought about the pounding outside that she had heard earlier. When had the noise stopped? “You must be one of the new hands.”

“Carlos,” he said. “Hired on the first of July. I been helping Dennis keep things running. Now I'm going to help that little lady in there, who needs all the help she can get.”

“You mean running the ranch?”

He stared at her out of narrowed, flashing eyes. “What else? You seen the killer?”

“It was dark,” Vicky said. What else indeed, she was thinking.

“All the same, you seen him?”

“I saw someone behind the steering wheel of a big truck. He wore a cowboy hat.”

“Every hand in these parts wears a cowboy hat.”

True, she thought. “Is there anything else?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Go in peace.”

REG HARTLY SLOWED
his pickup past the fence that enclosed the pasture. Appaloosas grazing on the stubbly grass lifted their heads, chewed, swallowed, and sent long, slow gazes his way. He parked behind a battered white pickup faded almost to yellow. There was an emptiness about the old ranch house. The steps creaked and groaned as he climbed to the porch. The morning was already hot; no telling how high the temperature might get today. The creeks were drying up. Narrow borders of sand along the banks. White, billowy clouds floating over the jagged peaks of the Rocky Mountains. Not a drop of rain in them.

Reg knocked at the screened door, which banged against the frame and jumped on its hinges. Not the kind of neglect Josh would have stood for if he were home working on the ranch. His ranch, he called it, except that old Ned, his father, wasn't ready to retire, and the spread along the Gunnison River on the Colorado Plateau outside Grand Junction belonged to Ned. Things would be done his way. Reg had tried to talk Josh out of leaving. Cowboying, moving from ranch to ranch, was no kind of life. You never could get a stake in a place of your own that you could leave to your son.

He remembered how Josh had laughed at that. Set the glass of beer down so hard that the foam had spilled onto the bar, threw his head back and laughed as if Reg had turned into a stand-up comedian, spouting truths as sharp as arrows. Well, you had to laugh or you would cry. “He's going to realize he can't run the ranch without you,” Reg had said. Josh still laughing. “He's going to have to pull back. Your mother's been after him to take it easy for years. Someday he has to listen.”

“You don't know my old man. He's gonna live forever. He can lift ninety-pound bales of hay. I got to get out of here.” He had left six months ago. A knapsack, an extra pair of boots, and his saddle, all piled into the bed of his pickup truck. Going to Wyoming, he said. You could always cowboy in Wyoming. Besides, he wanted to work with buffalo, and there were buffalo ranches in Wyoming. Crazy animals.

Reg realized the door had opened and the old man himself was standing on the other side of the screen. “You heard from Josh?”

Reg shook his head. He opened the screen door and stepped inside. “I came to see how your wife's doing.” The living room looked dusty and unkempt, empty beer bottles on the floor next to the sofa. A bachelor's place.

“Poorly. Right poorly. Ada is dying, no doubt about it, but she's taking her time, waiting for her boy to come home. He's all she's got. All we got. Never should have left. This here is our home. You want to see her? Pay your respects? She's gonna ask you about Josh. Give her some kind of story that might ease her a bit.”

Reg followed the bent back and knobby spine around the sofa and down a dim hallway into a dimmer room with a lace cover over the bed, the kind his grandmother used to crochet, and the tiny figure of Ada Barker under the cover. Thin, blue-white fingers spread over a swollen belly. “Josh?” Her voice was as high and thin as a cricket's.

“It's Reg Hartly, Josh's friend.” He set a hand over the old woman's. It felt like a cool sheet of parchment. “Just came by to see how you're doing. Your old man taking good care of you?”

It wasn't the right thing to say. He knew by the way she flinched, by the tremor in her hand, that it wasn't right. “He sent my boy away, and now I can't tell him good-bye.”

“Now, Ada, you know that's not true.” Ned cleared his throat, as if he could make the truth disappear. “Josh wanted to try things on his own, like lots of young fellas. Get his feet wet out in the big, wide world. Learn a few lessons. It'll do him good. He'll be back. This is home,” he said again.

She stared for a long moment at her husband standing at the foot of the bed, then closed her eyes, as if she couldn't summon the strength for the argument. And what did it matter? Josh was gone and she was dying.

“Is there anything I can do for you? I got my chariot outside if you feel up to a drive on this beautiful day. I can carry you . . .”

The thin hand slipped away from his, and she gave a little wave, like a dead leaf, directionless, falling from a tree. “No more chariot rides for me.” She managed a smile that stretched her thin lips over the stubs of teeth, as if, for a second, she had drifted into a memory. “I was a belle once,” she said.

“You were the prettiest girl in Mesa County,” the old man said. “Remember the ancient surrey wagon that belonged to my grandpa? One time he let me hitch up a couple horses and take you for a ride. That was because he loved you, Ada. Wanted you to be his granddaughter. Nobody else ever got to ride in that surrey.” Ned looked over at Reg. “After he died, I took a good look at the thing and hauled it to the dump. Sure didn't look like the wonder Granddad had been hanging on to all those years. I think he was hanging on to part of himself.”

Moisture pooled in the old man's eyes, and he swayed slightly, as if he were trying to stand up against the wave of memories. “I been calling Josh. Sending him letters. Even got a kid down the road to text him, whatever that is. Now don't you worry, Ada.” He looked back at the doll-like figure under the lace cover. “He's gonna get one of them messages and drive up here any minute now. Why, when I heard Reg's pickup coming up the road, I thought it was Josh.”

“You get him back, you hear?” There was a fierceness in the old woman's voice, summoned from somewhere deep within her. For an instant she lifted her head and gestured with it toward the man at the foot of the bed, then let it drop back onto the pillow. “Least you can do after you sent him off. Couldn't let go, just couldn't let go so he could be a man right here where he belongs. You bring him back so I can die in peace.”

“I'm doing my best.” The old man stifled a sob. “There's nothing in the world I want more than you feeling good again and Josh running the ranch. You and me can just sit on the porch and watch the horses and the sun setting behind the mountains. Won't that be great, Ada? Now you think real hard on that, and no more talk about dying. You think about Josh, 'cause he's coming back. You think about living.”

She had closed her eyes, but Reg wasn't sure whether she had fallen asleep or was just closing herself away from the lies. No more lies. Ned nodded toward the door, and Reg found himself tiptoeing behind the old man, not wanting to disturb the woman any further.

“Want a beer?” Ned was already on his way across the living room and into kitchen.

Reg went after him and sat down on a hard wood chair at the table covered in red-and-white-checkered plastic. How many times he and Josh had sat at this table. Doing homework. Josh was good at math. He had made sense out of the problems Reg had struggled with. Talking about the future. A couple of cowboys, born and bred, not good for anything else. What did they need math for? You're gonna be running this place someday, Reg had told him. You're gonna need to keep the accounts. Good thing you and numbers get along. Yeah, someday, Josh had said. Soon's the old man decides to take it easy.

High school, later, a fading memory, and Reg hiring out on neighboring ranches. No place of his own, no family place. His own father had cowboyed all over Colorado, had never gotten a stake for himself. But Josh had worked for his father. Always the hired man. “I'm no better off than you,” he'd said once. He had been in the dumps that day, downing three or four beers, crushing the cans and heaving them toward the trash basket. He had missed, and Reg could still hear the tinny sound of the cans clanking on the vinyl floor. He could see the loss in Josh's eyes, as if life had passed him by and he had missed everything. He'd left the next week.

The old man set a can of beer in front of Reg and dropped onto the chair across the table. He popped his can. “Don't mind saying, it hurts to see her dying with a broken heart. I keep going over and over it. I should've let him take over like he wanted. Grow our herd, put in hay in the south pasture. Oh, he had all kinds of plans. Even worked out the numbers. Sure, he'd have to borrow from the bank, but he could pay it back, or so the numbers said. But my granddaddy and my own dad never borrowed a cent. Me neither. That's why we own this place, free and clear. Slept at night without worrying when the bankers were gonna show up and run us off our own land. That's what I wanted for Josh. Free and clear, and maybe that meant holding back on his dreams until he could pay cash.”

He took a long drain of beer and smacked his lips. “Nothing turned out like I was hoping.”

Reg opened his own can and took a long sip. The beer was cold and foamy, and he realized how thirsty he was. “Listen,” he said. “Maybe I can help find him.”

“What you gonna do? Text him? Call? Send an e-mail? He's been ignoring all that.”

“I was thinking I could go to Wyoming.” Why not? He had been thinking about leaving the plateau anyway and trying to hire on someplace else. Two years of drought here, and ranchers cutting back on the hired help. He hadn't had a job in almost a month. Things could be better in Wyoming, and he could get a line on Josh, wherever he was.

“Leave here? Go to Wyoming? You got rocks in your head like my boy? It's enough he's missing. You don't need to go missing with him.”

“You know where he was working?”

The old man scooted his chair back, set both hands on the table, and levered himself to his feet. He headed into the living room in a lopsided gait, swaying as if he were on the dance floor. Reg could hear the squeak of a drawer opening and closing, then the old man was back, carrying a small stack of postcards and a stack of envelopes tied in blue ribbon. He flopped back down, pushed the envelopes to one side, and lined up the postcards into a neat pile in front of him.

“First we heard from Josh was in early April. He'd been gone a month, and we didn't know if he was dead or alive. Ada worried all the time. That's when she started getting sick, all that worrying, made the cancer grow. Take a look.” He pushed the card across the table.

On top was a neon red-and-yellow caricature of a cowboy on a bucking bronco, hat swinging in the air. Reg turned the card over. “Getting settled in the cowboy state! Rough drive over South Pass, big spring blizzard. Winter's still hanging around. It is what they say it is here, bad. Hope you are doing okay. Your son, Josh.”

“He doesn't mention a job.”

“Hadn't got on anywhere yet, my guess. A lot of ranchers don't hire 'til spring comes on. All they can do in winter is keep on the help they have. He didn't want to worry us. And my boy wasn't never gonna admit he was a failure.” Ned pushed another card after the first.

An Easter picture, rabbits in cowboy boots and white hats, holding baskets of candy. April 23 was scrolled at the top on the other side. “Hope this finds you doing good. Got hired onto a ranch that raises buffalo, so finally got the chance to work with those big boys. Hope you have a good Easter and will eat a slice of coconut cake for me.”

“Could be a number of buffalo ranches in Wyoming.”

“Three more postcards and an envelope with a picture,” Ned said, trailing the rest over the table.

Reg picked up the envelope and shook out a photograph of a two-story log cabin house. Scrawled across the bottom in Josh's handwriting: “This here is the ranch where I hired on.” The postcards were more cartoonish pictures of cowboys, old pickups, and horses that looked like nags. Reg turned over the first. “Buffalo ranching is sure a hard job. Gotta take hay bales out every day, break them up and toss the hay to the herd. We show up without hay, they'd most likely turn over the flatbed and kill us. Still cold and snow on the ground. I got me a new wool muffler that covers my face. Write me at Broken Buffalo Ranch, Fort Washakie, WY.”

“Did you write him?”

“Came back. Marked unknown at this address.”

Reg picked up the next card. “Spring coming on. A couple cows pregnant. Owner's real glad, since he's trying to grow the herd. Scratching out a living here, you ask me. Got to get back out to the pasture before the buffalo riot. Your son, Josh.”

The last postcard had what seemed to Reg a lonely note running through it. “Sure do miss the ranch and both of you. This place is pretty isolated. Indians all around. Sure would like to hear from you. Thinking about heading home sometime soon. Your loving son, Josh.”

“Broken Buffalo Ranch surrounded by Indians,” Reg said. “There's an Indian reservation up there, isn't there? You suppose that's where he landed?”

“I gave the kid down the road fifty cents to look it up on the internet. Yeah, my boy was on a reservation surrounded by Indians. Arapahos and Shoshones.”

“He never got your letters?”

The old man tossed the blue-tied envelopes toward Reg. “See for yourself.”

Reg untied the ribbon and made a fan of six or eight envelopes. Unknown stamped on the front of each one.

“You going up there and talk to that buffalo rancher?”

“That's what I'm thinking.” Reg finished his beer, then took out the tiny tablet he kept in his shirt pocket. A miniature pen was hooked onto the side. He opened the tablet and wrote: Broken Buffalo Ranch, Indian reservation.

“Someone else who might help,” Ned said. “If Josh was in trouble . . .”

“You think he got into some kind of trouble?”

“I'm saying if he did, he might've gone to talk to a priest. Ada poured a fierce amount of faith in that boy when he was a kid. He might've quit going to church, but he didn't get over it.”