Cold Dish

15

When we got to the truck, I was relieved to look through the passenger side window and see the cartridge box there. I was beginning to think that I was having some sort of mental breakdown and that the box lying beside the rifle on my seat was another phantom apparition. “Do you see that box on the seat?”

She peeked past my shoulder and turned her face to look at me. “What box?”

I nodded my head, ever so slightly. “Very funny.” I unlocked the door and opened it; the barrel of the Cheyenne Rifle of the Dead was pointed directly at us. The box was on the seat in the exact spot where I had placed it after my brief examination. Using the inside liner of the pocket of my jacket, I reached in and showed it to Vic. “Was this in here when you put the rifle on the seat and locked the truck?”

“No.”

I looked at the box. “Anybody drive my truck while I was gone?”

“Nobody. Did you leave your keys?”

“On the rack, in case somebody had to move it.”

“This is getting exciting.”

I placed the small cardboard container on my desk along with the rifle and sat in my chair as Vic leaned against the desk with her thighs flattened on the edge and her arms crossed. We were both looking at the damn thing like it might jump up, do back flips, and run away. It was a battered little box with the corners dented in and the edges fuzzy. The black printing was faded and scuffed, but you could still make it out. The print was in assorted fonts and at least as ornate as the handwritten addition. There was a floral pattern and a series of lines on each side that encapsulated the words “This Box Contains 20 Metallic Cartridges, Manufactured by Sharps’ Rifle Mf ’g Co., Hart-ford, Conn.” There was a large hole, exactly the size of a. 45 caliber slightly low and left of center with “400 yards” scribbled in pencil beside it. The writing was old, with a flourishing hand and detailed penmanship. It looked like the writing in the old sheriff’s logbook. There was something familiar about it and, if the distance was true, it was scary shooting.

When I looked up again, Vic was staring at me. “Well, are we waiting till Christmas?”

I took two pens from my broken Denver Broncos mug and carefully held the box down with one and worked the flap open with the other. No sense in getting even more fingerprints on the thing. I slumped a little and rested my chin on my arm as I continued to look in the box. “If you were cartridges over a hundred years old, wouldn’t you be tarnished?”

“Yes.”

“They’re not.”

She leaned around the corner and peered into the box like something might come out. “Look like they were loaded yesterday.”

I flattened one of the pens on the cardboard divider and slowly coaxed the box back, allowing two of the cartridges to roll out onto the blotter; they were both empties that had been fired. I spun one of the cartridges around with the pen so I could see the indentation at the primer. I turned the other one, and it was identical. “Two down.” I pinned the divider to the blotter again and nudged the box back, allowing two more shells to roll out. These were live, with lead and primers intact, as were those in the rest of the box. “Does it worry you that there are two of these shells spent?”

“You mean how it matches up with our current body count?”

“Something like that.” I looked along the shiny lines of reflection on the surface of the casing nearest me and clearly made out discolored spots whirling in the pattern of fingerprints. Whoever had handled these cartridges had not done it with any great care and, as I glanced at the other shells, I began to see more prints. With my luck, the individual who made them had been dead for seventy years. “Do you still have that shell of Omar’s that I gave you?”

“Yeah.” She retreated into her office and returned with the cartridge. While she was gone, I flipped the box over. On the other side was another hole where the shot had passed through: impressive to the point of being mythic. I looked at the handwriting and was sure I had seen it before. When she returned and handed Omar’s bullet to me, she leaned over to peruse the shells on the blotter. “These are different.”

His shell had a rounded line at the butt end that ended with two small stars and writing on the other side of the primer that read. 45–70 GOVT.; on the mystery shells, there was nothing. The edges at the butt plate weren’t as sharp either, as if the machining had been done in a hurry with devices under pressure to produce in difficult times. I scooped up one of the spent shells at the open end with the tip of the pen and held it up to my nose and sniffed. There was no quartzite, but traces of black powder were evident.

“They are originals.” I wasn’t surprised when the baritone rumble of his voice interrupted our conversation. I had seen Henry walk up and lean against the doorway, but Vic hadn’t, and it was just a tiny bit amusing when her back stiffened.

“What’re you doing out of the hospital?”

He crossed over and eased himself into the chair opposite my desk. “I see you still have your ear.”

I laid the cartridge down on the blotter and tossed the pen back in the mug. “Yep, I’ve removed all the scissors from the office, and I’m just not going to take any naps when Lucian’s around.” I nodded toward the scattered shells on my desk. “What do you know about these?”

Vic refolded her arms and looked at him, and her glance seemed to carry a little more professional interest than I would have found comforting. Henry simply smiled at her. “Hi.”

She smiled back. “Hi.”

I looked at the two of them for a moment. “Okay, before the two of you get into a pissing contest, how about you tell me what you know about these?”

His eyes continued smiling at Vic for longer than they should have, then he turned to me. “Where did you get them?”

“They were on the seat of my locked truck this morning, alongside the rifle.”

“Interesting.” He waited a moment. “They are originals.”

“How do you know that?”

“I am the one who polished and reloaded them, but I did not reload them for myself.” He took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly as he turned his head toward the window. “Lonnie.” After looking up at Vic, I turned back to him and waited. “Lonnie said that he wanted to shoot the rifle, and I was concerned that he might run some of those hot, modern cowboy loads through it. I took forty of the original cartridges he had and hand loaded them so they wouldn’t damage the rifle.”

I sighed and raised my eyes up to Vic. “Get a preliminary on these shells, then ship samples down to DCI.” She nodded, and I stood. “How far do you think you can get, within our obvious technical limitations?”

“Pretty damn far.” She looked at me as I scooped up the rifle. “Where are you going?”

I glanced over at Henry who was studying me. “I’m going out to talk with Lonnie Little Bird and get some fingerprints.”

“You sure you don’t want somebody to go with you?”

I looked back at him. “I got somebody.”

The heat of the day had begun to melt away what remained of the snow, and the clouds were just beginning to break up in the face of a mild, Wyoming autumn afternoon. As we drove out of town, I looked in the rearview mirror at the Bighorns. The fresh coat of snow had done them some good, even if it hadn’t done either of us any. We rode along in silence. My sheepskin jacket was draped over Henry’s shoulders; Dena Many Camps had forgotten to bring him a coat along with his fresh clothes. He didn’t particularly look irritated, just preoccupied, so I left him alone with his thoughts. I had picked up a fingerprint kit from our minilab and informed Ruby where we were going, asking her to relay any information gotten from Dave at the Sportshop, from the Espers, or Jim Keller. Lucian was still in the back asleep, and I told her to wake him up if anything happened. She had looked at me and withheld comment.

There was one question on my mind, and it concerned a box of aged. 45–70 shells that had been left on my truck seat. I broke the silence by asking, “Why did he leave them?”

“I do not know.” He didn’t turn but slouched a little against the door, the Cheyenne Rifle of the Dead leaning gently against the inside of one of his knees. “Unless it was good fortune.”

“For whom?”

“You.” He still looked out the windshield at the sunny afternoon. “Lonnie has grown very fond of you over the last few years. The last time we were there? He asked me if it would be all right if he gave this rifle to you.”

“The Cheyenne Rifle of the Dead? Thanks a lot, but no thanks.” He rode along quietly, and I was pretty sure I had hurt his feelings. “If it’s all the same with you and Lonnie, I think I’ll just hang around here in the camp of the living for a while.”

“That is not why he wanted to give it to you.” He turned and looked at me for the first time. “He wanted to give it to you to shield you.”

“From what?”

He shrugged and looked back out the windshield. “He said that you need protection from something very powerful and very bad.” The rest he spoke in a monotone. “He said that you are a good man and that there are those who would assist you if they could. That they had spoken with him, and that if you would allow them, they would help you.”

“Help me what?”

He sat there for a while, and I was getting worried that he might have left the hospital a little prematurely when he spoke. “Live.”

As we passed the cutoff to the Powder River Road, I thought about what Vonnie had said, that she had assembled herself so that she didn’t have to deal with all the things I had suddenly reintroduced into her life. I thought about caring about somebody more than life itself. As I looked back, I was pretty sure that Martha hadn’t loved me that much. She had been fond of me but had settled for me and had made the best of her situation. She had stayed because of Cady, and I had stayed because I loved Cady that much. I simply couldn’t conceive of doing anything else. I figured what I’d do was go over to Vonnie’s tonight and have a long talk with her. Maybe we could put things off until this case was over. The time when I had held her long toes, fitting the high arches of her feet in the palms of my hands, and had driven her home in the dark of the night seemed very far away and receding.

Henry dozed as I drove away from the sun, and the ruffling of his breath became steadier as we took the cutoff to the reservation. I saw Brandon White Buffalo looking after us as we went through the intersection. He stood behind his counter. It was hard to miss him as he looked through the clinging soda, chips, and candy advertisements. I extended a hand across the cab toward him, and he watched as we passed without slowing. He raised his hand also and pressed it against the heavy double glass of the convenience store window. Brandon White Buffalo stood there in the maelstrom of modern consumerism like a sentinel, like a warning in a mystical undertow. I looked back through the rear window of the truck to catch a last glance; he still stood there palm out and fingers spread like an orchard basket against the glass. He looked after us until we were gone, and I thought of Melissa at the Little Big Horn.

I reset my shoulders, concentrated on the road, and considered my dwindling staff. Turk would be out by January, Vic could possibly be gone before that, and the chances of me getting Ferg to return to full duty were slim. He would probably just retire. I was thinking about it myself. I picked the mic off the dash. “Base, this is Unit One, come in?”

After a moment there was static, then Ruby’s voice. “Leave me alone, I’m busy.”

“Any word from Dave at the Sportshop?”

Static. “His wife called. She’s about halfway through and will fax the stuff over when she gets done. Stop bothering me.”

I hung the mic back up and watched the trees pass by along the irrigation ditch. I expected to see the Old Cheyenne again, standing among the cottonwoods. But there was nothing there and that worried me a little more; maybe even they had abandoned me. I thought about where we were going, about Lonnie. Yes, it is so… I didn’t think that Lonnie had killed Cody and Jacob, but I wanted to talk to him directly and find out if there was anything more to his story than Henry had been able to tell me. I looked over at my friend. It seemed that his breathing had gotten a little rougher, but he still slept, his body attempting to repair itself while he wasn’t looking.

There was a maroon minivan with a bumper sticker that read FRY BREAD POWER in Lonnie’s driveway, and there was someone sitting on the passenger side. Even from the distance and angle, I knew it was Melissa. I brought the Bullet to a stop alongside the van. Henry woke and placed a hand on the dash to steady himself. “You all right?”

“Yes.” He blinked. “Just sleepy.” He looked out the passenger side of the Bullet, and I saw the muscles at the side of his face bunch as he smiled at her. His hand came up to the glass, and I knew hers was extended toward him. He handed me the rifle. I took a moment to collect myself, giving them enough time to be together before I opened my own door and came around the back of the truck. It was a moment I had avoided, this personal contact, but here she was, and here I was with her.

She was holding him, and I was amazed at how she had grown. Melissa was taller, still lean but muscled now and, even though she hadn’t lost all of the stunting qualities of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, the graceful quality that was indicative of the Cheyenne and their personal beauty was there. Her face turned to me. I hadn’t seen that face, with the exception of that fleeting glance at the powwow, for more than three years. Her eyebrows still arched in a questioning fragility, and the folds at the insides of her eyes still attempted to betray her. In honor of the golden fall afternoon and despite the oncoming winter, she was dressed in a pair of gray flannel athletic shorts and a T-shirt that read SWEET MEDICINE TREATMENT CENTER, SOBRIETY RETREAT. I stood there for a moment with the rifle in my hand, unable to move, as she loosened herself from Henry only long enough to attach herself to me. I held the rifle out so that it could not touch her and looped my other arm around her shoulders. Henry quietly took the gun. After a moment, she pulled back to look up at me. “You are sad?”

I laughed as a tear threatened to escape the corner of my eye. “I guess I’m just happy to see you.”

She smiled back, and it was like sunshine through a church window. “I am happy to see you, too.”

Henry retreated and headed up to the house with the Sharps as Melissa and I talked. She kept a hand on my arm as we spoke, as if the connection might be fleeting and neither of us could take the chance. She had received a partial basketball scholarship to a community college in South Dakota and was only back from her special classes for a tournament. She wanted to know if I could come home with her in a week and a half and spend Thanksgiving with her and her aunts. She assured me that Lonnie would be there, too. I asked her where Lonnie was now. “He is inside, arguing with my aunt Arbutus. She said that I should come out and sit in the car. I’m glad you are here. I was bored.”

As she spoke, I became aware of a commotion. The screen slapped open and the most formidable of the aunts made her way from the porch and headed toward us. Henry was wheeling Lonnie out the door after her with the buffalo rifle in Lonnie’s lap along with a small, black plastic box. Melissa’s aunt pulled up short when she saw me. I hadn’t formally met Arbutus Little Bird and had previously withstood her cast-iron gaze from afar. She didn’t like me, but I think it was less because I was a white man with a badge and more because I associated with Henry. “Hi, Arbutus.”

She redirected her gaze at Melissa. “Get in the car.”

I took a deep breath and took Melissa’s hand in mine. She was trembling. “Arbutus, do you want to tell me what’s going on?”

She didn’t respond but stood there with her hands at her sides as Henry wheeled Lonnie up behind her. She turned slightly and spat out the words, “I hope you’re happy, now that the sheriff ’s here.”

Lonnie’s eyes did light up when he saw me. “Hello, Sheriff.”

“Hey, Lonnie. What’s going on?”

“Oh, my sister isn’t going to let me have my daughter for the holidays. Yes, it is so.”

I glanced up at Henry, who shrugged. I looked back at the galvanized aunt. “What’s the story?”

“I’m taking her home.”

“Well, do you mind telling me why it is you’re not going to let her have Thanksgiving with her father?”

A moment passed. “I don’t have to talk to you.”

“No, you don’t, but I can get on the radio and get one of the IPs over here and you can talk to him.” I was playing an angle, but most inhabitants of the reservation hated Indian Police even more than us. We were just whites. They were apples, red on the outside, white on the inside. She didn’t say anything. “Whatever it is? I’m sure we can work it out.”

“I found a beer in his refrigerator.”

I turned and looked at Lonnie. “Is that true, Lonnie?” God, like I didn’t know the response.

“Yes, it is true. Yes, it is so.” He continued to smile. “I keep it there as a reminder and to keep temptation at hand. Temptation out of reach does you no good.”

“How long’s the beer been in there?”

“About a year and a half.”

She crossed her arms, but she turned to look down at him. We were making progress. “How come I haven’t seen it in there before?”

He blinked his eyes through the thick glasses. “It was behind the pickled pigs’ feet. You don’t ever move them. Um-hmm, yes it is so.”

The look on her face told me he was telling the truth. “Arbutus, do you think it would be all right if Lonnie came over for Thanksgiving dinner at your place?” I waited a moment myself, for the next one. “And do you think it would be all right if Melissa came over here and spent the night with Lonnie, maybe on the Friday after Thanksgiving?” She didn’t say anything but turned to look at me. “Friday night, then?”

“Get in the car, Melissa.”

She started to open the door, but Melissa’s voice stopped her. “Would it be okay if the sheriff came over for Thanksgiving dinner, too?”

Arbutus stopped and turned to look at her, then at me. She was a hard old gunboat, but I saw the steely eyes soften a little. “Walter is always welcome at our table.” She started to open the door, but her eyes steered clear of mine. “You know where I live. Melissa, will you get in the car?”

The hand loosened in mine, and she leaned in to give a slight peck on my lowered cheek. “I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.”

“I’ll do my best.” She stopped. “I’ll be there.” The smile returned, and I watched as she turned the corner and got into the van, or almost did, before she jumped out, ran around the front, and gave her father and uncle a good-bye hug.

I leaned against the bed of my truck, crossed my arms, and looked down. “How you doin’, Lonnie?”

“I’m good, and how are you?”

“I’m all right. Did you leave me a little present?”

He looked up at Henry through the split lenses, and the mid-afternoon sun glinted off his metal-framed glasses. Then he turned back to me and smiled. “Um-hmm, yes, I did.”

I nodded. “How did you get in my truck?”

“Oh, those new ones are easy to break into, that and the keys by the door of your office. Yes, it is so.”

I had to relocate the key rack. “Why did you leave the ammo for me?”

“You’re gonna think I’m crazy if I tell you.” The smile was a little weak when he looked up.

“Lonnie, I’ve seen an awful lot of crazy stuff lately, so why don’t you try me?”

“The Old Ones told me you would need them.” He nodded. “Yes. When I lost my legs, they began talking to me. I think it is because my legs are with them, now. They tell me half things.”

“Half things?”

“Yes, because I am only half with them. Someday, all of me will be with them, and they will tell me everything.”

I smiled. “I hope you don’t get the whole story too soon, Lonnie.” I looked down at the rifle in his lap. “Lonnie, did you take the gun out and shoot it a bunch of times?”

He looked genuinely ashamed. “I was angry, so I shot one of the fence posts out back.”

I thought of the things I might shoot if somebody had done to my daughter what had been done to his. The image of Lonnie out on his back porch late one night shooting at a singular fence post hung there just out of range. I’m pretty sure I jumped a little when the radio crackled in the truck. I could hear Ruby’s voice through the glass and the transceived miles. “Come in, Unit One.”

It was probably word from the Sportshop or on the Espers but, when I looked up at the clock on the dash, it was only two-thirty; maybe it was Jim Keller. I opened the door and keyed the mic. “Base, this is Unit One. Go ahead?”

Static. “Walt, George Esper is gone again.”

I slumped against the doorjamb of the truck and rested my head on the mic in my hand. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Static. “He stole Ferg’s truck. Vic’s in pursuit.”

“Where?”

Static. “Out 16, probably on the highway. He already ran into somebody near the co-op. Turk’s out there now.”

“Did anybody notify the HPs?”

Static. “Yes.”

I waited a moment; chances are Vic was still in range. Static, then a fainter signal broke through. “I’m at Mile Marker 113, and if the little fucker was up here, I would have caught him by now.”

“Vic, leave the highway to the HPs, I got a sneaking suspicion that he’s headed out this way.”

Static, and I listened as she slowed the five-year-old unit down to under a hundred, negotiating the divider with one hand. “I’m on my way back, but if that’s the case he’s got a hell of a lead on me.”

“We’ll get him from the other direction. Unit One, out.” I hung the mic back up and leaned out to look at Henry. “You coming?”

He nodded and started pulling Lonnie back up to the house. Lonnie grabbed the wheel rails of his chair and slid himself to a stop. “You go ahead, I can get back in the house myself. Yes, it is so.” Then he reached down and handed the rifle up to me. “Take this.” I took the rifle as he handed the black plastic box to Henry.

Henry looked at him, nodded, and came around to the passenger door. As I crossed in front of the truck, I stopped. “Lonnie, you know that cartridge box?”

He continued to smile. “Yes?”

“It has writing on it, next to the bullet hole?” He nodded and smiled. “Whose handwriting is that?”

“You should know that handwriting.”

“Lonnie, I don’t have a lot of time…”

“Nedon Nes Stigo, He Who Sheds His Leg.”

Lucian.

“He used to shoot with us out at the Buffalo Wallows, back in the day. One time, my father challenged him to try to hit a target as small as the cartridge box at four hundred yards, and he did it. Yes, it is so.”

It took me a minute to get myself going. “Thanks, Lonnie.”

I climbed in the truck and, reaching for my seat belt, motioned Henry to do the same. He placed the small, black plastic case at his feet and held the rifle as easily in his hands as he had held the one in Omar’s helicopter. By the time we got to the end of the state route that joined with the main drag, we were doing about a hundred with the sirens and lights at full tilt. It was still going to take us more than twenty minutes to get back to the other side of the reservation, and my knuckles tightened around the wheel. I concentrated on the road as we passed the cutoff down to the Powder River. “I think he’s headed toward us.”

“Because of what he said at the hospital, about living on the Rez.”

“It’s as good a guess as any.”

He braced a hand against the dash as the gravitational pull of a sweeping turn almost slid us into the barrow ditch. “What did Lonnie say about the writing on the box?”

“He said it was Lucian’s… You never heard that?”

“I never asked.”

“I guess it was done a long time ago, when Lucian was shooting with Lonnie’s father.” At the next straightaway he opened what looked like a cleaning kit and pulled out two long stems and began threading them together. “What’re you doing?”

“I am cleaning this rifle.”

“That’s evidence.”

“No, it is a weapon.”

It took awhile, even at our speed, but we finally made it to the northern end of the Powder when another vehicle popped over the horizon that was traveling at a pretty good speed of its own. From the distance, it was hard to tell who it was but, after a moment, I could see the lights. I grabbed the mic. “Vic, is that you?”

Static. “Fuck yes, it’s me. Where in the hell did that little shit go?” I slowed and stopped. By the time I had, she was pulling up alongside us and was rolling down her window; she had to crank. I cut the siren, and she leaned an elbow on the sill. “What now?”

I thought. “Well, if he didn’t take 14 back toward Sheridan, the only other main road is Powder River back here.”

“North or south?”

“We’ll take south, you take north.” She was gone in a billowing cloud of blue burned oil and tire smoke before I could finish my sentence. Maybe, if I bought her a new unit… I turned the Bullet around and laid a little strip of my own, accelerating back to the Powder. When we got to the cutoff, the only thing headed north was a drifting cloud of dirt that hazed the gravel road into the distance. We made the turn and headed south as the back end of the Bullet attempted to get ahead of us. I countersteered and hit the gas again as we slid around the first turn just about sideways and clipped a few mailboxes. I noticed Henry struggling to hold onto the Sharps and find his seat belt with one hand. “What’s the matter?”

“Just buckling up. It is the law.” This was the first time I had taken the big beast up to speed for any length of time; there hadn’t been any reason before. It was heavy, but I was surprised by the agility it had. “All right, you can crash now.” He had gotten his seat belt on and was studying the road farther ahead as I dealt with the ground at hand. “I see dust.”

If it was George, he had just jumped off the highway. A thought snagged in my mind. “Do you think he’s got the radio on in that thing?”

Henry turned to look at me as I negotiated another turn and another quickly afterward. “That would explain why he got off the state routes.”

“There’s something else.”

“What?”

“The old Esper place is out here somewhere, the one that Reggie’s great-great-grandfather settled. I remember Vonnie telling me about it. She bought a bunch of property on a speculation that they were going to put that power plant out there someday.”

“How does romance bloom?”

“Don’t ask.” I could feel his disapproving glance as we crossed a cattle guard and momentarily became airborne. We made for the washboard curve that lay ahead, and he braced himself. “Hey, I thought you guys always thought it was a good day to die.”

“Attributed to Crazy Horse who was often misquoted.”

The road straightened after the washboard, and I was able to bring all ten cylinders on line. The speedometer was creeping back up on eighty, and we were starting to get that light, floating feeling on the ball bearings of loosely packed dirt. My testicles felt as if they were somewhere in my chest cavity, and it wasn’t a pleasant feeling. If we missed one of the curves at this speed, we were most assuredly dead. All Henry said was “Ooh, shit.”

We hit the next turn at just about a hundred, and the sickening feeling in my stomach magnified as the laws of geometry exerted themselves on the velocity of all that Dearborn steel. At any reasonable speed it wasn’t much of a turn, certainly nothing worthy of a Jan and Dean ballad, but it was enough to slam the side of the truck into the red clay embankment. When we bounced off the wall, I overcorrected, and the Bullet shot for the river. I turned ever so slightly, trying to urge our velocity forward, and only the left rear wheel slipped off the road. The truck tipped slightly back to center where we gained purchase and shot into the next straightaway. He looked over at me, the passenger-side mirror beating against his door. “You want to wreck? Do your side, okay?”

George had obviously had a little trouble getting around that one, too; his side-view mirror bounced and clattered under the Bullet. We had gained a good amount on him. When we saw him next, he had topped a hill and was bouncing immediately through another cattle guard that was on his right. The road continued a steady climb until we got to where he had been, and I slowed just a little because there might be a slope on the other side. It was a good thing I had, because the road did make a sharp cut to the right and there was a reasonable drop-off. George had not made it.

You could see where the Toyota had gone through the fence sideways, taking the majority of the barbed wire and aged posts with it. The little truck had most certainly gone over, but it had landed on its wheels, and George was still bumping his way across the bottomland where the pasture ended in a gate only about a quarter of a mile ahead. If we kept our speed up, we would get there before him and arrive in a large wash that opened to the east with a rise of about eight feet in more than a mile. This was the part of the river that admitted honestly to the moniker “a mile wide and an inch deep.” There wasn’t much in that direction other than the access road to the Burlington Northern/Santa Fe tracks. There wasn’t anywhere else for him to go. He couldn’t turn back and try to climb the hill he had just slid down, and the river blocked him to the left where the water might only be an inch deep but the mud was bottomless. He had to go for the gate, and we were going to be there before him.

I slowed just a little, since time and topography were now on our side. The Toyota leapt in and out of the hillocks and sagebrush. You could see him in there, sawing at the wheel in an attempt to keep the pickup on a relatively straight line, his head beating against the headliner as he topped each rise. I cringed a little at the thought of what he was doing to his leg, his jaw, and other assorted and sundry injuries.

We made the last turn before the gate, and I accelerated briefly before sliding to a stop and blocking his path. I figured the faster I got there, the sooner he might pull the battered little Toyota to a stop, but he kept coming and I was beginning to wonder if he could see us or if he had beaten himself senseless. I waited as he approached, and it was only when he was about seventy feet from the gate that I saw the wheels turn and the vehicle lurch down the hill. George had decided to test the waters.

“Jesus H. Christ…” I gunned the Bullet farther down the fence line till I found a likely spot and cut the wheel myself, this time pulling a couple of yards of barbed wire and stapled posts after me. We followed him to the cut bank of the river and watched as the underside of his truck suddenly became visible. The jump didn’t get very far and, as anticipated, the wheels and most of the front of the Toyota sank into the soft mud of the Powder River, effectively ending the vehicular portion of George’s getaway.

I pulled up sideways and watched in absolute exhaustion as George climbed out of the window of his truck, fell into the water, rose up, and began quick-slogging away from us as fast as his bandaged leg would carry him. I looked past Henry in disbelief as he turned to hand me the rifle. “If you do not shoot him, I will.”

“We don’t have any bullets, or I would seriously consider it.” He laughed and pulled a gleaming. 45–70 from his shirt pocket and held it up. “Where did you get that?”

“Off your desk, where do you think?”

I pulled the handle and opened my door. “We’re trying to keep somebody from shooting him.”

He started out on the other side. “I am beginning to question the logic in that.”

George had gotten a good start, but his injury and the mud were slowing him quite a bit, and I could see the gray slime of the riverbed clinging to his pants well above his knees. I stopped at the cut and stood at the edge; he was about fifty yards out. I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled, “George, where do you think you’re going?!”

Henry joined me at the dark crust edge of the bank. He was still carrying the rifle. “If you shoot him now, we do not have to bury him.”

I cupped my hands around my mouth again. “George, that’s enough, get back over here!”

George continued on. I started down the bank and slipped, barely catching myself before I fell into the river. I looked down into water that I was sure was just above freezing and tried to figure out what the best approach might be. I was never an all at once guy, preferring to ease myself into things, but I was about ready to throw prudence to the wind when Henry spoke. The tone of his voice ran a chill colder than the Powder had ever run. “Walt, there is somebody over there.”

I raised my head and searched the opposite bank, but all I could see was George slowly making his way across. “Where?”

“Long way out. See that pointed clump of sage to George’s right? Just to the right of that, all the way out at the horizon.”

I stopped breathing, strained my eyes, and there it was. A small vertical figure in a horizontal landscape. “You sure that’s not a pronghorn or a mule deer?”

“No, it is a man, and he is armed.”

As Henry spoke, a small burst of smoke erupted from the figure. Just over two seconds later, George was cartwheeled backward into the frigid water. I took an involuntary step forward and splashed into the river water as George hit the mud. He struggled to get up, rolling himself sideways as he attempted to sit. It was a slow, grinding motion before things slipped into the adrenalin-induced rate where the real world cannot keep pace. I yelled with everything I had, “Stay down!” He couldn’t hear, or it didn’t matter. I had seen it in Vietnam, and I had seen it here. When you are a standing animal and you suddenly discover that you are not, there is an overriding need to rise and prove to yourself that you are intact.

“Reloading.”

When I turned, he had already thrown me the rifle. I caught it and quickly jacked the lever down and extended a hand up for the shell as he fished in his shirt pocket. At that point, all I could think of was the penny he had tossed to me at the bar that night. He threw me the round; it hit the side of my palm and started to ricochet off, but I caught it against my chest and quickly inserted it past the dropped block and brought the lever up. I squared myself for the shot, and my shoulder jarred as the stock came up and slammed against it. I had to calm down and bring it all together in a fluid motion; that’s when it occurred to me to breathe. I filled my chest cavity and felt the burn of flooding oxygen as I flipped up the Vernier sight… “Six seventy-five…”

“Seven hundred if it’s an inch.”

“Damn it.” I readjusted as quickly as I could. “Where’s Omar when you need him?”

Henry laughed as I brought the rifle up again, and it was just what I needed. All the tension faded from me. I pulled the set trigger and paused for a moment to check my target. Even at this distance, there was something familiar, something I knew, someone I knew. I adjusted my figures to encompass the season, general elevation of the shooter, and mean temperature. An approximation of one twenty-one-hundredths of an inch was the starting point, but I would have to go higher with current conditions. I peered through the pinhole of the Vernier’s tiny disc, which was capable of measurements as small as one one-thousandth of an inch, and through the knife-shaped, German-silver blade sight.

He was waiting for me there, whoever he was, a mirror image at seven hundred yards with the same off-hand positioning. It occurred to me that the first one of us to find something to rest against might be the one who would still be standing, but there was no time. I had an ace in the hole because I wasn’t the one he was shooting at, at least as far as I knew. I considered how many unfortunate individuals had held that as a last thought. George was clearly in my peripheral vision as I closed my left eye and blocked out the sight of the suffering youth. He had struggled up into a sitting position and now cradled his right arm in his left. It was difficult to tell what was blood and what was darkened from the water. I could hear him sobbing and only hoped it would continue.

I allowed my breath to slowly drift out with the faint breeze and it blended with the rounded river stones, the rustling of the dying buffalo grass, and with the faint wisps of high-altitude clouds. I could hear the song I had heard before on the mountain, the one that had shaken the trees and resonated through rock. The Old Cheyenne were there now with me, and I could hear their voices ascending as I held their rifle. I pulled the trigger of the big Sharps, and they whistled across the Powder River and beyond with a deadly accuracy that begged forgiveness as they went. They imparted death as a release and an involuntary shudder in the ongoing action of things. I hardly felt the kick and lowered the rifle in acceptance of a forgone conclusion. The figure dropped, and I listened as his wayward shot passed just above our heads. It screamed like misplaced vengeance and slapped through both sides of the Bullet’s double-sided bed.

George continued to sob, and I was glad that he was alive. After a few moments, I became vaguely aware of Henry as he took the rifle away from me and leaned it against the bank. He stood there for a moment, and I think he touched my arm. He continued on into the river. The voices of the Powder would continue to tell the stories they had told before I was born and would tell long after I was gone. Henry carefully picked his way on the large, flat rocks that George had had no time to look for. I watched him for a moment and then looked back in the direction of the shot. My jaw set, and sadness overwhelmed me.

I knew who it was.