Lone Creek

16

I ended up using all the two dozen frames in the cheap throwaway camera I'd bought, figuring I might as well. But it wasn't much use. The crime scene had been covered carefully-the shed's inside cleaned, the shell casings picked up, even the stack of hay bales knocked down. What was left amounted to zilch and could be explained in other ways. Like a TV cop, I needed a body for real proof.

And I was more confused than ever. I'd assumed that Balcomb could run the D-8 Cat well enough to hide the horses in the dump-that wouldn't have taken much. But whoever had maneuvered it inside the shed was a skilled operator. Either he was better than I'd suspected, or I was guessing wrong about a lot of things.

Madbird and I tacked the piece of siding back into place the same way it had been. Then we started home, driving with headlights out, the van bouncing slowly along the rough road.

When we passed the spur to the old mansion, he turned onto it. I glanced at him, surprised.

"Let's pick up our tools," he said. "You might as well do it while you got the chance, and I ain't working for that motherfucker no more, either."

I felt bad enough already. I hadn't figured on costing him this job, too. It wasn't that either of us was going to end up unemployed. The contractor we worked for, Jack Graves, kept several projects going at any given time. He'd switch us to another and pull men from there to cover here. But we'd both liked this one.

"I'm sorry about all this," I said.

"Hey, I'd rather know about this bullshit than not. I could use a few days off, anyway."

"I'll call Jack tomorrow and tell him Balcomb ran me off. You want me to say anything about you?"

"Jack already knows I got a lot of grandfathers up on the rez, and sometimes one of them dies."

The site of the mansion was the choicest on the property, overlooking Lone Creek and the thick forest rising up into those seemingly endless mountains. Nathan Pettyjohn and his wife once had hosted grand dinners and hunting parties for dignitaries here-governors and senators, European nobility, famous musicians and artists. There was a story that Teddy Roosevelt had stopped by long enough to bag himself a bull moose.

Tonight, the creek's clear rippling water seemed alive with moonlight. It made me think again about Celia. In a roundabout way, she'd been responsible for my starting construction work, like she'd been for so many other things.

After her death, my family's closeness with the Pettyjohns was over, and I didn't go back to do ranch work for them anymore. The next summer, my father got me on as a construction gopher instead. My name was "Hey, kid!" and my job was to run all day, carrying materials, fetching tools for the journeymen, and cleaning up the site. I didn't like it at first, and there were plenty of assholes doing their best to make it tougher. But there were a lot more good men, and as I learned the work, I got caught up in it. It was great training for boxing-every summer I gained more coordination and lean weight. And there was the practical bonus that by the time I finished college, I could build a house from the ground through the roof.

The mansion was coming back to life nicely. One thing I had to give the Balcombs-they wanted top-quality work and weren't pinching pennies to get it. Madbird and I gathered our gear fast, our boot steps echoing in the darkened old building-a dozen kinds of saws and drills, homemade wooden boxes of hand tools, extension cords, leather belts hung with heavy pouches that we wore like pack animals, all beaten into comfortable familiarity and marked with different colors of spray paint to identify the owners.

I'd never been sentimental about walking off a job and I wasn't now, but I felt a tug of loss, mostly because of the crew. Like Laurie Balcomb had pointed out, they weren't a pretty bunch. We had an ex-junkie Mexican plasterer with a full back tattoo of his naked girlfriend, a redneck new age plumber with the insane eyes that came from inhaling too much pipe dope, a finish carpenter who'd once broken his neck getting thrown from a rodeo bucking horse, a laborer who hand-dug like a backhoe and occasionally had to head down to the penitentiary in Deer Lodge for a stint making license plates, and a cast of others like them who came and went with the need. We'd gravitated together over the years because we all carried our weight and stayed off each other's nerves, and we'd all been on many other jobs where that wasn't true. I was the nominal lead man, not because of any enhanced ability, but because as the main structural carpenter, I was in the best position to line out what was coming. They didn't require pushing and wouldn't have tolerated it. Jack Graves took care of the business end of things, paid us well, and left us alone-another rare setup. They were also a hell of a lot of fun. I was going to miss that.

We loaded our tools in the van and started up again. For the next tense mile we stayed quiet, past the ranch hands' trailers and the darkened headquarters. If we were going to get stopped, this was the place. But everything was still quiet, and we made it out as easily as we'd come in.

"So what you gonna do, Huey?" Madbird said.

I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. "What would the Blackfeet do?"

He spat out the window. "Hang Balcomb's bloody fucking hair on the lodge."

"I'd love to. But I might as well put a gun to my own head."

"Yeah, you got to be smart about it."

"I'm not feeling too smart right now. It looks like I'm going to lose any way I go. I'm just trying to weigh how much and where."

"That's a real lesson in what it's like being a Indian." His teeth showed in that grin, although this time it looked humorless. "Have another beer. Maybe you'll get a vision."

The beer tasted fine, but I couldn't see much except a few scattered lights in the distance, making this country seem even lonelier than it was.

"I keep thinking about how careful he was, setting that up," I said. "Somehow, that's the worst part of it."

"I been thinking that, too. I don't guess you got a look at a brand."

I shook my head. "They were so torn up and buried in junk, I probably wouldn't have been able to see one anyway. But why would somebody else's horses be in there?"

"I just got this creepy notion. A story I heard about smugglers using dogs as mules. Sewed up dope inside them and run them across the border, then cut them open."

That gave this nightmare a new twist I hadn't imagined.

"Kirk?" I said, thinking of his meth habit. He could sure run that Cat-he'd grown up with it. He could have spotted me at the dump, gotten alarmed, and blown the whistle about the lumber. But I was still convinced that Balcomb was at least in on it-that that was what he'd been driving at when he grilled me-and that Kirk wouldn't kill animals like that.

Madbird had his own reasons for doubting Kirk.

"He ain't got the brains," he said. "Besides, he wouldn't have to pull something like that to run meth. Half the fucking double-wides in this state got labs in them. Heroin or coke would be more likely."

I tried to envision Wesley Balcomb, with his glossy lifestyle and elegant business operations and aristocratic wife, involved in the violent and dangerous world of dealing dope-especially at this level of viciousness. If he was at a complete remove, just putting up money, then maybe-but not hands-on dirty like that.

"Goddammit, it's just too much grunt work," I said. "You know what I mean? Up to your elbows in blood and guts and shit, having to lug stuff around and clean up-that's not how guys like him make money."

Madbird grunted assent. "Yeah, I don't buy it either."

We didn't talk much for the rest of the drive. When we got to my truck, Madbird pulled up next to it and we transferred my tools.

When we finished, he said, "I'm nervous about giving advice, 'cause it could backfire. But I guess if it was me, I'd try a bluff. See which way he jumps."

"Bluff how?"

"Tell him you got the pictures of them carcasses. Say you always keep a camera handy from being a news dog, so you had it when you found them. Then you went back later and figured out where they were killed. Show him those pictures if he wants proof. With all that together, he might figure it ain't worth fucking with you any more."

I was still standing there as Madbird fired up his van and pulled away. Then he slowed and leaned out the window.

"Hey, Hugh," he called. "You better be ready to jump, too."