Cold Dish

16

The bullet had shattered the clavicle, passed through the muscle and tendons of the shoulder, and had exited through the blade, taking most of it as it went. The tissue damage was tremendous, and it was unlikely that George’s arm would ever operate properly again. His pulse was weak and rapid, his breathing was shallow, and it seemed as if he was doing everything possible to lower my odds below fifty-fifty.

We had wrapped him in the wool blanket that I kept behind the seat of my truck and had carried him back to the tailgate. He lay there, trembling from the cold of the water and the loss of blood. Shock had dulled his eyes, and the pupils were dilated as he stared into the late afternoon sky. He had lost a lot of blood in the river and continued to ooze his life out onto the scratchy surface of the gray blanket. I folded my fleece jacket around his shoulder in an attempt to compress the wound and quell the blood flow. I leaned over him and smiled with my mouth, even though my eyes refused to join in. “You’re going to be okay, George.”

Along with the difficulty in thinking clearly that accompanies shock, his jaw was still wired shut, and his lips shuddered along with the rest of him, so that it was doubly difficult to understand what he was saying. “Shoshmeee…”

“Yep, somebody shot you, but I shot them. You just relax, everything’s going to be okay.” I pressed on the jacket at his shoulder and calculated the miles back to Durant. If you continued down the Powder River Road to Tipperary, you could cut back up 201 and get to town faster than doubling back to 16 and the paved roads. I couldn’t help but think that time was more important than macadam. Henry returned from the front of the truck where he had gone to raise Vic on the radio. “Henry’s here. He was with me in the truck when we were trying to find you.”

“Ya te he, George.” He put his hand down on the dying boy’s chest and smiled with his whole face. “You really had us scared there for a moment.” George was bleeding and would continue to bleed until he got to an emergency room. The important thing now was to keep his mind working in a positive direction, to speak calmly, and to reassure him, so that he could counter the effects of the shock. We had to get him thinking about other things, and I truly believe I could have searched the world over and never found someone better at diversion than the man who now stood beside me. George’s life hung on Henry’s every word, and I watched as the dark eyes peered into the dilated pupils and scooped up a subject that would carry the young man to safety. “George, I need to talk to you about being an Indian…” He glanced toward me and whispered, “She will be here any minute.” He looked back down. “George, if you are going to live on the reservation with us I have to teach you some things…” We transferred hands, and he held the makeshift bandage against George’s crushed shoulder. He continued to talk to him in a hypnotic rumble. “We need to talk about finding a harmony and a wholeness within yourself that you can share with all your relations, but I need you to listen carefully because the things I am going to say to you are very important. You need to hear every word, yes?” The trembling subsided, and George actually nodded his head. “Good.” Henry continued to smile. “You are going to make a good Indian.”

I tried not to think of the rest of that old statement and pulled away to look back up the road in time to see Vic’s unit come over the hill. She barely made it through the curve where George had gone off the road, cut her truck through the opening, and pulled up alongside the Bullet. With her sunglasses, she looked like a fighter pilot; she drove like one, too. “You shoot him?”

“No.”

“Who did?”

“I’ll tell you later. We need to get him into Durant. Now.” She followed me around her truck and opened the passenger-side door, and we laid George across the backseat and trussed him up carefully with the seat belts. I looked at Henry as she rounded the truck and got in. I noticed he was holding something out to me. It was another. 45–70. I stared at it for a moment, then back up to his face. His eyes were grim. We both knew the ending, and it was a bad one. “This land used to belong to the Espers…”

He didn’t move. “Yes.”

“You know who it is.”

He nodded and then looked off into the distance of the shot. “Yes.”

I took the bullet and stuffed it in the pocket of my jeans. “Get him in there alive, would you?”

“Do not worry about him.” He climbed in and sat on the floor beside George. He continued to apply pressure to the wound. I closed the door as he turned back to me and looked through the open window. His eyes were a warning. “Be careful.”

Vic looked at me questioningly, but I only nodded to her and slapped the side of the door in dismissal. I turned and walked back to the river and the rifle as she backed around the corner of my truck and rushed away to Durant. She took a left and continued down Powder River Road without my even telling her. I watched as the dust receded into the distance, and then the only sound was the water and a wandering band of Canada geese staging a late season getaway south. I watched them for a moment as they made their way along the water, keeping a steady pace between the darker hills on both sides of the storied river. The hills were contusion purple, and there were lengthy wounds of burnt-red scoria. It seemed like the whole valley was bleeding.

I picked up the Sharps at the cut bank and noticed a slight discoloration around the breech as I held it. It was still warm. I looked into the distance of the shot but could see nothing but rough terrain. I pulled the lever down, plucked the spent shell from the receiver, and replaced it with the live round Henry had given me. I tossed the empty into the river so that it would never be reloaded again. I crouched over the three inches of rushing water, cradled the rifle on my legs, and took a moment to wash George’s blood from my hands. The blood mixed quickly with the clear, cold water and disappeared north toward Montana.

I crossed the river and kept a straight path, even as the current attempted to drift me northward in its direction. When I got to the other side, I paused to steady myself and to breathe away the nausea that had overtaken me. I looked back at the Bullet to triangulate my shot’s trajectory, took a reading on the horizon, and began walking. I could feel the warmth of the setting sun on my back as I negotiated the clumps of sage, buffalo grass, and cactus, and I scared up a few western cottontails as I went. Just at the foothills, there was a small band of pronghorn antelope.

It didn’t take as long as I had hoped. I stood there with the rifle in both hands and looked at the elevated section of tracks marking the coal freight line’s direct path farther on east toward Gillette. It was lonely country and was a good spot, no matter what your intent, with a clear line through the wash that made for a perfect view of the river.

I kneeled down by the dark stains in the dirt and pressed my hand against the coarse texture of the land. It was sticky where blood had already begun drying into the earth. The Powder River country would accept moisture from any source, no matter what the cost. There wasn’t a lot, but there was enough. I stood up and took another look around before checking the road. There was a depression on the ground where the shooter had fallen, and I could tell from the pattern of the blood that the shot had hit left. Vasque, size nine tracks were all over the place, and as I knelt to examine one I saw the faintest glint of brass underneath a patch of sage. I went over and picked up the empty casing. There was no need for gloves or pens, so I held the spent shell up to the fading sun and looked at the dented primer and the base, which read. 45–70 GOVT. I was feeling a little sick again, so I stood and deposited the shell in my shirt pocket.

I followed the blood trail back to the access road and knelt by the last splatter. In the dry dust it looked black, just like the ones at the center of the road. A vehicle had been parked here long enough to leave traces of motor oil and transmission fluid; a vehicle with a pretty wide axle spread and, from the spin, it wasn’t positraction. The tires were a narrow ranch ply, and the depressions told me it was heavy, approaching a ton at least. There was a single exhaust blow where it had been started: carbon and condensate, with a little oil mixed in. I was willing to bet it was an older truck, and I was also willing to bet that it was green.

The shadows were lengthening, and I had someplace to go. I worked my way back across the Powder and to my truck, leaned against the bed, and thought about what was going to happen in the next few hours. My stupor was broken by the radio.

Static. “Come in, Unit One.” Static and a worried, “Walter, are you there?”

I swallowed, reached in, and grabbed the mic. “Yep. What’s the word on George?”

Static. “They made it in; he’s at the hospital right now.”

“Alive?”

Static. “Yes. Ferg took the Espers over there just a few minutes ago. Turk is getting ready to leave now, on his way out to you.”

“Don’t send anybody out. I’m on my way in, but I’ve got to take care of a few things.” I waited for a moment. “Is Lucian there?”

Static. “I think he’s still in the back with Bryan.”

“Will you get him for me?”

As I waited, I thought about how personal and ugly things had gotten over the last forty minutes. A breeze picked up a little in an attempt to scour the countryside. I wished it all the luck in the world. Static. “What the hell do you mean don’t send anybody?”

I smiled. “Good to hear your voice, old man. How’re you doin’?”

Static. “You woke me up to ask me that?”

I took a deep breath and laid the Cheyenne Rifle of the Dead on the seat. “Lucian, do you remember back when Michael Hayes killed himself?” A long pause.

Static. “What the hell does that have to do with the price of tea in China?”

“What kind of gun did he use?” There was another long pause.

Static. “Son of a bitch.”

There were clouds at the mountains, and the snow pack reflected the sour-lemon sun into one of the most beautiful and perverse sunsets I had ever seen. The clouds were dappled like the hindquarters of an Appaloosa colt, and the beauty kicked just as hard. The head wind rattled the bare limbs of the cottonwoods as the longer branches swayed, and the remnants of grass and sage shuddered close to the ground. The buffeting of the wind against the truck reminded me that I had lost both of my jackets.

I started at the beginning, working with the most innocent facts and making my way toward the most damning. I thought about the history first. No one knew exactly why Michael Hayes had killed himself. I was just a teenager when it happened, but I remember her saying that he had killed himself in the tack shed. Someone at the time had said he had done it with a large-caliber rifle, and anyone who knew Mr. Hayes would be happy to tell you he was not the type to take half measures. I remember someone making the statement that his brains had been scattered all over the walls.

I thought about the night I had gone to her house for dinner, and how she had made me leave the rifle by the door. Could she have been responding to the weapon itself? I remembered how the dog had continually looked at the door that evening. Could he have seen the Old Cheyenne?

I thought about the Vasques, size nines, and about holding those lengthy, supple feet in my hands. I thought about how she was only a head shorter than me, and how that sandy hair hung past her shoulders. It could have easily been she in the early morning light at Dull Knife Lake, and it would have been easy for her to carefully wind her way through the twisted branches at the second crime scene.

I looked longingly at the bar as I passed. The lights were on, and there were a few aged pickups parked in equal distance around the building; in Wyoming, even trucks have personal space. Dena was in there, fleecing the local cowboys out of their $163 a week. I guess with the current events, she had decided to bag the Las Vegas tournament and take care of some of the local talent. It was well past the end of the working season; for some of the cowboys it would be the last check they would see until things picked back up in the spring. It would be a hard winter for them too, but for now, they were having fun losing their money to Dena Many Camps. I envied them the privilege.

When I got to Portugee Gulch at the Lower Piney, the gate to the house was open. I picked up the rifle and listened for drums, bells, or voices of any kind, but the only sound was the wind as it swept down, undulating along the foothills of the mountains. I stepped out of the truck, and the halogen spotlights of the courtyard tripped on. It took me a second to remember how they had done the same thing when I had brought her home a couple of nights ago. The red shale crunched under my feet as I approached the house. When I got to the door, it was unlocked. I pushed it all the way open and looked in at the empty living room. Things were a great deal as they were when I had made my hasty departure the other night. The blanket was still crumpled on the sofa, but the fire was dead and cold. I thought about the dog and looked behind me. I listened very carefully as I glanced across the openings of the archways to the dining room and looked down the hallway that led to the kitchen. This was where I had seen him the first time, but the only sound was the wind in the courtyard and a soft whistling coming from the still open flue of the fireplace.

I closed the door softly behind me and looked down at the Cheyenne Rifle of the Dead; it had taken on a much more articulate quality with the amount of handling it had endured in the last week. The oils from many hands had given its ghostly finish a peculiar gleam, and the wood and Italian beads shone with a warning that it had come to life once again. The small, gray feathers looked soft and invited my touch. I jacked the lever down and checked the round just above the sliding block and then pulled the lever back up. I leaned the rifle against the wall and slid the action back on the Colt, releasing a live round into the chamber of the. 45. The hammer kicked back like a hitchhiker’s thumb. The sound of the thing was enough to wake the dead. I looked back at the Sharps; I didn’t want to take it, but I couldn’t leave it behind.

I moved across the room and went up the couple of stairs into the dining room, still listening and looking for any signs of blood. I paused at the opening to the kitchen and raised the sidearm up into a ready position, holding the rifle behind me. The kitchen was empty, but I thought I heard a slight noise and looked around the room again. The copper pots and stainless steel appliances remained mute until the refrigerator kicked on with a low hum. I heard the noise again. It was like the shifting of weight against something solid. I glanced toward the mudroom, where the dog had been kept before. Something very large moved, and a second later he crashed into the door. He barked and snapped over and over again at the other side as he leaped and the center panel pressed out toward me. I raised the pistol, holding the rifle in reserve, but the latch held.

I waited a moment for my heart to return to its regular pattern. It was going to be tougher from here on; I didn’t know the layout of the rest of the house. I went back out the opening to the kitchen, and there were four different hallways and two separate sets of stairs where I could continue my search. I had to think about where it was she might be, where it was that I would go if I were in her condition. I knew she was hurt and losing blood. Where would she go to doctor herself? There was no blood trail on the slick surface of the clay tile. She had not come this way, nor had she gone the other way into the living room or to the bedrooms beyond. She didn’t appear to have come into this part of the house at all.

I went down the back hallway that led farther into the compound. It was lined with bookcases and opened into an atrium with hanging baskets and large pots filled with plants I didn’t recognize. There were Turkish rugs and wicker furniture, and the air felt moist. Here was the pool, about fifteen feet long and seven feet wide, with a motorized unit that must have created an artificial current to swim against. I looked around at the lead framework that was filled with the panels of glass that made up the majority of the back side of the house. I moved toward the end of the right side of the room to an exterior door, put the Sharps under my arm, opened the door carefully, and looked around. The yard was filled with the same red shale as the front, and there was an opening that lead into an indoor riding arena that was about forty feet across the courtyard. There were depressions at the center where a truck had been driven. It was getting late, and the skies above had dimmed to where the strong angles of the sun set everything on dramatic edge. It would be dark very soon, and I had to find her before then.

I walked down from the slate steps and started to cross, keeping an eye on the surrounding windows and doors. When I got to the side of the large open doorway, I stopped and placed my back against the tin surface of the wall and propped the butt of the buffalo rifle carefully on the ground. The owl feathers moved very slightly, and I had a feeling the messengers were calling. It was the stable section of the arena, with horse stalls on both sides. There were opaque skylights that allowed a certain amount of the failing sunlight to spill through so I could see red shale tracks where a truck had crossed the concrete floor to the right. It was a large building, one of those prefabs at least fifty yards long and about twenty yards wide. Two horses came over to the gates to see if I had treats. One was a grade bay with Chinese eyes, and the other was a big thoroughbred, at least seventeen hands. The big one stuck his head through the stall door and reached his soft nose out to me. I reached up and petted him but continued to keep an eye on the opening ahead. When I got past him, he whiffled at me, and I turned to give him a dirty look.

Inside the large sanded space of the arena itself, there was a green Willys pickup, circa 1950, with the driver’s-side door hanging open. It wasn’t a ’63 Ford, but it was close enough. They were Arizona plates, antique. It was parked in front of another opening, and I could see lights on in the hallway beyond. I stayed along the plywood partitions that kept a rider from getting brushed off as he circled the arena on horseback and worked my way around to the truck. There was dried blood everywhere, and a small cotton bag of. 45-70s had spilled onto the floor. Wedged in the crease of the bench seat was a bloodstained, fake eagle feather. The ignition had been left on, although the motor was not running, and the dash bulbs had grown dimly yellow like the bug lights on an old-time porch. I turned back toward the opening and noticed that the architecture had changed in the hallway beyond.

This stable way was different from the others; it was assembled with rough-cut lumber and river stone. The corners of the wood were hand-worn, and the surface of the planks was weather-stained as if they had originally been outdoors. There was a row of dirty windows to the right. The dying light made angular, sharp-edged patterns down the walkway and reflected small seas of floating dust motes. Everything here was old, even the tools on the walls, and it looked like a small rural museum that had gone to seed. There were cobwebs in the overhanging rafters, and ring shank nails punched through the stained plywood where someone had not bothered to check their length when nailing down the tarpaper above. A fine patina of dirt had settled over everything and, except for the tang of blood, it smelled moldy, old, and mousy.

There were dark stains in the sand and a few on the stones that made up the walkway leading down the forty-foot hall. A Dutch door was open at the far end, and there was a light on. I stopped and listened; there was a brief crackle of what sounded like a radio frequency, but then it was gone. You could see a row of old saddles in there, but that was about all. I moved carefully past the abandoned stalls. Nothing had been in any of them for a long time, and I could just make out the scurrying movement of field mice as they busied themselves. I paused a little away from the door and noticed the blood on the galvanized handle. I started to speak. If I was going to be shot, it wasn’t going to be by mistake. There wasn’t any sound, so I inclined my head a little bit to see more of the room. “Avon calling…”

She laughed, a wispy, hollow laugh like air escaping from a tire, and the sound went through me. I turned slightly to the right and leaned in a little more and, through the dim light of the dusty, forty-watt bulb, I could see her. She was sitting on a series of wooden steps, the kind that grooms use to assist foxhunters in mounting their horses. They were a dark, hunter green with gold trim and looked as if they hadn’t been used in a while. I couldn’t remember the last foxhunt in the county, but I remembered the white-painted fences, and I remembered the glasses of pulpy lemonade that Vonnie’s mother had brought out to us when my father had shod their horses. She had put Maraschino cherries in the bottom of each glass, and I remembered how her hand had lingered on my father’s arm as he had taken his.

Vonnie was wearing a pair of dark coveralls that had been unzipped and peeled down to her waist and tied with the sleeves there. She had on a pair of Vasque hiking boots, and the blood had dribbled on them too. I wondered how she was still conscious. Then I noticed the Sharps buffalo rifle that was propped up between her knees with the butt resting on the floor. It was angled slightly in my direction. I knew how heavy the things were, but those fingers still wrapped around foregrip and trigger with a terrible determination. I could see that the massive hammer was pulled back and the rifle was ready to fire.

I eased the rest of the way into the room. She was against the wall, and there was a counter to her left where her shoulder was. The surface was strewn with medical supplies, most of them for horses. There were blood-saturated gauze pads, plastic bottles of topical antibiotics, and even a couple of syringes. They looked as if they had been pushed aside with a sweeping gesture when she had lost interest in the procedure. There was also a police scanner sitting on the table and, from the illuminated dial, I could see that it was set to our frequency of 155.070.

More saddles rested on log racks to her right, and the layers of grime made it clear that they hadn’t been disturbed in years. The ceiling was low, and I had to lean to one side to see around the naked light bulb that hung there. The glare from the proximity of the bulb was irritating. I was standing in the only door in the room, and there were no windows. There wasn’t anywhere to go, for either of us. I looked down and studied her face and could feel the sympathy twinge in my own. The damage to the left side of her head was only slightly evident in the tangle of blood-matted hair that stuck to the side of her face and strung down past her shoulder where the blood continued to drip. I was pretty sure her ear was gone and could only guess as to the extent of the rest of the damage.

“Hello, Walter.” She stared at the automatic in my hand that pointed down at the wooden plank floor and then to the Sharps that hung loosely in my other hand. “Are you going to shoot me again?”

I glanced down at the hammer of the Sharps she held but quickly looked back up at her eyes. With the dim light, I could barely make them out and wasn’t sure if they were dilated or constricted. “No.” I slowly lowered the hammer, placed the. 45 back in my holster, and pulled the snap over and clicked it shut. I raised the Cheyenne rifle muzzle up and leaned it against the wall beside the door. “It’s department policy to only shoot people once a day; it’s a budgetary thing.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” She laughed. “At least what I can hear..”

“Got your ear?”

Her blood-covered hand started to come up but then rested back on the rifle beside the set trigger; if it had already been pulled, it wasn’t going to take much to set the thing off. “Yes.”

I watched her hands for a moment. She was hurt and the effect was gruesome, but her movements were still sharp and, so far, the loss of blood hadn’t robbed her of any of her mechanical skills. “Pretty impressive. Getting hit like that would knock most people down and out.”

“It did.” Her eyes twitched in response to the wound, but she rolled her head back a little so that I could see more of her eyes. “I was out for a minute or two…”

“Pretty tough.” I waited for a moment, but she didn’t say anything. “We’re a pair, aren’t we? You with your ear and me with mine?”

She nodded slightly, smiled, and the effect of the bright white teeth against the blooded gore made my heart trip. “I don’t think this relationship is going to work out.” The smile broadened and then relaxed, as the muscles in her face must have disturbed the ear. “You play too rough.”

“Vonnie…”

“I’m glad you’re here, though. It wouldn’t have been right if you hadn’t been.”

I nodded and stepped to the side just enough to get the light bulb out of my face. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

She nodded slightly and glanced at the medical supplies scattered on the counter. “Not much of a Florence Nightingale, am I?” A moment passed. “I suppose my talents lie elsewhere.”

As I started to move again, the muzzle of the Sharps leveled up between us and hung there. “No.” I stopped, still too far away to grab the gun. She leaned a little, the slope of her back resting against the wall. “We could just… talk.”

“Well, we’ve got an awful lot to talk about.”

I waited, and after a while her face shifted a little, saving me the view. “Why couldn’t I have met you a day earlier?” She readjusted her weight against the wall and turned a little farther. Almost none of the damage showed now, except that the blood continued to saturate her thermal top. “Maybe none of this would have happened.”

“Vonnie…”

“One day earlier, that’s all we would have needed.”

“I don’t…”

“Twenty-four hours, and maybe I wouldn’t have made all this mess.” She glanced over at the medical supplies. “Why you? Why did all this have to do with you?”

“It’s my job.”

She looked back at me. “Yes.” Her attention dropped to the barrel of the buffalo rifle. “We all have our jobs, don’t we?”

I tried changing the subject. “What’s the story on the feathers?”

“Oh…” She blinked and refocused. “A bit of dramatic effect, symbolic really… life and death… I had hoped that the eagle feather would heal Melissa, the breath of life to make her better.”

“You took a lot of chances placing them.”

She didn’t move. “That was the hard part, seeing them up close.. ”

I thought about not telling her, but we were telling the truth and maybe it would keep her going. “They aren’t real. The eagle feathers, they’re fake.”

Her eyes glazed over, and the stillness of her was betrayed only by a sharp nod. “Well, doesn’t that fit…”

I glanced down at her feet. “The boots?”

“I was in the store when George was buying his. We have the same shoe size and I thought it might be handy later.”

“You knew where he was going?”

“I told him and his brother that they were welcome to fish at the old family place on the Powder if they wanted to.” She glanced at the scanner. “I also knew it was where you thought he was going.” Her eyes returned to the rifle. “Is he going to live?”

“Probably.” I waited what seemed like a long, long while. “We need to get you into town…”

“Walter, don’t.”

I waited. “Okay.” I looked around and gave it a resigned quality. “Why are we in here?”

“Why not here? This is where everything happens.” I looked at her, hoping that if I kept my eyes on her, she wouldn’t drift. She smiled just a little, started to laugh, and then stopped herself. She kept her eyes away from me. “He built it himself. He never built anything else in his life; he just wasn’t good at it. But we had this older cowboy who was working for us at the time who helped him…”

I smiled. “Jules Belden?”

Her eyes returned to me, but her head didn’t move. “Yes.” She stayed like that. “He’s still around?”

“Yep, he’s still around.” I started formulating a plan to keep her talking. If I could get her to go long enough, then maybe I had a chance.

She was looking into my eyes when I focused on her again. “He gave me quarters.”

“Me too.”

She laughed the wispy laugh. “He used to drink when he was here, and that’s why Father finally fired him, but he was a good carpenter.”

I looked around. “So he and your dad built this?”

“Yes.” She glanced at the tack. “When I decided to have the arena built, I just didn’t have the nerve to tear it all down, so I left this part.” I waited. “I still see him, sometimes…”

I watched as her eyes dulled a little. “Your father?”

“Yes, I sometimes see him. I’ll be out riding in the arena and I’ll look over and there he stands by the door, waiting for me.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “I’ve been having a little problem along those lines myself lately.”

The eyes narrowed. “I’m not being funny.”

“Neither am I.”

She continued to look at me but then broke it off to glance around. “You see him too?”

I shrugged. “No, I’ve been seeing Indians.” I placed my hands in my pants’ pockets, so she could see that I wasn’t going to try anything. Yet.

She gestured toward the buffalo rifle. “Is that their gun you’ve been carrying around?” She continued to study it. “The one you shot me with?” She didn’t show any signs of weakening, and I was beginning to think this was going to take awhile. “It’s beautiful. What was it you called it?”

“What?”

She continued to look at it. “The rifle?”

“Oh.” The barrel of her Sharps had shifted a little. “The Cheyenne Rifle of the Dead.” She nodded, and I smiled back. “It’s haunted.”

“By the Indians?”

“The Old Cheyenne.”

“Why?”

I studied her and tried to think if this was a good line for our conversation to take. “The Old Cheyenne stay near the rifle, and every once in a while they get the urge to take somebody back to the Camp of the Dead with them.”

“The Camp of the Dead.” It gave me time to look into her eyes. The pupils were dilated, but it was difficult to tell if it was from trauma or from the darkness of the room, or both. I watched her very carefully as I spoke and noted the continuing tremors in her long fingers. “So, the Old Cheyenne have come to get me, huh?”

“I started to leave the Old Cheyenne inside your door, but you said you didn’t allow guns in the house.”

I wondered how long it would take for her to get to the fact that her father had killed himself, probably in here. I looked at the wood behind her head, but the planks had been replaced. It had to be here, but I didn’t want to discuss her father’s suicide with her as she sat there with the loaded and cocked buffalo rifle in her hands. I didn’t say anything, and I didn’t move. She gestured gently with the Sharps. “This is the one he did it with.” I still remained silent. “They really are exquisite guns, aren’t they?”

It seemed safe enough. “Well made.”

“Yes, well made.” She looked back up from the barrel. “I was thirteen.” She puzzled for a moment, nodded, and then stared off into space as more blood dripped from the side of her face. “Did you ever wonder why it was he did it?”

I lied. “No.”

She was looking at me again. “You’re lying. You’re afraid I’m going to shoot myself.”

“The thought had crossed my mind.”

“You ever wonder why he did it here?”

It seemed like an odd question, but as long as she was talking. “I think you said it was because he didn’t want to make a mess in the house?”

She looked around. “He didn’t, but this place had special meaning for him.”

“Because he built it…”

She was perfectly still. “More than that.”

I looked at her, and the pieces started to fall into place. “What happened, Vonnie?”

“You’re a smart guy, Walter. I bet you can figure it out without all the horrid details.” She took a deep breath. “Daddy’s little girl

… I was nine years old, I mean for the physical act. It started a long time before, though.” She looked back to me. “Can you imagine?” Her eyes welled. “No, I don’t suppose you can.” I towered there like a stacked-up wreck and watched as tears fell from her dull eyes, diluting the blood on her face. I could feel their heat from where I stood. “I hated him. How could you not hate somebody that would do that to you? Somebody you trusted, somebody who was supposed to protect you? Someone who was supposed to love you.” She paused, and some of the heat died. “I tried. I really tried to have a life with a husband, family, children, and dogs even… I tried, but no matter how long or how hard… No matter how much therapy… I couldn’t get past it. No matter how strong I’d be, I’d remember him. I’d remember this place and what he did.” She had run out of air with a hissing finality, and I listened as she breathed. I waited as she continued to look at the rifle that leaned against the wall. “He didn’t kill himself because of me… I didn’t even get that satisfaction.” She sniffed and winced in pain. “He did it because my mother was going to tell… I moved back after a lot of years to take care of her and to try and get my life back from him, from here..” Something struck her as humorous. “I came back so I could hate him with her.”

“Vonnie…”

“And then, when Melissa… When it happened to her? She’s a child, Walt, just like I was… I thought surely now, now there’d be some kind of punishment, some kind of justice. Something for her, something for me. But they got off. Hardly any time served.” Her eyes turned toward me. “I didn’t let him off… I couldn’t let them.” I started to move but the barrel of the rifle was still there, and I had to wait and make it count. After a moment, she spoke again. “So, do you think the Old Cheyenne can get me in here?”

I cleared my throat. “I don’t think they’re out to get you.”

She half-nodded. “That’s too bad, I rather hoped they would be. But maybe I just don’t make the cut, huh?”

I took a deep breath. I thought about how it is a woman’s lot to be dismissed by men. “I think they could hardly do better.”

Her voice was small and distant. “Thank you.” The little corner of her mouth kicked up again, and the barrel of the Sharps shifted a little and came back closer to her chin. I took my hands from my pockets and gauged the distance to be about eight feet. We looked at each other for a while, and it’s possible she was reading my intent. “I don’t think anything will ever get me here again.” She was learning to smile with the undamaged side of her face. “But I suppose they can get you anywhere.” She paused for a moment, and I thought I might have a chance. “You understand, don’t you? I mean, you said that a part of you wished you had done it?”

“I think that a lot of people feel that way.”

“You know, I have a hard time telling which part of you I like most: your smile, your sense of humor, or the fact that you lie so poorly.”

“What do you want me to say, Vonnie? I don’t think the county’s going to have a parade for you…” Her eyes stayed steady. “There’s a difference between talking about it and doing it.”

She looked sad. “I was hoping we were past the moral portion of the conversation.” I wanted to hold her, to patch the ear up, and to make it all better. “Please, let’s not talk about what people deserve.”

“I guess it doesn’t make much difference, does it?”

“Not now.” Her finger twitched on the trigger. “Walter, I need you to not look at me…”

“Vonnie, don’t do it.” There was a long pause.

I froze the image of her then, with her head turned just slightly in the light of the dim, forty-watt bulb, the angle of her head accenting the fine bone structure of her jaw and the strong muscle tone of her throat. It might have been the night I saw her at the bar, the morning with the pancakes, our one date, on the street that day, angry at the hospital, or now.

She said it like it was a statement about the weather. “I love you.”

It was my turn to look away, just as she knew I would. My breath was short, and my voice refused to cooperate and burned in my throat. For a split second I studied one of the saddles, the worn appearance of the horns and curled surfaces of the rosettes where the touch of human and horse had at first softened the leather but where the man had left it to stiffen and dry. The dust on this particular saddle had been brushed as she had passed, probably by one of the sleeves that were tied at her waist. The leather surface underneath had held a warm glow that promised romance and freedom, and you could almost feel the gathering of equine muscles as they reached out and grasped the rotation of the earth.

I looked closer at a small spot on the cantle and at a singular drop of blood that had landed there. Blood drops at a uniform volume of. 05 milliliters and in a tiny ball. Upon striking a surface, the blood leaves a pattern that will be dependant on the type of surface it falls upon. Splatters. On the smooth leather of the saddle, the drop had remained relatively intact with only one scalloped droplet having escaped at eighty degrees and perpendicular in direction.

I’m sure the blast in the little room was deafening, but I didn’t hear it.