Any Other Name: A Longmire Mystery (16 page)

“Oooh-Wahy-yo heeeey-yay-yoway, Wahy-ya-yo-ha, Wahy-yo-ho-way-ahway-ahway 
. . .”

The buffalo bull immediately pivoted to the right and then in a full circle to look at us again, shook its head, and turned its wide horns to the right and left—like us, unable to determine from where the song came.

It was silent for a beat, while the singer took a breath, but then he continued.

“Aho, hotoa’e! Netonesevehe? Netone’xovomohtahe? Eneseo’o
 . . . They are the foolish
Ve’ho’e
, the trickster people, and do not watch where they go.”

The bull turned again, this time to the left, and waited.

“I am Nehoveoo Nahkohe,
Hotametaneo’o
of the
Tsetsehestehese
. Do you know me, big brother?”

The buffalo turned a bit more.

“We mean you no harm, and only wish to pass through this sacred place.”

I watched as the buffalo bull’s tail descended, and the muscles relaxed in the beast as he finally lowered his head and pawed at the ground again, this time in a disinterested manner, as if surprised to find snow on his buffet. Another moment passed, and he started off, up the slight grade to our right.

I sighed. “You still out there?”

“I am.”

I still could not tell exactly where he was.

“Did I just see you attempting to imitate a buffalo?”

“You did.”

“Do not quit your day job.”

I buttoned my coat, flipped the collar back up, and started forward carefully with Tavis in tow. After a few steps I could see Henry in the pale gloom, a tall figure with a leather cloak
moving in an imaginary breeze. “We lost you; where the heck did you go?”

He glanced at the buffalo—there were still a lot of them milling around—and whispered. “I was ahead of you when we walked into them; when I tried to double back they blocked my path. I was simply going to wait until they moved on, but then you started challenging the biggest one and I thought I should intercede.”

I began whispering, too. “Challenging, is that what I was doing?”

“Yes.”

I smiled. “I think I could’ve taken him.”

The Cheyenne Nation did not look particularly impressed.

I kept my voice low. “Find the truck?”

“No, but the tracks continue toward the tree line.”

Tavis broke in from behind me in a loud voice. “There’s a tree line?”

The Bear looked at the patrolman and shushed him. “The buffalo are looking for shelter but must have gotten spooked when the truck drove through the herd.” He glanced around at the hulking shapes. “They are just now settling down and getting their bearings, so be quiet.”

I gestured with my chin. “Let’s get going; I don’t want to lose them.”

Henry turned, and we started off, a little more carefully this time.

After a hundred yards or so, we started to climb, and I could make out a few small trees leading toward larger copses and eventually the tree line that Henry had found.

The Bear stopped, looked at the tracks, and then at what countryside was visible, all twenty feet of it. “This slope leads down
into a canyon and I would suppose a creek, whereas the embankment to the right leads up to a ridge. If they are stupid, they went into the canyon, and if they are wise, they stayed with the ridge.”

“If they took the canyon they aren’t going far, so let’s check the ridge.”

He nodded and then frowned. “Unfortunate.”

“Why is that?”

“It appears to be the same choice that the buffalo have made.”

“Misery loves company.” I could see at least a dozen of them in the immediate vicinity as I started after our Indian scout. “How many of these things do you suppose there are out here?”

“From the movement of the herd, I would say a couple hundred at least.” He slowed as one of the bulls, tossing its head and huffing, tracked in front of us. “They are still very uneasy, and I am afraid that any movement or sound could set them off.”

I nodded. “Just that much more of a reason to get to the tree line; if these monsters start charging around, I’d just as soon have a tree or two to put between us.”

The Bear suddenly stopped and whispered, even quieter this time. “I can see the truck.”

Bunching in close to Henry, I slipped my hand under my coat, pulled my .45 from the holster, and trailed it along my leg, watching as Tavis did the same with his Glock.

The Bear looked back at the two of us and shook his head. “Do not fire those weapons, unless it becomes absolutely necessary.” He took a few more steps forward and then stopped again. “As near as I can tell, there is someone standing in the bed of the truck.”

Of course, I couldn’t see anything, but I was used to that in my dealings with the Cheyenne Nation’s uncanny sensory abilities. “Do you think they’ve seen us?”

He watched the invisible landscape for a moment. “No.”

“If I keep moving in this direction, I’ll run into them?”

“Yes. This may take a while with the buffalo, so when you get to the truck, keep him talking.” Without another word, Henry moved off to our left and gradually disappeared like a cipher.

“Where is he?”

I gestured for Tavis to follow. “Stick with me, troop, and don’t fire that weapon until I tell you.”

Another forty feet and even I could see the outline of the blue truck, and indeed, someone standing in the bed. “Look, we don’t know that any of these individuals are dangerous, so let’s just play it slow. Chances are, this guy just thinks a couple of crazies are after his friend and his friend’s girl, and he’s just trying to do the right thing.”

He swallowed. “Is that what your twenty-five years of sheriffing are telling you?”

“Not really, but there’s gotta be a first time, right?” I looked at the kid and thought that I really didn’t want to be shot in the back by the Glock .40 he was carrying. “Don’t shoot anybody, okay? Especially me.”

I turned, took another step, and lifted my voice just loud enough to be heard but hopefully not loud enough to spook the buffalo that surrounded us. “Hey Willie, how are you doing?”

A little distance away, one of the bulls turned to regard us.

The croupier moved toward the tailgate and yelled back at me, “I’ve got a gun!”

“Okay.” I waited a few seconds, just to let the nearest buffalo know that we bore no ill intent. “Do you mind keeping your voice down a little? We’re concerned that these buffalo might spook, and I’m sure that none of us want that.” He didn’t say anything, so I continued. “My name is Walt Longmire, and I’m
the sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming. I’m working on a missing persons case—”

“Whatta ya want?”

I watched as one of the bulls crossed between us, and I carefully took a few more steps to get a clearer view of the man. I could see that he was holding a rifle. “Well, this doesn’t have much to do with you, but it has a lot to do with the other man and the woman who are with you.”

There was a long pause before he spoke. “I don’t got no woman with me.”

I took a few more steps toward him. “Well then, the woman who
was
in your truck.”

He gestured with the weapon. “That’s close enough.” He leaned a little forward. “Who’s that with you?”

“Patrolman Tavis Bradley of the Deadwood Police Department.” I held my free hand up. “The woman in the casino who was getting money from the ATM? We believe that she might be Roberta Payne, who went missing from Gillette, Wyoming, three months ago.”

“I don’t know no Roberta Payne.” There was a long pause. “I don’t know if I even believe you’re a sheriff.”

“If you let me get close enough I’ll show you my badge, and Tavis here can show you a whole uniform, if you’d like.”

His head turned as he glanced around. “Where’s that big Indian guy?”

“He’s not with us anymore—maybe he’s with your friends?” An out-and-out lie, but it was all I could think of to say. I took another step and could see that there were two more people sitting in the truck. “Look, we just want to talk to you about the woman—”

“He says that somebody’s after her.”

I took a breath, just to let him know that he’d slipped up. “So, they are with you?”

He gestured with the rifle again. “I’m just telling you what he said before. Now, turn around and head back out of here before I make you sorry you followed me.”

“What’s your friend’s name?”

“Go away.”

I figured I’d put my cards on the table, so to speak. “Willie, you know I can’t do that. I’m trying to find this woman for her mother, who doesn’t know where she is or what happened to her. Now, if she doesn’t want to go back there that’s her business, but I need to speak with her and make sure she’s all right and that there’s nothing illegal going on.”

He didn’t move, not a muscle as near as I could see, and it was as if he were some kind of black cardboard cutout in a cheap community play, until the man in the cab raised the barrel of a pistol and aimed it at Willie and I heard a woman scream, “No!”

Willie fell forward, and another round passed through the collar of my sheepskin coat, grazed off my neck like a vengeful hornet, and yanked me sideways. I immediately raised my Colt.

I’m pretty sure that one of the buffalo rammed smack into the truck. Huge, wooly animals were shooting off in every direction as I turned to yell at Tavis to stay with me, but the young patrolman, clutching his side, with the Glock next to him and a lot of blood sprayed across the white hillside, was lying in the snow.

I grabbed him. “C’mon, we’ve got to get out of here.”

“He shot me!” He tried to pull away. “I swear to God, he shot me!”

Pulling the kid up onto my left shoulder, keeping the .45 aimed on the truck, I staggered forward with buffalo galloping around us like cue balls looking for a good strike. One brushed extremely close, and I fell with the kid but scrambled up, dragging him by his arm as he screamed.

Another bull was hurtling at us, and I could see that we weren’t going to make it, so I threw myself on top of Tavis in an attempt to shield him. He screamed again as my weight hit him,
and I felt one of the hooves graze across the back of my head, the heavy, warm breath of the animal blowing down on us.

I lay there for a second more and then holstered my Colt, figuring it was about as useful as a peashooter in a shooting gallery, and pushed off again, this time grabbing Tavis by the front of his jacket. It was about then that I heard the truck start up and the billowing exhaust blew back at us from the twin tailpipes.

Lurching after it, my hand glanced off the tailgate, and I could see the card dealer lying in the bed, and the woman in the cab screamed, “Deke, don’t!”

There were two people in the truck—the man whom I assumed was named Deke spinning the steering wheel, and the woman whom I believed to be Roberta Payne staring back at us with a look of horror on her face.

I slipped to the ground, the reverse lights flickered on for a second, but then the thing peeled out in the same direction it had been heading, spinning snow in my face and ice on all the rest of me.

Spotting a copse of evergreens to my left, I dragged the kid and pushed some of the branches away so that we could get close to the trunks and shelter ourselves from the charging herd that surrounded us.

I settled him on the ground but felt the branches cave in as one of the animals must’ve come a little too close to the tree. “Get the hell out of here, there’s only room for two!” I fell backward onto Tavis, turned, and kicked at the thing to keep it away. The buffalo yanked its head around, stripping the branches in a cloud of needles that peppered the two of us, and I thought for some reason that maybe he might respond to a cattle call, so I started yelling, “Yaaaaaaah, yaaaaaaah—get out of here! Yaaaaaaah, yaaaaaaah!”

The bull, obviously having been herded in the State Park Roundup, recognized the call and immediately turned his big head and bounded away.

I sat there, stunned that my ploy had worked, and then rolled over, taking the flashlight from Tavis’s duty belt to study him. He looked pale. “How are you doing, troop?”

He didn’t say anything, but he wheezed and his chin trembled.

I rolled him to the right and could see the wound in his side, the blood saturating the bottom of his jacket. “This is going to hurt, but I’m only going to have to do it once.” I unzipped his coat and then trussed him up using my bandana as a bandage to quell the blood loss. “You all right?”

He nodded.

“I’ve got to go out there and look for Henry, okay?” He nodded again. “I won’t leave you, but I’ve got to make sure he’s all right and bring him back here if he isn’t.” I glanced down at the kid with blood all over him. “We’ll take you to the hospital over in Custer and get you squared away. You’ll be okay.”

He nodded again but still didn’t say anything.

I stood and became aware of something warm and slick on the side of my head. I reached up and felt the spot where the buffalo must have kicked me and noticed blood on my glove that must have been dripping from the wound on my neck. I reset my hat, wiped my glove on my pants, and pushed through the evergreen canopy out into the open.

It was the middle of the night, and I was surrounded by buffalo in a blizzard with a stuck cruiser and as far as I knew no available cover for miles around—good going, Sheriff.

I trudged in the direction where the truck had been, pretty
sure that the Bear must’ve been close to the thing when everything had all gone to hell.

The buffalo appeared to have calmed down as I found the spot where the truck had been sitting. I bent and picked up the kid’s Glock and then glanced around but could see no sign of my friend. A sense of dread began overtaking me—what if he was out here, unconscious or hurt and unable to call out, what if he’d been killed?

“Walt.”

I turned with the flashlight and the .40 and could see the outline of what looked like a giant crow, the long black wings attempting to wrap close to his body, but ruffled and twisting ever so slightly in the wind. “You all right?”

He grew closer, and I could see that he was moving with a little trouble. “As well as can be expected—who was the idiot that fired first?”

“I assume it was the man named Deke—the woman in the truck yelled his name when they took off.”

He nodded as he drew up next to me, and I noticed he held his side with one hand.

“You’re hurt?”

“My back. I was attempting to negotiate my way around a particularly cantankerous bull when the shot went off. I got out of the way, but his horn caught my coat and we went for a ride.”

“You should’ve done my imitation.”

“There was not much time for interpretive dance.” He grunted a laugh but then regretted it. He poked a finger at my neck, where a little blood had saturated the sheepskin. “You are hit?”

“Not bad, but it grazed me and got the kid.”

He pursed his lips. “Where is he?”

“Under a tree over here—shot through a few ribs it looks like, but he’s breathing okay, so it didn’t get his lungs.” We both stood there, looking at our boots. “His legs work, and you can get him back to the cruiser. I would imagine that the South Dakota Highway Patrol will already be there and they might have information on this Willie character, but also make sure they check out Roberta Payne and the mystery man, Deke.”

“And what are you going to do?” I was still looking at my boots as he studied me. “You have no supplies, no gear, not even the proper footwear.”

“I’ll take the duty belt off Tavis, and you can take this.” I handed him the Glock. “I’m just going to follow them. They’ll probably come out on a road, and I’ll be waiting for a ride, but if they get stuck or wreck that thing . . .” I reached out with my left and gently laid a hand on his shoulder. “That kid is hurt, and somebody’s going to have to get him out of here.”

He made a face. “I can track better than you with my eyes closed.”

“I think I can follow a pickup truck; besides, you’re hurt.”

He cocked his head, studying first my neck and then the blood on the side of my face. “So are you.”

My arm was aching, which must have been some sort of reaction to the bullet that had grazed my neck, and so was my head, but I decided to withhold those thoughts. “Not as bad as you, and anyway, it’s my job.”

He looked at the tracks leading toward the ridge and handed me his cell phone. “You need to be careful, this is an unpredictable situation—the worst kind.”

I gestured weakly toward the tree where Tavis was hidden. “Get him some help, and I’ll call you when I find anything.”

He shook his head. “Where, exactly, is Vic?”

I converted my grimace into a clearing of my throat. “Room two thirteen at the Franklin Hotel, right across from the casino. I’m betting she’s asleep,” I added. “You can have my bed.”

“What if she is in it?”

“Then you get the sofa and Dog.” I started toward the trees and was already weary at the thought of traipsing through the snowbanks all night. “C’mon, I’ll help you with him.” I paused and looked at him. “When you get back to the cruiser, radio Emil Fredriksen—as soon as he finds out one of his own caught a bullet, he’s going to want this Deke fellow’s head, and other portions of his anatomy, I’m thinking.”

—

My head was giving my neck a run for its money as I adjusted Tavis’s duty belt to the first hole, took a deep breath, and studied the tire tracks, the only thing visible in the whiteout. As I’d suspected, they had followed the ridge and skirted the tree line before heading down a slight incline that flattened and opened up into an expanse of white.

Slipping in my boots, I continued down the grade until I could hear the muffled sound of rushing water, most likely under ice. Keeping the water to my left, I continued following the tracks and suddenly felt firmer ground underneath, almost as if it were paved. Pretty soon I could hear the heels of my boots clicking on the surface, and I was sure I was walking on a road, although I still couldn’t see more than fifteen feet ahead.

I could feel a lump rising where I had been kicked by the buffalo. It didn’t seem as though it was bleeding, but it ached like mad and wasn’t feeling any better with me probing at it. I adjusted my hat a little forward so that the band didn’t rest on the
wound, and, since my neck was cold, I pulled up the collar of my coat and buttoned it tight, standing there for a moment feeling light-headed and weak.

The truck tracks were the only ones on the road, and I hoped they’d stay that way. I also figured that by now Deke would have become Black Hills Public Enemy Number One, and there were probably a dozen or so HPs out here prowling about like the buffalo, looking for somebody to hook. I just hoped it wasn’t accidentally me.

The snow was getting deep again, and I couldn’t feel the surface of the road any more, the drifts filling the area in with swales that started making the going a little rougher and forcing me into a few of the reflector poles.

It hadn’t been high plains cold until now. I squinted my eyes to clear them, but it was as though my mind was trying to go on down the road without me. My teeth were beginning to chatter and my hands and feet were becoming numb as I clomped along, the mantle of snow I had acquired probably making me appear more and more like one of the buffalo.

I trudged across a bridge and as I yawned, trying to stretch my jaw in an attempt to get rid of the ache in my head and the one in my neck, I thought about what had happened back on the ridge. What had Willie been doing with Roberta Payne and why was she living in Deadwood, siphoning money from her own account? Where did the Deke character come in? Why did he shoot Willie? None of it made any sense, but until I got back to civilization and the backstory, my job was to find the woman.

I rounded a corner, looked up, and saw a large structure on a hillside near a giant cottonwood with bark like stripped bone,
and I stopped to place a hand on it for a brief rest, but discovered my right arm was numb.

Using my left, I pulled my arm up and looked at the glove and the inside of the cuff where blood had coagulated and frozen. I would have thought the wound would have stopped bleeding by now, but as I half turned and looked back at the trail of red I’d left on the roadway slowly being erased by the snow, I suddenly felt a little woozy.

There was a sound to my left, and I could see another buffalo standing near the creek. He ambled up the rise into the falling snow, but when he got even with the tree, he stopped, turned his great head, and stared at me—he was completely white. At first I thought it was just the snow covering him, but from only a couple of yards away, I could see that under the frost his fur was indeed white.

We stood there looking at each other, but when I blinked he had completely disappeared. I blinked again and took a few more breaths, but he was gone. Thinking he had climbed the hill, I turned back toward the lodge and allowed my eyes to adjust—there was no white buffalo, but there was the back end of a dark-colored pickup truck.

Standing there huffing my breath through my mouth like the great beast, I tried to make sure I was seeing what I was seeing, but the image, though swimming, remained the same. Pulling off my left glove with a leather fingertip between my teeth, I unsnapped my Colt from the holster.

I moved forward and leveled the sights on the vehicle, which was parked in front of a rock retainer wall. There, lying in the truck with the majority of his blood having drained into its snowy bed, was Willie.

Reaching out, I placed a few fingers alongside his throat, but there was no pulse—and the rifle was gone.

I slipped up to the side of the vehicle and blinked to keep the ice from my eyes. Resting the Colt on the top of the truck, I got the Maglite from Tavis’s duty belt and switched it on with my good hand to study the interior of the pickup. Most of the window was frosted over, but there was nobody inside—the keys were gone, but the hood was warm, so they must’ve not been here for that long.

Remembering Henry’s cell phone, I holstered the flashlight and pulled the device from the inside pocket of my coat and looked at the bars, having become something of a master in searching for a signal in the Bighorn Mountains last spring. There weren’t any bars, but I tried it anyway and dialed 911, holding the device to my ear but hearing nothing.

Tucking the phone back in my pocket and picking up my sidearm again, I glanced left and right while rubbing my arm to see if I could get some feeling back and finally saw a set of stairs composed of the same rock as the wall. Keeping my left-handed aim on the dark areas of overhang above, I negotiated the steps and noted a red sign to the left that read
STATE GAME LODGE, ESTABLISHED 1920
.

I took a breath and sighed; I suppose if you were going to hole up, you might as well do it in the swankiest place in the 71,000-acre park. If South Dakota was like Wyoming, however, the historic heritage lodges were closed in the depths of winter, while it was the newer, more insulated buildings that remained open.

The spacious porch was filled to the railings with snow, but there were footprints where two people had passed up the steps, and it looked as if someone had kicked open the door. Stepping
to the left, I pressed the barrel of my Colt against the wooden surface and slowly pushed it wide, the hinges creaking like a crypt.