Buffalo Jump Blues (11 page)

A
s a trout guide, Sean Stranahan had floated buddies who finished each other's sandwiches, sisters who finished each other's sentences, and, once, memorably, two women attending a romance writers' convention who traded a joint from bow to stern and promised they could finish him off in five minutes tops, if he didn't mind pulling over to the bank and climbing out of his waders. An opportunity declined, not without periodic regret.

But he had never before fished with men who finished each other's casts.

The brothers, cable-muscled and strikingly handsome, were as blond and Aryan to the eye as their father was swarthy and Mediterranean, with a vaguely Asian infusion. The genetic stew, when you added to the pot the mother who advanced each foot as if she was testing the water, and who resembled a Nordic goddess who'd had about half of her blood drained, would have baffled Sean, if Sam hadn't already told him that the boys were stepsons. Sean learned that they had retained their birth father's name, Karlson, while availing themselves of their stepfather's fortune, which he'd made felling balsam trees for pulp mills and then, astutely predicting the decline of the industry with the ascent of electronic media, parceling off his more accessible timberlands for residential development.

The fraternal twins, for such they turned out to be, called Sean “Captain,” throwing in mock salutes as they introduced themselves as “Brady and Levi, the Fedora brothers,” tipping identical felt Trilbys studded with trout flies. They tumbled into the Land Cruiser,
tussling as they fought for shotgun. They wrestled again at the riverbank over the bow seat, then, panting and with their shirts torn, picked the grasses from each other's chest hair, grooming with the absorption one sees of monkeys in a zoo. Brady, the elder by twelve minutes, taller by two inches, and fairer-skinned by half a shade, had won the bow, but less than a mile into the float Levi joined him on the casting deck, where one would make the cast and mend the fly line so that the salmonfly pattern floated freely in the current, then pass the fly rod to the other, who would fish out the drift before making a cast and passing the rod back, and so forth; this, together with a running patter over their relative prowess with the young women at Dartmouth, where they played varsity lacrosse and from which they would graduate the following year, was the way the afternoon began to pass.

Sean didn't know what to make of them. He'd changed the itinerary at the last minute, forgoing a float from MacAtee to Varney for the stretch upriver, putting in at Lyon Bridge, which would pass them into the evening shadow cast by the Palisades. He watched for recognition in their eyes as he imparted the news, but if they were reluctant to visit—or perhaps to
revisit
—the scene of the buffalo jump, he was unable to detect it.

On the water, he pressed the matter by directing them to cast toward the bank under the cliffs.

“A body was found here the day before yesterday,” he said. “Up by that big rock. Did you hear about it?” He kept his voice casual.

“We heard this morning,” Brady said. “This is where the buffalo fell, is it not?”
Is it not? If you say. Right-o, Captain—
their speech was padded with such supercilious affectation. Clearly, Sean was their employee, or rather their stepfather's, whom they called “Papa-san.”

Looking for an excuse to pull over, Sean caught a break when Levi overcast the bank, hooking his fly in a wild rosebush. Sean dropped anchor and walked upriver, reeling in the fly line until he reached the five-petaled flowers that made a splash against the bankside willows.
He snipped off the fly, blood-knotted a new tippet, and tied the fly back on. By the time he turned to go back, the brothers were nowhere in sight. He found them forty yards below the boat, frowning at the cavernous rib cage of a bison. The carcass was swarming with deer flies and yellow jackets. Sean breathed through his mouth to reduce the odor.

“Why didn't they take the meat?” Levi said. “The newspaper said that Indians were going to take the meat.”

Two hours into the float they were the first seemingly genuine words either brother had spoken. It was the boy underneath the veneer, his voice higher-pitched; he sounded like a ten-year-old asking a question of his father. There was a tremor in the square-cut chin.

“The ones that died in the fall spoiled,” Sean told him. “They could only salvage quarters from the ones that were still alive the next morning. Whoever drove them over the cliff didn't have the guts to finish the job.”

It was a shot in the dark. None of the news reports had mentioned the suspicion that the bison had been driven over the cliffs.

“Where did you hear that?” It was Brady speaking.

Sean was finding out that he took the lead in conversation, Levi either riffing off what he said or echoing his meaning with a more self-effacing choice of words.

“The sheriff's a neighbor of mine,” Sean said, not looking at him. “She said it was a buffalo jump, there's an Indian term for it . . .” He snapped his fingers, searching for the word and hoping he wasn't overdoing the gesture.

“A pishkun,” Levi said, and Sean saw his older brother shoot him a look. “I think that's what it's called,” he said, amending his conviction.

Sean nodded. “Yes, that's it.”

It was the opening he'd waited for to bring up their involvement with the American Bison Crusade, but the withering look Brady had given his sibling made him reconsider. Sean's information was
thirdhand, and if they denied it, what would he have gained by putting them on the defensive? Instead, he took the opportunity to plant a seed of doubt.

“The sheriff said they found something that might identify one of the hunters, or maybe it was they knew where to look for something. They're going to come back up here, climb up the cliffs. If we float this stretch again tomorrow, we might run into them.”

The walk back to the boat was silent. Sean turned once to see if the brothers were looking up at the cliffs, but they had their eyes on their wading shoes.

Enthusiasm for casting gymnastics waned after that, but as the hours passed and the clouds became limned with the blood of the sunset, the fishing picked up, as did the mood. Sean replaced the salmon flies with elk hair caddis, and when the imitation Brady was fishing disappeared in a swirl, he did most everything wrong, but the fish stayed on. It fought in the air before it fought underwater and was nineteen inches, measured against the net. A big rainbow trout, for fishermen who don't catch them very often, is like a fire in the attic. Those who watch the house burn down are peeled from their skins of personality. Their eyes seem stunned, smells are sharper, sounds more insistent. For a time they'll say anything that comes into their heads, anything at all.

W
hen Sean turned under a hazy moon into Martha's drive, he was surprised to see the Suburban that the Liars and Fly Tiers Club leased. She met him at the door of the barn, bringing her finger to her lips. He followed the beam of her flashlight inside, where Robin Hurt Cowdry was sitting on a hay bale by the stall where the young bison lay on its side, the cow a few feet away. Dorry was curled against the bison's back and had fallen asleep with her arm draped over its neck.

Cowdry cocked a finger toward his niece. “The Buffalo Whisperer,” he whispered. He unfolded himself from his seat and they went outside, where he fished in his pocket for a vapor cigarette.

“If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I wouldn't believe it,” Martha said. “You recall I told you that the calf had a nervous disposition, wasn't gaining weight? It was bleating like the dickens all evening and then Dorry came and it settled right down, nursed, fell asleep.”

“It's innocence, is what it is.” Cowdry pulled at the cigarette, its eerie blue light a wink in the night. “Animals have a sense of these things. That little girl in there, she's seen a Rover blown up by a pipe bomb, seen her mother's arm lying on the ground after the explosion. My sister. That little Dorry held her while she died. But she's stayed innocent as snow.”

“If only it could last,” Martha said.

“Innocence?” Sean asked.

“I'm talking about the bison.” She excused herself to Cowdry and pulled Sean aside, keeping her voice low. “Rosco called. It looks like Drake and company feel they have enough law for the court order. It's
water-cooler conversation, but that's the word. Maybe by the end of next week. I don't know what to do.”

“Call Gail Stocker at the
Star
. Tell her you have a story.”

“Obviously you aren't a cop. Not this one, anyway.”

“Then I'll do it,” Sean said. “It will put pressure on the judge.”

“Aren't you the wishful thinker? No, let's let this play out before we do anything we'll regret. I say ‘we' because it makes me feel better, but I'm all alone in this. If you'd told me last week that I'd lose my job over a bison calf, I'd have looked at you funny.”

When Cowdry left, carrying Dorry, who was asleep in his arms, Sean told Martha what Brady Karlson had said after releasing the trout.

“‘That will make you forget about murder on the Madison.'”

“He said that?” Her voice was skeptical.

“‘I say, Captain, that will make you forget about murder on the Madison.' Exact words. “There was like this dead silence, and then I said, ‘What murder?'”

“‘Oh, you know.' He flopped his hand, tried to blow it off as nothing. Then he said, ‘I was thinking of the fisherman who was found with a hook in his lip a few years ago.' Cat got his tongue after that and he seemed to go a little bit into himself.”

“Just sounds like history to me. There
was
a body with a hook in the lip. You know that better than anyone.”

“I know, but it seemed to me he was searching for an explanation. What do you think they'll do?”

“About what?”

“Weren't you listening? I told them that you were going to go there tomorrow and look for more evidence, that you had a lead.”

“That's a thin worm to bait a hook with. Did it occur to you that they could have an alibi?”

“Yes, and I asked them where they'd been staying and they said they'd been guests at the ranch for about a week, but their father had only come in over the weekend.”

“So they were alone?”

“Not exactly. Their mother was in residence, but the boys are in a separate cabin.”

“Do they call her ‘Mama-san'?”

“No, they call her ‘the white panther.' As in, ‘The white panther will be having her first drop of the Irish now.' He affected an Irish accent. “That's their way. They make fun of people. When I asked how they celebrated the Fourth, they said they drove up the valley to see the fireworks, no specifics.”

“So, if they do show up at the cliffs, what am I supposed to do, arrest them for walking on public land?”

“I hadn't got that far. And you're right, it's thin. But there's something about these kids, it's like they've drawn a circle around themselves and anyone outside the circle is simply there for their amusement. Brady, he did something that really bothered me. A whitefish took his fly, just a little one, and he grabbed it to unhook it and then squeezed it by the gills it until its eyes popped out. Then he threw it back into the river. I told him that in my boat we treat every fish with respect, and he said, ‘Sure, Captain,' gave me his mock salute.”

“You can't arrest somebody for cruelty to whitefish,” Martha said.

“I know. But the way he did it, the deliberate . . . brutality, I guess. Like his eyes turned red for a second, except not really. Anyway, I thought I'd tell you.”

“I'm interested.”

He cocked his head. “So the two of us, like old times.”

“Like old times,” Martha echoed. The last time the two of them had staked out a location, Sean had cajoled her into kissing him and she had, against her better judgment.

“Maybe Harold wouldn't like it, though,” he said.

He was pushing her buttons and she knew it, but couldn't help taking the bait. “Harold doesn't tell me where to go or who to go with.”

She turned toward the house.

“Where are you going?”

“Get my jacket,” she said. “And maybe a wee drop of the Irish for the cold.”

—

Theodore Thackery opened the door wearing a flannel bathrobe buckled in place with a wide leather cartridge belt. He switched a porch light on as he stepped outside. In the sudden light, the steel rims of his glasses and the brass cartridges glinted like different denominations of coin.

“Martha,” he said. They'd known each other in a passing-nod kind of way for years. She introduced him to Stranahan and they shook hands. Thackery had a hangdog appearance and dark circles under his eyes. He wiped his glasses against the lapel of his robe and put them back on. Sean noticed that his hands had a tremor.

“What are you packing there?” Martha asked.

“Oh, this?” Thackery gesticulated, his fingers waving in the general vicinity of the cartridge belt. “I got .45-70 rounds for my Sharps. First thing at hand. I don't get many visitors, let alone midnight.”

“That's an old buffalo rifle, isn't it? I just saw one of those, belonged to Calvin Barr. He said it was an original.”

“Barr,” he said. “I don't think I've had the pleasure. My rifle's a replica, made by the C. Sharps Company in Big Timber. I collect weapons from several eras, originals if the price is right. But old Sharps in good condition come pretty dear.”

“Sorry about showing up unannounced,” Martha said, “but I didn't have your number. Do you have cell reception here?”

“I have a landline inside. Up by the viewing platform, sometimes I can raise a bar.”

“Viewing platform?”

“It's about a quarter mile up toward Bobcat Creek. It's a tripod, a log one, like they use in Alaska to keep game meat from bears. I built
it so I could get a better vantage of the range. You can scope a lot more country from thirty feet up than you can from the ground.”

“Well, sorry again about the interruption.”

“No problem at all. What can I do for you?”

“We need to park here for a few hours.”

“Be my guest.” A short silence, his eyes moving from one to the other, asking a general question. He shrugged. “If that's the way you want it, I won't ask.”

“I appreciate that,” Martha said.

“You stay out until morning, I'll cook you a proper breakfast.”

She said thanks and they left him standing there, looking like a half-dressed tin star investigating a thump in the night.

“He looked sort of like hell,” Martha said. “Like he hadn't slept in days.”

“Well, it is the middle of the night.”

“Strange that he doesn't know Calvin Barr.”

“Why's that?”

“Because one shoots buffalo and the other thinks you shouldn't. You'd think they'd have crossed paths by now.”

They began the half-mile hike to the escarpment where Harold had found the cairns. It would have been shorter and easier to simply climb the cliffs across from the river access, but that meant leaving a car where the brothers would notice it, if in fact they came.

A badger froze in the beam of Martha's headlamp. It flattened itself out, baring its fangs in the glare. “Harold's grandfather's totem animal,” she commented. And to the badger: “Go back about your business.” As the moonlight was bright enough to avoid stepping into holes, she switched her light off and they walked on, reaching the open slopes of the escarpment.

“Where do you think we should wait?” Martha said. The lines of authority blurred when she was with Stranahan. Harold, too, for that matter. Introduce people into the landscape, hostility, the need for diplomacy to defuse an escalating situation, and she was the sheriff.
But in the backcountry, she deferred. It didn't mean she liked it, and silently she chastised herself for so quickly asking his opinion.

“Let's go down to the top of the cliffs,” Sean said. “If they actually did leave something behind and were going to come after it, it could be below the cliff as well as above.”

They eventually decided on an outcrop of ledgerock about six feet back from the precipice, where a banner of orange ribbon tied to a bush marked where the Indian man had fallen and impaled himself on the piton. They sat with their backs against the basalt outcrop, Martha brushing the area first with her hat.

“Rattlesnake country,” she said. “Gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

“I thought they were only in the lower elevation, down around the Beartrap Canyon.”

“Each year they're found a little farther upriver. The district biologist thinks it's global warming. He just can't say it out loud.” Her voice rose. “You hear that, Mr. Snake. You get any ideas about warming up next to me, I'll bring back the wrath of winter.”

She offered Stranahan a swig from her whiskey flask, then took one of her own. “Ah,” she said. “I love getting out of the office, even if it's with my ex-boyfriend.”

“The whole drive here you're bitching about it and now you're in a good mood. If Sam was here he'd say, ‘Women.'”

“Men who say, ‘Women,' don't understand women. But to be honest I don't know why. I've only got a John Doe in the morgue and I'm about four days from losing my job, but other than that, I'm tip-top.”

It didn't last. Her mood went from tip-top to this is goddamned uncomfortable to resting her head on Sean's shoulder while a tear tracked down her cheek, all within an hour and without very many words.

“What's wrong, Martha?”

“Oh, nothing. Everything.”

“Nice having David for a few weeks.”

“Yeah, it was. I never thanked you properly for taking him on that float on the Big Hole. He really looks up to you.”

“He's a good kid.”

“I just wish I could have been there when he was younger. I thought after the divorce, he'd choose me. How could I have been so naive?”

“He didn't choose his father. His brother did, and David chose not being separated from him.”

“I know. That's what I tell myself, but nothing can change what I lost. You can't turn back the clock.”

“He's here now. He still needs you.”

“You think?”

“I know he does.”

“Thanks. That's something I needed to hear.” She rubbed her head against his neck. Sean pressed the button to illuminate the LED display on his watch. Two a.m. A bank of cirrus edged across the moon as he began to drift away.

“Why are people always choosing the wrong people?” Martha asked. But Sean was already dozing.

An hour later, he heard rocks clattering and came awake with a start. There it was again, the sound coming from directly below, down by the river. If it was the brothers, why hadn't he seen headlights snaking down the access road? Because they had turned them off, of course. He shook Martha awake and worked the pins and needles out of his shoulder.

“What is it?” she whispered.

“Company.”

Lying down, he elbowed to the lip of the cliff and peered down. The clouds had cleared and a shape loomed in the darkness, its silhouette cast on the lambency of the current. It was a bison, moving very slowly along the bank from north to south. Above the undertone of the river, each step the animal took thumped like a heart. The bison stopped and he could swear that a smaller shadow separated
from it, though the shadow merged back with that of the larger animal as soon as it had appeared.
A calf?
Sean could feel his own heart beating against the ledgerock.

The bison began to call from deep in its chest. The night had turned chill, and as it called, the steam of its breath enveloped its head. Sean could hear the intakes of breath before each call, could hear his own breath and that of Martha's beside him. The bison began moving again, its moon shadow a ghostly distortion in the ripples of the current. Sean looked for the satellite shadow and again thought he saw it, or was it simply the bison shifting position? The great beast lumbered along the fisherman's trail that followed the bank upriver, until its bulk was engulfed by the darkness. For a few more seconds Sean could make out its shadow where the water was still, then that too was gone. Ten minutes later they heard it call, faintly and from far up the river, and ten minutes after that it called, or maybe not.

Martha and Sean exchanged a glance. Martha shrugged.

They settled back to wait as the night ticked down and false dawn spread its lie on the horizon. Nothing else happened, and when the wind picked itself up, so did they. Back at the game manager's cabin, they said thanks but no thanks to Thackery's offer of breakfast and drove back to Bridger in weary silence. They were turning up the canyon road when Martha mentioned that the department had sprung for a bus ticket for Joseph Brings the Sun. Three-thirty arrival from Great Falls on the following day. Martha asked if Sean could pick him up and take him to the morgue.