Buffalo Jump Blues (4 page)

“Why that star?” she said.

“A woman I know believes her daughter's spirit resides in it, because it pulses like a heart. Something to do with the heating and cooling of the gases.”

“That's a very Indian thing to believe.”

“She is Indian, a little.”

They looked at the sky.

“I'm a quarter white on my mother's side,” she said. “We're from Rocky Boy. Chippewa Cree.”

“What brought you here?”

“MSU. I had a basketball scholarship. Things happened and I wound up back on the reservation. Then I was out of state awhile.” She waved the cigarette. “Nomadic people and all that. Now I'm back in school, or will be fall semester.”

“How did you end up in a fish tank?”

“Ah, so you know my secret.”

“It's my powers of deduction. You weren't at any of the tables and you're smoking beside a service entrance. And I know who the Parmachene Belle and the Queen of the Waters are, and you don't look like kitchen help, so that leaves the Chippewa Nymph. Besides, your eyes are bloodshot. I'm guessing that's an occupational hazard.”

“Aren't you a smart fellow?”

“I'm a private detective.”

“Really?”

“Sort of.”

She brought the cigarette to her lips and exhaled. “The Queen's the real attraction. Cal only hired me because I could fit into a tail he bought on eBay.”

“Pays the tuition, huh?”

She shrugged. “The hourly's so-so, but we get fifty dollars for walking down the bank and posing with the fishermen.”

“I didn't know about that.”

“Yeah. If a guy wants a picture of himself holding a mermaid while he's standing in the river with his fly rod, like ‘Look what I caught,' it's fifty dollars and tips. I made five hundred on the Fourth, being passed around like a trout.”

“What's Montana coming to, huh?”

She smiled. “So are you going to watch me swim? I'm in the tank in twenty minutes.”

“I would, but I have to be somewhere else. Perhaps tomorrow night?”

“I don't work tomorrow.”

“Then it's my loss. I've never had a date with a mermaid before.”

“Who said it was a date?”

“I stand corrected.”

“Smoke with me,” she said, holding the cigarette out to him.

Sean puffed.

“Coward.” She took the cigarette back and flicked the ash with a fingernail. The silence between them was comfortable.

“Bad timing,” Sean said. He smiled back at her. He hadn't flirted with a woman in a long time. Ida seemed genuine and he was beginning to regret telling Katie that he'd come over.

“I've got to go wriggle into my tail. It was nice meeting you.”

“What's your last name, Ida?”

“Evening Star.”

“Like Venus?”

“No, Venus is a planet. It's just called the Evening Star.”

“Ah. So that's why you asked me earlier about the stars.”

“No, I was just making conversation.”

“I showed you mine, show me yours. Is it out tonight?”

“Maybe if I knew you better.”

“Are you?”

“Going to know you better? I don't know.”

She ground the cigarette out on the rail, and thirty minutes later Sean was knocking on the door of the Forest Service lease cabin outside West Yellowstone, where Katie Sparrow lived. Her Class III search dog, a shepherd named Lothar, checked him out by running his nose from cuffs to crotch, then gave his okay by trotting back to his dog bed. Katie raised on her tiptoes to kiss him. She'd streaked whiskers on her cheeks with eye liner and was wearing the puma costume with the tail held into a curl with fishing line.

“Would you care to see my lair?” she said.

—

He awoke to scrambling feet as Lothar jumped down from the bed and stood under the window, beating his tail against the nightstand. Outside, floating on a chill wind, Sean could hear the faint howling of wolves. Katie stirred in her sleep and he thought of waking her. She loved to hear wolves. It was why she left the windows cracked, even in winter.

“Katie,” he said. She was naked under a flannel sheet and he drew a finger down her spine.

“What is it?”

“Wolves.”

She sat up. In the moonlight spilling through the window, Sean could make out the tattoo of a cracked heart on the swell of Katie's left breast. On the first night Sean had spent with her, he had kissed
the tattoo and felt her body stiffen. “No, please don't do that,” she said. Nor was he permitted to kiss the beauty spot under her right collarbone because Colin, her fiancé whom she'd lost in an avalanche, had always kissed it, and, like the heart, it was reserved for the memory of his lips. In other ways she was sexually freer than any woman Sean had known, even if she had yet to show him the sex move she'd joked about patenting.

“You aren't ready for it,” she'd told him. And added, “Maybe next time.”

That had been three or four next times ago, and it summed up their relationship. He could aspire to her sex move, but there was skin he couldn't kiss, a level of intimacy beyond which he could not pass. And if he was being honest, it was the same with him, though without the physical boundaries. He and Katie were temporary harbor, ships throwing lines to each other in a wine-dark sea.

He smiled at the image in his mind of a wine sea.

“Whatcha thinking?” she said.

“Nothing.”

“You always do that when we're together. It's like you're somewhere else.”

The wolves howled, saving Sean from coming up with a lie.

“That's the Cougar Pack,” Katie said. “They made a kill up on Gneiss Creek three days ago. Now they're hunting again.” Sean felt her fingers interlace with his as she spoke. She squeezed his hand. “Come on, let's make love, we can howl with them if we're quick.”

They weren't quick, but by then it didn't matter.

“I
haven't slept in a barn since Two Dot,” Martha said.

Beside her, Harold stirred. Martha shone her flashlight, picking out pieces of straw clinging to his braid.

“Stop that.”

“I'm going to have to yank this one,” she said.

“Okay, okay, I'm up. What happened in Two Dot?”

“I was a bad girl.”

“You? Martha Ettinger?”

She acted like she hadn't heard.

“How's the little guy holding up?”

“Good, I think,” Martha said. “She let him nurse about an hour ago and he's lying down. I think we can relax now. The skin seems to have worked.”

They had laced the skin of the dead calf around the bison calf, securing it with baling twine and duct taping the cord anywhere they thought it might chafe. The result was a very odd-looking animal, and the first time the calf had tried to butt up under the cow, she had stepped away, her eyes wide with alarm. He'd tried again, and again she'd stepped away, but on the third attempt she'd accepted him and he'd nursed at her swollen udders. It had taken all of twenty minutes.

Twelve hours later, the last seven spent on the straw in the barn, the question was no longer if, but “what now?”

“I'm going to lose my job over this,” Martha said, putting voice to what she'd been thinking all night long.

“And I won't?”

“Drake had a point. What we're doing is against the law.”

“Only if he pushes the issue.”

“Oh, he's going to push it.”

“He'd risk being disgraced on the camera. I meant what I said. He knows I meant it.”

“It doesn't matter what
he
decides to do. Use your brain, Harold. It's what
we
did. Too many people know already for us to have any chance of keeping a lid on this.”

“Then we'll take it as it comes. Public opinion's going to be on our side.”

“That and five grand will buy us a bail bond.”

“You're wrong there, Martha. We'd be released on our own recognizance.”

That brought her smile up in spite of herself. She let out a sigh, then shook her head. “Come on in the house,” she said. “Let's have some tea and I'll call Rosco and see where we stand. Things are never so bleak once the sun is up.”

But the sun was two hours from being up and the house was dark, the only light a soft yellow haze cast by the porch bulb, which had been left on all night. Harold was right by her side and yet not there at all as she walked toward that light, remembering other nights she had left it on, hoping that Sean Stranahan would see the glow when he walked his dog along the gravel road, up from the tipi where he lived.

There had been a time, a year ago now, when the light served as a signal that he was welcome to come in and help her work the picture puzzle spread out on the ponderosa pine slab that served as her desk. One puzzle piece would lead to another, one kiss to the next, and they would be lost to one another's touch, and then lost further. There had been that time. Then Martha had ended it for fear of it ending, getting out when the hurt wouldn't go as deep. All last winter the porch light had been out, last spring, too. She'd only switched it back on after her son's visit in June, when circumstances had brought
Sean and Martha together again. David, her son, had found the big brother in Sean that he had looked in vain for in his own brother, and Martha had softened, admitting to herself how much she cared. And so the light had gone back on, but Sean had either not seen it or ignored it. For four nights she'd left the light on, waiting for his knock. She had almost given up when she heard the rap at the door, had swallowed the last of her chamomile tea and sought the pulse in her neck with two fingers, willing herself to be calm.
What will I say?
she thought.
Will I simply fall into his arms and all is forgiven?
She had opened the door. It was Harold, come to borrow her horse trailer because his needed rewiring.

“Harold,” she said.

“Who were you expecting?”

And she'd flung herself at him, Harold with whom she'd had a short-lived affair a few years before, Harold who had left her to go back to his ex-wife in Browning, Harold who had then left his ex-wife because he said he was tired of talking her off a ledge, which was a joke because there weren't any buildings tall enough to have ledges on an Indian reservation.
That Harold,
with whom Martha had no real future and knew it. But there he was, and here he was now, and she reached for his hand as they walked toward the light meant for somebody else.

—

Over the phone line, Martha could hear Rosco Needermire sigh.

“Martha, Martha, Martha,” the county prosecutor said.

“You don't sound like you're happy I helped you get elected,” she said.

He said he'd get back to her.

“Well?” Harold said.

“The gist is I'm a cooked goose two ways till Sunday. Number one, state law does give Drake the license to remove bison from private property if they are deemed a threat to livestock. No surprise there.”

“You're talking brucellosis. That's—”

“Bullshit. So you've said. But law's law. The fact is, he can legally take the bison
without
a warrant. Rosco says about all I can do is fall back on delaying tactics. I can apply for quarantine status and say that I'll raise the calf away from contact from any livestock except for the cow. But there's a lot of hoops to jump through. Anyway, he'll see if there's any way the rules can be bent, considering the circumstances. The fact that the calf's in my possession is to my advantage, that and the bad publicity the DOL would get for pressing the matter. So he thinks Drake will want to make the department look responsible and go the warrant route, which gives me a little time.”

Harold was shaking his head. “Needermire still wear a
Jaws
undershirt when he goes to trial? 'Cause for a man who thinks he's a shark he doesn't have many teeth.”

“Harold, there's only so much he can do. You've got to calm down about this.”

“You're just as upset as I am.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Something's been nagging at me, Martha.”

“What's that?”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did they go over that cliff? My grandfather had this old juniper bow backed with sinew, said his grandfather had used it to finish off buffalo after they drove them off the cliffs. I didn't know whether to believe him, because the people had horses by then and nobody used pishkuns once they could run buffalo on horses.”

“You mean a buffalo jump?” Martha said. “You're thinking somebody drove them over the cliff?”

“I don't think it was suicide.”

“There were fireworks. It scared them, you said it yourself.”

“I know. It's the plausible explanation. Still, I'd like to talk to that
range manager up at Tenderfoot Creek who made the call, find out what he actually saw.”

“Harold, this isn't a crime scene.”

“Then I'll do it on my own time.”

“No, I can give you some line on this. A couple days. See what you can find.”

He nodded. “I'll go back this morning. I want to see how they're handling the recovery. The ones I finished off won't have spoiled, but they're going to have to work fast.”

“Don't get into it with Drake. That's not my advice. That's an order.”

“Order, Martha?”

“Whatever you want to call it.”

—

He didn't get into it with Drake. Drake wasn't there, nor was his trigger man, Calvin Barr. Who was there was John Rain in His Face from the Fort Peck Reservation. He was the head of a team of seven other Indians, mostly Assiniboine and Sioux, though one man was Blackfeet, like Harold. They were representatives of the Intertribal Buffalo Council who supervised treaty rights, sanctioned by Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, to hunt bison that strayed beyond the buffer zone outside Yellowstone National Park.

Rain in His Face said they'd boned out the meat from the five bison Harold had finished off and that it had been driven overnight to a meatpacking facility in Fort Peck. This morning they were salvaging hides and skulls from another six that had been dead too long and had spoiled and bloated in the sun. The parts of the carcasses they had no use for would be hauled to the landfill, though he was squabbling with the DOL over who had the honor.

“So that's eleven,” Harold said. “I guess I missed a few of the dead ones.”

“Fifteen thousand pounds, give or take,” Rain in His Face said. “A lot of waste.” He was well over six feet, with a broad chest and
stomach, a wide nose, and deeply pockmarked cheeks. Blood from the biceps down, his shirt stained with gore.

“Let me ask you, John, how do you suppose they went over the cliff like that?”

“I don't know. Those guys from DOL didn't tell me shit. The range manager was here earlier. Said he saw them above the cliffs night before last. Not your standard-issue department man. Struck me as a bit on the mad side. But white people, huh?” He shrugged. “Why, do you know something I don't?”

“No.”

“Then what's your involvement? This doesn't sound like a police matter.”

“Same question I've asked myself. But there's a question of jurisdiction because the game range is a hodgepodge of land ownership—Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, state, private, it's all mixed up. If the herd was on federal or state land, then the Department of Livestock had the right to shoot them. More complicated if they were on private property. Then they'd have to haze them onto public land before they could lower the boom.
I think.
The law's a bit confused. But the real reason I was first to the scene is because I was close by and a fishing guide called the sheriff's line. He'd heard the racket and didn't know whether to put in at the landing or not. So there was a public safety issue involved.”

“I see.”

“What I'd like to know is why. I thought of wolves, we have a couple packs in the Gravellys, what's your take on that?”

“I doubt it.” Rain in His Face shook his head. “Buffalo fend off wolf attacks by presenting a unified front. Seen it time and again. Herd stands its ground to protect the small ones. If they run, the calves get caught.”

“So if it wasn't wolves, what was it?”

“Could be lightning strike. I've seen buffalo stampede from thunder and lightning.”

“What about fireworks?”

“Maybe.” Rain in His Face shook his head. “This was back in the day, I'd say my people herded them over the edge, or yours. First thing I told myself when we got here is this is a perfect place for a drive. I climbed to the top earlier and you even got a dip in the land before the cliffs. Like a ski jump. They'd never know they were going over until their hooves were in the air.”

While they were talking, the crew had been shuttling back and forth across the river, using a battered johnboat to ferry the heavy hides that they'd stripped from the carcasses. Clouds of flies made a halo over each human head and the boat itself was enveloped in a fog of insects. The scent was powerful and dark, with a tang of turning meat. Harold realized that Rain in His Face was the least bloody of the workers. Three of the men had been smart enough to save their shirts and were bare-chested.

“Gives you an appreciation for our ancestors,” Rain in His Face said. “We were born too late, you and me.”

“I know what you mean,” Harold said. “We have the meat but we lost the hunt.”

Rain in His Face called the crew over. The Blackfeet man turned out to be a distant cousin of Harold's, not surprising given the complexity of the family trees. But Harold didn't know him, he didn't know any of these men, and the bond of heritage only went so far. He was a badge to them,
the man,
if less so than a white man would be. Harold asked if they'd seen anything unusual during the recovery work. Nobody spoke up. He made a joke about knowing he was among brothers by the condition of the vehicles parked at the river access, wondering if there was a working turn signal in the lot. That got a laugh. Indians were nothing if not self-deprecating. But the laugh was on the polite side. He wasn't learning much and the men wanted to get going.

After the two trucks had driven away, Harold pulled on his waders to cross the river, trying to prepare himself for the bones and the gut
piles. The dew point had risen and fingers of midmorning fog lingered among the ghosts of the dead. It wouldn't be so bad once the sun rose higher in the sky. Still, he hesitated. He was remembering what Rain in His Face had said about the game range manager.

Not your standard-issue department man. Struck me as a bit on the mad side.

Harold decided the cliffs could wait. If nothing else, paying the manager a visit would eat an hour or two, give the day a little time to put the spirits to bed.