Death Where the Bad Rocks Live (36 page)

Manny herded the government Malibu, a carbon copy of the white one that had crashed and burned, around large boulders, keeping on top of the deep ruts, finally clearing the first large pinnacle of million-year-old sandstone. Marshal Ten Bears’s cabin sat huddled between hills older than even the Lakota could ever record. Manny stopped the car and grabbed his binoculars. Marshal’s truck was parked beside Ham’s Suburban, the crumpled front fender glinting fresh exposed metal, the bumper listing to one side like a drunken politician. Manny imagined two cowpokes who had ridden up to the hitching rail in front of the cabin, tied their mustangs off, and sat inside visiting over a whiskey.

Manny eyed the deep ruts cut by flash floods. He put the car in low gear and kept on top of the ruts, stopping beside Marshal’s truck.

Manny left the car where it was as he made his way around sage and cactus higher than his waist. Alkaline dust quickly erased whatever shine he’d put on his wing tips this morning, and he beat dust from his pant leg. The wooden porch showed dust undisturbed, thick, the faint trail of a lizard having crossed it the dust’s only disturbance. He bent and brushed his hand across the wood: no one had disturbed the dirt today. Perhaps not since yesterday.

Manny grabbed onto the horseshoe knocker and banged hard, even though he didn’t expect an answer. A meadowlark screeched overhead and Manny jumped. The meadowlark speaks Lakota; was it warning Manny not to enter the cabin? But the bird swooped down, preoccupied with a bull snake slithering across the road. The snake had nearly made it to the safety of a clump of sagebrush when the dive-bombing bird sank its talons into the head of the snake. “Have a good feast
little brother,” Manny called after the meadowlark as it rose in the air, the writhing snake whipping the air as snake and predator flew out of Manny’s sight.

He rapped again, and turned away from the door, resting his hands on the hitching rail scarred from countless horses tied there. A dust devil twirled choking dust, air-dancing across the rough hills, and disappeared in the direction the meadowlark had gone.

Manny turned back to the door and opened it. He stepped inside as the fierce wind cut through the gaps in the log structure, whistling past the wood that Moses had nailed onto the west side.

Manny took a moment to allow his eyes to adjust to the faint light filtering in through the single window. He flipped his cell phone open to call Clara. It showed no more bars than it had before and he pocketed it.

He plopped into a chair to wait. It had been two hours since he’d left Sophie’s, and he’d hoped Marshal would be here so he could ask his questions and get home in time to take Clara to the Olive Garden for her birthday.

The wind rose, blowing dust through gaps in the logs. The wind. Always the wind here in the Badlands, wind that had eroded the landscape since before the Lakota claimed this as a sacred place. Manny closed his eyes to a rising headache, imagining the first man that had inhabited this cabin, imagining Moses Ten Bears. The sacred man lived a life of simplicity, one of sacrifice, praying to the four winds every morning before starting to paint for the day, paintings that could have brought him riches. If he’d had any desire for the White man’s money. Moses’s existence reminded Manny of that of religious monastics who lived a sacrificial life when they could have lived like kings.

A screech owl woke him. How long he’d been asleep, he didn’t know, except the sunlight through the tiny window had
turned to moonlight. The harbinger of death—the owl—warned him of some grave danger that awaited him. He stood, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood with him. Still, no Marshal or Ham.

He willed his breathing to slow, assuring himself that not all owls were messengers of death, when he heard a faint voice call out. He cracked the door and stuck his head outside. A voice trailed on the wind, rising and falling, coming from a saddle between two buttes.

He cocked an ear.
Crying.
Or was it merely the wind, fear from the screech owl earlier putting voices in his head, the moans of ancestors forever lost to this place. This Sheltering Place.

The voice again, a human voice, as intelligence rose and fell with the cries. The voice grew stronger, more intense. He stepped onto the porch and cocked his head, aiming his ear like a living homing antenna. “Who’s there?”

No answer, save for the wailing that sounded human. He stepped off the porch in the direction of the sound. “Who’s there? Tell me where you are so I can help you.”

The voice stopped as abruptly as it had begun. A meadowlark flew overhead, talking to him, in time with the distant rumble of thunder miles to the west, to the storm that approached.

But no crying. Perhaps it had been his imagination, and he turned back to the cabin.

A shot erupted, muzzle flash like tiny lightning bolts. A bullet whizzed close enough to his head it sounded as if a yellow jacket had strafed him. Manny dropped to the ground. Another bullet hit the sagebrush he’d stood beside a heartbeat before. Another shot, kicking up dirt an inch from Manny’s face. The shooter had his location bracketed.

Manny scrambled on all fours to a tall clump of purple sagebrush, unholstering his auto as he dropped behind the
bush. He peered around the sage and squinted against the fading light, grateful for the flashes of lightning that gave him some illumination. Whoever had shot at him had lured Manny out of the cabin and within gunshot range with the expertise of a seasoned hunter that lures the coyote with a predator call, knowing Manny would respond to wails of help. But the prey shot back. Manny ripped two quick shots in the direction of where the muzzle flash had been, dropping down low to the ground.

Lightning flashed, closer this time, illuminating for a brief moment another vehicle parked behind his Malibu, a vehicle that had not been parked with Ham’s ’Burb or Marshal’s truck. The vehicle’s driver door stood open: the shooter had not risked shutting it.

He strained to hear above the thunder. Quiet. He gathered his legs beneath him and duckwalked toward cactus closer to the cabin when two shots in quick succession came his way, and he dropped as much from surprise as from the throbbing pain from one slug that hit his shoulder. He rolled to one side, avoiding another bullet that kicked dirt where he had lain a foot away. Whoever the shooter was, he knew how to target prey.

Manny lay on his side, concentrating on where he thought the shots had originated, watching the area between him and the cabin as he slipped his bandanna from his pocket and stuffed it under his shirt to stop the bleeding in his shoulder. He chanced moving his arm in a tight circle, wounded but not broken.

Finished with his field dressing, Manny rolled back on his stomach, holding his pistol like a divining rod in front of him, a divining rod that would do him no good if he couldn’t even spot his attacker. And if he couldn’t get within pistol range of the shooter.

A bullet tore into the sagebrush and drove a piece of
branch into Manny’s cheek. The shooter was working around one side of the cactus for a clean shot.

Manny gritted his teeth against the burning in his shoulder and waited until lightning flashed between black, roiling storm clouds. Just as the lightning died, Manny low crawled to a piece of sage ten feet away. He paused, timing the lightning again, and scrambled for a dead cottonwood ten feet past that. He hugged the ground and dropped behind the tree. He chanced a look around the trunk. Nothing stirred, yet he knew his attacker lay in wait for him to make a sound, cause movement that would betray his position. If I can hold out for another half hour, he thought.
If I can hold off until the sun sets fully, darkness will be my ally.

He reached inside his shirt and grabbed his beaded turtle containing his medicine hanging from a leather thong. How many times had his
wopiye
helped him through some crises? Wakan Tanka
unsimalye
.
Wakan Tanka
pity me, he whispered, then laughed to himself. Reuben would be proud of his little brother intoning the Great Mysterious in such a time of need.
Give me strength, and a whole lot of old-fashioned Lakota luck right about now.

Manny rolled onto his back and dabbed at the bandanna, which was soaking up blood. He peeled off his polo shirt and gathered his leg under him as he sat poised to time his move between lightning flashes. Thunder close enough to reverberate inside his aching head accompanied a mighty flash. When it died, he draped his shirt over the cactus and backed into an arroyo thirty feet away, dropping down below a dirt bank just as two quick shots accompanied more thunder, as if the Thunder Beings themselves were angered at the desecration of their sacred ground.

Manny didn’t wait to see what damage his shirt sustained or how close the shooter had gotten. He ran hunched over along the arroyo bottom, deep and offering him the protection
he needed. When he’d gone fifty yards, he dropped onto his stomach and crawled to the top of the bank. A figure, indistinct in the darkness and lit by lightning flashes, hunched over studying the tracks, looking toward where Manny had scurried after he’d tossed his shirt over the cactus. The figure seemed to be studying the terrain, deciding whether to follow an armed man into the brush, then turned toward the cabin and was lost to the night.

Manny strained, eyes adjusting to the darkness. The lightning played tricks on his eyes, illuminating a dark figure that shadowed his shooter. Was the attacker nearing where Manny hid? Was the shooter out there still, waiting for Manny to move, to reveal himself for another ambush? Manny rubbed his eyes. The shadow had disappeared.

Manny’s questions were answered as a car door slammed moments later and an engine started. Headlights burst the darkness and ruined his night vision. Manny turned his head, knowing the receptors at the sides of the eyes were much more sensitive, better able to cut through the lack of light looking sideways. The car crept up the slope on that trail leading from the cabin to the rim of the Badlands, light and sound fading, staying in the Stronghold. Nothing leaves the Stronghold, including the noise of the shooter leaving.

Manny checked his watch when the lightning flashes were bright overhead. The storm approached rapidly as did all summer thunderstorms in the Badlands, swooping down as if to catch Manny in a flash flood and drown him.

He felt foolish, cowering in the arroyo rather than working his way around to get the advantage on his attacker. But Manny had been afraid. He’d frozen in fear, as much from the persistence of the shooter as from not knowing who it had been. Or where the next shot would come from. A man should at least know his executioner.

Manny breathed deep, his racing heart slowing. He breathed
again of the air heavy with moisture, heavy with a different kind of assault: thunderstorm approaching fast, as if the Thunder Beings themselves were animating the clouds and the wind and the lightning.

He gathered his legs beneath him and crawled out of the gully as occasional drops of rain, cold on his bare back, harbingers of something more violent coming his way, stung his cheeks. He hunched over and scrambled to his car, as much as to try to pick up tracks of his attacker as to make himself as small a target as possible. The shooter’s car had driven away, but had there been more than one person? Was the shooter still lying close to the cabin, waiting for Manny to show himself?

Marshal’s truck and Ham’s Suburban were still parked by his Malibu. When Manny opened the car door to climb in, the dome light failed to come on. He grabbed the key hidden in the ashtray. The starter was as dead as the lights.

He fumbled in the glove box and his hand fell on his flashlight. He looked the way the shooter had driven off while he popped the hood and shone the light around. He was no mechanic, but battery cables had been cut.
In law enforcement, we call that a clue.

He squatted and opened Ham’s Suburban’s door. The dome light weakly illuminated the inside, and he slammed the door. He felt under the floor mat, above the visor. The key dropped down and he jammed it into the ignition. The Suburban burped once, then died as the dome light went out.

He crept hunched over to Marshal’s truck, expecting a shot. He reached for the door handle; sticky blood dripped onto his hand and made it slip off the handle. He wiped his hand on his Dockers and eased the door open. The hinges creaked loud enough he thought someone nearby could have heard it over the noise of the thunder. Manny checked the usual places, but no keys.

He slammed the hood of his Malibu as the rain started in earnest. He hopped inside to get out of the rain and lay down in the seat before he realized how dumb that move was. If the shooter returned, he’d have nowhere to go. He’d be a captive audience to his own execution.

He stuffed the flashlight into his trouser pocket and double-checked the snap on his holster before running for the cabin. His feet slipped on gumbo and he fell on the slippery wooden walkway in front of the shack. Pain shot up his shoulder as he fell against the door. He rolled onto the floor and kicked it shut. He scooted on the floor, backed against one wall as the rain came in great torrents, the Wakinya Oyate, the Thunder Nation, yelling in unison, shaking the cabin with their noise as they threw fierce lightning that flickered through the chinks in the logs.

Manny reached for an oil lamp on the table and fumbled for a match. He sat back down in the darkness, the adrenaline dump catching up with him, causing him to feel more exhausted than he ever remembered. He knew as he jumped with each thunder clash that his diabetes had stolen his strength, and he cursed himself for not getting it under control before.
If I ever get out of this, Clara, I’ll go to the doctor. Promise.

He grabbed his Glock and placed it on the floor beside him, expecting the storm to announce his attacker coming through the door to finish him off.
Well, bring it on. I’m not the best shot but I can shoot across the room accurately enough. Come through the door.
And sometime during the night, the Thunder Beings lulled him to sleep.