Death Where the Bad Rocks Live (41 page)

He opened the door, not expecting to find anyone. He relived that night when he’d cowered against the wall, gun on the floor beside his leg, waiting for his attacker to burst through the door for an old-fashioned western shoot-out that never happened. He vowed not to back away from such danger again on this trip.

Two coffee cups sat on the table, dark rings crusted to the rims, and Manny grabbed the percolator atop the woodstove. He opened the lid and sniffed: old, perhaps a day, maybe more, coffee burnt, acrid. Ham and Marshal had a good head start on them.

Willie yelled and Manny ran from the cabin as a beat-to-hell Studebaker pickup pulled up, gas can and spare tire and odd tools jostling around and bouncing off the bed as the truck bounced between ruts on its way down the hill. Janet sat behind the wheel, a terrified look etched on her face as she skidded the pickup to a stop beside the OST Dodge. Dust pelted the clean, white finish of Willie’s Durango.

Janet flung the door open and caught herself climbing out. She used the fender to stand as she batted dust from her hiking shorts, and grabbed a small, multicolored day pack that looked like she’d bought it at Macy’s rather than Cabela’s.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Willie nodded to her ensemble. Khaki shorts that stopped just above her knees color coordinated with her too-tight pink and lavender tank top. Her Nikes looked more suited for a day trip at a tourist site than a week in the most unforgiving country in the west.

“I’m coming along.”

“Bullshit!” Willie motioned for Manny to adjust the straps on his ALICE pack.

“Uncle Leon will not like that. You’re ordered to take me.”

Willie, a resigned look on his face, looked to Manny for help. Manny shrugged. “I don’t work for your Uncle Leon, and I can’t stop you from coming. But if you hang back and can’t cut it, I’ll leave you to the coyotes. Or to that mountain lion that I heard the other night. This is no mall outing.”

Janet’s face reddened and her lips pursed. She drew in a long breath before she spoke. “I won’t get in the way.”

“Suit yourself.”

Manny unfolded the map and oriented his compass to the trail leading from Marshal’s cabin. Without another word, he started along the path Reuben felt Marshal and Ham would have taken. As they crossed the streambed, Janet yelled. She’d fallen into tall sage, the thick roots gouging her legs, blood dripping onto the ashen dirt. Willie squatted beside her, hefting her erect while her dimples showed through a broad grin.
This is going to be one great little adventure.

They unrolled their bedrolls that night under a sandstone overhang. Lightning, faint in the west but growing more intense, illuminated fingers of stone jutting skyward. But it wasn’t the lightning that brought rain, rain that would threaten to fill deep gullies in minutes and drown a man in moments. This was what Unc had called heat lightning.
“When you see heat lightning,”
Unc would say,
“the Thunder
Beings aren’t so angry. They just want us two-leggeds to remember they exist and can harm us at any moment. They won’t bring us a lot of rain, just enough that we don’t forget them.”

Unc’s teachings were forever stored at the fringes of Manny’s mind, waiting for the chance to surface when Manny needed Unc’s help. Like now. Manny scooped out depressions in the dirt, like Unc had taught him to do, so that his head and shoulders were more comfortable when he slept.

Unc’s Good Red Road had always been an example for Manny, yet he’d fought so hard to suppress Uncle Marion’s traditional teachings. The man had died penniless, in a shanty he didn’t even own on the outskirts of Pine Ridge, both legs amputated, body racked by diabetes. But Unc had been the richest man Manny had ever known, rich in the warrior spirit that lived in all Lakota, just waiting to be brought to the surface by prayer or ritual.

“Never thought about doing that.” Willie watched as Manny finished scooping out dirt with the small folding shovel he’d strapped to his ALICE pack.

Manny handed Willie the shovel. “I’ll let Janet in on this little trick when she gets back.”

“Back from where?” For the first time, Manny realized she was gone. “She was just sitting around the fire a moment ago.”

“She took her Glock and went to get supper. I told her she didn’t have to but she insisted. Said she wanted to pull her weight. She took off south with my GPS unit, so I know she can make it back.”

“Shit! The last thing we need is for her to go blasting away and alert Marshal and the judge we’re on their back trail.”

As if to punctuate his concern, a single shot bounced off canyon walls somewhere to the south, or the west, it was difficult to tell in the still night air, the sound bouncing off cliffs and spires, fading as if the Stronghold wouldn’t allow the
sound to go farther. Manny struggled to hear another shot, but all that was left was silence.

Willie grabbed his own Glock and strapped it on.

“Where are you going?”

“After her.”

“She could be anywhere,” Manny reasoned. “All you’d do is manage to get yourself lost at night.”

“Well, we got to do something.”

“We will.” Manny tossed another branch into the fire. “As soon as our MREs heat, we’ll have supper. Hope she knows how to use that GPS unit.”

The rain came gentle, dripping on Manny’s exposed neck. He pulled his poncho hood over his head while he retreated to the sanctuary of the overhang just as Janet yelled from over the small hill fifty yards distant. Manny thought for a moment about leaving the dry sandstone enclosure. But just for a moment, and sat dry, his hands wrapped around the warm coffee cup.

Janet burst through sagebrush and stumbled, falling onto the wet sand. Willie ran to her and helped her up, but she threw his arm away and fell again. Willie shrugged and returned to join Manny under the overhang.

“What you two looking at?”

Manny warmed his hands by the fire just outside his reach. “The great hunter. Where’s supper?”

“Missed the damned deer.”

“Good.” Willie took off his raincoat and slipped on a hooded sweatshirt against the cool, damp air. “’Cause they’re not in season. I would have had to sign out a warrant for poaching.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“He’d have to. I’m a witness.”

Janet stood openmouthed until Willie snapped her trance. “Get in out of the rain or you’ll get soaked.”

She snatched her sleeping bag and day pack and scurried under the overhang. She dropped on the ground between Manny and Willie and ran her hand through her wet hair. “I’m starving. What’s for supper?”

“What did you bring?”

“Bring?” She looked at Manny like a cow looking at a new gate. “All I got is some Tanka Bars for energy. I figured you’d at least take us someplace where we could kill our supper.”

Manny shook his head. “This is no slumber party with the girls.” He reached around his pack and came up with a can of Spam and a fork. “Heat it over the fire.”

“Spam? Ugh.”

“Squirrel, Possum, and Mice. If it was good enough for our combat troops, it’ll get you by. Heat it over the fire.”

“And chew this when you’re done.” Willie reached into an open bag of MREs and tossed Janet a packet of gum. “It’ll keep you moving.”

“I hate gum. Besides, I got enough energy to keep me moving.”

“That’s not the moving I’m talking about.” Willie grinned. “It’ll keep your plumbing moving so you can at least make an effort to keep up tomorrow.”

Janet jumped at a thunderclap that bounced off the inside of the overhang, and she looked at the rain pelting the fire outside the safety of their enclosure. “Maybe it’ll rain too much and we’ll have to go back in the morning.”

Manny arranged his bedroll over the scoops in the sand. “Not likely. In an hour, it’ll be all soaked in and you won’t even know it had rained here at all. Tomorrow you get lesson two of police work—come a little more prepared.”

“What’s he doing out there?” Janet, hungrier this morning, devoured the can of Spam she was too good to eat last night. Cold. She wiped the jelly packing off one cheek and motioned to Willie standing, face to the sky, thirty yards from the overhang, his trilling voice rising and falling with the motion of his arms. “Rather than wasting time, we could be looking for the judge and Marshal. The sooner we find them the sooner we can crawl back to civilization.”

“For an Oglala, you don’t know much about your culture.”

“I’m Sincangu,” she corrected. “And it still doesn’t answer my question.”

Manny nodded to Willie in the clearing between two boulders. Dust swirled around him as he turned to the south and tossed a pinch of tobacco into the air. The wind took it somewhere the spirits could use it. “He’s praying to the four winds. Offering tobacco.”
Always sanctify the west wind first
, he heard Unc’s voice whisper from the Spirit Road. Still teaching Manny the ways. He repeated the advice for Janet.

“Well, the west wind can stop blowing anytime. I’m sick of it. Besides, I had other things in school to worry about than my culture.”

“Like how to get in trouble?”

Janet grinned and dabbed at the corner of her mouth with her shirttail. “Not me. I was too smart to get caught.”

“Like that shoplifting charge in Hot Springs? Or selling pot to that state DCI agent in Rapid City?”

Janet tossed the can aside, but picked it up when Manny glared at her and held his hand out. She gave it to him, and he set it beside their trash from the night before. “So I got caught a few times. Ever heard practice makes perfect?”

“So you perfected being a criminal?” Manny grabbed his folding shovel to dig a hole to bury their trash. “Hardly the makings of a good law officer.”

“Let’s just say I was on my own during those school years. Uncle Leon convinced me that former bad people make the best police officers. That they know best how the criminal mind works. They think like their adversary and catch them.”

“Like catching Henry Lone Wolf after he busted Willie’s truck and stole his flashlight?”

“Just like that.”

“Even though Henry wasn’t available to do the dirty deed?”

“What you talking about? I caught him with Willie’s SureFire.”

Manny shoved dirt over the dirt and patted the sand with his shovel. “I called a lieutenant I know at the Rapid City PD. I had some issues with the way they treated Henry after an arrest.” Manny left out the ass cleaning Henry had received. “And I told him Henry had broken into Willie’s truck, and about the Durango getting keyed.”

“Is there a point to this?”

“Henry had a previous engagement during both those times. Henry was sitting in the Pennington County hoosegow on a pissing-in-public charge. He couldn’t have been the one.”

“All I know is that I got Henry dead to rights with the flashlight.”

“And credit for the collar?”

“You got it.” Janet watched Willie tuck his medicine pouch inside his shirtfront as she grabbed a roll of toilet paper and slung her canteen over her shoulder. She started for some dead cottonwood in a dry creek bed. She disappeared over the dirt bank as Willie walked back to the campfire.

“She give up and go home on her own?”

“You don’t want to know. Let’s take a look where we are.”