Death Where the Bad Rocks Live (42 page)

Manny spread Micah’s wrinkled map out beside the Park Service map and weighted the edges with pebbles. “We’re close to where Reuben—and everyone else until now—thought that
Moses fell to his death. No one knew for certain, it’s such a vast area. But this is where Moses often went to pray. This is where it was rumored he went missing, a mile along this trail. Maybe less.”

“Then we better keep sharp. Last thing I want is for the next generations to think this holy-man-in-training fell to his death instead of getting shot. If Marshal or the judge is our shooter…hear that?”

“Hear what? There’s nothing except the wind.”

“That’s ’cause you’re getting old. Listen.”

The shifting wind brought a woman’s wail with it. “Janet,” Willie said, and turned his head into the wind. “There.” He pointed to a spot over the hill where she had disappeared with her roll of TP. Willie started down the trail and Manny had to run to keep up. Willie paused for a moment, cocking his ear, altering his direction as Janet’s cries grew louder.

Willie scrambled up a popcorn-gravel hillside and lost his balance and slid down, and Manny grabbed his arm and helped him up. They crested the hill above Janet. She sat on the ground, her arms wrapped around her bent knees, face buried in her arms crying and eying a body ten yards in front of her.

They half slid down the other side, and Willie dropped on his knees beside her. He wrapped his arms around her as he glanced at the man with his legs sticking from beneath a gnarled, dead cedar log. “What happened?”

“Dead,” Janet cried into Willie’s shoulder. “I came over the hill to do my morning thing. I didn’t see him at first until I finished and got around that bunch of downed cedar. Terrible. Man must have died a slow death out here all alone.”

“He’s not dead.” Manny squatted beside the man and rolled him onto his back.

Janet chanced a peek around Willie. “He’s got to be dead. Look at all that blood.”

Manny brushed the dirt and flies away from Marshal Ten Bears’s face. His breathing came slow, shallow. Manny checked his pupils: even and reactionary. But for how long? “Give me a hand here.”

Willie left Janet and crawled to Marshal. Willie’s hand came away with dried, frothy blood, and he wiped it on his trouser leg. “Lung shot for sure.”

Manny probed the dirt and let the sand sift through his fingers to age the blood. “Yesterday. Last night at the latest. Hard telling in this heat.” He called to Janet over his shoulder. “And you didn’t see him last night?”

“How would I see him? It was dark.”

“This is the way you stormed off last night when you said you were going to find something to kill for supper.”

“Well I wasn’t looking for a man. I told you I shot at a deer.”

“Even accidentally? Could you have shot him by accident, thinking he might be a deer?”

“Give her a break,” Willie said. “It was dark and he was hidden by those cedar trees.” He turned to her. “Give me your canteen.”

Janet stood and cautiously walked to within arm’s reach of the body as she handed Willie her canteen. She jerked her hand back and retreated a safe distance away, dropping wild-eyed and crying onto the ground. Willie poured water in the cap and trickled it over Marshal’s lips. Marshal coughed, but his eyes remained closed, his body limp in that predeath manner Manny was certain was just over the horizon.

“We got to get a chopper in here.”

“Good luck finding a signal.” Willie flipped his cell phone open and closed it just as quick. “Not even a half bar. This man’s dead.”

“Not if I can help it. Can you make him comfortable until I can get help?”

“Where are you going to find help out here?”

“There.” Manny pointed to a cliff a mile away and three hundred feet above the floor of the Badlands. “If I get to that spot, I might get a signal and call for a medevac.”

“It makes more sense for me to go. I’m younger…”

“And clumsier.” Manny forced a smile. “I’ve seen your big ass try to scramble over these hills. Besides, I’m not so old I can’t still walk down a deer if I needed to. Besides, you’ve studied healing.”

Willie’s eyes widened. “Nothing like this. I can treat corns or hemorrhoids. But nothing like this.”

“We got no choice. You and Janet stay here.”

“Now I got to take care of Marshal
and
Janet.”

“It’s a curse.” Manny lowered his voice. “You got another reason for keeping her here. Whoever shot Marshal might be close. You’ll need another set of ears and eyes.”

Willie looked back at Janet still hunched over twenty yards away. “You think it was Judge High Elk?”

Manny shrugged. “That’d be too pat now, wouldn’t it, him coming here with Marshal?”

“But I don’t see the judge here helping him out. If it were my hiking partner…”

“I know.” Manny patted Willie’s shoulder.

“And one other thing—Janet might have shot Marshal by accident last night.” Or on purpose, Manny thought.

Manny called to Janet, “You stay with Willie. He’ll need your help.”

“Think he’ll make it? Enough that he can tell us who shot him?”

Manny shrugged. “He just might if Willie can keep him alive and I can catch a cell signal. That being the case, you’ll get a ride out of here like you wanted.”

Even at this distance, Manny saw the dust the helicopter kicked up as it lifted off. For a moment, the Chinook from Ellsworth seemed to ride a heavenly dust cloud, like some drab-colored Thunder Being carrying Marshal and Willie and Janet south along the Spirit Road.

Manny shielded his eyes, watching the helicopter disappear over the horizon. He imagined this is what the Old Ones saw when they fled to the sanctuary of the Stronghold, imagined them watching their pursuers becoming lost and succumbing to the heat, all the while telegraphing their movements by the fine dust that permeated the Badlands.

Manny had used the last of his water and tried whistling through cracked lips.
Clara will be furious with me, not even being able to kiss these lips until they heal.
He checked his watch. His own rescue chopper would be a tourist helicopter from Mt. Rushmore that was still an hour away.

He forced his mind away from his plight and thought over the investigation. Something gnawed at his mind and he needed to get a handle on it. He needed a sweat-your-ass-till-it-drops run, where he got into his zone to sort things out. His own sort of vision quest. His own special sweat.

The sun was directly overhead now, and Manny flipped up his collar to protect his neck, while his mind wandered to the bombed-out Buick that had been the grave of Moses and Ellis Lawler. He didn’t believe for a moment that the pair had driven into the bombing range to pass the jar of whiskey. Ellis, maybe, but Manny has the odd feeling that Moses never drank, a feeling strong enough it sent shivers along his spine, as if the sacred man himself sat beside him on the hilltop. Something more important than booze had lured them there. Something as skillful as his shooter luring him into the night by Marshal’s cabin to ambush him.

Somehow the pair was connected to Gunnar Janssen, who had hired Marshal Ten Bears to take him into the Stronghold
during spring break from college. Gunnar had booked Marshal under the guise of a hunting trip, but claimed to have forgotten his rifle. Had Moses and Ellis and Gunnar all been the victims of the bad rocks, with their own evil
wakan
?

Manny tucked his head between his legs, waiting for his ride off the cliff, and his thoughts drifted to Willie. Both had their own special problems with relationships: Willie fighting depression and guilt while fending off Janet’s advances; Manny fighting to demonstrate he still loved Clara despite his diabetes, despite what it had done for his libido. Marshal’s sudden near-death experience reinforced that a man has to be ready for whatever
Wakan Tanka
decides to throw his way. And to make amends to those he’ll leave behind. Manny vowed not to leave Clara with second thoughts about their relationship when he himself departed along the Spirit Road.

Rotor blades cutting the air and getting louder woke Manny from his drifting stupor. He thought he saw a helicopter nearing, a helicopter bearing the orange and blue markings of the Badlands Tour Company. Just before it touched down yards from him, he imagined Lumpy emerging as the tour guide, running hunched over with water bladder in hand, frown on his florid face. Now this was one of those daymares Unc had warned him about.

“Willie called me an hour ago. Marshal is out of surgery at Rapid City Regional. He’ll recover.”

“When can I talk to him?”

Lumpy scowled. “How should I know? You want predictions, get a holy man. Like your brother. It’s bad enough that I gotta sit here in the waiting room with your sorry ass.”

“You don’t sound very appreciative.”

“Of what?”

“Us taking care of your niece.”

“You two shouldn’t have taken her in the first place.”

“And Willie risk the ire of her uncle Leon?”

“All right, I’ll say it. Thanks for keeping her in one piece. Though I still don’t know how she managed to fit that much makeup and feminine things in her pack.”

“That’s all I wanted to hear. You can leave if you need to. I’ll catch a ride from someone.”

“And leave you to muck things even more? Not a chance.”

The Pine Ridge ER receptionist called a patient’s name, and a woman stood cradling her crying baby as she disappeared through the examination room doors. “Benny Black Fox saw the judge’s Suburban speeding away from the Stronghold this afternoon.”

“Don’t tell me he shot out another lightbulb on the KILI tower?”

Lumpy shrugged. “All we know is he was up on the Battle Creek tower when he spotted the judge’s outfit driving away.”

“Thought there weren’t any roads that way.”

“Neither did I, but Benny says there are trails there that’re wide enough for a vehicle, if you know where to look.”

Reuben had showed Manny a trail on his map that was once used. Perhaps Ham knew the same trail. “Then we need to find the judge fast.”

Lumpy laughed. “You have been in the sun too long. The rez is five thousand square miles. If the judge don’t want to be found, he won’t be.”

“He’ll go to Sophie’s house.”

“Not hardly. We’ve learned something about police work, we lowly tribal cops. He’s on the run and won’t come back to his mother’s. He won’t want to implicate her. He might be our best suspect in Marshal’s shooting—among the many others you’ve come up with—but he won’t stick around.”

The receptionist called Manny’s name and he stood. Lumpy put his hand on his arm. “I got shit to do, but I’ll have Pee Pee give you a lift to Rapid. It’ll get him out and away from his house for the afternoon.”

“Not you again.” The ER physician flipped through the chart. “Says here you reinfected your leg wound from that cat. And you were pretty dehydrated when the helicopter picked you up.”

“That was two hours ago—long enough that I could have knitted a sweater if I wanted. Good thing I just didn’t keel over out there.”

“Didn’t you ever hear the Indian Health Service is just a little underfunded? Now put this gown on.”

Manny winked at the ER nurse scowling at him over her half-glasses. “You just want to see my butt.”