Night of the White Buffalo: A Wind River Mystery (12 page)

Father John told him what Clifford had said: the birth of the white calf was like a visitation from the Blessed Mother.

“Then the calf is very holy, indeed. What bothers you?” He shifted sideways toward Father John. His blue eyes were bright and watery.

“The owner of the ranch, Dennis Carey, was shot to death. A young man who worked there last fall has disappeared.”

“You sense evil about the place?” The bishop hurried on, not waiting for a response. “Perhaps that is the reason the white buffalo calf was sent there.”

THE CAMPING SPACE
was perfect. Bordered by two huge boulders and a stand of ponderosas that muffled sounds from the other campers. Past the ponderosas, Reg could see a slice of Lander in the distance. He had pulled the pickup in close to the campsite, set up his pup tent, and put the rolled sleeping bag inside. Then he had gathered twigs and started a fire in the fire pit. Someone who had been here before had left a stack of logs, and he had rolled the top one into the fire and balanced the small grill he kept with his camping supplies on the sides of the pit. He worked his pocketknife around the top of a can of pork and beans, which he set on the grill. When the brownish liquid started bubbling, he had lifted the can off the grill with a pair of tongs, set it on a flat rock that served as a table. Squatting in front, he had opened the metal triangle that held a knife, fork, and spoon and eaten the hot chunks out of the can.

Reg liked the sound of the wind in the pines, the muffled noises of other campers preparing dinner, the faraway sounds of cars pulling into the campground. He liked the privacy, the lack of ties. He was used to eating and sleeping outdoors, used to the feel of the wilderness. He had been a kid, barely sixteen, when Dad died and he'd dropped out of school and gone cowboying. He had followed his cousin onto a ranch on the Colorado plateau, a great swath of land that bound Colorado and Utah together. You could ride for days without seeing another soul. Cattle. Sheep. Mountain lions. He had seen a wolf once, although no wolves were supposed to range that far south. A thousand creatures scampering about, but no people. From time to time, he'd collect his pay and go back to Grand Junction. No family there anymore. Mom had died years ago; he hardly remembered her. Most of his friends had gone cowboying. They had ties. Parents and sisters and brothers. A few of his friends had even gotten married, although months went by between visits home. Oh, he liked girls, all right. Sometimes he longed for a girl. But most of the time, that fire was put out after a few days in town, a couple of dances, a roll in the hay.

Married life had never appealed to him. Born to be a loner. That was how he thought of himself.

Josh was different, always had been. It had surprised Reg when his buddy told him he was going to hire onto a ranch out on the plateau.
Long way from family
, Reg remembered saying.
You'll get lonely.
Cowboying wasn't for everybody; he had tried to make Josh understand. He could still hear Josh's voice: “Hell, I'll come back to see the folks whenever I like.” Then he had gotten fascinated with buffalo and gone to Wyoming to work on a buffalo ranch. He hadn't come back.

Reg finished the pork and beans. He felt warm and drowsy. The sun was out of sight, but the western sky was on fire with tongues of magenta, orange, and purple. The other campers seemed to have settled down, although he could hear a faint medley of voices and a strumming guitar. Shadows moved across the campsite; it was starting to get cool, despite waves of warmth from the campfire. A deep tiredness dogged him. He had driven most of the day to get to Wyoming.

He forced himself to his feet and went about the routine motions of cleaning up the campsite. Always keep a clean camp! Pounded into him by the first foreman he'd worked under, the summer he turned sixteen. He put the used can in a bag he kept for trash, poured a little water from his water bottle over the utensils and folded them back into the triangle. Then he used the rest of the water to douse the fire, because you could never leave an unattended fire. The first rule of living in the outdoors.

Ten minutes later, Reg was driving the winding roads out of the campground. He turned onto the straightaway that led down into town and stepped on the accelerator. Lander was a small town, Main Street stretching ahead with hanging baskets of flowers that looked dried, past their prime; people strolling sidewalks, licking ice cream cones; and the streetlamps coming on, shooting little circles of light over the pavement. He kept the map open on the seat next to him, even though he had studied it earlier at the campsite, imprinting the network of roads in his mind, and he turned onto Highway 789, past the sign that said Riverton.

Another small town, but quieter, it seemed; only a few people strolling the sidewalks. Lights flickered in the windows of small bungalows, a steady traffic crawled down the streets. He drove north on Federal until he spotted the blinking sign on the corner. Behind the sign was a squat brick building with a flat roof and a light over the door that flared onto the parking lot. Reg parked in the lot between two trucks with the figure of a cowboy riding a bronco on the Wyoming license plates.

Smells of beer, sweat, hot grease, and dust hit him as he stepped into the bar. He had been in a hundred bars across the West, places where tourists never went. He smiled at the idea of himself, the stranger, walking into a local hangout, cowboys leaning against the bar, sipping beers, watching him beneath the brims of their hats. Hoping for excitement. What have we here? Somebody new. And the girls in cowboy boots and tight jeans and shirts opened halfway to their belly buttons, giggling. Tension shot like electricity through the whole place.

He wedged himself into a vacant space at the bar between two cowboys. The bartender, who looked as if he'd stepped out of an old western movie, caught his eye, and Reg motioned to the beer tap. There was an economy of movement, an economy of language among cowboys. Familiar, all of it. He might have been in Arizona or Idaho or back on the Colorado plateau.

“New to these parts?” Reg realized the big guy on his left, with scabs on his hands, had been eyeing him.

“Passing through.”

“Not a lot of work, if that's what you're wanting. Where you from?”

“Drove up from Colorado. You work around here?”

“Looking to get hired on at a spread tomorrow, if I get lucky. Raise buffalo, them crazy ranchers. Now they got themselves a white buffalo calf. You ever hear of that?”

Reg took a long drink of the beer the bartender had set in front of him, swiped at the foam on his lips, and nodded. So that's what was going on out at the Broken Buffalo, folks showing up to see the calf. Somewhere he had heard about white buffalo calves. “Indians believe they're sacred,” he said, unsure of the memory he had pulled that from. He turned around and leaned his back against the bar, his eyes accustomed now to the dim light. Hanging around the booths in the back of the bar was another batch of cowboys—Indian cowboys. “You talking about the Broken Buffalo?”

“You heard of it? Jesus. They're looking for hands in Colorado?”

“I came here to find my buddy. He hired on there last spring.”

“Must be a white guy.” The cowboy on the other side joined in. He had a big belly that rolled over a silver belt buckle and a grizzled look about him, as if he'd just ridden in from the prairie. “Don't hire Indians out there.”

“Why not? It's on the rez.”

“Just their way.” The first cowboy shrugged. “Owner got shot the other night. From what I hear, he wasn't no Santa Claus. Works his hands pretty hard. Holds off the pay for months until he sells some stock and gets a big contract to supply buffalo meat.”

“I heard he lost a contract with a national supermarket chain last spring.” The other cowboy jumped in. “Meat underweight. You ask me, he ran a lousy business. Couldn't afford to buy enough hay to supplement the grass, so the buffalo didn't get as big as he was expecting, and he lost his contract. Ranchers I've worked for, they get a loan from the bank to run their business. Pay it back after they make some money.”

“Heard he couldn't get a bank to give him a loan.” The first cowboy lifted the glass of beer to his lips. The scabs looked like flies on his hand. “I hear they only had a couple hands until yesterday, when they started hiring. Carlos somebody is the foreman. That your buddy, Carlos?”

Reg took another swig of his own beer. “Josh Barker. You heard of him?”

Neither cowboy said anything. They made a sucking noise as they drank. An argument had started up over in the booths, a couple of guys shouting. Then quiet as the Indians shifted about, moving between the booths and tables. A cowboy with a lazy eye in a sun-wrinkled face walked over and leaned in toward Reg. “Josh your friend?”

“That's right. His mother's dying. I came here to find him. Cowboy out at the ranch said nobody by the name of Josh Barker ever worked there.”

“I'd say he's a damn liar.” The man was big, blond, and hard-jawed. Reg knew the type. Quick to call things as he saw them, ready to back up words with fists. “Josh came in here once in a while. Tall, skinny guy, but nobody messed with him. He could handle himself.”

“He say he was working at the Broken Buffalo?”

“That's the place. Liked working with buffalo, he told me. Unpredictable beasts. Have to stay on your toes. Don't turn your back on them.”

“When's the last time you saw him?”

“Been a while,” the first cowboy said. The others nodded. “Couple months at least.”

“He say he was planning on going somewhere else?”

“He sure as hell wanted to get off the Broken Buffalo.” Reg wasn't sure if the lazy eye was looking at him or someone else. “Said he was getting out soon as he collected his back pay. Going to Montana.”

“Did he say why?”

The cowboy shrugged. “Ready to move on. The Broken Buffalo was a lot of hard work, not much time off.”

Reg drained the last of his beer, shifted toward the bar, and motioned the bartender for another. Montana. Another big, empty state with who knew how many buffalo ranches. He felt as if he had picked up a heavy load, and now he wanted to set it down. He grabbed the new glass and drank half of it. The image of Josh's mom dying in her bed, pale and as shrunken as a doll under the covers, kept playing in front of him. He took another drink and tried to blink back the image. “I don't think he'd settle into some new place without letting his folks know. Last time they heard from him, he was working at the Broken Buffalo. I don't understand why that cowboy out there lied to me.”

“Could've been one of the new hires. Maybe he didn't know better. Anybody else besides these guzzlers”—the cowboy tossed his head in the direction of the other cowboys; his lazy eye fastened on a corner of the bar—“your buddy might've talked to?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“White priest on the rez.”

“Josh wasn't religious.” He was thinking that Josh's dad had said something about talking to a priest in the area.

“All the same.” The lazy eye seemed to have focused on Reg. “Guy gets in trouble, might go looking for somebody like that. I heard the priest at St. Francis Mission on the rez is a pretty good guy.”

“Trouble? You think Josh got into some kind of trouble?”

All three cowboys were shaking their heads, looking at him as if he'd missed the rodeo. The cowboy with the scabby hands finished off his beer and set the glass down hard on the bar. “He hated that ranch with a passion.”

“I hear the owner got shot,” Reg said. “You saying Josh might've had something to do with it?”

“I'm saying, that rancher pushed around every cowboy ever worked there.”

Reg took another sip of beer. “I figure I'll go out there tomorrow and talk to the widow. If she takes me on, I might find out what happened to Josh. Any of you guys know her?”

The cowboy with the big belly took a half step backward. “Seen her at the powwows selling buffalo hamburgers. Pretty good looking, but . . .”

“What?”

The cowboy shrugged. “Something hard about her, like she got kicked around a lot and wants to make sure from now on she's the one doing the kicking.”

Reg tried to form an image from the women he'd known. Bar girls, party girls, daughters on the ranches he'd worked. He finished his beer and slid the glass onto the bar. “Good talking to you.” He gave a little two-finger salute and headed for the door, past the tables, past a group of Indians. He let himself outdoors and walked through the shafts of light to the parking lot, conscious of the heavy thud of footsteps behind him.

THEY WERE THE
Indians from the back booth. He recognized them the minute he turned around. The overhead light flickered off their brown faces. “What's your problem?”

“What're you doing here?” A big Indian with a pockmarked face seemed in charge, the spokesman, the boss. The chief, Reg thought, and he stifled a laugh that he knew was from nerves rumbling deep inside. The chief had thick shoulders and thick brown forearms with the tattoo of an eagle that seemed to be flying up his right arm. This wasn't the first time he'd had to face off a gang of tough guys in a two-bit town nobody ever heard of, dust blowing off the asphalt. It was like he was walking around with a billboard on his back:
Stranger. Beat me up.
The local entertainment for the week.

“Minding my own business.”

“My friend here says he heard you talking about the Broken Buffalo.” The chief shifted sideways, and Reg feinted toward the opening. The chief moved back. “What business you got there?”

“I'm not looking for trouble.”

“You come all the way from Colorado and you're not looking for trouble? You think we don't have enough cowboys for the work here? You think you can nuzzle in?”

“I'm looking for a friend.” A blur of brown faces striped by yellow light hovered behind the chief's shoulders. “Josh Barker. Last I heard, he'd hired on at the Broken Buffalo. He took off, and I'm trying to learn where he went.”

“That's not how we put it together. You're just another Colorado dirtbag looking to take a job ought to be ours. You heard the Broken Buffalo's hiring, and you think you can take over your buddy's job.”

“Soon as I locate Josh, I'll be on my way back to Colorado.”

“Your buddy was smart. Lot smarter than you. He took the hint and got out of here. You should do the same. Highway out there”—he nodded toward the stream of headlights passing on Federal—“goes straight to Colorado. Start driving.”

“Look,” Reg said. “His mother's dying. If something happened to him, she wants to know so she can die in peace.” Had he imagined it, or had something softened behind the black eyes watching him? “Just between you and me, I'm not going to any cops. I just want information.”

The chief took his time, jaw muscles working as if he were chewing over the words before he spit them out. “Your buddy drove out of here just like he drove in. On his own.”

A truck had pulled around them into the parking lot. Doors swung open. A couple of white cowboys jumped out and sauntered over, as if they had sized up the situation. They stopped on either side of the Indians and dipped their heads toward Reg. “Raps giving you trouble?”

“No trouble. I was just going to my truck.” This time the space opened between the chief and another Indian, and Reg walked through. He got into the truck, turned the ignition, and drove past the Indians—Raps, the cowboys had called them. He supposed that meant Arapahos from the rez, Indians the Broken Buffalo Ranch refused to hire. The side-view mirror framed the two cowboys yanking open the door to the bar and disappearing inside. The Indians were still in the lot. He turned onto Federal.

He supposed he had crossed some invisible line, missed some sign that said
ENTERING THE WIND RIVER RESERVATION
, the truck pulling hard up an incline, the lights blazing on top of the hill. A gigantic lighted billboard ahead said
WIND RIVER CASINO
. And Josh, he liked to gamble. He could smell a game no matter where he went. And he was lucky, the sonofabitch. He won big, but he never could hold on to it. Win big, lose big, and Reg supposed that was why he kept cowboying. That and the fact that Josh loved everything about cowboying. Living outdoors, working with horses and cattle and buffalo. Buffalo, they were the biggest challenge. Josh never shied from a challenge.

The truck slowed and balked. Jesus, he thought, don't break down on me now. Seemed like more traffic than earlier, more than he expected on a road that connected a couple of small towns. Trucks and pickups, SUVs, cars moving in both directions. An SUV with Oklahoma license plates shot around him and pulled in only a couple of car lengths ahead of the oncoming traffic. He blinked his lights at a pickup with brights on and kept a decent space behind the red taillights of the SUV, the cone of his own headlights flaring over the black asphalt.

The truck was groaning now, like a tractor hauling a heavy load. Last thing he needed was to break down out here on the highway between nowhere and nowhere. It was a long five-hour drive south to Colorado, and if he found out Josh had headed for Montana, he would have to go in the other direction.
I'll find him
, he had told Josh's dad. For a moment, the words—the promise—had wiped the worry from the old man's face. Ahead, lights from the sign wafted like blue-and-yellow smoke in a black sky lit with stars. The traffic had opened up. The SUV was far ahead, taillights twinkling like tiny match flames. A long break in the stream of oncoming vehicles.

The gunshot sounded like the crack of thunder. Sudden and explosive, out of nowhere. The truck took a little jump. He could feel his heart batting his ribs. For an instant, he thought another truck, black, invisible, must have rear-ended him. But he knew a gunshot when he heard it. He had been firing rifles since he was a kid; his own rifle hung in the frame across the back window. He jammed down on the gas pedal, glancing back and forth between the rearview window and the side windows. He even turned partway around and looked back, expecting—what? Black space had opened around him. The shot had come out of the shadows along the road as he had driven by. He hadn't noticed anything. No vehicle parked in the brush. No movement. Nothing but the gunshot.

A bullet had hit the bed of the truck, he was sure, which had lifted off the rear wheels. The truck was steady now, the uneasy steadiness after a shock. He drove over the crest of the hill, lights from the casino sign flashing on the hood and mingling with his headlights, then slowed into the right turn and followed the smoothly paved road that circled down and around a parking lot. Vehicles lined up row after row in the glare of the overhead streetlights. Beyond the lot, the reservation spread into the darkness.

He stopped in front of the casino, jumped out, and ran for the wide glass doors that were already opening for him. Inside was an officer in a blue uniform, the grips of two pistols visible in his gun belt. The casino floor lay beyond, an acre of slot machines, people sitting in front of them, other people milling about. A jangling, whirring noise, like an undercurrent of electricity, cut through the air.

“Some bastard just shot at me.”

“In the parking lot?” The guard went on alert, yanking a phone off his belt.

“On the highway, coming up the hill.” Reg could feel his heart still pounding. His voice came back to him like that of a runner, as if he had run up the hill.

“You hurt?” The officer looked him over, then leaned sideways into the phone. “Edward, at the casino. Got a cowboy here says he was shot at on the highway.” He went back to looking Reg over. “You going to need an ambulance?” He waited until Reg shook his head, then he said, “Nah. He looks okay. Shook up.” He nodded again and slipped the phone back into its case. “State patrol is on the way. You want to sit down. I'll get you some water.”

Reg said he would wait outside. He went back outside into the warm evening, lights flaring over the sidewalk and a field of stars blazing in the black sky. He found the bullet hole. A clean shot through the side of the bed, not three feet from the cab. If the shooter was a marksman, he hadn't intended to kill him, just scare him. Or—and this made him stop, frozen in place—he had intended to kill him and had missed. For a crazy moment, he thought about taking his rifle out of the lock and driving back to look for the shooter.

He cleared his throat, as if that could clear away the impulse. If the shooter was still around, he would be a dead man before he got out of the truck.

He walked around the truck and examined the exit hole. The bullet had traveled straight across the bed, but, had it hit his metal supply box a foot away, it could have ricocheted into the cab. He could have died tonight. The thought froze him in place again. Trucks and pickups were turning into the lot, trawling the rows for parking places. The shooter could have followed him here. Waiting to follow him back onto the highway, where he would try again.

He could hear sirens in the distance growing louder. He watched a patrol car come around the bend, red and yellow roof lights flashing, sirens wailing. Then the sirens cut off and the car pulled in close to his back bumper. A patrolman got out and walked over, one hand on the handle of his holstered gun. “You the guy shot at?”

“Reg Hartly. I have ID.” The patrolman nodded, and Reg pulled his wallet from his back pocket, extracted his driver's license, and handed it to the patrolman, who had unclipped a small Maglite from somewhere on his belt. He shone the light over the license and handed it back.

“What happened?”

Reg pointed to the exit bullet hole. “I was driving south on 789, pulling up the hill, when out of nowhere, there was a rifle shot. Hit the bed on the left and came out here.”

The patrolman had stepped over and was examining the other side of the truck. “Nice, clean entrance,” he said. He walked around and studied the exit hole. “You see anything?”

“Nada. There was a break in the traffic, and that made me a sitting duck for some crazy nut.”

“You got a beef with anybody?”

“I just got here today.” Reg took in a couple of breaths before he said, “There were some Arapahos at the O.K. Bar, gave me a hard time in the parking lot a little while ago. Thought I was here looking for a job. Didn't like the idea of an outsider taking local jobs.”

“They make any threats?”

“No. I drove off. I don't think anybody followed me. I was on my way to Sinks Canyon, where I got my camping gear.”

“Why are you here?”

“Looking for a buddy, Josh Barker. Heard of him?” The patrolman barely blinked. “Hired onto the Broken Buffalo Ranch. Problem is, he disappeared. I'm hoping to find somebody that knows where he might have gone.”

The patrolman pulled out a phone and tapped a couple of buttons. “We got another shooting on 789, on the hill north of the casino. I'm going to need help locating the shooter's nest.”

“Another shooting?” Reg said.

The patrolman put the phone back into its case. “Five or six in the last year. Random, far as we know, but Riverton cops will go to the bar and talk to the Arapahos there. We may need to talk to you again. Right now I want you to take me to the spot.”

Reg gave him the number of his cell, which the patrolman jotted down on a small notepad he'd pulled from his shirt pocket. “I'll follow you.” He gestured toward the truck with his head.

Reg got behind the steering wheel and jiggled the ignition to coax the engine into life. He pulled a sharp U-turn and drove past the patrol car onto the wide, curving road and out toward the highway. Headlights from the patrol car shone in his rearview mirror. He glanced at both sides of the road for the spot where it had happened. Everything looked the same, shadowy clumps of scrub brush and sage and wild grass in the darkness. He realized he was halfway down the hill. Here, he thought, where the truck had been straining and groaning.

He pulled over close to the borrow ditch on the east side of the road as the patrol car moved in behind him, red, blue, and yellow roof lights flashing against the darkness. He jumped out and walked over to the patrolman lifting himself out of the car. “It was around here, I think. It's hard to tell for sure.”

The patrolman straightened his shoulders and looked off into the dark scrubland. Two other patrol cars had appeared out of nowhere, a line of cars parked alongside the borrow ditch now, other patrolmen walking over. “Shooter hid out there?” One of them said. “Lousy place to hide.”

*   *   *

REG LEFT THE
patrolmen standing in a circle, heads bent. Organizing a search, he guessed, talking on radios. Roof lights flashing; radio in one of the cars crackling. He had to wait for a break in traffic before he could pull a U-turn. Then he wedged the truck into the southbound lane, the traffic moving slowly past the patrol cars. He could feel the heaviness in his legs, the exhaustion working through him. He thought about crawling inside the pup tent, feeling the comfort of the sleeping bag around him. He couldn't shake the memory that had hit him earlier: Josh liked to gamble.

He turned right at the top of the hill and followed the curve back to the front of the casino. He shouldn't park here, but he didn't think they would shoo away a man who had just been shot at. He got out, slammed the door, and walked past the sliding glass doors.

The officer looked at him. “You doing okay?”

He was okay, he said. He was thinking that his blood had stopped pounding in his ears, and the fear and shock had melted into an anger that burned like a wet fire and would take a while to burn off. “I'm looking for a buddy of mine,” he said, “liked to gamble. Any regulars here might have gotten to know him.”

“What's his game?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Over there.” He threw a palm toward the far corner of the casino. “Look for Debbie Moon. She's dealing. Might've heard of your guy.”