Night of the White Buffalo: A Wind River Mystery (14 page)

“The cowboy's here looking for his buddy, Josh Barker, who according to some guy at the Broken Buffalo Ranch, never worked there. Another cowboy, Rick Tomlin, the main witness against my client, has also disappeared.”

“Cowboys drift on the wind. Maybe whoever said Josh hadn't worked there just didn't know him.” He glanced over at her. Pinpricks of light from the dashboard jumped in his eyes. “You should be grateful the witness took off before the trial.”

ELENA LOOKED DRESSED
up for Easter. A flowery blue dress cinched at her waist and a little pink scarf tied over her head. She wore the usual black sturdy-looking shoes with ties that flopped about as she came into the office.

“Everything okay?” Father John stood up. The old woman seldom walked over to the administration building. The residence was her domain. She had on shoes for walking a hard-dirt path on a ranch.

“Dinner's in the slow cooker. Ready whenever you and Bishop Harry want to eat, in case I don't get back.”

“There will probably be a huge crowd.”

“I don't mind standing in line. It's a small sacrifice.” She tilted her head toward the window and the white pickup on Circle Drive, exhaust shooting from the rear pipes. “My grandson, Jeff, is taking me. The sacred calf blessed us.” She hesitated, and when he didn't say anything, she went on: “Jeff never showed any interest in the old stories and the old ways. Basketball and video games, that's all he thinks about. Who cares about the ancestors? They're dead.” She shook her head, drawing in her lower lip. He could see her blinking back the tears. “He saw the calf on TV last night, and everything changed. Wanted to know the old story of White Buffalo Woman, how she changed into a buffalo and promised she would return when we needed her. Now she is with us again, a holy spirit from the Creator Himself in that little white calf. Well, Jeff kept me up most the night, wanting to know more and more. I told him what I remembered my grandfather telling me. I don't mind saying, I thought my heart was gonna burst with happiness.”

Father John smiled. “I'm glad to hear it.” He had been on the reservation for ten years now. He had seen a number of young men like Jeff turn away, wanting to be modern, wanting to be like everybody else. But he had watched many of them turn back and stay strong.

“It's okay? My taking time off?”

He nodded, still smiling. It wasn't necessary to say anything. They both knew that Elena pretty much ran things.

Father John waited until the old woman's footsteps receded in the corridor and the heavy front door banged shut before he sat back down at the laptop open on his desk. It had surprised him how quickly the news out of the Casper TV station had burst across the internet. Dozens of newspapers, radio shows, TV news shows had featured the white buffalo calf. Dozens of blogs posted on the significance of the calf. He read through several. All filled with wonder. So much longing, he thought, for something holy in the world.

He shut down the laptop, waiting while it cycled silently through different phases before the screen went dark. A four-year-old laptop, practically an antique, but he was attached to it. Familiar with its ways. He was about to start down the corridor to tell the bishop he was going out for a while when he heard the thrum of an engine coming around Circle Drive. He walked over to the window and watched a silver pickup bump to a stop in front of the administration building. A tall cowboy in a tan hat jumped out of the driver's seat. He had the slump-shouldered, bowlegged look of a rodeo rider. His boots scraped on the concrete steps.

Father John went out into the corridor and motioned the cowboy inside. “How can I help you?” he said.

“Looking for the priest around here.”

“You found him. Father John O'Malley.” He could feel the cowboy's gaze taking in his red plaid shirt and blue jeans, his cowboy boots.

“You got a minute?”

Father John ushered the cowboy into his office. “Have a seat,” he said, gesturing toward a side chair. It wasn't often cowboys wandered into the mission and wanted to talk, but from time to time they wandered in. Working on a ranch a hundred miles from anything that resembled a town, lonely, something gone wrong in their lives, and they found their way to the kind of place they remembered from when they were kids, a timeless, steady place, like a church or a mission. “Where you from?”

“Colorado Plateau. Name is Reg Hartly.” Father John shook the man's hand. He could feel the tension beneath the rough, calloused palm.

“How can I help you?” Father John walked over and sat on the edge of the desk.

“I got a buddy that's gone missing. Came up here and hired on the Broken Buffalo last April. Left in late June. Nobody's heard from him since. Not his girlfriend, not his folks. His Mom's dying, so I came to find him. Josh Barker. I was hoping you might've run into him.”

“What makes you think he came to the mission?”

“I heard he got crossways with the owner. Figured if there was some trouble, he might've come looking for advice. His folks are Catholic, and Josh got brought up that way.”

Father John stood up, went around the desk, and sat down. The old leather chair creaked under his weight.
I committed murder.
The voice from the confessional had never left his mind. In the middle of the night, driving across the rez, opera blaring, walking down the path to the residence, the voice trailing him:
I committed murder.

He pulled over a pad and wrote Josh Barker on the top. Below the name, he wrote: Broken Buffalo. April–late June. There were no murders on the rez in June, nothing reported in the news, no bodies
found.
Dennis Carey wasn't shot until last week, long after Josh Barker had left. And yet, Sheila Carey had convinced herself one of the cowboys who had worked on the ranch had killed her husband. If Josh Barker was the man in the confessional, what had he done?

“What kind of trouble do you think your friend was in?”

The cowboy shrugged. “Didn't get on with the owner. From what I hear, nobody did. Cheated on the hired hands, paid late and then only part of what was owed. Always promising to settle up. Look.” The cowboy held up one hand. “I know somebody shot the SOB. Wasn't Josh. He had too much going for him. Someday he was gonna take over the family ranch on the Plateau and build it up. He had plans, Josh, and he wasn't stupid. No way would he throw away his life over some cheating rancher. I figure he would've lit out of here, if he was able.”

Father John didn't say anything for a moment. He drew a long black line under the name Josh Barker. Then another line. “Josh never came to the mission.” Then he added, “As far as I know.” He had no idea who the man in the confessional had been.

The cowboy started to get up, then settled back in, the dark shadow of a new thought playing on his face. “Some Indians took a shot at me last night. Trying to scare me off. I hear there's been other pickups shot at around here. Those Indians don't like outsiders like Josh or me taking jobs they think belong to them. I been thinking . . .” He nodded and stared off into space. “I was awake all night trying to put it together. The way I got it figured, those Indians scared off Josh and other cowboys. Either scared them off, or . . .” He let the rest of his thought hang in the air. “The guy they really hated was the one hiring the cowboys. I figure they're the ones that killed Dennis Carey.”

“You reported what happened?”

The cowboy nodded.

“I suggest you talk to FBI agent Ted Gianelli. He's investigating Carey's murder.”

“I'm thinking I'll have a talk with the widow. I hear she's hiring new hands. I get on the ranch, I figure I might get a line on what happened to Josh.” He jumped to his feet and started for the corridor. The straight back, the squared shoulders said it all: One way or another he would find Josh Barker. He had no intention of talking to the FBI.

Father John got up and went to the window. The silver pickup backed onto Circle Drive, gravel spraying behind the rear wheels. Then it shot forward. He could see the silver flashing through the cottonwoods. He was thinking about the beautiful Irish girl who had sat in his office in the same chair Reg Hartly had occupied. Nuala O'Brian, black-haired and blue-eyed, freckles sprinkled over her nose, had driven across the snow-blown plains from New Mexico looking for Jaime Madigan. He'd been raised Catholic, she had said, so it made sense that he might've come to the mission if he'd gotten into trouble. What kind of trouble? He had asked. She had shrugged. She didn't know, but there was always trouble, wasn't there? He'd told her the truth and watched the blue eyes darken in frustration and fear: He had never met Jaime Madigan. He had suggested she file a missing person report with the FBI and the tribal police. She had shaken her head, and he wondered if she had filed any reports. She had seemed so defeated—a little stoop in her shoulders—as if the mission had been her last hope. Jaime Madigan, he remembered, had also worked on the Broken Buffalo.

He walked down the corridor and found the bishop bent toward his own laptop.

“News is spreading.” The bishop barely glanced up. “More visitors coming. Whole area will be affected.” He was smiling at something on the screen, probably a picture of the white calf.

Father John said he was going out for a while. The bishop nodded, still smiling, eyes glued to the screen.

HE FOUND RANCHLANDS
Employment wedged between a coffee shop and an outfitter halfway down Main Street. The office and the stores shared the same flat-roof, white-brick building with the sun blinking in the plate glass windows. Riverton was crowded. A group of people stood in front of the restaurant across the street waiting for lunch. Pickups, SUVs, and cars filled the spaces at the curbs. He had to drive two blocks beyond the office, make a U-turn, and drive back before he saw another pickup pulling out. He parked the Toyota into the vacant space and switched off the CD player. The notes of “Di sprezzo degno se stesso” hung in the breeze for a half second. He headed down the sidewalk past the outfitter, with displays of saddles, bridles, blankets, wading boots, and fishing poles, and let himself through the door with the initials RE imprinted on the front like a brand. A bell jangled into a small waiting room with three plastic chairs against the window and a small table littered with used magazines. A counter bisected the room. There was no one behind the desk on the other side. The odor of coffee clung to the office.

Father John walked over and pressed the bell on the counter. The sharp noise punctuated the cacophony of the door bell, which was still jangling. A minute passed, then another before a side door opened and Steve Mantle emerged, carrying a coffee mug. “Been expecting you,” Steve said. “Come on back and have a seat.” He motioned with his head toward the far end of the counter. “Just brewed some fresh coffee. Tempted?”

“Never can resist the temptation.” Father John went over and lifted a section of counter. Steve had set the mug down on the desk and was gathering up magazines and papers that spilled over the seat of a wooden side chair. He dropped the stack next to the coffee mug and started back across the room. “How do you take it?” he called over one shoulder.

“Milk or cream. Powdered is fine.”

Steve disappeared behind the closed door. Father John could hear the quiet shuffling of a focused task. Then the man was back, carrying a mug like an offering. He handed it across the desk and sat down in a swivel chair. Father John perched on the side chair and took a sip of coffee. The hot liquid bit at his throat.

“Been doing a little research this morning,” Steve said, rolling closer to the computer screen. “Pretty slow lately. Most ranches have all the help they need. Only one hiring is the Broken Buffalo.” He was tapping at the keys, the hunt-and-peck method, fingers moving quickly. “Here we go. Placed a couple of cowboys out on the Broken Buffalo a year ago last spring, six months or so after the Careys bought the place. Jack Imeg and Lou Cassell. I heard they left last fall. Dennis Carey showed up and said he was looking to hire a couple more hands. I had some cowboys looking for work, so I sent them over. Rejected all of them. They were good men, experienced with buffalo. So I called Dennis. ‘Don't seem like I understand what you're looking for,' I told him. ‘Maybe you'd better tell me what you didn't like about those cowboys.' ‘Like them just fine,' he said. That was a lie. He didn't hire a one. Told me he had a small operation. Everybody had to get along real good. So he had to go with his gut feelings on whether the cowboys would fit in.”

He tapped a few more keys and stared at the screen a long moment. “I interviewed all those cowboys. They'd fit in anywhere. Professionals, you know what I mean? Grew up on ranches around here, born in a saddle. Worked with horses and cattle since they were knee high to a grasshopper. Live in the outdoors, all kinds of weather. Nothing bothers them. Totally self-sufficient, those guys. A rare breed, getting rarer, you ask me, with more small ranches selling out to so-called agribusiness. Fancy name for corporations. It's like these cowboys are left over from another time. Hell, they can live off the land their whole lives. Hunt, fish, eat wild veggies and fruits. Tan skins and sew up their own clothes and moccasins. Use buffalo sinew for the thread and buffalo bones for awls, just like the Indians used to do. They can even fight off grizzlies. Know a couple of cowboys that did just that, and lived to tell the story, too. Most of them hired out to get enough money to start their own spread. None of them was good enough for Dennis and Sheila Carey.”

“Too independent for the Careys? Maybe they thought they wouldn't take orders, or wouldn't stay around.”

“Wouldn't stay around? You ask me, nobody stays around that place. I had a mind to tell Dennis Carey to take his business somewhere else. There's a ranch employment agency in Casper covers the whole area. But my business is not that good.” He heaved a long sigh. “Can't afford to drop clients even when they're nuts. So I sent over more prospects, and they hired a couple. Jaime Madigan and Hol Hammond.”

“Jaime Madigan?”

“Irish lad. Red hair, freckles as thick as buffalo stew.” Steve Mantle leaned forward and squinted at the computer screen. “Came from someplace in Ireland I never heard of. Grew up roping cattle, like he was in the West. Always wanted to come here, and one day he got enough together to fly himself and his girlfriend to New Mexico. Worked a couple years on a ranch on the Pecos until the owner sold out to a corporation. You know him?”

Father John shook his head. He told Mantle that he had met Madigan's fiancée last winter when she had come looking for him. He could still feel the worry, the desolation in the young woman wringing a tissue in her hands.
Jaime would never leave me.
She had finally returned to New Mexico, he supposed.

“Jaime left the ranch in February,” Mantle said. He had been missing a month, Father John was thinking, when Nuala O'Brian had come to the mission. “Both of them, Jaime and Hol, collected their pay, packed up their gear, and took off. Told Carey they had a line on work in Idaho. He asked me to send over some prospects. We went through the same dance for a couple weeks. Nobody quite what they were looking for. Nobody that would fit into that ranch of theirs.”

Steve tapped another couple of keys and blinked at the screen. “Finally hired on Josh Barker and Rick Tomlin.” He looked up. “You ask me, that was a mistake, with all their careful interviewing. Tomlin was a troublemaker. In the bars whenever he got time off, or took the time. Maybe you read about him in the
Gazette
. Got in a fight at a bar in Riverton last June. Accused some Arapaho of assaulting him. Case was supposed to go to trial a couple days ago, but Tomlin never showed up.” He was shaking his head. “He was one cowboy that didn't fit the mold. I wouldn't call it professional to accuse somebody of assault, make yourself the star witness, and not show up. Can't recall the Arapaho's name.”

“Arnie Walksfast.”

“You know him?”

Father John nodded. He was thinking that he'd known Arnie since he was a kid. Came out for the Eagles a couple of seasons. A good fielder, and the best hitter on the team. The next season, he didn't show up. Father John had gone over to the small house with blue paint peeling off the sideboards and a musty odor of old things inside. Arnie's mother had raised him alone. Father John wasn't sure about the boy's father. He had never heard the man mentioned. Arnie was getting hard to handle, he remembered the woman saying, running with the wrong bunch. She had been crying, and trying hard not to cry, sinking deeper and deeper into an overstuffed chair, as if it could have swallowed her. He had told her he'd be glad to talk to Arnie, and she had said she would ask him to stop by the mission. She couldn't
tell
him to go.
Order
him to go. Warriors don't take orders, she'd said. Arnie had never shown up, and Father John had gone back to the house two or three times. Just Arnie's mother, sinking into the chair, desolation clinging to her like smoke.

Arnie had been in and out of trouble ever since. Father John had gotten used to seeing his name in the newspaper, or hearing the news on the moccasin telegraph. It was Vicky who fought to keep him out of jail. From the rumor he'd heard, Vicky had managed to have the assault charges reduced in a plea deal that sent Arnie off for another round of rehab.

Still, it was strange that the cowboy who'd accused Arnie of assault had failed to show up.

“What happened to Rick Tomlin and the other cowboy?”

“Same as the others. Packed their gear . . .”

Father John put up a hand. A pattern was emerging; always a pattern, if you could detect it. Beneath the obvious lay the logic. “All the cowboys white?”

“Yeah. Dennis never came right out and said he wouldn't hire Indians. The guy was savvy. Didn't want to bring any federal busybodies down on him for discrimination, but I got the message. Didn't trust them, even though I placed lots of Indians that turned out to be steady, hard workers. Nobody can manage horses like Arapahos, I told him. He was sitting in your chair. He just shrugged. He said, ‘You know the kind we like.'”

The pattern surfaced like a bunch of dots that formed a picture after you've stared at them long enough. But something else caught Father John's attention. “Two cowboys were from Colorado. What about the others?”

Steve went back to tapping keys and blinking at the screen. “Colorado, New Mexico, Utah.”

“Nobody from around here.” Another pattern, the picture dark and steady now. “Why do you think the Careys only hired outsiders?”

Steve Mantle shrugged. He pushed back from the computer and stared off into space, as if he might find the answer. “I told you, Carey was nuts. Don't repeat that, please. I don't want word getting out I'm bad-mouthing clients. What am I saying? You're a priest. Used to keeping secrets, huh?”

Father John took a moment. There was still something else, flitting past like a whisper. He tried to listen hard, but the whisper drifted away. Finally he put on his cowboy hat and was about to thank the man and get to his feet when he grasped the rest of the pattern. “Looks like the Careys hired cowboys two at a time. And they both left at the same time. Is that right?”

Steve Mantle sat quietly. “Not exactly.”

“Not exactly?”

“Sent four or five applicants to the ranch in June after the last cowboys left. Dennis hired two, like usual. Carlos Mondregan and Lane Preston. They're still there. Been sending cowboys over the last few days since that white buffalo calf was born. So far Dennis . . .” He paused and drew in a deep breath. “Sheila's had to take over, and she's hired five. Still looking, from what I hear, but the word's out now. Cowboys are going to show up at the ranch on their own. Don't need the help of old Steve Mantle.”

Father John didn't say anything for a moment. At least for now, the pattern was broken.

And yet, it had only been broken in the last couple of days. “According to my count,” he said, “you placed six cowboys on the ranch in the last year and a half. Dennis hired them in pairs. They quit in pairs. Is that usual?”

“Coincidence.” Steve lifted his shoulders, then let them fall. “Cowboys ride the range, bunk together, eat together. They get to talking. One plants an idea in the other's mind. Heard of a good opportunity in Idaho or Montana. Always rumors on the cowboy circuit, so they decide to take off together.”

“You see the same thing on other ranches?”

Steve was quiet a moment, staring down at the keyboard. Finally he looked up. “Broken Buffalo's the only place I ever seen it.”