Night of the White Buffalo: A Wind River Mystery (20 page)

“I'LL GET ARNIE.”
Ansel swung around, stomped up the wood steps, and disappeared into the dark house. The other Indians moved about in the headlights, forward, receding, like a stream lapping the banks of a river. Gusts of warm wind disturbed the dusty ground. A fetid odor of hopelessness tinged the air.

“He'll take off,” Vicky said. Father John could hear the tension in her voice.

“Maybe not.”

They leaned against the pickup and waited. The Indians were waiting, too, it seemed, slouching around the front of the house now, folding onto the stoop. Hip-hop pulsed into the quiet. Five minutes must have passed. Father John was beginning to think Vicky was right, that Arnie had bolted out the back and was running across the prairie. Running to what? He had no other choice. He would come out.

There he was, framed in the rectangle of darkness, peering out past his buddies, blinking into the headlights, a shaky, lost look about him. He stumbled across the stoop, braced himself on somebody's shoulders, and picked his way down the steps. Across the yard, hugging the edge of the headlights, weaving forward, the alcoholic walk. In an instant, an unwanted memory, Father John saw himself. Planting one foot after the other, not trusting the earth. It was always shifting.

“Why'd you come here?” Arnie looked around, as if someone else might materialize out of the darkness, the police perhaps.

Vicky took a step toward him. “You have to go back to rehab.”

“Tomorrow.” Arnie switched his shoulders about, as if he could drive himself back to the house. He started falling sideways, and Father John reached out and grabbed his arm, steadying him.

“Tomorrow's too late,” Vicky said. “If you return tonight, your probation officer might take that into consideration. There are no guarantees. He could still revoke probation and send you to jail. Your only chance is to return tonight. By nine o'clock tomorrow morning he will know you walked away. Within an hour, maybe less, the BIA police will be here. You will be in jail by noon.”

Arnie squinted into the darkness and lurched backward. Surprise started over his face, as if he had just registered the fact Vicky had come with someone else. “Where you been keeping yourself, Father?”

“Same place.”

“Baseball field?”

“That, too. What made you leave the clinic?”

The Indian shifted his gaze between them and mopped at the perspiration that gleamed on his forehead. “I had business. I needed to clear up a couple things.”

“You'd better tell me,” Vicky said. “I can't help you if I don't know what's going on.”

He bent toward Vicky. “You're the one got me worked up.” There was a husky belligerence in his voice, and Father John moved closer to Vicky. “Rancher got murdered. Who the cops going to blame if my buddies were out shooting at cowboys? Cops are going to think they did it.” He tossed his head back toward the Indians. “Having a little fun, I mean, trying to scare the outsiders away. Besides, we was so drunk, couldn't hit a barn.” He hesitated. “Did some good, though. Those cowboys got out of here. Murder, that's something else.” He clasped his fist against his mouth. “I'm going to be sick.” He stumbled sideways through the full blast of the headlights and crouched in a spasm of dry heaves.

Father John went over, put a hand on the man's shoulder, and handed him a wad of tissue that he'd pulled from his jeans pocket. “Take your time.” He remembered the queasy, dizzy miserableness.

Arnie tried to get up. It took a while, Father John bracing one elbow and Vicky bracing the other. Finally he was on his feet. “Like you said”—he was looking at Vicky again, eyes rheumy and tired—“I'd be a conspirator. No matter I'm in rehab spilling out my guts to some therapist, working the machines sick as a dog. I'm still a conspirator 'cause these are my buddies. We do business together. We shot at some cowboys, but we stopped. We figured we might get real unlucky and kill somebody. If my buddies had anything to do with that rancher getting shot, I figured I'd be looking at conspiracy to commit murder.”

Vicky glanced at Father John, and in that instant, in the headlights flaring in her eyes, he saw a new idea take hold of her. She was quiet a moment. Finally she said, “Somebody shot at a white cowboy two nights ago.”

“It wasn't us.” Arnie was shaking, hands moving at his sides, and Father John expected the dry heaves to begin again. Instead, the man seemed to grab hold of some invisible support. “Wasn't us that shot the owner of the Broken Buffalo, either. Hell, we didn't know he got shot until we heard the news on the telegraph.”

“But you worried your buddies might have been responsible,” Father John said. “You came here to find out. You believe your buddies are telling you the truth?”

“Yeah. I told you, we stopped trying to run off the cowboys. Wasn't a good idea.”

Father John exchanged a glance with Vicky. He could read the conclusion in her mind; it was the same as his.
Somebody
thought it was a good idea. He fixed his gaze again on the Indian: “Did you hear that Steve Mantle at Ranchlands Employment was murdered this evening?”

Arnie blinked, a puzzled look on his face, as if he were trying to fit this new information into the rest of it. He shifted from one foot to the other. “The guy that finds jobs for outsiders? Murdered?”

“Sometime between six and seven o'clock.”

“You think . . . ?” He was sputtering, tossing his head about. “You think I had something to do with it? My buddies? Jesus! That's what the cops think? That's why you come here?”

“I told you why we're here.”

“Jesus! You tell the cops we took a shot at some cowboys, they'll blame us for everything. You'll bring all the freaking cops down on us.”

“I'm your lawyer, Arnie. What you tell me is confidential.”

The Indian was staring at Father John. “Don't worry,” Father John said.

“It's not like this is confession. Nothing keeping you from . . .”

Vicky put her hand on Arnie's arm. “You heard what Father John said. What about the others?” She nodded toward the Indians still slouching around the stoop. What do they know about the murder?”

Arnie turned around. “Mantle, that white man that gets jobs for outsiders, got shot tonight. He's dead. Any of you guys heard anything?”

The Indians started moving about, getting to their feet, starting toward them. “Dead?” Ansel said.

“Yes,” Father John said.

“First we heard.” There was an anxiety in the way they looked around at one another. “We been here all day.” Drinking, Father John thought.

He walked over and opened the passenger door. “Get in, Arnie,” he said.

Arnie pulled back and, for a moment, Father John thought he might refuse, take his chances, run off before the police arrived tomorrow. Then Arnie threw a glance over one shoulder. “I need my backpack.”

“Ansel can get it.” Father John nodded at the Indian who seemed to be the spokesman for the others.

“Hold on, I'll find it,” Ansel said. “We don't need the cops showing up here.” He spun around, crossed the yard, and leapt onto the stoop. In a couple of minutes, he was back, carrying a small, lumpy-looking pack that, Father John thought, probably contained everything Arnie Walksfast owned in the world.

Vicky was already in the passenger seat, the door open; Arnie was nowhere in sight. Father John felt a stab of annoyance. He'd been tricked. Arnie had gotten him to look away and had taken off.

“He wants to ride in the bed,” Vicky said, then she pulled the door shut.

Father John went around and handed the pack to the Indian, already curled up in the corner beneath the rear window. He shunted the pack under his head and closed his eyes.

*   *   *

“I THINK ARNIE'S
telling the truth.” The faint dashboard light washed over Vicky. Against the black window, her profile looked small and dark. “Maybe I want to believe him. I know he can't be trusted; I learned that in the past. The thing is, he was scared enough to walk away to make sure his buddies weren't involved in the shootings. What does that tell you?”

“He thought it was possible.”

“Exactly.” Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Vicky lean back against the seat, as if something had been settled.

“He believes them.”

“Which could help his defense, I guess. He's not a conspirator.”

“What's the motive for killing Carey or Mantle?”

Vicky was quiet a moment. “Revenge, anger, and the sense of falling behind while everyone else goes forward.”

Father John slowed down to let the truck behind him pass. It had been riding on his tail since they had turned onto Blue Sky Highway. Something familiar about the truck, but there had been a lot of traffic on the rez—trucks, pickups, SUVs. Now the traffic seemed to have melted into the vast, empty darkness.

The truck dropped back, and Father John pressed down on the accelerator. A gust of wind knocked at the pickup, pushing them toward the borrow ditch. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel. The truck was gaining again, bright lights flashing and bouncing behind them. This time he kept the pickup steady. There was no oncoming traffic. He slowed down to let the truck pass.

“What's going on?” Vicky shifted about, stretching to see out the rear window. “Why doesn't he go by?”

Father John sped up a little. The pickup was shaking around them, the engine growling. No more than a few feet between the truck and the pickup, and Arnie Walksfast in the bed. If the truck rear-ended them, Arnie would be hurt.

Then the truck—huge and black, silver chrome gleaming on the doors, a cowboy hat dipping behind the wheel—pulled around. The engine roared, and gears ratcheted down. The truck veered to the right, forcing Father John to stomp on the brake. The old pickup swung back and forth across the highway before settling into the lane. The right-turn light on the truck had started blinking; the emergency lights came on. The truck was riding the edge of the highway, close to the rim of the ditch, slowing down. Father John pressed down on the brake.

“He wants us to pull over.” Father John steered the pickup sideways as the truck pulled ahead and stopped. The driver—short and powerful looking, cowboy hat pulled low—jumped down and started walking back, a measured gait, as if everything were normal. Except for the way one hand was hidden in the pocket of a bulky jacket.

Father John pushed the gear into reverse and turned halfway around. One arm across the top of the seat, eyes on the road behind. He stepped down hard on the accelerator and the pickup shot backward, rocking and skidding over the pavement. He glanced out the front at the dark figure standing in the middle of the road, arms extended, holding something in both hands.

“Get down,” he yelled. He was pushing the pickup as hard as it would go. For a terrified moment he thought it might stop altogether, collapse in a heap, but it kept going. He was aware of Vicky crouching below the dashboard, and he yelled again, this time at Arnie bouncing around in the back. “Get down. Get down.”

The shot, when it came, sounded like a clap of thunder, sudden and sharp, leaving a dead silence in its wake. He realized he had braced himself for the impact. Nothing. Still he kept trying to put as much distance between the shooter and the pickup. Finally he slowed down and made a sharp U-turn, managing to bring the pickup around so that they were heading back the way they had come. The truck dissolved into the darkness in the rearview mirror.

He stopped at the intersection with Ethete Road, got out, and ran to the back. “You okay?”

Arnie was wide-eyed and blanched looking, mouth quivering. “He tried to kill us! I heard the bullet whiz past.”

“You okay?” Father John said again. He could hear his heart pounding.

The Indian nodded, and Father John got back into the pickup. Vicky was sitting up straight, staring ahead. “My God, John. That was how Dennis Carey was shot. That was his killer. Why us? Why us?”

He followed Ethete Road until he came to Seventeen-Mile Road and turned east, scanning the rearview mirror for the large, black truck. After several miles, he saw the billboard of St. Francis Mission blinking in the trace of headlights.

He kept going, looking around, watching everything now because you never knew; you never knew when someone might try to run you down and kill you. At the highway, he turned north. Through the outskirts of Riverton, the dark shadows of buildings and sagebrush passing outside, and into town, under dim circles cast by the streetlights. Why us? Why us? resounding in his head. Another turn, and the clinic lay ahead, bathed in outside lights, a few cars parked in the lot. He pulled up near the front door.

It took a moment to get Arnie out of the back. Difficult, all of it, throwing one leg over the top of the bed, searching for the wheel well on which to balance himself. Father John hung on to his arm until the Indian had dropped to the ground on both feet. They walked him inside, Vicky holding one arm, Father John the other. The nurse was tight-lipped but professional, nodding him into the corridor like a truant schoolboy returning to class.

Out in the pickup, Vicky beside him, Father John took a moment. The bullet had whizzed across the hood, tearing through the windshield. A couple of inches lower and it could have killed her. It could have hit him. Or Arnie. Any of them, stopped in the darkness by a crazy man. He realized why the black truck had seemed familiar. “There was a big black truck among the trucks parked next to the barn at the ranch,” he said.

“We've been asking too many questions,” Vicky said. “Cowboys missing from the Broken Buffalo. Someone there must think we found the answers. You talked to Steve Mantle this afternoon. He was killed this evening. We were next.” Father John watched her digging something out of her bag. “Reg Hartly has been asking a lot of questions.” She pressed a button on her cell phone and stared at the hard, bright light of the screen. “He's in danger, John. Hello?” She had the phone at her ear now. “This is Vicky Holden. I'm with Father O'Malley. Someone tried to run us off Blue Sky Highway and shot at us. No. We're okay. The truck came from the Broken Buffalo Ranch. There's a cowboy at the ranch who is in danger. You've got to get officers out there.”