Night of the White Buffalo: A Wind River Mystery (3 page)

FATHER JOHN STAYED
a couple of car lengths behind the police car that shimmered silver in the moonlight. A slow left turn onto Trout Creek Road, then another left onto a narrow dirt road. The old Toyota pickup bounced and skittered. Dust rolled backward and sprayed the pickup's windshield. He dropped another car length behind. He and the police chief were driving farther and farther away from the houses, the debris-strewn dirt yards, the paved roads.

The chief's brake lights came on, and Father John followed them onto a two-track. The pickup was gyrating so hard he had to grip the wheel to keep from being tossed against the side window. The CD skipped and stuttered as the two-track undulated over the plains toward what looked like a log ranch house, the windows lit up like Christmas.

Banner was knocking on the front door as Father John pulled in next to the police car and hurried up the stone steps. The wooden slats of the sofa and chairs on the porch rattled in the wind. From inside came the clack of footsteps that stopped on the other side of the door. Father John had the sense of a presence on the other side, of a hesitation.

The door inched open the width of a brass chain, and Banner stuck his wallet badge into the opening. In an instant the door closed, then swung open, the metal chain clanking against the wood. Peering up at them with narrowed eyes and a fixed expression of dread was a small, attractive woman with reddish hair plastered against her head and fastened in the back. In her red plaid shirt and blue jeans washed gray, she looked capable of riding onto the pasture and roping a buffalo calf. She barely came to Father John's shoulder.

“Sheila Carey?” Banner tilted his head toward Father John. “Father O'Malley from the mission. May we come in?”

“What are you doing here?” A deep well of suspicion rose in the woman's voice.

“I'm afraid we have bad news.”

She stepped back and motioned them inside, then walked around a small table and perched on the edge of a sofa. “Whatever it is, let's have it.”

Banner dropped into the upholstered chair on the other side of the table, and Father John nudged a wooden chair out of a corner and sat down a few feet from the chief. He wondered how they must appear to the small woman staring wide-eyed at them, two big men bearing down on her with terrible news. The chief cleared his throat. It was never easy, Father John thought. “Your husband, Dennis, was shot this evening on Blue Sky Highway.”

The woman pitched herself to her feet. There was a sharp thwack as her leg hit the edge of the coffee table. “That's ridiculous.” Now she was looking down at them. “Dennis is at a meeting in Riverton. Monthly meeting of local ranchers. Afterward they go to a bar, sit around, drink beer, and gossip like a bunch of old biddies. He'll be pulling up any minute.”

“I'm so sorry.” Father John stood up and reached across the table for the woman's hand. She yanked herself away.

“How dare you show up in the middle of the night and tell me Dennis is dead. He cannot be dead. He's on the way home. See . . .” She darted for the front window and peered past the edge of the drapes. “I can hear the rumbling of his truck. He's out on the dirt road now. I'll see his headlights coming up our road soon.” She pivoted about and stared at Father John a moment, then at Banner. “How dare you tell such lies!”

She was swaying on her feet, and Father John walked over and took her arm to steady her. “You had better sit down. Your husband didn't survive.”

She shrugged away again, and wrinkles of understanding began to crease her face. “Didn't survive? How can that be? He was fine. He went to a meeting. How can he be dead?”

Father John took her hand and tried to lead her back to the sofa, but she was like dead weight, stuck in the middle of the floor. A door opened and shut in the back of the house, and a cowboy, black hat pushed back on his head and bunched fists hanging at his sides, materialized out of the darkness in the kitchen. He looked Hispanic, dark-skinned with flashing black eyes, and a short, stocky build. He stopped a couple of feet into the living room. “You need help, Mrs. C? I seen the police car and old truck out front.”

Behind him, like a shadow, was another cowboy, lean and young and tense looking, acne popping on his forehead.

“Chief Banner.” Banner got to his feet and faced the two men. “Who might you be?”

“Hired hands,” Sheila Carey said. “Carlos Mondregan, the foreman, and Lane Preston.”

Banner nodded. “Father O'Malley and I have brought Mrs. Carey some very bad news. Her husband was shot this evening.”

“What?” Mondregan's mouth opened into a wide O. “Shot? Where?” The other cowboy stepped backward, as if he had been pushed.

“On Blue Sky Highway. He was probably on his way home.”

“I should've gone to the meeting with him. I should've gone. Nobody would've gotten close to him if I'd been there. God, Mrs. C.” Mondregan swung toward the woman who was rocking back and forth, eyes darting about the room. “What do you want me to do?”

“I have to go to him.”

“I'll take you,” Mondregan said.

Banner told them the coroner had removed the body to the morgue. “We'll arrange for you to see him and make a positive identification.”

“Positive identification? You mean, there could be a mistake?”

“I'm afraid there is no mistake.”

Sheila Carey ran her tongue over her lips. “Oh my God. It's true then, isn't it?”

“Is there anyone I can call for you?” Father John said.

She dropped onto the sofa and dipped her face into her hands. “There's nobody else.” Her voice was shaky and muffled. She peered through the Vs of her fingers. “Carlos and Lane have been helping out on the ranch. But it's just me and Dennis in our own little world here, like it's been ever since we met eight years ago. Both of us looking for something, and we found each other. Dennis is a real cowboy.” She dropped her hands, closed her eyes, and sat rocking back and forth, as if she had escaped into another time, another place. “A real cowboy. Wandered around the West for years, working other people's ranches, drinking too much, hooking up with no-account women. Same for me, except for the cowboying and women. I hooked up with loser guys. It was like I had a beacon on me to attract losers. Wandering all over, like Dennis, with a lot of lousy, miserable jobs and rat-infested apartments. Things are gonna change, be different, he told me that first night. We're gonna get us our own spread, and we're gonna raise buffalo. He had a thing about buffalo, Dennis did. Buffalo are wild, can't ever be tamed. He felt a kindred spirit with them. So he got a good job on a ranch outside Grand Junction, and I hired on at a restaurant. No more drinking and carousing. We saved every penny. Two years ago, we put a down payment on this spread. Mortgage to knock out your eyeballs, but it was Dennis's dream. Our dream.” She was crying now, as if the present loomed in front of her.

Father John went over and sat down beside the woman. He waited a moment before he said, “Are you sure there isn't someone we can call? A friend on the rez?” Had Dennis and Sheila Carey been Arapaho, the moccasin telegraph would have spread the news by now. The house would be filling up with relatives and friends. Women working in the kitchen, fresh coffee brewing, casseroles and cakes appearing as if by some conjuring trick. People would be pressing around Sheila Carey, patting her shoulder, holding her hand. Sipping coffee, eating, crying.

“Now he's dead. I know he's dead.” This seemed to take all the woman had left, because she fell sideways onto the armrest. Banner and Carlos both jumped forward as Father John put an arm around her shoulder and lifted her into a sitting position. Her head lolled against the back cushion. She blinked at the ceiling, then made an effort to pull herself upright. “There is something you can do.”

He waited, and after a long moment, she went on: “Bless the grave. Dennis would want to be on the ranch.” She ran her tongue over her lips. They looked cracked and sore. “You can do that, can't you?”

“Yes, of course,” he said. He glanced up at Carlos. “She could use some water.”

The cowboy swung about and disappeared into the dimness at the back of the house. The sounds of running water and glass clanking on metal drifted out of the kitchen.

“I can get an ambulance,” Banner said.

“No! No ambulance!” A surprising amount of energy pumped through the exclamation. “No hospital. No drugs to help me cope. I had enough of that in that other life. You gotta arrest that bastard.”

“Who are you talking about?” Banner asked. “Do you have an idea of who might have shot your husband?”

“Oh, I got ideas all right.” She grasped the glass that Carlos held out and gulped at the water. “I got more than ideas. That cowboy Dennis had to let go in June. Threatened he'd come back and settle things.”

“If he's still in the area, we can pick him up. What can you tell me about him? Name? Local connections? Where did he go?”

“He was no good. I told Dennis not to hire him the minute I laid eyes on him, and believe me, I know a loser when I see one. But Dennis said he needed help. Long stretch of fence to repair, dams about to calve. So he hired him. Rick somebody. Thomas. Thompson. Tomlin, maybe. He didn't work out, just like I knew would happen. Drunk half the time. How would I know where he went? He wasn't from around here. After Tomlin and another hand took off, we were lucky to hire Carlos and Lane.”

Banner started to his feet. “I know this is hard, Mrs. Carey, but if there's anything about Rick Tomlin you happen to remember, give me a call.” He pulled a card from his shirt pocket and set it on the table. “Agent Gianelli will also want to talk with you.”

“The fed?” Mondregan's eyebrows shot up.

“I don't want cops and feds all over the place,” Sheila said.

“Mrs. Carey, your husband was murdered.”

“We were supposed to be blessed.”

Both cowboys leaned in close. “You sure you want to talk about this now?” Carlos said.

“Talk about what?” Banner sat back down.

“Can't stay a secret, not on the rez with people coming around. Word'll get out.”

She drained the glass of water, then set it on the coffee table. “We had a great blessing. Ironic, isn't it? Dennis gets killed just when we've had a blessing.” She was staring at Banner. “It's a blessing when the white buffalo calf gets born, isn't it? In the Arapaho Way?”

Banner made a sucking noise, as if he were trying to catch his breath. “When did this happen?”

“About a week ago,” Carlos said.

“When were you planning to notify us?” Banner leaned forward, not taking his eyes from the woman, and Father John tried to remember what he had heard about the white buffalo. A being so rare, a white buffalo calf was considered by all the tribes to be sacred, a special blessing from the Creator, a reminder that the Creator was with the people. People from all over would descend on the ranch to see the white buffalo calf.

“Not until we finish repairing the north fence,” Carlos said. “We gotta control the crowds.”

“I'm asking Mrs. Carey.”

“We didn't expect . . .” She broke off and sobbed quietly into the palm of her hand. Finally she lifted her head. “Nobody expects a white buffalo calf to be born. It just happened. Dennis spotted it in the pasture. He couldn't believe his eyes. Pure white buffalo calf with black nose and black eyes. Not an albino. I didn't know what that meant until he told me. Our calf is the real thing, as rare as a gold nugget the size of my fist. We were blessed. That's what he said. We were blessed. Some blessing!”

Banner had extracted a white handkerchief and was patting at his forehead. He stood up and, looking down at the woman slumped on the sofa, said, “When do you plan to make the birth public?”

“It was Dennis that was gonna handle it.”

“We need a couple days before we can get the fence fixed,” Carlos said. “Maybe longer. We can't have people trampling the pastures. We gotta fix a pathway they can use to go see the calf.”

Banner stuffed the handkerchief into the back pocket of his uniform trousers. “We're going to need time to plan for crowd control.” He was looking sideways into the middle of the room. “Roads will be jammed.” He switched his gaze between the woman and the cowboys hovering nearby, then he tapped the card he had laid on the table. “I would appreciate a heads-up before you make the announcement. Like I said, if you remember anything that might help us locate your husband's killer, call me immediately.”

“Oh God,” Sheila said. “Why did this have to happen?”

Father John got to his feet, leaned over, and patted the woman's shoulder. “I'm at the mission if you want someone to talk to.”

He followed the chief across the living room and out the door. The night was getting cooler, and the wind had picked up. The chief hurried to his car and slid inside, shoulders rounded with determination. The engine had barely coughed into life when Banner pulled a U-turn and headed out onto the two-track. Father John got into the pickup and started after the red glow of taillights that jumped and bounced ahead. The woman was right, he was thinking. A white buffalo calf born on the rez, and a few days later, her husband shot to death. How could the calf be a blessing? And yet Indian people everywhere believed the calf was a blessing, a symbol of the Creator's presence. Hundreds, probably thousands of visitors would descend on the rez to see the white buffalo calf. And Sheila Carey, left to cope alone with only the help of hired hands. Dear Lord. He turned off the two-track and onto the dirt road, a few scattered stars shining through a sky black with clouds, the red taillights plunging into the darkness ahead.

FATHER JOHN TOSSED
the Frisbee into the tall grass surrounded by Circle Drive and watched Walks-On lope after it. The early-morning sun burned at his neck, but a hint of the night's coolness lingered in the air. He had slept fitfully, a few hours of tossing and turning, images of the surprised look in Dennis Carey's face stamped in his mind. But something else had nagged at him: the uneasy feeling that the man in the confessional had killed again and, somehow, Father John should have stopped him. The feeling had kept him awake most of the night and followed him this morning like a shadow he couldn't identify or ignore.

The dog disappeared into the stalks of grass and reappeared with the red Frisbee clenched in his jaw. He ran back, a shaky, unbalanced sprint filled with confidence and enthusiasm, as if the fact that he was missing a hind leg was of little importance. Walks-On had been tiny, not much larger than a brown paper bag tossed out of a car, when Father John had found him in the ditch on Seventeen-Mile Road. He had been at St. Francis a couple of years then, still wobbly with the effort to stay sober, grateful to have a place to work, to be a priest.

Even now it made him flinch to think he might have driven past if the puppy hadn't moved his head. Father John had pulled over, gathered the broken body in his arms, laid the dog on the front seat, and driven for the vet's office in Riverton. A week later he had gone back and claimed him, when no one else had. A puppy with an amputated hind leg who had grown into a muscular golden dog, full of life, seemingly unconcerned about his loss. A lesson in that, Father John thought.

He threw the Frisbee again, this time angling it toward the residence. The slope in Walks-On's shoulders meant that he understood: the game was over. Father John made his way across the field on the dirt path worn by countless past Jesuits. Like so many aspects of St. Francis Mission—the black-and-white photos that lined the administration corridor, the theology and philosophy books in the library, the files in the archives—the dirt path was a reminder that he followed in the footsteps of other men, better men. He never wanted to let them down.

A white pickup turned off Seventeen-Mile Road and flashed through the tunnel of cottonwoods as Father John hurried up the church steps and let himself inside. Mass was supposed to start in ten minutes. He had played catch with Walks-On longer than he should have. Now he walked down the aisle, genuflected before the altar and the tabernacle Arapaho women had made from tanned deerskin to resemble a tipi, and made his way into the sacristy. He could hear the front door opening and closing with the arriving parishioners as he put on the chasuble and walked out to the altar. The red, blue, and yellow geometric patterns in the stained glass windows glowed in the morning sun: lines symbolizing the roads of life, triangles for the village, circles for the buffalo. At least a dozen Arapahos knelt in the pews, most elderly and set in their ways, used to starting the day with the quiet solemnity of Mass.

“Let us offer our prayers,” he said, “for the soul of the rancher, Dennis Carey, who lived among us and died among us last night on Blue Sky Highway, where he was shot to death.” From the nodding heads and blinking eyes, Father John knew the news had spread. The moccasin telegraph never shut down, not even in the middle of the night. But he sensed something in the hands fidgeting with prayer books and rosaries, the worried looks shadowing the brown faces. Somewhere on the reservation was a shooter who had been taking random shots at pickups moving in the night down empty highways. Now a man was dead.

He gave a short sermon on a part of Luke's Gospel he had always liked: how Jesus had encouraged his disciples to place their trust in God and to live without anxiety. At the consecration, he lifted the bread and the grape juice that alcoholic priests could substitute for wine and repeated the words of Jesus: “This is my body; this is my blood.” Silently he prayed for the grace to trust in God for whatever the future might hold.

After Mass, he stood outside and shook hands with the elders and grandmothers, another ritual that started the day, he thought, for them as well as for himself. Walks-On had wandered over, and the old people took turns patting his head, which, he suspected, was the way the dog liked to start his day.

Miriam Many Horses waited until the others had set out for the pickups parked on Circle Drive before she stepped over. Usually she brought her father, Clifford, to Mass. This morning she was alone. She was in her fifties, but she looked older, with a tanned, weathered face and a red-and-blue scarf tied around sloped shoulders. “Dad wasn't up to coming to Mass this morning.”

Clifford Many Horses put up with a lot of afflictions, Father John knew. Diabetes, arthritis, and lungs that collapsed regularly into pneumonia, but the old man seldom missed daily Mass. Father John could think of only a few mornings when Clifford and his daughter hadn't sat in the last pew. Clifford's pew, he thought of it. “Is he okay?”

“Ninety years old and getting worn out.” She smiled. “Otherwise he's a tough old bird.”

Father John nodded. Tough and determined, he thought. Nothing had kept Clifford from doing what he set his mind to. Ran away from the rez to join the army at age fifteen. Slogged through Africa and Italy and finally Germany. On his way to fight in the Far East when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the war ended. Back home on the rez with a purple heart for a bullet he had taken in his hip, he'd bought a couple of cows and a steer and started building a herd. Then he'd built a family. Miriam was the youngest of six children, the one who'd stayed close to the old man after her mother, Dorothy, died, took him to church, saw that he had a good meal every day.

“My father would like to talk to you. How about lunch at noon?”

“I'll be there.”

*   *   *

FATHER JOHN COULD
hear Miriam's pickup rumbling around Circle Drive and out through the cottonwoods as he went back into the church and made his way down the aisle, checking the pews for anything left behind. Odd the things he sometimes found. Cigarette packs, notepads, pencils, keys, eyeglasses. Small enough objects to have slipped silently out of pockets. The pews were empty this morning. He genuflected again at the altar, taking an extra minute to say another prayer for the dead man on the highway and the widow whose life had changed in a moment.

Outside, Walks-On raced ahead across the grass and up the steps to the residence. Father John let him in the front door and followed him down the hall to the kitchen, where the dog stared at his empty bowl, then stared up at him.

“How are you, my boy?” Bishop Harry sat at the round table hunched over the
Gazette
spread in front of him, working at a cup of coffee. A fringe of whitish gray hair wrapped around the old man's pink scalp. His eyes were pale blue and lively, fired by the sunlight that filtered past the flimsy white curtain at the window. From the basement came the hum of the washing machine. “You must have had quite a night. I heard about the poor man who was shot.”

Father John lifted the bag of dog food out of the cabinet and shook it into the bowl. Then he filled the dog's water bowl and set it down. “Elena?” The moccasin telegraph usually reached the housekeeper before it reached the mission.

“You are to help yourself to oatmeal.”

From the basement came a lurching, halting noise before the washing machine settled into a normal rhythm. Something else at St. Francis that was old, outdated, and in need of replacement. Like the stove and refrigerator that he half expected to give out at any moment, the roofs on the old buildings that leaked in every rainstorm, the gutters that needed patching, the creaking doors, and the worn carpets. There was never enough money to keep the mission buildings running smoothly.

“I went with Banner to notify the widow.” Father John spooned oatmeal into a bowl, poured in milk, and sat down across from the bishop.

“Ah, yes. The hardest part of our job.” For a few seconds, it seemed, the bishop wasn't an old man sent to St. Francis Mission to recover from two heart bypass surgeries; he was the bishop of Patna, India, overseeing thousands of Catholics, visiting the families of the sick and dying, consoling those who'd lost their loved ones, watching hope disappear in their eyes. Their brothers, sisters, cousins, fathers were with God now, at peace, he'd probably told them. It wouldn't have made the task any easier.

“I don't have to ask how she took it.”

“Her life changed last night. Nothing will ever be the same. Her name is Sheila Carey. Her husband was Dennis. They ran the Broken Buffalo Ranch off Trout Creek Road.”

The bishop was nodding. “I trust she has family and friends.”

“She seems alone, except for a couple of hands who work there. She asked me to bless her husband's body. She wants him buried on the ranch.”

“They're Catholic?”

“I don't think so.” He took a bite of the hot, creamy oatmeal, surprised at how good it tasted, morning after morning.

“Whatever comfort you can bring in this time will be welcome, I'm sure.”

Father John could hear the slow, halting shush of footsteps on the basement stairs, a sense of determination and purpose in each step. He knew the effort it took for Elena to climb stairs now. The door opened into the kitchen, and she walked over and set a hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

He had to smile. So much solicitation about how he was feeling after last night! For an instant he was transported back to the kitchen in the little apartment on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, Mom standing over him, worried about the boys he'd had to fight his way through on the way home from baseball practice and the black eye she kept trying to cover with an ice pack.

“I'm fine, thanks,” he told the old woman. In her seventies at least, although she might have crossed into her eighties. Her age was her business, as she had reminded him on numerous occasions. She had kept house and cooked for a parade of Jesuits down the decades. She could remember every single one, all the odd habits. Father Jerome, the vegetarian; Father Lawrence with his leg brace; Father Michael, who'd talked to himself in Latin; Father Bruce, who'd lost himself in philosophy treatises and forgotten to come to dinner. Elena had related all the stories, and he suspected that when he was gone she would tell stories about him to the next priest.

“Gives me the creeps,” she said, walking over to the sink and turning on the faucet. “Somebody out in the darkness shooting at cars like they was in a shooting gallery.”

“Chief Banner thinks Carey knew his shooter. He had pulled over.”

She seemed to take this in as she slid a stack of plates past the soapsuds into the sink. “Well, that don't make sense. Who's dumb enough to pull over and wait for somebody to shoot him? I'd say the same crazy shooter took a shot at him, and that's why he pulled over.”

Father John exchanged a glance with the bishop. He didn't say anything. He had learned long ago not to argue with Elena. She had her own way of looking at the world, and it had amazed him, at times, how clearly she saw it.

“Might be Arapaho,” she said.

Father John finished the oatmeal, got up, and poured himself a cup of coffee. He carried the coffeepot to the table and refilled the bishop's cup. The crazy shooter might be someone from the rez, either an Arapaho or a Shoshone. He leaned against the counter, sipped at his coffee, and waited to see if she had anything else, but she was caught up in washing, rinsing, and stacking dishes. “What makes you think so?” he said finally.

“Raps don't like that buffalo ranch.” She added a plate to the stack and, patting the suds on her hands with her apron, turned toward him. “Those white people never hired Indians. Only cowboys ever worked there are white. Outsiders. They come from all over, from what I hear. Only thing is, they don't come from the rez.”

The cowboy Carlos Mondregan was most likely Hispanic, Father John was thinking. The other cowboy with the pimply face was white. Neither was Arapaho or Shoshone. He wondered why a rancher in the middle of the reservation wouldn't hire local Indians, who knew more about handling buffalo and horses than anybody else. He waited for Elena to continue, provide an explanation, but she turned back to the sink, plunged a hand into the soapy water, and dislodged the stopper. The water swished downward.

“You know,” he said after enough seconds had passed to change the subject, “I'm pretty sure I could manage the laundry.”

Elena gave a shout of laughter. She found another plate at the bottom of the sink, rinsed it under the faucet, and set it in the drainer before turning toward him. “And mess with my washing machine and dryer? They need special care. They don't work for just anybody.”

“You could teach me.” He pushed himself away from the counter and took another sip of coffee.

“Ha! How long would that take? I could get ten loads of laundry done.”

She would never relinquish the task, he was thinking. Laundry was part of taking care of the house, which she considered her house even though she lived a mile away with her daughter's family. Her place, her work. Judging by the grin on the bishop's face, the old man also knew that they were here at Elena's forbearance.