Rocky Mountain Justice (The Legend of Camel's Hump) (16 page)

It was Sheriff Montgomery’s big black patrol car. He was following the teenagers; staying far enough back that they didn’t see him. He could follow them, and their dust cloud, easily. Yet the same dust cloud obscured his car from that of his quarry. If he wanted to, he could be at the cabin a couple of minutes after Ray and Dawn. Jerry jumped back behind the barricade and watched the two cars approach, his mind working faster than it ever had before.

Wayne headed down the gravel road that the locals called “Cutoff Road”. It served as a shortcut from the small town of St. Dubois, on Highway 10, over to the Flathead Reservation and on toward Glacier Park. It was a road that he knew well. He’d lived on the reservation for a few years as a boy and he’d kept in touch with friends there. But this trip was different, and he silently cursed the old road and its potholes. Even with George’s big work pickup, he could only make about 35 miles an hour on this road surface. At this rate, he wouldn’t make it to Pablo for at least a day. But there was nothing he could do about that.

After about four hours of bouncing, he arrived at the spot where the road crossed the Missoula River. It was a ferry crossing and a slow one. Wayne parked at the river’s edge and honked his horn. After the third honk, he saw the ferry operator saunter out of his home on the other side of the river and walk over to where a large raft was tied up on the river bank. The big raft was attached, by two heavy cables, to an even larger overhead cable that traversed the river. There was a big V-8 engine on the raft for emergencies, but it wasn’t needed today. The operator climbed aboard the raft and, using a large pole, pushed it off into the river where the current caught it. The operator deftly angled the raft so that the current hitting its sides pushed it along the big cable, slowly crossing the river. By the time the ferry reached him, Wayne had been waiting beside the river for over an hour, munching on a candy bar and thinking.

Finally, the ferry came to a rest in front of the pickup and Wayne slowly drove onto it as the ferry operator held it in place with his pole. Then the crossing was duplicated, with the current carrying Wayne and his pickup to the opposite river bank.

It was another six hours before Wayne arrived in the reservation town of Pablo. He drove straight to the Police Station where he encountered another delay. It was now after midnight and the station wasn’t manned at night. Not knowing where to go or what to do, Wayne decided to just nap and wait for morning. He ate another candy bar and covered himself with an old coat that he found behind the seat. Soon he was asleep.

He was awakened by a loud banging on the window beside his head. Startled, he glanced at the source and saw an Indian face plastered against the window making an incredible grimace as its eyes crossed, tongue hung out, and fingers wagged from its ears. Wayne immediately started laughing. It was good to see his old friend. He rubbed his eyes and climbed out of the pickup, still laughing. His friend, John Grazing Elk, grabbed him in a bear hug saying, “Welcome back to the reservation, my brother. Are you finally here to stay?” Wayne, still laughing, freed himself and returned the hug. Then he broke free and turned to face his friend. “No John. We’ve got some serious business. I’ve come to you for help.” With that, his friend’s face sobered. “In that case c’mon in while I make some coffee. Can’t do business without banishing the sleep devils, can we?”

Wayne followed him into the police station and used the bathroom to wash his face and clean up a bit. In the meantime, John busied himself making coffee and checking yesterday’s mail. Finally, they both had coffee in hand and were seated at a little table on one side of the big room.

John opened with “OK, White Devil, what new mischief do you have in mind for your Indian friends?” Wayne grinned. “No mischief this time. I have a serious problem and I can’t go to our local law enforcement because they are the problem.” At that, John became very serious. “Whoa, Wayne. I’m the law here, but over your way, I’m nothing. I can’t solve those kinds of problems. You need the Feds and I don’t even know if they would do anything. It depends on the problem.” Wayne took another sip from his coffee cup and looked across the table at his friend. “John, there’s an Indian girl being held against her will on a sheep ranch over my way. I think she is being raped repeatedly – by the sheriff and his deputy! Have you had any young girls go missing in the past couple of years?”

John’s chair came down hard and his hands slapped the table as his body jerked forward to stare at Wayne across the table. “Shit Man! Yes! Right now we are looking high and low for my niece, Sara. She went over to Polson to visit her aunt a few weeks ago and disappeared. Just disappeared! She’s only thirteen years old! Could she be the girl you’re talking about?” Wayne’s face drained of color. “God, I hope not. But it could be. My son and his friends saw her and they said that she appeared to be tall and slim, but young looking.” It was John’s turn to turn pale. “That’s her.”

Wayne got up and refilled his cup, coming back to the table with a question. “Can you help me get her out of there?” John nodded, saying “Not in my official capacity. But I’m due for a vacation; and I know a few other people who would like to go on vacation with me. Your sheep ranch sounds like a perfect place for us to relax a bit. Now tell me the details.”

Wayne leaned back in his chair and told the story as he had heard it from Jerry and Dawn. John asked a few key questions as he talked, but mostly remained silent, taking notes on a yellow pad. When the story was done, he said, “It sounds like there might’ve been several of these girls. You mentioned one from Arizona named Annette. I have a flyer from the San Carlos Apache Reservations down there asking us to look for a girl by that name. It’s about a year old now, but she’s still missing. I’m wondering if there aren’t others that we don’t know about.” Wayne answered, “I don’t know. Could be, I guess.”

Then John dropped a bombshell. “We know this guy Ike Schumann. About five or six years ago, we threw him off the reservation for stealing. His woman, a squaw that everybody called Bird, went with him. They aren’t any good at all.” Wayne thought about that and then asked, “Hasn’t Bird come back? Ike’s been telling everyone in Dublin that she left him and came back to the Res.” John rose as he answered, “I dunno, but I don’t think so. I’ll check that while I’m rounding up a posse. You can wait here while I get a crew together. I’ll probably be gone a couple of hours.”

He started for the door and then turned back to his friend. “Dammit, Wayne, life is funny. A few years ago, I would’ve been forming a war party! Now I’m putting together a posse! The names changed, but the function’s still the same!” With a wry laugh he went out the door.

While Wayne waited, he walked around for a few minutes, checking out the office. John had decorated it with Indian artifacts almost as if it were a small museum. When he finished looking around he settled in for a wait, rounding up magazines and taking a seat at John’s desk.

It was almost noon when men began arriving. They gathered in the parking lot and chatted, seeming to wait for something. After about an hour, John drove up and greeted the assembled men. He got out of his car, reached into the back seat, took out something that looked like rolled-up charts, and headed for the office door. The assembled men followed John into the building. He walked to where Wayne was setting and put down the rolls of paper he was carrying. Wayne stood and watched as the silent men took positions in a semicircle around the desk.

John broke the silence with, “Men, I’d like to introduce you to one of my oldest friends, a man who has once again proven his friendship to our people. For reasons that’ll become clear in a few minutes, I’m not going to tell you his name. Nor am I going to introduce any of you.” At that, the group exchanged some puzzled glances, but maintained their silence.

Now John moved to a blackboard behind the desk. Wayne rolled his chair out of the way and gave John a hand as he unrolled the large map he had been carrying and taped it to the blackboard. As it unfurled, Wayne recognized it as a Forest Service map of the national forest that surrounded Dublin.

With the map in place, John turned to the men. His first words were “OK my friends, I want you to know that everything I’m going to tell you is very, very, important. It’s also the biggest secret that any of you will ever have to live with. It’s something so secret that we’ll have to carry it to our graves. We can never, in the future, admit that this happened. Not even to each other. I’m not here as the Police Chief.” With that, he took his badge off and placed it on the desk. “I’m here as a descendant of one of our greatest war chiefs and I intend to start a fight. This fight is not one that is allowed under white man’s law, but it’s one that our heritage demands of us.” He paused to let this sink in, and then he challenged them. “If any of you can’t live with this, we’ll all understand. Just say the word and leave now.” Again he stopped to allow them to think. The men looked at one another, but no one moved. John went on, “If you decide to stay, you’re going on a trip for the next few days. No one can know where you are going or where you have been – ever – and I want to emphasize, you will be breaking the law. I want that to be very clear. Now I’m going to give you a few minutes to talk about this and decide if you want to stay.” With that, he picked up his coffee cup and walked over to the coffee pot.

None of the men moved for a long moment. Then they shuffled slightly, looking at one another. Finally one of the older members of the group, a very dignified-looking man, stepped forward. He seemed to be speaking for the group as he said, “John, we’d follow you off of a cliff if you said the word. If you ask this of us, it must be important. None of us are leaving. Tell us what you want us to do.”

John began speaking again. He repeated the story that Wayne had told him earlier, stopping occasionally to ask Wayne to clarify details. When he told them about the girl in the stone hut, several men muttered dangerously. But the group maintained silence through most of the story. Finally, John paused, the story complete. He gave them an opportunity to ask questions and the men asked several, most of which Wayne had to answer. Soon one of them said, “OK we’ve got the picture, now what’s the plan?”

Now John took control, bringing the men closer around him as he laid out the Camel’s Hump landscape on the big map. Fittingly, he drew an arrow out of a quiver that decorated the wall and used it as a pointer, identifying landmarks around the sheep ranch. When he had familiarized them with the area, they began discussing plans. Wayne was asked to sketch the layout of the sheep ranch’s roads and buildings. Several different potential tactics were discussed before they agreed on the approach they would take. It was done calmly, as if this were an everyday event.

Finally they finished. A plan was agreed on and they were ready to roll. Wayne looked at John and said, “I do have a question. How do you plan to get there? If you go down the cutoff road, the Ferry operator will remember you. It’s too dangerous.” John thought for a minute and then asked one of the men, “Can we use that tourist-hauling bus of yours?” In answer, the man smiled and held up a ring of keys that had been dangling from his belt. John grinned and said, “OK. We use the bus. We’ll tell everyone that we’re going on a tour to another reservation. We can’t take the cutoff road. We’re going to have to go over through Idaho to Cour ‘d Alene, head east from there on Highway 10, make a stop in Dublin and then keep going east toward Missoula until we hit the highway coming back here. How’s that sound?” Everyone agreed.

Then one of the men spoke up. “Most of us have been to war before and I think we’re forgetting something. We can carry our wounded on the bus. But where would we carry bodies? If I heard you right, there are probably some of our people there that will need to be brought home for a proper burial.” At this thought, John’s face grew even more serious. “You’re right. Can one of you follow the bus in a pickup with some tarps in it?” The older man answered again. “We can take mine. It needs a good break-in run anyway.”

John looked around and smiled, saying, “Guys, its set. We leave here in an hour. Go home and get your guns as well as whatever food and clothes you need. Be back in an hour. Are there any questions?” The men started for the door, but stopped when one man, a big fellow that looked like the youngest of them, spoke up. “Yeah. I do have a question. Basically, we’re about to go on the warpath. If we do, this might be the last war party our people ever assemble. Why don’t we make it a real war party, with war paint and the whole business. Let’s make the ancestors proud!” There was a murmur of general agreement, so John answered. “All right, but we wear regular clothes and clean faces until we’re over there. Don’t forget, we’re a just another tour group for most of the trip. Just bring the stuff with you. Are there any other questions?”

The bus owner held up a hand. “Yeah. What do you want me to put on the destination slot above the windshield? It’ll look odd if we don’t have a destination up on the tour bus.” At that John grinned. “How about just putting “War Pony” up there? There must be a place by that name somewhere.” The whole crowd started laughing and went out the door leaving the sound of their laughter and some tentative war whoops in their wake.