The Highwayman: A Longmire Story (9 page)

“But the flat-hat, she lives?”

“Yep.”

“Because of you.”

“I suppose, and Henry.” I brought my eyes up to her. “Did he ever say anything about the money?”

“No, but people talked because he was Indian.” She looked out at the casino again. “Things have changed but maybe not so much.”

“Did it bother him, the things that people said?”

Her eyes turned back, and she studied me. “Would they have bothered you, those words?”

I pulled at the corners of my mouth with a thumb and forefinger. “Did they bother him enough that he might’ve killed himself?” She started to speak, but I cut her off. “I’ve seen where he died, Kimama. There was no way he could’ve gotten a radio call in the no-man’s-land of the canyon warning him about the tanker. From where he sat at the north tunnel he would’ve had thirty seconds or so to make up his mind to pull out in front of that thing . . .”

She broke into my monologue. “He didn’t kill himself.”

“How can you be so sure?”

She leaned in close, and I could feel the warmth of her breath. “Because, Bucket, I was there.”

“Does Jim Thomas know you’re on duty?”

“I’m fine.”

“Seeing as how you drowned last night? You were in that water longer than I was, and I don’t feel so great myself.” I leaned on the Dodge and continued scolding her through the window as she clutched her forehead and we watched the tiny flakes descend like a gently disturbed snow globe. “Headache?”

She nodded. “Just a little.”

“You need to go home. Now.”

“I want to be here for the ceremony. It’s important.”

I sighed and looked at the promontory at the end of the pull-off that overlooked the Wind River, where
Henry was conferring with Kimama and Sam Little Soldier. “It’s just a ceremony—nothing says it’s going to work.”

She dropped her hand and looked up at me with the icy blue eyes. “You still don’t believe any of this, do you?”

“Nope.”

“Even after hearing it?”

I laid an arm on the roof of her car, leaning in and smiling. “It’s a radio, Rosey, somebody’s on the other end, and it’s not Bobby Womack.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“A feeling.”

“A feeling?”

“Yep.” I glanced around for effect. “Look, I’ve seen some amazing things in this life, some things I can’t explain, but I’m not willing to go with the out-of-this-world supposition until it’s been proven to me that it’s not of this world. That’s part of our job, to find answers, and I’m not willing to throw up my hands and say there are none until I’m sure there aren’t any.” She said nothing, so I continued. “Someone is making those radio calls, and someone is putting those silver dollars on the road.” I pulled the one from my pocket and handed it to her.

The blue ice in her eyes melted, and the whites glistened in the dim light of the cruiser. “Where did you get this?”

I glanced over my right shoulder back down the road. “North entrance of the north tunnel.”

“How?”

“When I took that walk through the tunnels, I heard footsteps behind me and chased after them.”

“Who was it?”

“I didn’t see, but they left that coin on the road for me.”

“Did anything bad happen, because if it didn’t, it’s going to. I told you about the other times when—”

“You tried to kill yourself.”

“What?”

“You attempted to kill yourself—I’d say that’s pretty bad.”

She looked away. “I don’t remember.”

“Jumping?”

“No.”

“Well, you really didn’t jump, you just stepped off.”

Her hand came up, and she grabbed the zipper of my jacket. “I don’t remember any of it, Walt. Nothing. I just
remember laying beside this unit and hearing that voice, repeating over and over and over.”

“Well, you missed the exciting part.”

She continued studying the silver dollar. “This one is different, marked up.” She looked at me. “Did anything else happen? I mean anything bad?”

I thought about it. “I almost got run over by not paying attention.” I reached out and tapped the coin in her hand. “Slipped on this thing and then found it, that’s why it’s scratched.”

“Hold on, that was before we waited for the call and before you talked to me?”

“Yep.”

She pushed open the door and then slammed it, careful to pull the tail of her black slicker aside. She stared at me as she held the silver dollar up between us. “You had this on you and didn’t say anything?”

“I wanted to wait until we did or didn’t hear the radio call.”

“If we hadn’t heard anything would you have shown me this?”

“Of course.”

“Then why did you wait?”

“Because I didn’t want to confuse the issue.”

“Which is?”

“Whether or not you were actually hearing the radio calls.”

She held the coin closer to my face. “This is proof.”

I stood there for a moment and then took the thing from her, holding it up into the ghostly pall of the half-hidden moon. “No. This is an 1888 Hot Lips Morgan silver dollar—and that’s all it is. You can buy one in mint condition in any coin shop in the country for about three hundred and fifty dollars and that’s what somebody has done.” I glanced at the winding roadway beside us. “And then they’ve placed them on this road for you and me to find.” I looked back at her. “We have a very clear objective here, Rosey, and that’s finding out who is doing this and why—and that, not all the burning of incense, chanting, and magic words in the world, is going to accomplish it.”

“Just another day on the job, huh?”

I nodded, returned the coin to my pocket, and glanced around at the two-thousand-foot cliffs. My eyes were drawn to the thick belt of the Milky Way galaxy and the dense stream of stars that ran from one end of the canyon to the other, still visible even with the falling
flurries—the Hanging Road, as the Cheyenne and Crow called it, the path the owls used to take messages back and forth between the land of the living and the Camp of the Dead.

“You’re wrong about one thing, though.”

I looked down at her. “What’s that?”

She glanced at the road, but then her attention turned south, toward the northern entrance of the north tunnel. “The silver dollars may be warnings of impending disasters, but we have the power to avert them.”

“Excuse me?”

“At least you do. You could’ve been hit by the car, but the coin saved you, and I could’ve drowned, but you saved me. So that means that the silver dollars and therefore the highwayman don’t have absolute sway.”

I thought about it. “Yep, but then again if this dollar saved me and I saved you, then maybe they do.” Draping an arm over her shoulders, I turned her around, steering her toward the Indian ceremony. “C’mon, let’s go listen to some chanting and magical words.”

She reached up and gripped my arm as we approached the promontory that stretched out past the guardrail. “Will there be incense?” Her voice carried a false enthusiasm. “You said there would be incense.”

I sighed. “There’s always incense, cedar, or sage. You want to put money on it?”

“I’ll bet you a dollar.”

I laughed and hugged her in a little. “I bet you will.”

 • • • 

“Nenéé-’ ne-nihiióó.” Kimama raised her arms and looked out over the roiling water of the Wind River, raising her face to the gentle snowflakes and crying out in a strange rhythm that was at once startling and melodic. “Tei’yoonóh’-o’ hootn-I’-iiióó-i’.”

There wasn’t much room out on the point where she’d decided to have the ceremony because of the small fire, so the rest of us were relegated to watching her from behind. Sam Little Soldier was the closest, along with Henry, who stood holding the ubiquitous pottery bowl, the sweet-grass bundles, and the juniper or big cedar, a third in a duel with ghosts.

“Noh heetéetoo-no.”

The Bear had discussed the ceremony with me, explaining that it wasn’t an exorcism but more of a plea that the spirit should find peace in this world and finally be allowed to proceed to the next. “Noncombative” was the way the Cheyenne Nation had described it. He had
laughed at this point and posited the thought that trying to get the spirits of the departed to do what we wanted was a low-sum game in that they had lost everything, and what in the world did we have to offer in exchange?

“Ci’céésé nenéé-né-nihiioo.”

I’d repeated the quote from Kimama about the dead wanting only what the living wanted—understanding. He’d made a face and asked if all I really wanted in life was to be understood, and I’d told him that a comfortable pair of boots was nice.

“Niicííhoh-o nonohkú-nihiit-ówoo.”

“I’m glad there’s incense.”

I glanced down at Rosey and was happy to see that some of her old energy had returned. “I’m glad the AIRFA was passed, or we would all have been arrested.”

Leaning into me, she whispered. “The what?”

“American Indian Religious Freedom Act—it was established to allow the Native peoples the right to preserve their religious and cultural practices. It allows them access to sacred sites and the freedom to worship through ceremony with possession of objects considered sacred.”

“Hihcébe niiéi’-noh’eeséihi-n biikóó.”

“Ancient history.”

“1978.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. Talk about an infringement on your religious freedoms, huh?”

“Cih-tokoohob-éi’ee.”

Rosey focused on the woman presiding over the ceremony. “She looks familiar to me.”

“You stop her?”

She took a moment. “I don’t think so, but maybe that’s it.”

“Cih-’ówouunon-in.”

“Kimama had some interesting things to say this afternoon; evidently, she was with Bobby Womack the evening he was killed.”

Rosey turned to look at me. “Really?”

“She was having an affair with him.”

“Bobby wasn’t married.”

“No, but she was.”

“Cese’éihii técénéniihenéihii niihii-een.”

“She would drive up into the canyon at night to spend time with him in some crappy station wagon she drove.” I noticed a peculiar look on Rosey’s face. “Those were her words. Something wrong?”

Her brow twisted. She saw me studying her and
laughed lightly. “It’s nothing. I’m just getting sentimental about my mother lately. “My father died a number of years ago, but my mother’s health is starting to fail.”

“Nookóox noh neixóó! Cih-eeh’étii-’!”

“She nearby?”

“Not really. She’s in Cheyenne—she’s in a home. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice place, but I don’t get enough opportunities to get there and visit her the way I should. I’d move her, but she’s been there for seven years and I don’t want to upset her by taking her to a new place.”

“Heeyoocéi’oo-’ hoowuóów.”

“It’s difficult.”

“Yeah.”

We watched as Henry passed the bowl, the sweet-grass braids, and the big cedar to Kimama, and she lowered the offerings into the small fire, catching the ends and allowing them to burn before twisting them partially out in the pottery. She held the bowl in her left hand, scooping the wisps of smoke like captured spirits and rolling them over her head and arms; then she switched the bowl to her other hand and repeated the procedure. “Beneesooo-’ hiine’etiit, henihihc-owooyeiti-eenee.”

I stepped a little away from the others, and my eyes played to the right. I half turned toward the road in order to look back at the opening of the northernmost tunnel. Shadow had engulfed the wall of granite that scooped out and faced north, but I could still make out the utter darkness of the tunnel itself.

It was like an opening to another place, and I guess I half expected to see the ghostly apparition of Bobby Womack looking back at me from the abyss. I didn’t see him, and if Kimama and her magic words that floated up to meet the flurries had their way, I never would.

I was a little sad, because as people go, Bobby Womack had never done anyone real harm—his spirit had warned of disaster but had never caused it. If the stories of the canyon were true, he’d helped people all these years and never harmed a soul. If there was a kernel of possibility in all this, where was it I would be spending eternity? Guarding the denizens of Absaroka County—a ghost sheriff?

“Heetih-nohkú-ni’-cebísee-t heet-íeti-’.”

They were wrapping up the ceremony, and I pulled out my pocket watch to check the time—it was eleven o’clock. Rosey and I strolled back toward the parked vehicles and stopped at her cruiser as the group at large
approached. Henry and Sam assisted Kimama as she stepped over the guardrail but then released her as she dismissed the two of them with a wave of both hands.

Rosey was leaning in the open door of her vehicle, I’m sure aware of the time.

Kimama moved toward Sam’s car but stopped a little away from it to berate me. “You talked too much during the ceremony, Bucket.”

I was unaware that she could hear me but apologetic just the same. “Sorry.”

“You should have respect.”

“I do, and I’m sorry.” I gestured toward Rosey. “We just had a few things we needed to discuss.”

She glanced at the trooper and then back to me. “Next time, do not do it while I am working.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She started to walk past Rosey but took a moment to reach out and grip her arm. “And you, Hookuuhulu’, you should know better.” She looked straight at her for another moment and then continued on as Rosey watched after her.

She looked back at me with a quizzical expression mixed with shock. “What did she just call me?”

“It sounded like
Hookuuhulu’
?”

“Little mouse.” We both turned to see Sam Little Soldier stepping up beside us with Henry. “Hookuuhulu,
’
it is Arapaho for ‘Little Mouse,’ an endearment that everyone uses for children and grandchildren.”

Rosey swallowed and shook her head, looking back at the woman as she climbed in Sam’s ancient Toyopet Crown. “My mother, she said there was a nanny who used to call me ‘Little Mouse.’”

“Maybe she was Arapaho.” Sam Little Soldier passed us and continued toward the vintage Toyota, probably afraid the medicine woman would hot-wire it. “But in case you haven’t noticed, Kimama has a nickname for everyone.”

“I noticed.” I moved up beside Rosey as the Bear joined us. “Speaking of, where’s Joey these days?”

“He’s not a big one for ceremonies.”

I pointed toward Kimama. “I don’t suppose she’s got a nickname herself?”

He opened the driver’s-side door and spoke, just before wedging inside to escape the falling snow, “Nope, just ‘Kimama.’”

As he started the rattletrap of a car and shuddered his way past us in a loop toward the road with his window down, I yelled, “And what does that mean?”

He turned his head toward the sha-woman as she stuffed things into her oversized purse and then stuck his big head out the window one last time to shout at us as they drove by leaving melted tracks in the gravel. “It’s Shoshone—it means Butterfly.”