face as I hesitated. “C’mon, let’s go.” He reached back and ruffled Dog’s ears as the barrel of the Winchester leaned over and casually pointed at my head. “What’s your dog’s name?”
“Dog.”
He looked at me, caught my eye on the rifle, and pulled it back upright. “That’s convenient.”
I turned the key, watched the coil indicator light up and turn off, and started the big diesel. For the first time in a very long time, I regretted having to fasten my seat belt.
He motioned me through the double doors, down the ranch road, and onto the Powder River Road. We were headed north and drove silently through town past the old mill. They were nailing masonite over the front window of the bar as we passed. Bill didn’t wave, upholding the it’s-not-a-friendly-town motto, and we continued up the grade to where some WYDOT trucks were parked at the condemned bridge.
He did wave at the few workers who paused to look at the general prosperity that the new truck signaled as we drove across the tire-worn smooth planks. He motioned for me to stop at the dirt lot at the other side, and I reached for the key. “No, leave it running. I just want to ask a quick question.” He rolled down the window and yelled to a redheaded and mustached man who stood at the back of the Range Co-op trailer. “Hey.”
The man turned and walked over. He was another rail-thin individual and looked a little incongruous wearing the massive electrical tool belt at his waist and the broad-brimmed black cowboy hat on his head. I recognized him as Steve Miller, the man who had hooked up the phone at my cabin and whose daughter, Jessie, had deep-sixed a Datsun pickup in an irrigation ditch about a year ago.
I was wondering how to keep my cover as the telephone man spotted me and started to speak, but Bill cut him off. “Hey, Steve, how long are you guys gonna leave that emergency phone over on the pole?”
Steve nodded at me for just a second and then glanced over his shoulder at the blue plastic receiver still connected to the junction box. “Not long; I was just using it until they remove the bridge.”
Nolan reached out and grasped the lean man’s elbow. “Do me a favor and leave it up there till after the weekend? I’m cut off back at the house, and that thing’s pretty handy.”
Steve glanced at me again, and I diverted my gaze in hopes that he wouldn’t say my name. “Well, you’re not supposed to be using it, Bill.” He looked my way again. “It’s against the law.”
I assumed that was for my sake.
“I ain’t usin’ it for long distance. I just need you to leave it over the weekend, all right? In case of emergency.” Without waiting for a response, he hit the button and the tinted window rolled up.
Steve stepped back. I gave him a brief nod as I slipped the Dodge in gear and pulled out.
Bill threw an arm over the seat and looked past Dog to see if the telephone man was making any move to go toward the utility phone on the pole. From the rearview, I could see him watching us, but then he turned and went back to the trailer.
Nolan looked straight ahead. “They’re gonna tear it down.”
I glanced at him. “The bridge?”
“They shouldn’t rebuild it; they should just leave that town over there, stranded.”
It was almost the exact same thing that Mike Niall had said. “Why is that?”
He took a stiff draught of rye and licked his lips. “S’cursed.” He settled his back against the seat and gestured with the bottle toward the bow in the river behind us. “You know, the town used to be on that side of the river.”
I faked ignorance. “Really?”
“Yep.” He fiddled with the foresight on the. 30–30 and collected his history. “Camp Bettens was out here somewhere, about five miles east of Absalom-used to be called Suggs, about a century ago.” He paused again. “You look like you were in the military. Were you?”
I continued to study the road. “Was.”
He sniffed and nodded. “You got the look.”
“What look is that?”
He smiled to himself. “A precision of movement, and you don’t seem to miss much.” He cleared his throat. “There was a night back in 1892, when these two buffalo soldiers wandered into the saloon at Suggs and were met with more than a few racial slurs.” He shook his head and laughed, contemplating the liquor bottle. “Can you imagine that bunch of bar-flies, whores, and outlaws suddenly considering their watering hole as exclusive?” He laughed again. “Well, these ol’ boys were 10th Cavalry, companies G and H, and had just come back from Cuba and the Philippines-and let me tell you, they were not unserious individuals.”
“Hershel Vanskike has an old Henry rifle from-”
“Do you believe that ol’ coot has that thing hanging in a saddle scabbard out there in a sheep wagon on Barton Road?”
“He says it’s his fortune, and that he’s going to retire on it.”
The rancher nodded. “If somebody doesn’t run off with it first.”
We crossed Highway 14/16, which was the main paved road, and since Bill made no move to indicate another direction, I continued north on the Powder River Road. I navigated a long straightaway where the gravel changed from gray to shale-red and glanced up to see a sign that read YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE NORTHERN CHEYENNE RESERVATION. There were stunted juniper bushes and mountain mahogany, some stretching into miniature trees but most just shrubs, and strong embankments of rock jutting from the valley that the Powder River had carved. “I take it those buffalo soldiers quietly departed, choosing to take their custom to another and more liberal establishment?”
“Well, sorta.” He took another but smaller sip-I guess he was trying to slow his intake. “They escaped a shoot-out but got sniped at all the way back to Camp Bettens. The next night, twenty of the troops got together and rode back into Suggs and set up a standing and kneeling position on the main street and threw one massive volley into the saloon.”
I glanced over and watched as the Winchester continued to bounce between his knees. “I bet that livened things up.”
He nodded and closed his legs together to support the rifle as I wound my way along the cliffs at the riverbank. We were climbing. “As you might imagine, there was a considerable amount of return fire, but the only person in the bar who was hurt was the bartender, who was hit in the arm, and he got a shot off that killed one of the troopers. The squad from the 10th departed, leaving one of their dead in the street, and the locals sniped at ’em again all the way back to their post. There was a court-martial, and the whole batch of ’em got reassigned in short order to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.”
I glanced back at Dog in the rearview mirror, and even he was watching the man with the rifle. “End of story?”
“Not exactly.” He glanced out the side window at the river, still flowing a tired, watery chocolate milk. “Two months later, one ’a them buffalo soldiers came back, walked in that saloon, and raised up the barrel of a big Colt Walker. 44 and shot that same bartender in the left eye.”
“I take it he didn’t survive that one?”
“Nope.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly with a belch. “They put together a posse and went after the trooper, but they never found him. Some people say he mingled on the reservation here, but others say he got help from a local rancher and got away.”
“Interesting.”
He turned in the big, leather seat and looked at me with more consideration than he had so far. “It is, isn’t it?” He continued staring at the side of my face, and I registered where his hands were, one idly on the barrel of the rifle, the other holding the bottle. “There’s history all over these hills-some of it people know, some of it they don’t.” He didn’t move. “I wonder about that.”
“About what?”
“About history, when it dies.” He leaned back into the seat but still regarded me. “Kind of like the tree that falls in the forest when nobody’s around? I mean, if nobody remembers the history, did it still happen?”
I studied the road ahead, looking like a red ribbon stretched through an extended bolt of khaki cloth, and thought about the Indian notion of the black road and the red road. According to Native spirituality, the black road was one of selfishness and trouble, while the red road was one of balance and peace.
I smiled and shook my head as I noticed a vehicle parked at the end of the long stretch, and a tall, dark man leaning against the truck bed with his face turned upward like a sunflower.
