provoked more exploration, but in keeping with the Battlement’s inhospitality, all of the seventeen-thousand-foot wells had come up empty.
Secretly, I was glad. I still had hopes that there might be a few dinosaurs up there lingering about.
Just outside of town, I pulled the rental car to a stop at the railroad crossing and watched a fully loaded Burlington Northern amp; Santa Fe coal train rumble over the dark, shiny rails that gleamed like quicksilver in the twilight. My mind matched the pace of the train, each thought snagging the next and hauling it in tow.
I had explained to Tom Groneberg and his son, Carter, that we were just out for a ride and had taken the old ranch road by habit. He’d asked if I’d gotten this month’s check, and I assured him that I had. He said that he and his wife, Jennifer, had purchased the property to the west and still had hopes of having a place of their own someday. I assured them that my place was theirs as long as they liked.
I glanced back up the hill toward the cemetery and thought about two of the graves that were up there.
I reached over and scratched Dog’s ears as the last railcar passed and snaked its way in a gradual arc along Clear Creek south toward the Bighorn Mountains. “Thomas Wolfe says you can’t go home again.” He watched me with his big, soulful eyes and then glanced back down the gravel road to the hills beyond, perhaps looking for his own long-dead ancestors.
There was a great deal of bustle in The AR in anticipation of the big fight, and I was hoping that Juana would be working so I could get Dog and me some dinner. It was as she’d said, and Pat had rehired her; then, after giving her all the work, he had gone home to take a nap before this evening’s festivities. She was loading auxiliary coolers behind the bar, and there were sixteen more cases to carry in from the porch. I volunteered to stock the beer if she would grill up a few hamburgers for us.
The food was ready by the time I finished setting up the coolers, and she even allowed Dog to come in and sit at the end of the bar. She broke up his two hamburgers and started to carefully feed them to him. I guess her opinion of the species was softening. “He likes me.”
I ate my one cheeseburger and suspected that it might’ve been a little larger than The AR usually served. “So, you called the cops last night?”
She fed another bite to Dog, and I could tell she was surprised at how gentle he was. “Yeah, even as an illegal I figured that was too much gunfire to not call in. Anyway, I was incognito.” She glanced at me. “How come they arrested you?”
I swallowed and took a sip of my iced tea. “They didn’t.”
“Why’d they put you in the cruiser?”
I plucked a fry that had fallen from my plate onto the surface of the bar, dragged it through my puddle of ketchup, and gave it to Dog-waste not, want not. “They just said they wanted to go over a few things.”
She gestured a graceful chin toward the now-boarded-up window. “Like who blew out the front of the bar?”
I nodded. “Things like that.”
“Pat’s got a pretty wicked scuff on his chin, and he says his jaw isn’t working so hot.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” She continued to watch me as I ate. “He says that he was closing up and that somebody came in the back and surprised him.”
I turned to look at her as she fed Dog another bite. “Somebody was breaking in the back while somebody was shooting up the front?”
“That’s what he said.” She shrugged with one shoulder and again with just a bit of attitude. “What do you think happened?”
I had to smile at her two-year, textbook procedure. “I really wouldn’t know.”
“I found about fourteen nine-millimeter casings scattered all over the floor, and a twenty-gauge shell behind the bar with wadding out on the porch.”
I ate a fry. “Really?”
“Yeah.” She fed the last of the burger to Dog and wiped her hands on a dishtowel hanging from her back jeans pocket. “You wanna know what I think?”
“Sure.”
“I think there were three people involved. I think Pat and somebody else were meeting here in the bar, and then somebody came in the back. I think whoever it was that came in surprised Pat, hit him with his own gun, and then went toward the front.” Her face grew flushed, and I could tell she was very excited about giving me her account of the story. “Then, whoever was out here didn’t really want to see whoever it was that took Pat out and started shooting at them.”
I nodded. “Took Pat out?”
Her smile bunched to one side as she considered me. “It’s cop-talk. Don’t you ever go to the movies?”
“Not since 1974. It was a double feature-Ulzana’s Raid and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.”
She swatted my words away. “Evidently, nobody got shot since there isn’t any blood.”
“Evidently.”
She folded her arms and looked at me. “There’s just one thing I can’t figure out, and that’s why the guy with the shotgun didn’t just shoot the guy in the pickup truck?”
I took a sip of my tea and sat there watching her in the silence. “And what pickup truck was that?”
It was silent some more. “I didn’t tell you about the red Dodge pickup truck?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Oh.” She reached down and petted Dog’s head. “After I called 911, I ran down the road by the church and saw a truck back away from the bar and take off down Wild Horse Road.” As an afterthought, she added. “It didn’t have any plates.”
“Uh huh.”
She leaned in on the bar, conspiratorially, and stole a fry. She chewed and watched me. “Bill Nolan’s got a truck like that.” She made a face and shook her head. “But he’s not the one you’re looking for.”
“Oh?”
“No, he might be a law bender, but he’s not a lawbreaker.”
I sighed and finished my tea. “I wasn’t aware that I was looking for anybody.”
She leaned in even closer, and her voice was barely a whisper. “Okay, but a lawyer from Philadelphia by the name of Cady Longmire called looking for her father, the sheriff of Absaroka County, and described a guy who sounded an awful lot like you.” She stole the last fry and looked very satisfied with herself. “I told her that I was working for you, and I could deliver a message.” She put her elbows on the bar and looked to the right and to the left for dramatic effect, then at me directly. “I told her you were undercover.”
I stared at her. “What was the message?”
“She said that some guy named Michael asked her to marry him.”
9
October 28, 8:45 P.M.
“How am I supposed to know you’re undercover; you’re never undercover!”
Cady emphasized the word like I was playing spy.
Ruby, unaware that my activities in Absalom were of a covert nature, had given my daughter the number of the motel office, which was also the one for The AR. Luckily, Juana had been the one who had answered. “It’s okay. I trust the person who got the phone.”
“The man or the young woman?”
I took a breath. “Who answered the phone when you called?”
“Some guy, sounded like a real piece of work. Funny name, like something you’d hear in a bad television show.”
“Cliff Cly?”
“That’s it.”
