FBI had strung between the trees and which we carefully pulled down and stepped over.
The Bear stopped. “This is illegal.”
I looked at him as Dog went underneath. “I’m sorry, is this your first time?”
“I have always tried to lead a lawful life.”
I cleared my throat and petted Dog. “Thank goodness; I’d hate to have seen what it would’ve been like if you hadn’t shown a modicum of restraint.”
He watched where he was placing his moccasins. “Virtue being my nature.”
I thought about the talking bear. “I thought asking questions was your nature.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” I began looking around in a vague kind of way as he watched.
“What, exactly, are we looking for?”
“Something shiny.”
He glanced up at the calypso-blue sky and breathed in deeply. “Can you be a little more specific?”
“You’re going to laugh.”
“I will not.”
I nodded as I began searching the surrounding ground with Dog following me. “You will.”
He raised a hand in solemn oath. “Indian Scout’s honor.”
“I happen to know you were never a Scout.”
“Perhaps, but I have been an Indian my entire life-with the possible exception of a brief period in 1969.”
“And what were you then?”
His head tilted, and he looked a great deal like the bear in my imagination. “I am still not sure.”
I continued to look around at the edge of the cliff. “It was something the crow said in my dream.”
“Vision.”
“And something she was wearing.”
He looked at me. “Wearing?”
“Yep.”
He glanced around. “I am not sure I want to hear this part.”
“It was a bracelet; one of those medical ones.”
He paused for a moment. “On a crow.”
“You said you wouldn’t laugh.”
He smiled instead. “Maybe the crow had a condition.”
I glanced at him with a hard look, for all the good it was going to do, as he began looking in the branches. “Whooping cough; might have caught it from a crane.”
“If you remember, I saw something reflecting up here from down below, and for some reason I’ve got it in my head that it’s a bracelet.” I stared at his Adam’s apple. “Do you mind telling me why it is you’re looking in the trees?”
He spoke in a pedantic tone. “Because that is where crows live. They are drawn by shiny objects; if there was something up here, either on someone or left behind, the first thing a crow would do when it found it is take it to its nest.” He lowered his face. “Now, if you had had a vision of talking prairie dogs…”
I joined him in studying the trees, and even Dog looked up. “All right.”
He pointed skyward like the ghost of Christmas future, and his hand, tanned and powerful, extended from the rolled-at-the-cuff chambray shirt he wore. I followed his finger and rested my eyes on a twisted mass of branches and thick, seed-head grasses deep in one of the conifers.
“There.”
I glanced down from the cliff to check the angle. “Gotta be it.” I looked at the tree, which was a little to our right and almost at the edge. I indicated the lowest limb. “I don’t suppose you’d like to…?”
He glanced over the precipice. “Not really.”
I looked up and sighed. “I already climbed one today, and that didn’t end well; besides, I have to keep an eye on Dog.” I placed a thumb through the beast’s collar, just to emphasize my point.
He watched me for a moment more and then sauntered over to the trunk, and it was as if he levitated himself onto the thing. I watched as he effortlessly made his way up, his weight causing the pine to shudder but not crack.
He was almost to the nest when a large and very irate crow banked with the thermals rising at the face of the cliff and stalled for a moment before lighting about ten feet above his head.
“You’ve got company.”
He leaned out and glanced up at the crow, which had begun screaming down at him.
I looked over the edge. “I think she might have young ones in that nest.”
“Would you like to talk to her? You evidently have a knack.”
“Very funny.” I kept hold of Dog. “Don’t let her knock you off.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
He started up again, and the crow flapped her wings and flew over me to circle the adjacent treetop. She planted herself in the pine next door and began cawing at Henry with a renewed ferocity.
He was just underneath the nest when three small heads appeared and, thinking the dinner bell must’ve rung, began calling back to their mother. “It is getting crowded up here.”
“I think you should look on the side toward the cliff.”
He shifted his position and went up a few more branches, the limbs getting closer and causing him more difficulty. “Your concern for my welfare is very touching.” He was studying the bottom of the nest, and I saw him draw back. He smiled, shook his head, and pulled something from the bottom of the wad of intertwined material. He leaned out from the main trunk, holding on with only one hand, and tossed something through the air.
It shone and caught the rays of the sun as I held out a hand, barely capturing it before it hit the edge of the rock. I breathed a sigh of relief, stepped forward, and released Dog. “I wish you hadn’t done that.”
He was carefully descending, keeping time to the cacophony of crows but careful not to upset the nest anymore than he had to. “You always catch things.”
I turned the item over in my hands-it was just like the one in my dream.
“Visions, they never lie.” He was standing next to me now, examining the thin, stainless steel bracelet that lay in my palm.
The medications that were engraved across the broader section of the band were diazepam, tizanidine, baclofen, amitriptyline, oxybutynin, dantrolene, and pregabalin. “You ever hear of any of these?”
“Only diazepam; otherwise, no.”
“Me neither.” I flipped the thing over, and we both stared at the red caduceus insignia: two snakes intertwined. This was different from the one used by the American Medical Association, which had only one snake.
I held it out to Henry, who read my thoughts. “Caduceus; two winged snakes.”
“Old.”
“Yes, very.”
I thought about it. “When did they stop using two snakes?”
“I am not sure.”
“Well, I know a place where we can find out some answers to these questions.” I glanced back into the tree where the mother crow was checking and tending to her still-squawking brood, and dropped the bracelet in my shirt pocket. “I must’ve seen it when we were up here and just forgot about it.”
The Cheyenne Nation smiled as I held the FBI tape for him to step over. “Yes, that must have been it.”
Rezdawg stalled out three times before we coasted into the Bear’s driveway alongside Lola and traded the ugliest truck on the high plains for the Thunderbird, a more reliable and suitable ride for the trip to Billings.
The health center was on the way, and it was a quick drive, so we stopped there first; Lolo Long’s cruiser was parked in front.
When we got inside, Henry stopped to look at Lolo, who, leaning with her elbows on the counter, was providing a remarkable, back-lit silhouette in the diffused light of the large window at the end of the hall. With one booted toe balancing on the tiled floor and the arched back I was once again reminded of just how breath-pausingly beautiful the tall woman was.
