from the convict in the Thiokol, which, by the way, is when I had him call Shade-then he called me.”
“Get the fuck outta here.”
“Yep, we had a wide-ranging confab about conversing with dead people.” She didn’t laugh. “He’s the only one left, and he’s got two hostages, Pfaff and the Ameri-Trans driver.”
She readjusted the phone in her ear. “Walt, he’s going to kill them.”
“Not if he thinks they’re the only thing that’s keeping him alive.”
“He’s got the marshal’s. 223 for that.”
Indeed. “Speaking of, where the heck is my backup?”
“Bear was with Joe Iron Cloud and Tommy Wayman’s just above. Hey, were there any trees across the road when you went up West Tensleep?”
“No.”
“Well, lucky for you Wayman’s an old-school Wyoming sheriff and keeps a Husqvarna 42-inch chain saw in his truck. He said the last time he saw Henry and Joe they were leaping over the fallen trees in the finest James Fenimore Cooper tradition and were headed out at a high rate of speed.” I thought about how the odds were evening. “Tommy said there was no way the Bear and the Cloud were going to keep up that pace.” She laughed. “I asked him if he wanted to bet.”
“What’d he say?”
“Not now, not ever.” It was my turn to laugh as she continued attempting to bolster my mood. “Why don’t you wait; you’ve got some pretty intense Indian backup coming-both the Arapaho and Cheyenne nations.”
“Yep, the mountains are full of them.”
There was another pause. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Virgil’s up here, too.”
“The jolly red giant?”
“Ho, ho, ho.”
“That’s not good. Does he know that evil scumbag is the one who murdered his grandson?”
I stared at the trail as if approaching a cliff, and maybe I was. “That’s how it stands?”
“Yeah.” I stood still and could hear her lodging the phone against her neck, which, as I recall, was a very nice place to be. “It would appear that Virgil’s son, Eli, had a child out of wedlock-the boy, Owen White Buffalo. There are no reports of a missing child, because there are no records of him, period. We’re attempting to find the mother, but so far-nothing.”
“Okay.”
She could read the tone of my voice. “Are you getting ready to hang up on me?”
“I’d better-I’ve got to catch up.”
She gave me Joe Iron Cloud’s satellite number. “Give them a call to see where they are and what the weather is doing before you do anything stupid, all right?”
“Roger that, nothing stupid.” I would dial it into the phone after we hung up. “Gotta go.”
“And call me before you do anything stupid.”
“Anything stupid, my SOP. 10-4.”
She hung up. I turned the device off and tucked it back inside my coat. Annoying Vic was always the simplest way to get her off the phone and, all in all, it was usually pretty easy.
I started out again, looking up the valley at the west ridge of Bomber Mountain, so named because in 1943 an unfortunate B-17 had abruptly come to rest there with all crewmen on board.
I know how they must’ve felt.
So it was quasiofficial that it was Virgil’s grandson. Could he know, and how could all of these horrible coincidences have fallen in place the way that they had?
I suddenly remembered Joe Iron Cloud’s cell number, so I pulled out the phone and dialed. Even if he didn’t answer, the number would be recorded. As expected, it connected me to an answering service-the Arapaho had even taken the time to record a message. His halting voice made me smile, and I could just see those two very tough men racing their way up West Tensleep Trail; God help anything that got in their way.
“Hey, hey, this is Sheriff Joe Iron Cloud. I’m unable to answer your call right now, but if you’ll leave a message I’ll get right back to you. Ye-ta-hey.”
I waited for the beep and then spoke. “Joe, this is Walt Longmire, president of the Give America Back to Americans movement, and I was wondering if you’d help the three-hundred million of us pack? Give me a call.”
I closed the phone and tucked it away.
“That should get their attention.”
Keeping an eye on the cloud mass that seemed to be leaning on me, I worked my way around the west side of the lake. If I was lucky, I’d get them pinned in the open meadow adjacent to the big peaks, and I would have cover at the ridge of Mistymoon Lake. Raynaud Shade would have the choice of either giving it all up or taking a chance on the delivery of a high-powered, high-mortality package at long distance.
I began to climb to the next level that would lead to Lake Marion and started feeling the burn in my legs, mostly the tops of my thighs. I was doing pretty well with my lungs, but my legs were another matter, and after twenty minutes more I was starting to resent the supplies in Omar’s pack-the very supplies that, if everything went bad, were going to be responsible for keeping me alive. I trudged on, every once in a while lifting my face to scan the ridge where they’d disappeared.
When it happened, it hit like a wall. The second front of the storm came in. I knew it was just the barometric pressure, but it still felt like I was being inhaled by that giant blue devil on the cover of Saizarbitoria’s book. The exhaling riptide came quickly, and I watched it bend the trees like a sweeping claw as it topped the extended northern backbone of Bald Ridge.
It was like the winter had shattered, and the shards were now blowing in my face, small bits of the last season, blasted and blown.
My eyelids were starting to freeze, and I remembered the amber-tinted goggles that were hanging around my throat. I fumbled to pull them up as I climbed and concentrated on just putting one foot in front of the other as I pushed up the last part of the hillside trail where I’d last seen the three. Every time I looked away from my boots I’d stumble and veer from the path, so I tried to focus on their tracks. It was only when I got to the point where Shade had called me that I almost stumbled over the huge man in the grizzly bear hide. He was sitting on a boulder with the lance balanced between his knees, his back to the storm, his moccasined feet stretched out onto the path.
His booming voice carried above the keening wind that bucked me sideways as I stood above him.
“He left this for you.”
In the surrealistic amber hue of the blowing snow, the giant sat holding a small human femur in his gigantic hands.
11
“You know, when the Iichihkbaahile formed people, we used to have ears at the back of our heads so that we could hear if anything was sneaking up from behind.”
I’d been listening to Virgil’s galloping monologue for about ten minutes now. “Does that include white people?”
“I suppose. Even with all your faults, you’re people too, right?”
“Right.” I watched through the bizarre view afforded by my goggles as the massive grizzly skin swayed along the trail, the hind claws dragging across the snow as if the White Buffalo was packing a bear in a fireman’s carry.
“The reason they got moved to the sides was because while he was working, us people kept moving our heads back and forth to see what the Iichihkbaahile was doing.” He paused on the trail for a second, and I almost ran into him. “Doesn’t that sound like something white people would do?”
“Uh huh.”
