figured it could be easily arranged. This was not the first time a white man in this part of the country had found himself in this particular situation. I must have pushed him farther than I had thought, because I could just make out the scratching of his shoes as they fought the shale bed at the side of the road.
Tell them Standing Bear is coming.
My head started feeling gorged with blood, whereas my legs began feeling as if they’d been left out overnight. To make things worse, my clammy sweatpants were now riding up the crack of my ass. I wondered if the Seventh Cavalry had had this problem as I ran for all I was worth, listening to the growing pat of his cushioned running shoes. I thought about turning to meet him, but the sound seemed to be coming from a distance yet, and I figured I’d play it out till the end.
The sun was shining on the driveway when I got there, and I was careful not to slip on the thawing frost as I cut the corner and headed into the final furlough. The receding wind was enough to flip the dried leaves up in salute as I passed, and I started thinking about making it: mistake. It didn’t take much, just a little nudge that forced my left foot in front of my right just before we got to the Big Bonanza irrigation channel. The results were cataclysmic as my already top-heavy momentum carried me into the only partly empty ditch.
By the time I got to the cabin, Henry was standing with two young men at the southeastern corner about ten feet from the front log wall. One of them was the young man with the strong features I had seen at the bar the other night. I walked past the ’69 half ton sitting in my drive and glanced at the hand-lettered writing on the door. Hopefully, Red Road Contracting’s carpentry skills were better than their sign painting ones.
“Well, if you do the porch at ten feet, then you can use dimensional twelves for the roof overhang.” He turned to look at me. “Run the porch all the way across the front.”
“Porch?” They were looking me over, but I guess they figured I was covered with mud every day.
“Yes, most people have areas outside their houses so that they can keep the majority of the outdoors outside.” Henry folded his arms and looked at me. “Charlie Small Horse, Danny Pretty on Top, this is Sheriff Walter Longmire.”
Pretty on Top was Crow, so it was a two-tribe deal. “How much is this going to cost?” I had to do this quickly; my pants were already starting to harden.
“I am glad you asked that question, because I like to be real up front with people on the cost of things. That way there isn’t any problem later on.” He looked down the front of the house and imagined the porch that would be the first step forward in home improvement I had taken in years. “About fifteen hundred in materials if you use rough-cut, not including the tin. Then labor.” Charlie Small Horse and I were going to get along.
After my shower, using soap as shampoo, I passed them on the way to the Bullet. They had already placed stakes and run string lines to give the general dimensions of the structure, and Charlie Small Horse was using a digging bar to break away the frozen topsoil. He paused to look up and smile as I carefully stepped over the bright green twine.
His head tilted a little as he looked at me. “You really a sheriff?”
I looked down at my uniform shirt and opened my coat to show him the badge. “Duly, at least until the next election.” I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “Mind if I ask you a question?”
He smiled. “Hey, you’re the sheriff.”
“I understand you had a little argument with Cody Pritchard the other day?”
He looked at the digging bar. “Who?”
I waited a second. “Cody Pritchard, the fella we found over near the Hudson Bridge Friday night?”
“Oh, him…”
“Yep, him. You had a little argument with him at the bar?”
“Yeah.”
“What was that about?”
He shifted his wide hands on the digging bar. “He didn’t like Indians.”
“How could you tell?”
He poked at the hole. “The usual. He sat there and gave me hard looks till he worked up his nerve.”
“He said something?”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
“The usual shit.”
“You say something?”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
He grinned with bad teeth. “The usual shit.”
It felt strange to have somebody working on my house. It felt strange just to have anybody there. I looked over at the little red Jeep and figured I’d give her a call later.
It was one of those beautiful, high-plains days, where the sky just blinks blue at the earth and you have to remind yourself to take it in. The second cuttings were all up and tarped, and the perfectly round shadows of the bales looked surreal stretching across the disc-turned fields toward Clear Creek like stubble fields at harvest home. I didn’t pass a single car on the way into Durant. It was a little before eight when I got to the office, and Ruby already had five Post-its plastered on the doorjamb of my office. I spotted them when I came through the front door. “It’s a five Post-it day already?”
“Vic’s been here.”
I sat on the corner of her desk. “I thought she wasn’t coming in today.”
“She’s not, but she dropped some stuff off for you.” She looked up, and her hand went to her mouth. “What happened to your face?”
I didn’t think the scratches were that bad, but there were a lot of tumbleweeds in the ditch. “It’s a long story. Turk head back for Powder Junction?”
“After he decided how he was going to arrange the furniture when he got to be sheriff next year.”
I rolled my eyes as I got off her desk, headed for my office, and snatched all the little yellow Post-its as I went in. This was the system she had devised to get me to do all the things I was supposed to do during the course of my workday. On the top of my desk was a Tyvek envelope from the Federal Bureau of Investigation via FedEx. It still gave me a cheap thrill to get stuff from the Bureau, kind of reassuring me that I was on epistolary terms with the big guys: my pen pal, Elliot Ness. Vic must’ve brought it in. She wasn’t as impressed by the federales; considered them a case of dumb-asses-with-degrees. I broke open the nylon-reinforced filament tape and pulled out the mummy-wrapped container as an envelope fell to my desk. It was from the General Chemical Analysis Division, file number 95 A-HQ 7 777 777. Hell, with all those sevens we were bound to get lucky. And we were. The FBI laboratory said the foreign chemical compound on the ballistics samples had been identified as Lubricant SPG or Lyman’s Black Powder Gold.
Son of a bitch, that narrowed the field. That meant that whoever shot Cody Pritchard had done it with a black-powder shotgun. That didn’t make sense, though. I wasn’t even sure if you could shoot solid slugs out of antique shotguns without having them blow up in your face. And why use an antique shotgun? As the ultimate in nostalgia, at least thirteen American firms produced black-powder muskets, rifles, pistols, and shotguns, including flintlock and percussion designs. Traditional muzzleloaders are occasionally used for hunting, but black-powder arms turn up more frequently at pioneer celebrations, traditional turkey shoots, and in the hands of Civil War reenactment groups. They come with the original drawbacks of slow reloading, inconvenient ammunition, and lots of smoke. On the other hand, as certified antiques, their sale and ownership is generally not regulated under current firearm legislation. Two sides of the coin and neither one any help. Who had antique shotguns in this part of the country? The answer to that came roaring back: everybody. Even I had an old double-barrel Parker that had belonged to my grandfather and an old Ithaca 10 gauge coach gun. Okay, so it didn’t narrow the field. I looked up and found Ruby leaning against the doorjamb. “Yep?”
“I just wanted to see your response.”
I held up the letter. “To this?”
She smiled. “Underneath that.”
I slid the envelopes aside and picked up a pair of what looked like sweatpants. In blue screen printing it said CHUGWATER ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT XXXXL. “Very funny.” Chugwater was a little town about two-thirds of the way down to Cheyenne and is known for its chili mix and Hoover’s Hut, a gas station/gift shop. I held the pants up
