he was what Lucian would have turned out to be if the old sheriff hadn’t lived in such interesting times. A couple of years in a Japanese prison camp might be just what Turk needed, but I didn’t have a bridge over the river Kwai for him to build, so we had to settle for Powder Junction. “Go out to the Esper place and relieve Henry Standing Bear. Tell him to come back to the office.” He didn’t say anything, just gingerly made his way out the door.
When I turned around, Ruby had her arms folded. “I suppose that’s as close as we’re going to get to an apology?”
“I didn’t fire him.” She rolled her eyes. “Can you get me the Ferg, please?” I gave her a dirty look of my own. “Then if you would be so kind as to try and get Jim Keller on the phone?” This got another questioning look. “Oh, and could you call the Yellowstone County Jail and see if they have frequent lodger Artie Small Song?”
While she attempted to raise Unit Three, I walked over to the window and looked back up the valley. The clouds were just beginning to creep over the lower peaks, and it didn’t look good. We had an opening in the weather but, by my calculations, it was only good for about the next five hours. I needed help-as near as I could figure, about seven million dollars’ worth.
“I’ve got him.”
I turned back and took the mic. “Ferg, where are you?”
Static. “Up from the Hunter Corrals.”
“Turn around.”
There was a long pause. “What?”
“I think he’s at Lost Twin.” I shrugged for my own amusement and Ruby’s. “Appropriately enough.”
A much longer pause. “We’ll never make it in there before dark, and with this weather coming in…”
I keyed the mic and held it. “Yep, I know.” I looked over at Ruby. “I’m gonna get us some help. I’ll call you back. All I need you to do is get to the parking lot at West Tensleep.”
Static. “Just the parking lot?”
Static again. “Hey, Ferg?”
“Yeah?”
“Anybody who’s there… hold ’em.” I handed the mic back to Ruby, loving it when she didn’t know what I was up to. “Would you add Omar to the phone list?”
“What in heaven’s name for?”
I waited a moment, then batted my eyelashes and stated the obvious, “I need to talk to him.” I crossed the room and took out my keys and hung them on the rack, just in case anybody needed to move the truck. She shook her head and dialed as I made my way back to my office. I sat at my desk and made mental preparations for the coming conversations and for the plan that was just starting to fully develop in my mind. I glanced over at the doorway and around the corner to the safe where we kept the guns. I knew what was in there and made a few calculations on what we would need-all long-range weapons. There were a couple of battered old Remington 700s and a Winchester Model 70 and, as near as I could remember, the Remingtons were. 30- 06s and the Winchester was a. 270. All good rifles, but I was thinking of the Weatherby Mark V. 308 that was lurking in the back. Omar donated it to the library raffle about five years ago, and I had embarrassingly won it, and it had rested in the back of the safe ever since. I wasn’t even sure if I had ammunition for the thing. I remembered the sign at the Marine Corps Scout Sniper School at Quantico that read THE AVERAGE ROUNDS EXPENDED PER KILL WITH THE M16 IS FIFTY THOUSAND. THE MARINE SNIPER AVERAGES 1.3 ROUNDS PER KILL. THE COST DIFFERENCE IS $2,300 VS. 27 CENTS. Shave and a haircut, two bits.
On a whim, I punched up Vonnie’s number and listened to her machine tell me she was unavailable at this time but to leave a message and she’d get back to me as soon as possible. When I hung up the phone, Ruby was at the door; it appeared I was on the road to being forgiven. “Yes, ma’am?”
“Mrs. Keller says Jim’s gone hunting with a friend in Nebraska. She also says that she’s bringing Bryan his lunch and a few things and wants to know how long we are intending on keeping him.”
“Oh, brother…” I placed my elbows on the desk and rested my chin on my combined fist.
“You’re going to wish you hadn’t stuck your hand in that hornet’s nest.”
I looked at the blinking red lights on my phone. “Do you think she was lying?”
She crossed her arms and covered her mouth, deep in thought. “It makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“Yep, it does.” She glanced down the hall toward the jail in an unconscious effort to conceal her thoughts. “When Henry gets here, tell him to go down to Dave’s and get some real winter gear, altitude stuff, and some Winchester. 308s.” She nodded absentmindedly and disappeared back toward her desk. “Is this Omar on line one?”
She called back down the hallway, “Line one,” then reappeared in the doorway. “By the way, Artie Small Song is in the Yellowstone County Jail and has been there since Saturday. They want to know if you want him; they say he eats like a horse.”
“Tell them it’s a wonderful offer, but no thanks.” She nodded and disappeared as I picked up the receiver and punched line one. “Omar?”
“Yes.” It wasn’t a happy yes.
I thought for a moment. “Are you aware of the term posse comitatus?”
“Yes.”
I listened to the silence on the line and then settled into the plan. “Do you still have that Neiman Marcus helicopter?”
11
“I do not think the last one of these I was in was like this.”
I looked around at the embossed, luxurious, Italian leather interior, but once again my attention was drawn to the swirling countryside as we ascended the east slope at over 160 miles an hour, a fact of which my stomach was acutely aware. “Don’t talk to me, I’m concentrating on not throwing up.”
“I did not know that they come with doors, and the little bud vases are a nice touch.”
“I’m going to make a point of puking on you first and into them second.”
Henry smiled and looked out the other window while balancing the Weatherby Mark V lightly between his powerful hands, completely oblivious to the speed and altitude. He had raided the small area of army surplus in Dave’s sale department near the back door of the sporting goods store and was wearing fingerless wool gloves; one of the old, reflective-green, M1-style jackets with the genuine acrylic fur lining; a pair of Carhartt overalls; and a new pair of Sorels. He looked like a disco Eskimo. “Did Omar really buy this helicopter at Neiman Marcus?”
I sighed and attempted to put a good seat on my internal organs. “It was in the divorce settlement with Myra.”
“So, she bought the helicopter at Neiman Marcus?”
I belched and placed a hand over my stomach. “He bought it for her when they were getting along. When they got divorced, he took it back.” He was silent for a few moments, but I knew it was too good to last.
“Where exactly is the helicopter department in Neiman Marcus?”
I dipped my head and rested it against the barrel of the Remington pump I carried. “Please shut up.”
He considered the rifle between his knees. “Did the Weatherby come from Nordstrom’s?”
The metal felt cool against my forehead as I listened to the whine of the superchargers on the big Bell engine as it fought to carry us through the thermals the cragged peaks below were creating. I thought about my plan. I had to keep reminding myself that nobody else had thought up this harebrained stuff and that I was responsible for my own misery, but we couldn’t have covered this amount of ground on foot. If we saw anything, if we saw George Esper, we would go down and snatch him up, dead or alive, and get out of there like a Neidless Markup bat out of hell. Just the thought of up and down made my stomach flip again.
He must have noticed me closing my eyes. “You want me to tell you about my first time?”
“Don’t tell me it’s Dena Many Camps.”
He smiled, playing with the adjustments on the rifle’s scope and then readjusting them back. “I remember the first time I rode in one of these things. We were doing a hot extraction out of Laos in ’68 with this NVA colonel we were taking down to the magic fishing village on the coast. We had lost about half our patrol and were flying
