As the Crow Flies

by Craig Johnson

  As the Crow Flies

  Walt Longmire [8]

  Johnson, Craig

  Penguin Group (2012)

  Tags: Walt Longmire

  Walt Longmirettt

  * * *

  * * *

  The Wyoming lawman returns after staking his claim on the New York Times bestseller list

  Embarking on his eighth adventure, Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire has a more important matter on his mind than cowboys and criminals. His daughter, Cady, is getting married to the brother of his undersheriff, Victoria Moretti. Walt and old friend Henry Standing Bear are the de facto wedding planners and fear Cady’s wrath when the wedding locale arrangements go up in smoke two weeks before the big event.

  The pair set out to find a new site for the nuptials on the Cheyenne Reservation, but their scouting expedition ends in horror as they witness a young Crow woman plummeting from Painted Warrior’s majestic cliffs. It’s not Walt’s turf, but the newly appointed tribal police chief and Iraqi war veteran, the beautiful Lolo Long, shanghais him into helping with the investigation. Walt is stretched thin as he mentors Lolo, attempts to catch the bad guys, and performs the role of father of the bride.

  AS THE CROW FLIES

  Also by Craig Johnson

  The Cold Dish

  Death Without Company

  Kindness Goes Unpunished

  Another Man’s Moccasins

  The Dark Horse

  Junkyard Dogs

  Hell Is Empty

  CRAIG JOHNSON

  AS THE

  CROW FLIES

  VIKING

  VIKING

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

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  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in 2012 by Viking Penguin,

  a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Craig Johnson, 2012

  All rights reserved

  Publisher’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Johnson, Craig——.

  As the crow flies / Craig Johnson.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-58355-5

  1. Longmire, Walt (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Sheriffs—Fiction. 3. Homicide

  investigation—Fiction. 4. Native Americans—Fiction. 5. Indian reservations—Fiction. 6. Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation (Mont.) 7. Montana—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3610.O325A8 2012

  813′.6—dc22 2011040961

  Printed in the United States of America

  Set in Dante MT Std

  Designed by Alissa Amell

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  ALWAYS LEARNING

  PEARSON

  For Marcus Red Thunder, who like Henry knows which way the wind blows

  The Indians survived our open intention of wiping them out, and since the tide turned they have even weathered our good intentions toward them, which can be much more deadly.

  —John Steinbeck, America and Americans

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  People always ask me if I catch grief about using the politically incorrect term “Indian” in my books rather than the currently acceptable phrase “Native American.” Most of my interaction has been with members of the Cheyenne and Crow tribes, who generally laugh when I try to use the more sensitive term. They ask me where, exactly, I was born—hence, my being a “Native American,” too. I’ve been fortunate enough to spend time over the years with these magnificent people, and I can honestly say that I enjoy their company above all others.

  Everybody knows that you never enter unknown territory without an Indian scout and in this go-round it was my good buddy Claude Rowland, with many trips to the Tribal Offices, Birney (both Red and White), and a few to the café in Ashland. Many thanks to Cheyenne Tribal Police Chief Algin Young for giving me an insider’s view of his extremely difficult but ultimately satisfying job on the Rez. Big thanks to Linnie Birdchief for her time behind a badge and being the inspiration for Lolo Long (especially the eyebrows). As always, a hardy thanks to Leroy Whiteman for the porch talks and keeping me straight on the red road. Thank you to my good friend Charles Little Old Man for the stories and to Rosalie Bird Woman for the education on Sweet Medicine. Thanks with all my heart to Lonnie Little Bird for the campfire (say hey to Melissa for me). Thanks to Tiger Scalpcane and Don “Porkchop” Shoulderblade for the prayers—they must be working.

  A debt of deep gratitude is owed to the Ashland Ranger District for the use of the Whitetail Cabin and their valiant attempt at trying to keep me politically correct. To the Jimtown Bar, a great place to have a conversation and a couple of cold ones—just don’t look for the beer can mountain that used to be there (even though I did my part in trying to rebuild it). Thanks to Eli Yoder and Yoder’s World Famous Boots just north of Ashland, Montana—I’m proudly wearing a pair!

  The usual ten little Indians get their fair share: Kathryn Court, Tara Singh, Maureen Donnelly, Ben Petrone, Gabrielle Gantz, Barbara Campo, Gail Hochman, Greer Shephard, John Coveny, Hunt Baldwin, Chris Donahue, Tiffany Ward, and Susan Fain (okay, so it’s thirteen).

  For the fall not winter, spring not summer, cool not cold that is my inspiration in all things, my wife Judy.

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  Epilogue

  1

  “I wanna know what Katrina Walks Nice did to get kicked out of a joint like this for sixty-one days.”

  I began questioning the makeup of the negotiation team I’d brought with me to convince the chief of the Northern Cheyenne tribe that he should allow my daughter to be married at Crazy Head Springs. “Don’t call the White Buffalo a joint; it’s the nerve center of the reservation.”

  My undersheriff, Victoria Moretti, shook her head. “It’s a fucking convenience store.” She smiled, enjoying the muckraking. “She must’ve done something pretty shitty to get eighty-sixed out
of here for two months.” Vic gestured toward the white plastic board above the cash register where all the reservation offenders who had been tagged with bad-check writing, shoplifting, and other unsavory behaviors were cataloged for everyone to see—sort of a twenty-first-century pillorying.

  My eyes skimmed past the board, and I watched the crows circle above Lame Deer as the rain struck the surface of Route 212. It was the main line on the Rez, and the road that truckers used to avoid the scales on the interstate. Before 212 had been widened and properly graded, it had been known as Scalp Alley for the number of traveling unfortunates who had met their demise on the composite scoria/asphalt strip and for the roadside crosses that ran like chain lightning from the Black Hills to the Little Bighorn.

  As my good friend Henry Standing Bear says, on the Rez, even the roads are red.

  I was trying to pay attention, but I kept being distracted by the crows plying the thermals of the high plains sky; it was raining in the distance, but the sun appeared to be overtaking the clouds—a sharp contrast of blue and charcoal that my mother used to say was caused by the devil beating his wife.

  “She must’ve stolen the cash register.”

  My attention was forced back inside and under cover, and I twisted the ring on my pinkie. My wife, Martha, had given it back to me before she died so that I could give it to Cady whenever she got married.

  I looked up—the negotiations weren’t going well. It would appear that Dull Knife College had suddenly scheduled a Cheyenne language immersion class at Crazy Head Springs on the day of the wedding. We had reserved the spot well in advance, but the vagaries of the tribal council were well known and now we were floundering. The old Indian across from me nodded his head in all seriousness. I was negotiating with the chief of the Northern Cheyenne nation, and he was one tough customer.

  “That librarian over at the college is mean. I don’t like to mess with her; she’s got that Indian Alzheimer’s. Um hmm, yes, it is so.”

  I trailed my eyes from Lonnie Little Bird to the rain-slick surface of the asphalt—Lame Deer’s main street being washed clean of all our sins. “What’s that mean, Lonnie?”

  “That’s where you forget everything but the grudges.”

  I smiled in spite of myself and took a deep breath, slowly letting the air out to calm my nerves, as I continued to twirl the ring on my finger. “Cady’s really got her heart set on Crazy Head Springs, Lonnie, and it’s way too late to change the date from the end of July.”

  He glanced out the window, his dark eyes following my gray ones. “Maybe you should go talk to that librarian over at the college. You’re a large man—she’ll listen to you. You could show her your gun.” He glanced down at the red and black chief’s blanket that covered his wheelchair. “She don’t pay no attention to an old, legless Indian.”

  Henry Standing Bear, my daughter’s wedding planner, who had made the arrangements that were now being rapidly unraveled, sipped his coffee and quietly listened.

  “But you’re the chief, Lonnie.”

  “Oh, you know that don’t mean much unless somebody wants a government contract for beef or needs a ribbon cut.”

  Up until this year, Lonnie’s official contribution to the tribal government had been limited to falling asleep in council. A month ago, when the previous tribal leader had been found guilty of siphoning off money to a private account belonging to his daughter, an emergency meeting had been held; since Lonnie had again fallen asleep, and therefore was unable to defend himself, he was unanimously voted in as the new chief.

  “She’s in charge of all the books over there and she’s full blood—that’s pretty much the worst of both worlds.”

  A heavyset man with long hair and a gray top hat with an eagle feather in it stopped by the table and rapped his knuckles on the surface. “Mornin’, Chief.”

  Lonnie sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t call me that, Herbert.”

  Herbert His Good Horse, the morning drive announcer on the low-power FM station KRZZ, smiled and turned to the rest of us in the crowded booth. “Do you know the story about the three Indian women who died at the same time?”

  Herbert was a mainstay on the Rez, where almost everyone tuned in to 94.7 FM just to hear the outrageous jokes he told between songs.

  Lonnie responded for the table. “Nope.”

  “St. Peter was sitting on his throne at the gates of heaven—”

  “Is this a true story, Herbert?”

  He nodded his head vigorously, the eagle feather stuck in the band of his hat bobbing up and down like a crest on his head. “It’s from one of those priests over at St. Labre, and those Catholics, they sometimes tell the truth.”

  Vic barked a laugh. “Fuckin’ A.” She raised an empty coffee cup to get Brandon White Buffalo’s attention in hopes of a round of refills, but the big Crow Indian was attending to another customer.

  Herbert His Good Horse produced an elongated cigar from his silk brocade vest along with a cutter. “One of the women was Lakota, one was Crow, and the other was full-blood Cheyenne. St. Peter looked at them and said that they were heathens and there wasn’t anything he could do to let them into the white man’s heaven, but that he was curious because they had all three died at the same time. He asked the first one, the Lakota woman, if she had anything to say, and she said she didn’t know anything about the rules but she had always lived her life attempting to seek a balance in the red and black roads. St. Peter listened and was impressed by the spirituality of the woman and told her she could go in after all.”

  Lonnie smiled and nodded as Herbert repocketed the cutter and produced a chopped-down, brass Zippo lighter, the one that he had carried in the seventies in Vietnam. “St. Peter leaned down to the Crow woman and asked her if she had anything she wanted to say, and she told him that to her, there was a spirit in the air, the land, the water, and all the creatures that populated mother earth and that she had spent her life attempting to be respectful of all these things. St. Peter was so impressed that he waved her into the white man’s heaven, too.”

  Lonnie sipped his coffee, and Henry, smiling, glanced at me.

  “Then St. Peter turned on his throne and looked at the Cheyenne woman. He asked her, ‘Do you have anything you’d like to say?’ The Cheyenne woman nodded and said—‘Yeah, what are you doing in my chair?’”

  Lonnie laughed so hard, rolling his head from side to side with his mouth hanging open, that no sound came out. After a while he began slapping Henry on the leg; I suppose just because the Bear had both of his and because he was also Cheyenne. “Um hmm, yes, it is so.”

  Herbert, who had recovered from laughing at his own joke, lit his cigar, rapped the table, and signed off with his signature slogan—“Stay calm, have courage…”

  The entire booth responded with the rest: “And wait for signs.”

  Henry, probably glad for the interruption, put his own cold coffee on the table, smiled indulgently, and watched the disc jockey stroll away. It really wasn’t the Bear’s fault that our site had been suddenly appropriated at the last minute; as he’d explained to me, clearing all the events of all the organizations on the reservation was akin to herding prairie chickens.

  I stared down at the platinum ring with the smallish diamond that was between two inset chips. “What’s the librarian’s name, Lonnie?”

  At the mention of our collective obstruction, the laughter died away in his throat. “Oh, it’s my sister Arbutis. Umm hmm, yes, it is so.”

  Henry raised a hand and massaged the bridge of his nose with a powerful thumb and forefinger. “Ahh-he’, I had forgotten.”

  I knew Arbutis Little Bird—more as Lonnie’s daughter’s aunt than as his sister. Melissa, with whom I’d been involved in a complicated case a couple of years ago, was now away in Bozeman playing point guard for Montana State. The news couldn’t have been worse for our cause—Arbutis was a steely-eyed, iron-bottomed gunboat of a woman whose natural response to everything was an absolute negative that brooke
d no discussion.

  I looked back out the window where the crows had disappeared and the rain appeared to be winning the battle. We were doomed.

  “Henry, have you thought about taking him down to Painted Warrior? That’s a pretty fine spot, um hmm, um hmm. There are crows all over the bottom land, and they circle the cliffs up where the warrior’s war paint streaks the rocks. Yes, it is so.”

  The Bear released his nose. “Near Red Birney?”

  They both smiled, and Lonnie nodded. “Yeah, definitely not White Birney.”

  In a perverseness of geography, there were two towns by the name of Birney just on and just off the Rez. To the Indians they will forever be referred to as Red Birney and White Birney, but to the politically correct Caucasians the names had been transmogrified to Birney Day (for the day school), and Birney Post (for the post office). Like most things on the Rez, it was complicated.

  “You can take the ridge road, but you’ll need a four-wheel-drive if it really decides to rain. If I was you, I’d take 4 down to the windmill at Tie Creek, and then go up the dirt track till you get to the spotter road to your right—that’ll take you straight over to the base of the cliffs.”

  A spotter road was the name the locals called roads used to spotlight and poach deer on the Rez. I was already losing faith. “Lonnie, Cady’s really got her heart set on Crazy Head Springs, and the wedding is in two weeks.”

  He nodded again and then became somber in respect for the gravity of my situation. “Well then, maybe you should go on over to the library, but take your gun, Walter. Umm hmm, yes, it is so.”