The Thirteenth Skull

by Bonnie Ramthun

  “What’s a buffalo jump?” Lucy asked. “We’ve been so busy I haven’t asked yet.”

  “A buffalo jump is the primary way the Lakota Sioux and other Plains tribes hunted buffalo,” Jorie said. Her face became more animated as she spoke; evidently she shared her professor’s passion on the topic. “Before the fifteen hundreds, when the Spanish brought the horse, the Native Americans had no way to reliably kill a single buffalo. So they would slowly drive a buffalo herd towards the edge of a bluff or cliff. Then they would stampede the animals off the cliff and the fall would kill or cripple enough buffalo so the people would have what they needed.”

  “How would they stampede the buffalo?” Lucy asked.

  “Here’s the good part,” Eileen said. She, too, knew about buffalo jumps. She grew up in Wyoming and schooled in South Dakota. Every schoolchild learned about the Plains tribes and how they survived. “Or not, depending on your point of view.”

  “Yes,” Jorie said impatiently. “But it was a tremendous honor to be chosen.”

  “Chosen for what?” Lucy asked.

  “To lead the buffalo herd over the cliff,” Eileen said. She nodded at Lucy’s stunned expression. “No, not suicide. The Lakota would dig a hollow right underneath the lip of the cliff. Then the young boy—”

  “Boy?” Lucy breathed, eyes wide.

  “Boy,” Jorie said. “Between ten and fourteen, when boys are strongest and most agile. And aren’t yet warriors.”

  Lucy looked around automatically, with the expression that Eileen was beginning to think of as the Mother-Radar look, even though Lucy knew Hank was happy with his blocks in the living room.

  “The boy would cover himself up in a buffalo head and cape, and slowly lead the herd towards the cliff,” Eileen continued.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Lucy said. “How does a ten-year-old in a buffalo skin look like a buffalo?”

  “Buffalo aren’t that bright,” Eileen laughed. She stretched her arms behind her head. It felt good to sit down after all those pots and pans. “They look at silhouette, not size. Outline and smell is what counts. Plus, the tribe would sometimes light a grass fire to spook the buffalo even more. They wouldn’t do that in a year like this one, because it’s been so dry. But in wet years, they’d spook ’em with fire.”

  “Then the boy would start running towards the cliff edge. The buffalo would follow, believing that they were running to safety, then stampede, and the boy would flip off the edge of the cliff and into the hollow beneath,” Jorie continued.

  “And tons of buffalo steaks and chops would fall past him. It was a very risky and very honorable challenge for a warrior-to-be,” Eileen said.

  “And if he missed?” Lucy asked.

  “Then they honored his memory,” Eileen said.

  “Actually we’re hoping he missed,” Jorie said. “The herd that fell off this cliff was absolutely huge. There are so many bones at the bottom of the cliff we think perhaps this was a bigger stampede than the tribespeople intended. If the boy missed his perch, we’ll find him underneath all the buffalo. With luck, he’ll have everything with him. A complete skeleton, maybe even tools and artifacts. Talismans. A treasure.”

  “Have you gotten to the bottom yet?” Lucy asked, and then shivered elaborately. “Sorry. I just keep thinking of Hank.”

  “We’re almost there,” Jorie said. “Then Beryl and I had to return for a funding meeting at the University. Jon was gone when we got back. Just gone! He wouldn’t have left. He sent us to the damned funding meeting, he was so excited about the excavation. I’ve never known him to miss a funding meeting. If the dig looks like a good one, we’ll want to bring a whole crew of graduate students up here.”

  “That was when?” Eileen asked, though she already knew.

  “Three days ago,” Jorie said. “And your sheriff, that King idiot, he wouldn’t—”

  “King?” Eileen asked, sitting forward abruptly. “Not Richard King?”

  “Rick, not Richard,” Jorie said. “Anyway, he’s a complete creep. He said we couldn’t even file a missing persons report for at least a week, not without some suspicion of foul play—”

  “Eileen,” Lucy suddenly asked. “What’s the matter?”

  “I know him,” Eileen said, swallowing past an acid lump of dismay in her throat. “I know Richard. Jorie, I hope your boss shows up with a hundred hickeys and a hangover, because I don’t know if I can work with Richard King. Or, rather, if he wants to work with me.”

  “Hey, guys, here’s some soda pop,” Tracy said, bursting through the door with her customary speed. She cradled three glasses in her hand, glasses clinking with ice. “You hungry yet? Lunch in fifteen minutes, sandwiches. Gotta go.” She set down all three glasses on a table next to Eileen and shot back out the doorway. Eileen very carefully avoided looking at Lucy, knowing if she did she’d start laughing. Tracy obviously did not want to be captured by the tenacious and unpleasant Jorie Rothman.

  “Thank goodness,” Lucy said, capturing a glass with a sigh. “It’s been so hot these past few days.” She took a deep swallow of her soda pop and stopped in mid-swallow. Eileen, handing a glass to Jorie, saw the stillness and turned to Lucy.

  Lucy set her glass down.

  “I don’t hear Hank,” she said, and leaped out of her chair.

  “I’ll be right back,” Eileen said, bolting after Lucy.

  In the living room there were blocks scattered across the floor, but no Hank and no Zilla. The door to the front porch was open, as it had been all morning, and the screen door showed an inviting slice of blue sky and green grass.

  “Hank!” Eileen and Lucy shouted together.

  “Who’s Hank?” Jorie asked from behind Eileen. “What?”

  “You better stay here,” Eileen said. She left for the kitchen with Lucy at her heels and in the short shadowed hallway between the sunny family room and the sunny kitchen Eileen felt her arms brush up with sudden goosebumps.

  The kitchen was full of a mixture of delicious smells. An enormous pot with a boiling chicken was on the stove for Tracy’s chicken noodle soup. Tracy, hands lathered with flour, was rolling out dough for apple pie. The apples, peeled and sliced and covered with cinnamon and sugar, lay in a ceramic bowl. Tracy looked up and saw Eileen’s face and dropped the rolling pin.

  “What?” she asked, eyes widening.

  “Hank,” Lucy said in a little voice.

  “He’s okay,” Tracy said. “He just wandered off. Zilla is with him, Lucy. We’ll find him.”

  She stepped to a rack by the door, which held a leash, an old raincoat, and a dog whistle on a chain. Despite her calm words her hands were shaking. She stepped to the open kitchen door and blew the whistle. Eileen winced and covered her ears – though she couldn’t actually hear the tones, she could sense a kind of high pressure on her eardrums.

  There was silence, and then impossibly far away, like a dog in a dream, they heard Zilla barking.

  Chapter Two

  The Reed Ranch, Wyoming

  Lucy could hardly breathe as she followed Tracy and Eileen towards Zilla’s barking. She couldn’t understand how Hank could have gotten so far, so fast. She’d only left him for a few minutes.

  The Reed Ranch sat in a fold of land in wooded hills with a gorgeous view down into a river bottom and across a valley to the slopes of mountains. Devils Tower lay six miles south but Lucy couldn’t see it. She was glad. When they’d driven up she’d seen the Tower at a distance and it made her feel distinctly odd. The Tower was the remnant of an ancient lava eruption, fluted like the trunk of gigantic tree stump. It didn’t look natural looming against the horizon. Lucy’s eyes hurt just looking at it, it was so gigantic and still and black. She almost felt as though it were looking back at her, and didn’t like her very much.

  The main building of the Reed Ranch, a frame house painted a cheerful yellow and white, was set apart from the other outbuildings. It sat within a small forest of tall pine and aspen trees. A green and shady l
awn stretched south and west of the house. To the north, where the road came into the ranch, there was a straggly flower garden. Lucy found out why the garden was so ragged her first morning at the ranch; she’d woken to see four deer munching happily at the flowers, enormous ears flicking back and forth ceaselessly, tails flipping happily. Tracy came out with her apron and shooed them away and the deer bounded off like mischievous children.

  Tracy was heading towards the farthest set of outbuildings, a small yellow-painted barn and a chicken coop next to a tiny log cabin. The cabin was neat and tidy, but the roof of the small barn had a pronounced sag, and the chicken coop had a raspberry bush growing through the screening of the sides. Behind the outbuildings was the start of the forest, deep and green.

  In the other direction, where the level land started to slope down towards the Belle Fourche River, there was a modern looking structure. It was large and metal and had a huge door. This building held a bewildering array of trucks and tractors and even a snowmobile. Beyond this building there was another barn, a big one, with a corral. There were some other buildings next to the barn that looked like horses might live there. Lucy, who knew next to nothing about rural life, wasn’t sure.

  As they came closer to the log cabin Lucy could see movement, and nearly fell over her feet as Hank and Zilla came into view. Hank was unharmed, dusty from head to toe, jumping up and down and laughing.

  “Oh thank God,” Lucy gasped.

  “He’s okay, he just wandered off,” Eileen said. “I was never worried, were you?”

  “Not for a second,” Lucy said, and laughed shakily.

  The day was hot and breathless and smelled like dust and pines and horses. Now that they could see Hank and Zilla more clearly, Lucy realized that the little cow dog was acting strangely. Hank was trying to jump past Zilla towards the cabin, but every time he did Zilla would block him. He tried to push by her and she wagged her tail harder, but she didn’t move. He tried to dodge left but Zilla anticipated him and placed her little body in front of him. Hank giggled and tried to dodge right. Zilla wagged her tail and blocked him again. Hank looked back and saw his mother.

  “Mommy!” he crowed. “Look! Zilla!”

  “That’s the old homestead, Lucy,” Eileen explained. “The log cabin is where my great-grandparents first lived when they came here. Now we just store stuff there. We don’t even use the old chicken coop any more.”

  “That’s where they lived?” Lucy said, looking at the sagging old log structure. “It looks like a dog kennel.”

  “They raised three out of their seven children there, as a matter of fact,” Tracy said absently. She was looking at Zilla and frowning.

  “What is going on?” Jorie said. Lucy glanced behind her. Tracy still had on her flour smeared apron and Jorie followed behind, looking impatient. “Can we get back to the ranch now? This is a waste of—”

  “Something here is dangerous,” Tracy said, her eyes on Zilla.

  “Pick up Hank, Lucy,” Eileen said abruptly. Lucy picked up her little boy, who settled into the crook of her arm. His body was warm and sweaty and dirty and smelled rather strongly of collie. And wasn’t there something else in the air? Something thick and bland? She thought there was, and she looked at Eileen. Eileen nodded back, a brief movement of her chin. She smelled it too.

  Tracy stood looking up and down the homestead. Lucy looked too. There were no cars coming up or down the ranch road that led to the highway. There was nothing moving in the hot, still day but four women, a small boy, and a collie dog. A few chickens scratched in the yard down by the big barn. High in the air down by the river bottom a hawk floated in big, lazy circles. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

  “Stand down, Zilla,” Eileen said. She suddenly held a very businesslike SIG-Sauer in her hand, gleaming like a black jewel in the sun.

  “What’s that?” Jorie said in a high voice. “A gun? What do you need a gun for?”

  “Something is dead behind my old chicken coop,” Tracy said. “Can’t you smell it? The death?”

  “I smell it,” Lucy said. Jorie nodded, her face suddenly confused.

  “Something might be back there that’s not dead,” Tracy continued calmly.

  “Something back there?” Lucy asked sharply.

  “Cougar, bear, wolf, they all defend their kill, Lucy,” Eileen said. “With me,

  Zilla.” Zilla fell into place with Eileen, tail no longer wagging, her head and ears up and alert.

  “Wish our dog Fancy was trained that well,” Lucy muttered into Hank’s ear, and shifted him so she was more comfortable. She half expected Eileen to come running back around the corner of the chicken coop with an enormous bear at her heels, a vision at once so horrifying and funny she felt a rise of nervous laughter in her throat.

  “Not a wolf,” Tracy said to Lucy, as though they were holding drinks at a cocktail party instead of guns in the midst of what Lucy felt was a completely deserted state. Wyoming was empty, empty. There was simply nothing. As far as Lucy could tell there were hills, trees, streams, bluffs and hollows and herds of antelope and deer and jackrabbits, but no people, all the way from the Colorado border to the Reed Ranch. To a girl raised in Baltimore, Maryland, the state of Wyoming was terrifyingly empty.

  “Why not a wolf?” she asked, swallowing past a dry patch in her throat. Hank twisted in her arms to look at her face, his little mouth suddenly pursed in concern. “Everything’s fine, Hank.”

  “Wolves are noisy. We’d have heard them howling over a big kill. And they don’t dine this close to us, anyway. They’re very polite, wolves.”

  Eileen walked back around the coop with no fanfare. Her gun had disappeared but her face was pale and thoughtful.

  “I think we’ve found the missing archeologist,” she said to Jorie. “I’m sorry.”

  Jorie gasped and started forward. Tracy put a hand on her arm.

  “No, dear,” she said.

  “You can’t go back there,” Eileen said.

  “I have to,” Jorie screamed. “It’s Jon? He’s dead? You don’t know it’s Jon!” She started forward again and Lucy joined Tracy, stepping in front of Jorie. Tracy put her arms around the younger woman.

  “I don’t know if it’s Jon,” Eileen said. “But there’s a dead man back there, and I don’t know if it’s murder or not. It doesn’t look like an animal attack.”

  “I need to see him,” Jorie sobbed, trying again to move forward. Her face was shiny pale except for two bright red patches on her cheeks. Her mouth was drawn down and distorted. Lucy saw this with sympathy and a dawning interest. Jorie looked like a lover, or a wife. She wasn’t acting like a colleague.

  “No you don’t,” Lucy said at the same time as Eileen and Tracy.

  “He might be alive,” Jorie shouted through her sobs.

  “He’s extremely dead,” Eileen assured her. “Let’s get back to the house and call the police right away, and Dad too.”

  “Right, then,” Tracy said briskly. “Lucy, you give Hank a bath right away. Lots of soap and scrub him good. Eileen, you get the tub out and scrub Zilla down. I’ll take Jorie inside and we’ll make the calls.”

  “Hank?” Lucy whispered to Tracy. “Did he – see? Did he touch him?” Tracy gave her a big smile, as reassuring as a hug.

  “No, Lucy. I think Zilla caught the scent and followed it over here, and Hank followed her. But Zilla wouldn’t let him get near the cabin or go behind it. You saw that, remember. And there aren’t any tracks in the dirt but Eileen’s. Look.”

  Lucy did, and tried to nod as calmly as she could when what she wanted to do most was burst into relieved tears.

  “But just in case, we’re going to scrub the two of them very well and have Dr. Peterson check Hank over when he gets here. Just in case. Let’s move, girls.”

  Jorie resisted, her blue eyes clouded and red, her mouth trembling.

  “Can you get hold of dad?” Eileen asked. She was grave and unsmiling but Lucy could tell she was excited. But
of course that was her job. Finding dead people was all in a day’s work to Eileen Reed. Lucy, on the other hand, was an analyst. She only dealt with dead people on paper. A dead person right in front of her wasn’t in her job description. She swallowed hard, trying not to think about what was behind the cabin.

  “You’re sure? He’s back there? Jon is back there?” Jorie said again.

  “I’m not sure of anything yet,” Eileen said. “Come on, Jorie, let’s get you inside and get you some water. You need to sit down for a few minutes.”

  Lucy followed Eileen as she led Jorie back to the main house, her head buzzing with the July heat and her heart hammering with fear for Hank. By the time they got back to the main house Hank himself had calmed her. He was his usual cheerful self, sitting happily on her hip and watching Zilla trot along behind them. As they walked through the kitchen door his head started to droop on her shoulder.

  “Upstairs for a bath, Hankster,” she said. She walked to the stairs and looked back. “I’ll be right back down, okay, Eileen?”

  Eileen looked over at her, glanced at Jorie to make sure she wasn’t looking, then dropped her an enormous wink and grinned at her. Eileen couldn’t wink. She had a lovely oval face with high angular cheekbones that gave her an ice-queen look that Lucy envied, but when she winked she screwed up one side of her face and squinted both eyes into slits and turned her face from ice-queen to clown. Lucy smothered a giggle.

  “No problem,” Eileen said. Truly, she thought, with the two of them together, what could be a problem?

  The Reed Ranch, Wyoming

  Eileen stood quietly over the body. Lucy was bathing Hank and Jorie had gone to the jump site to tell her colleague. She’d be back far too soon, but at least that gave Eileen some time.

  She stood in the hot sun, feeling a lot less assured than the image she projected to her mother. Eileen was never sure how she solved cases. Her personal theory was that she just kicked at rocks until something came crawling out. So far, something had always crawled out.