I had seen it coming in that last second and turned, but the majority of the force deflected from my nose and into my left cheekbone and brow. The effect was a blinding amount of blood that flowed from the cut at my cheek.
I backed away, swiping at my eye with one of my toweled hands. It hurt and felt like half my face had ballooned to the size of a softball. I smeared the blood back with the shoulder of my shirt, and I was relieved to make out shadows moving in the rapidly closing eye, but for now I was effectively blind to my left.
He had come out better in the impact, but not by much. He shook his head-evidently he had come close to knocking himself out with the illegal move. When he looked up and could finally get a read on me, he smiled at the damage to my face.
Cly stepped forward and feinted with his left but brought a jab back up with his right; when he withdrew from the punch, he dropped his guard just as I’d told Henry he would.
I responded with a quick jab from my left. He was off balance and started to fall away. I could have just let him go, but I was tired and angry and wanted it really over. I stepped after him and watched with my one eye as he raised his right to block the anticipated left that had stung him twice. It was another mistake, and his last for the evening, as I’d anticipated his move and had already brought a roundhouse haymaker down into the side of his head.
You can hit a man in a lot of different ways, ways I’d learned in the rough-and-tumble high-plains bars as a boy, ways I’d learned in the inner trenches of Big Six football, in the Marine Corps, and in more than a quarter-century in law enforcement. You can hit a man to embarrass him, hit him to blood him, hit him to knock him down, or you can hit a man to lay him out.
To my absolute dishonor, I hit Cliff Cly with the intention of the last.
His jaw bounced off his chest, and I could see that his neck muscles didn’t work just before he pitched over backward, taking the metal pole at the corner, three lengths of rope, and at least two other people with him.
There is a sound that bodies make when they hit the ground, and there is no way to describe it. I’ve heard that sound in motels, bars, football, and battlefields, and it is this sound that brought me back.
There was a great deal of screaming, yelling, and confusion as I approached to see if he was still breathing; he was, but he lay still, with only his chest moving. I guess he had been the crowd favorite and there must have been a lot of money placed on his potential victory, because as I stood there a folding chair clattered against the back of my head and a few more flew onto the platform. I stumbled out of the ring and started pushing my way toward the back hallway, but even with my limited view from one eye, I could see that the entire crowd was now involved in nothing short of a melee. I tripped over another folding chair and went down as the mob swallowed me.
I started to get up, but a familiar hand planted itself against my chest, and the Bear ducked as more chairs sailed into the ring. There was a crash of glass near the bar, along with more screaming and yelling, and I could hear fighting that didn’t sound like the kind sanctioned by the Powder-River-Pound-Down. Henry crouched guard over me and pushed someone away while dodging an airborne bottle that smashed on the floor and showered us with shards.
I was staring at his hand as he continued to smile like the Cheyenne always do in battle. I tried to blink my left eye but couldn’t tell if I had, and then allowed my head to fall back to the floor as he asked in a perfectly conversational tone, “Did you know your daughter is getting married?”
10
October 29, 11:55 P.M.
In 1948, at the Jimtown Bar, two hundred yards north of the Cheyenne Reservation, Hershel Vanskike killed a man. He was involved in a side-room billiards game when two traveling gentlemen from Chicago noticed the sport and asked to buy in. It was inquired as to whether they had the where-withal to join the game, and they assured the local cowboys that they did.
The cowhands, not assured, asked them to exhibit the funds. The gentlemen from Chicago displayed over two thousand dollars in small bills.
Thus assured, the locals agreed to let them participate, but after a few hours of losing and drinking too many whiskeys, the Chicagoans grew irritable, and one of them, whose name was John Boertlein, began abusing an Indian rancher who was seated at the bar. He poked the Indian with a pool cue and asked the “chief ” what the locals did for fun around these parts.
The middle-aged Cheyenne ignored him and continued drinking, slowly bringing the pungent liquid to his lips with his elbows seemingly attached to the bar.
The man from Chicago told the “chief ” that he had plenty of wampum and jabbed the Indian with the pool cue again, leaving a small, blue chalk dot on the Cheyenne’s white shirtsleeve.
The bartender took a step away, bracing his hands on the bar.
Boertlein prodded the Indian again and asked if he knew where he and his friend, whose name was Bud Ardary, could find a few squaws for the night. He left another blue mark.
The Cheyenne remained silent and took the final sip from his shot glass.
Bud Ardary, the other gentleman from Chicago, broke from the pool table to join in on the fun. Boertlein poked the Indian on his other arm but still didn’t get any response. Instead, the Cheyenne put his empty glass back on the bar surface, tipped his hat to the bartender with his right hand, and rose. Boertlein, sensing that he was about to be totally ignored, grabbed the Indian by the shoulder as the Cheyenne turned toward him, but the Indian stepped by him and headed for the door.
John Boertlein had a puzzled look on his face as he stood there.
Ardary pulled his friend toward him in time to see a thin line of red blooming across his buddy’s dress shirt where the blade of a knife with an edge like a scalpel had sliced the Chicagoan’s abdomen.
Ardary pulled a pistol as the Indian opened the door, and Hershel Vanskike, realizing that the last man to draw his gun in these situations was likely the first to end up dead, snatched a natty little. 32 from his own waistband. Ardary fired at the Cheyenne as he stepped through the door. He missed. Sensing some movement to his right, he then extended his. 38 toward the pool players, and Vanskike pulled the trigger on the. 32.
I looked up at the big Indian seated next to me. “Damned Indians, they always get you into trouble.”
He nodded. “I think that was my Uncle Art, the one who moved up to Rocky Boy.”
I looked back at the report. “I can see why he moved.”
It was viewed as a clear-cut case of self-defense, and the autopsy revealed three more bullets from previous altercations, but Vanskike still received nine months in the county jail. There were also the usual amount of D amp;Ds on his record and public intoxications with a smattering of aggravated assaults, but most of Hershel’s criminal activities had tailed off a good thirty years ago when the old outlaw had grown accustomed to painting the town beige. Other than the incident at the Jimtown Bar, the only really troubling item was the one involving a rented house in Clearmont.
As for our involvement in the present altercation, no one questioned why Henry and I were arrested by the Absaroka County deputy and not the Campbell County one.
Just north of town across the condemned bridge, Victoria Moretti pulled the Bullet off to the other end of the dirt lot that WYDOT and Range Telephone were using, along a fenced pasture and to the side of what appeared to be an abandoned, yet familiar, green pickup.
The Cheyenne Nation and I sat on the tailgate of his truck as Vic doctored his and then my broken face from the first-aid kit from my truck. My undersheriff squinted at my swollen eye and pulled at my cheekbone, her investigation inflicting a considerable amount of pain. “Does it hurt?”
I leaned back a little, trying to get away from her probing fingers. “It didn’t till you started fussing with it.”
She stood her ground with her arms folded and looked at me. She wore a light fleece jacket, and she had the collar turned up against a repeated tide of cool air floating down from across the
Bighorns. You could almost see the slight trails of breath leaving her mouth-almost. “He needs to get that hand X-rayed, and you need stitches.”
“Just pack it full of that antibiotic stuff and bandage me up.”
“You need stitches.” I didn’t say anything else, just continued to look at her through one and a half eyes. “Walt, you’re being an asshole.”
I took a deep breath, sighed, and I think I might’ve even smiled. “I do it rarely, but you’ve gotta admit that when I make an effort, I’m pretty good at it.”
She shook her head as she delved through the kit for the requisite supplies. “What in the hell came over you?”
“I was feeling manly.” I listened as the breezes played the dry, burnished grass like a mandolin and thought that maybe it was the oncoming winter, or maybe it was what Henry was reading in the file, or the fact that my left eye was almost completely swollen, but even though I felt tired, I was still willing to rise to the occasion. I sighed deeply and looked up at the Cheyenne Nation. “He supposedly burned a house down in 1992?”
“He was charged, but then it was dropped.”
Henry read further in the glow of Vic’s Maglite, which he held in his good hand as she continued to assess my injury. “He was supposedly out of town, but according to the Sheridan County sheriff there was reason to believe that he was the arsonist.”
Vic knocked my knees apart to get better access, and I listened to the creaking of her gun belt as she pushed against my legs.
The Bear read aloud. “ ‘Large, high-relief alligatoring of charred wood, crazing patterns of irregular glass, and depth of charring indicate the use of an accelerant… Line of demarcation and spalling of the masonry indicates suspicious point of origin.’ ”
Vic looked up. “What? They had Sparky the fuckin’ arson expert working over in Sheridan?”
He snorted. “It gets better. Guess who the investigating officer was?”
He held up the manila envelope with the arson report on top. Vic snatched it off his lap and read the scribbled signature at the bottom of the faxed sheet. “It says Frymire. Fuck me.”
I looked back up at her and remembered that Chuck had been employed by Sheridan County before us. “Our Frymire?”
Henry nodded. “In the personal notes, he says that it was such a clear case of deliberate fire that he tried to run it down, but as soon as the owner got a check from the insurance company, he dropped the charges.”
The Cheyenne Nation sat forward to hold the flashlight for Vic as she squeezed a worm of topical antibiotic onto her index finger.
Vic leaned my head back and removed the gauze pad she’d been using to sop up the blood, careful to keep the medication on her finger from getting smeared off. I spoke to the sky. “Who’s watching the store?”
“Ruby, and she says to tell you that the next time you’re working undercover, would you please leave a note or something?”
“I’ll leave a sock on my office doorknob.”
“You don’t have a doorknob.”
I looked at Henry’s hand as he held the flashlight, and Vic smeared the goop under my eye and into the cut. “Oww.”
She smirked. “Good. I hope it fucking hurts.” She peeled the wrapper from a large gauze-backed Band-Aid. “I’ll ask again: what in the hell possessed you?”
I continued to look at the Bear’s hand. “The Indian started it.”
She dismissed him with a glancing blow from the Mediterranean eyes and pasted the bandage onto my cheek. “From him I expect it.”
“Why?”
She smiled, the canine tooth sparking in the beam of the flashlight. “He’s a savage.”
Henry’s voice rumbled in his chest. “Look who is talking.”
After Vic finished, I stood and walked away from the bridge toward five horses. They stood just over the crest of a hill alongside the river and watched us, probably wondering if there was any chance of getting fed. I made a kissing sound and watched as the lead bay raised his head. He came toward us, and the others followed. They expected something to eat but settled for nosing my hands.
I scratched the big bay behind his ears and then ran my fingers under his chin where the bugs usually bit along the soft flesh beneath the jaw. The short hair was pebbled with small swellings, and he rocked his head back and forth, using my hand as a scratching post like some thousand-pound house cat.
I glanced back at Vic and Henry. “He’s got pictures of her all over his sheep wagon.”
“Who?”
I pulled my hand back, and the bay nibbled at my knuckles. “Mary Barsad. When I dropped Vanskike off at his trailer last night, I saw that he had pictures of her all over his walls.”
They looked at each other before resuming their communal looking at me, Henry the first to speak. “That is significant.”
I brushed the horse’s nose and stretched my other hand out to pet a roan. “Maybe. He also believes in the divine accordance of Kmart.” They both were still looking at me. “He buys these astrology scrolls at the checkout line at Kmart, and I think he really believes in them.”
Vic pushed off Rezdawg and walked over. She kept her distance; she didn’t much like horses. “He was on Sandy’s short list; we know he killed a guy, and he might’ve set a house on fire.”
“So?”
Her snort startled the little remuda. “Somebody once taught me that if you’re looking for a murderer, you start with the people who’ve killed people.” She took a step closer, and I could just see her in my bad eye, past the gaggle of horse noses. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s not like we’ve got a suspect behind every fucking tree.” She glanced around with purpose at the plains stretching to the horizon. “Not that there are a lot of those around here either.”
Henry stuffed the folder under his arm. “What are you thinking?”
I took a breath and watched the roiling of the over-grazed sweetgrass in the pasture; it was as if someone was stroking it just as I’d petted the horses. “I’m not getting a feeling for any of it, and that worries me.” The bay extended his muzzle and breathed in my breath as I laughed. “Hershel’s horses.”
Henry joined us, handing Vic back her flashlight. “What?”
I palmed the bay’s head slightly out of the way. “These horses must be some more of Hershel’s; they always want to identify you by sniffing your breath.”
“OIT.”
I glanced at him-Old Indian Trick. “Really?”
He nodded and extended his good hand to a dun mare. “I have heard of it done when gathering horses on the open range.”
I nodded. “Maybe Hershel has more Indian connections than we know about.”
Vic stuffed her hands in the pockets of her fleece. “So, how does that help us?”
“Damned if I know, but I don’t think it’s Hershel.”
“I thought it’s only women who have intuition.” She sighed in exasperation. “Then what about this Bill Nolan character?”
I thought about it. “He’s up to something, but then he’s been up to something ever since I’ve known him. I don’t think he’s a killer, even in the more abstract sense of setting the house or the barn on fire.”
Vic risked getting closer to the horses so that she could get into my line of sight. “So, now we’re thinking that Wade Barsad might’ve not set the barn fire?”
I ran my hand down the bay’s muscled throat. “I don’t know.”
“Then why did she kill him?” I turned and looked at her. “Walt, she’s the only one left.”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“Then who? That’s everybody who was there the night of the murder.”
I reached out to pet the bay between his ears, but I guess he figured we didn’t have anything in the way of treats and decided to move on; the others followed. Henry started digging in his shirt pocket. He extended his unswollen hand with one of the high-grain sorghum treats-the kind that horses will walk through hell in a napalm saddle to get. The bay t
urned on a heel and took the horse cookie from the flat of the Bear’s palm. The others crowded near as he distributed a few into my shirt pocket where I’d hidden my star.
“Then it was someone who was not there.”
October 24: five days earlier, late morning.
Frymire had sounded irritated.
“I walked in here, and the prisoner was gone.”
I leaned on the counter at the nurse’s station and held the phone a little away from my ear. “We’re at the hospital. Mary’s getting a mandatory checkup; Vic and I brought her.”
“I thought that was supposed to be at two o’clock?”
“Isaac called and said he could fit her in sooner, so I figured we’d get it over with.”
“What’s the verdict?”
I glanced at the closed door that led to the examination room. “I don’t know, but Isaac, Vic, and Mary are still inside.”
“Well, I’m here serving and protecting. There was a drive-off at the gas station south of town, but the guy came back and paid while I was there.”
“Must’ve known that the International Man of Mystery was on his trail.”
Frymire hung up. My deputies did that to me a lot.
I was bored, and Ruby’s niece was working on the computer at the next desk, so I ambled over and looked down at the sandy-haired young woman. “How you doin’, Janine?” I was particularly proud of myself for remembering her name; it seemed as though I was forever forgetting it.
She didn’t look up. “I’m busy, Uncle Walter, so stop bothering me.”
I decided to take a walk down to the bank of machines by the door and get a bottle of water, seeing as how they didn’t have an apparatus that dispensed Rainier. I dropped in a few quarters, pushed the button, and retrieved the plastic bottle below. It was a nice day, so when the automatic doors that opened to the outside automatically swung wide, I took it as an invitation.
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