Death Without Company

by Craig Johnson

Static. “We can try, but if it gets bad, reception’s kind of touch and go. How you wanna do it?”

  “How about I give you a call every hour on the hour?”

  Static. “This mean I’m officially deputized?”

  I smiled. “I’ll talk to you about that.” I pulled out my pocket watch and rekeyed the mic. “In ten minutes it will be 3:00. Call me at 4:00.”

  Static. “Roger that.” If I hired him, at least he already knew radio procedures.

  Henry had kept an eye on the homestead while the foreman and I had finished our conversation. I clipped the radio to my belt as he turned to look at me. “We are walking from here?”

  I stared at the corner of the mobile home. “Yep, after I put Dog in the truck.” He wasn’t happy about it, but I figured Henry and I were aware of what we were getting ourselves into, so we deserved whatever we got. I told Dog not to play with the radio.

  There was a level area to our right where the banks of Crazy Woman shallowed, but it seemed assailable by an 18-wheeler and a house trailer. We crossed the frozen creek and moved within fifty yards of the house. There were a few dormers and a lean-to addition on the near side, and a screen door continually slapped in the wind, a brittle noise that grew louder as we approached. The broken trunks of the cottonwood were bleached out and whitened by the sun and the unending wind.

  There was nothing at the house itself to indicate that Leo might have been in there. The Mack truck and the mobile home were buried axle deep in the powdery snow about twenty-five yards west of the homestead. The house trailer was fairly new and was small by white man standards, but it was still almost twice the size of the cabin. I could see where the folding steps had been pulled down at the front door; they were covered with snow and appeared undisturbed.

  I glanced over at Henry. “You see anything?” He had stopped about thirty feet from the cabin; I could imagine his nostrils twitching. We had unconsciously fanned out from each other as we had approached; both of us had won hard lessons on what could happen when individuals bunched up in situations like this.

  “No.”

  “One of the things I don’t see is an ’87 Wagoneer, not that I thought I would have. I don’t think he could’ve gotten a car down in here with all this fresh snow.”

  I thought about the dark stories I knew and started forward. It was three steps up to the front door where the screen door beat its arhythmical response to the wind. I placed my hand on it and felt some of the paint crack and fall away like sheet music. The wind had stopped for a moment, and it was quiet. I looked into the house, and you could plainly see it was empty; the only thing that moved were the drifts of some tattered, faded, once-white lace curtains that rolled and fell back against the broken window glass. The curtains, shredded and billowing with the wind’s persistent caress, reminded me that Mari had been here. I hoped she still was, because I needed all the support I could get, but I doubted it. She had lived the majority of her life in the house in Powder Junction. As I saw her, she only came here in the spring or summer, and she never entered the house itself. Her presence was there, though, along with the faded pieces of wallpaper. The house had contained her spirit but had paid the terrible price of purposeful neglect and had died a slow and inevitable death with no songs ever to be heard again.

  His voice was soft and, if you weren’t listening, it would have drifted quietly along playing a variation with the wind. “There is a cellar.”

  I clicked the flashlight on and cast a beam across the stairs; they looked as if they might hold me. Not much of the snow had blown into the basement, and you could see the hard-pack dirt floor, but not much else. I handed the shotgun to Henry and pulled out my .45. We looked at each other for a moment, and then I stepped onto the first tread, which squealed but held. I hated basements. I ducked my head under the jamb and continued down, casting the light from the flashlight across the small room. The stairs were centered, so I checked underneath and on either side first. There were a few broken nail kegs and floor parts from the room above. The flashlight illuminated the heavy beams and supports that stood centered on raised stone that had been chiseled from the bedrock of the canyon floor. I stepped down onto the smooth surface of the dirt, turned the flashlight back into the darkness, and I heard something move.

  It was a muted sound, almost like the one that a feather duster would make. I stepped to the side and flashed my light to the center of the basement; it illuminated chains that hung there and the glowing golden eyes of a thirty-pound great gray owl. He screeched at me, dipped his head, and then exploded in a flurry of powerful wings that must have been six feet in wingspan to the collapsed wall of the broken foundation. His heavily feathered talons clawed at the rubble and found purchase. His huge head slowly turned to regard me: messenger from the dead indeed.

  “What is going on?”

  “I just flushed an owl from the other side.”

  It was quiet for a moment, but then his voice rumbled. “Messenger from the dead.”

  “I had that comforting thought all on my own.” I played the light back to the support beam at the chains that hung there. “Wait a minute.” I uncocked my side arm, slipped it back into my holster, resnapped the thumb strap, and walked over to the foot-wide support beam.

  They were heavier than tire chains and old. I pulled one up and looked at the metal clasp hanging from the end, checking to see another at the end of the other chain. I held one of the manacles up to my wrist for comparison; these had been custom built for someone with a wrist half the size of mine. The heavy chains were through-bolted, and they had been there for a long time. The clasps were unlocked and hung like gaping jaws. I dropped them and watched as they slapped against the wood, bumping there like a child worrying a pant leg. The corners of the timber were worn from the repeated strikes against them. Horsewhip or quirt marks. I stared and felt the blows, felt the cries, felt that it was good that the man who had put these things here was dead.

  “Anything?”

  I passed the beam of the flashlight around the cellar for one more look, but all there was to see here, I had seen. I checked the owl one more time, but he hadn’t moved. He continued to watch me as I made my way back up the steps. “Just more evidence to convince me that it’s a good thing Charlie Nurburn is dead.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “I think I just heard something in the trailer.”

  I was out and standing beside him when we heard it again. We looked at each other. “Did that sound like somebody moaning?” He nodded his head, and we headed for the trailer and the fold-down steps. I pulled my .45 out again and leaned against the trailer’s aluminum skin, just to the right of the door, and cocked the hammer back. The Bear pulled up to the left; anything bad that was going to happen in the next moment would likely happen in the framework of the doorway we now stood beside.

  I took a deep breath and reached for the knob, slowly turning it to the left and the right: locked. I pointed at Henry and the ground, indicating that he should stay there. He nodded, and I started around to look for another way in. I kept an eye to the windows, but the shades were all pulled down. When I got to the back, I could see another door about three-quarters of the way down. I slowly worked along the side of the mobile home, stopping just this side of that door. There were no steps here but, if I stretched, I could just reach the knob. With my fingertips, I pressed it and turned. It was tough at first, but then it clicked, far too loudly, and sprang open about an inch.

  I ducked down a little and pulled the door open about a foot and looked down a hallway that seemed to run the length of the thing. Cheap paneling and some sort of indoor-outdoor threadbare carpeting with a few window screens leaning against the interior wall was all that was visible. No Leo Gaskell. I looked down the hallway in the other direction, but all I could make out was the textured ceiling and a cheap light fixture; at least I could be sure that Leo wasn’t going to jump on me from above. I stood back up, took another deep breath, and casually opened the door the res
t of the way.

  Nothing.

  I stood still for a moment, then leaned in about two inches and checked both sides, did it again, and then again. Still nothing, so I shot the works and stuck my head all the way in along with the .45. There was a closed door to my right and another at the end of the hallway that was partially open and led to a living room in which, sitting on an imitation leather sofa and swathed in about four Hudson Bay and buffalo blankets, was, who I assumed to be, Ellen Runs Horse.

  I cleared my throat. “Hello.” The condensation from my breath stayed in front of my face; it was probably colder in the trailer than it was outside.

  She didn’t move, just kept looking at me from beneath the blankets; after a bit she finally said, “Eeh.” Crow. She said yes as a statement that held neither question nor interest. The small cloud from her breath collected there in the gloom.

  “I’m Sheriff Walt Longmire, Absaroka County.” I felt foolish saying it, but it was procedure. “Ellen Runs Horse?”

  “Eeh.”

  Same inflection. “Are you alone?”

  A moment passed. “Eeh.”

  I was feeling a little more secure but decided to test the theory using Vic’s litmus test for sanity. “Ellen, did you know that I was a Chinese fighter pilot?”

  “Eeh.”

  It was a fleeting security.

  I stretched up, got the majority of my girth in the doorstep, and wriggled inside. I was relatively sure that Leo wasn’t in the mobile home; if he had been, he would have most certainly bludgeoned me to death as I wallowed on the floor. I pushed off the questionable carpet and slumped against the wall. I looked back down the hallway where Ellen Runs Horse was fumbling with something in the blankets; she was probably trying to get up. I waved a hand at her. “That’s okay, Ellen.”

  It was then that I saw the barrel of a chrome-plated, pearl-handled .32 rise up from the blankets like a howitzer and tremble as she endeavored to pull the trigger.

  “Ellen . . . ?” That was about all I got out before the .32 belched fire and the ceiling above me blew apart with a smart sound. The crack of the automatic in the confined space was tremendous and my ears rang so loudly that I could barely hear myself yelling. I staggered against the interior wall and could feel my hand tightening around the grip of the .45 in spite of myself. I coughed it out in a yell. “Jesus, Ellen!”

  The automatic wavered but rose again as I dodged into the room to my right. The next bullet went through the first wall into a mattress that was leaning against it. I’m not sure how much protection I thought the thin walls of the mobile home were going to be, but the structure was falling below my expectations. I looked at the hole in the wall; she was getting closer. “Ellen?” Silence.

  I waited, but the next shot didn’t come. There was another shuffling noise, so I ventured toward the door and slowly peeked around the jamb. Henry was there, kneeling before her, with the tiny automatic cradled in his hands. “I think it is safe now.”

  “Jesus!” I turned the corner and looked at the two of them.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Jesus!”

  He was doing his best not to laugh. “You take a little walk down the hallway and come back when your vocabulary increases.”

  I stood there and took a few deep breaths as they continued a very low conversation in Crow, a language that, like Cheyenne, seemed to catch in the throat of the speaker. I could feel my heart rate beginning to slow to normal.

  I picked up a few words, but they didn’t make much sense to me. Her face was broad, and she had thick brows that seemed to gather at the center and curve up, giving her a sad and questioning look. The outside corners of her eyes folded within themselves, hiding the edges of the baking chocolate pupils. Strong creases at the corners of her mouth, cascading from the cheekbones, made it difficult to tell if she had ever smiled. The movement of her lips was slight, and her voice barely carried.

  After she finished talking, Henry took a plastic cup from a television tray to her right, glanced inside, and reached to her feet for what looked like a half-frozen gallon jug of water. He shook it to make sure some of the water was still liquid, refilled the cup, and placed the straw at her lips. While she drank, I took a look around. There was a Christmas tree in the corner, a motley bottlebrush type, which was decorated with homemade ornaments constructed of Mason jar lids and old photographs. Standing beside the blind television set, the holiday enthusiasm of the scraggly tree gave the room the most depressing appearance of any I’d been in, never mind the opened and emptied cans of creamed corn, the mushroom soup with a single spoon sticking up, the heel ends of a loaf of white bread, and another jug of water that had frozen solid.

  He closed her tiny hands around the cup, and she held it. Her eyes followed Henry when he stood; he quietly spoke to her again and then stepped toward me. “She is touched.” He glanced back over to Ellen who seemed content to suck from the straw of the plastic cup. “She says that none of her friends have come to visit her for a long time.”

  “What’s the story on the pistol?”

  “Evidently Leo told her to shoot anybody that came in.”

  “What’d she say about him?”

  “She thinks I am Leo.”

  I nodded a tight nod. “How did you get in?”

  “Just forced it with the tomahawk.”

  “Noticeable?”

  He handed me the automatic, which still had a round left. “Not that much.” His eyes came back up to mine. “Why?”

  “You’ve got to get her out of here.” He looked at me. “I don’t see any other option. We’ve got to get her some attention, but he might come back and, if he does, I want someone here to meet him.”

  “You are in no condition . . .”

  I looked back over to Ellen Runs Horse. “You speak the language, and she trusts you. Chances are he’s still in town somewhere, but I can get Double Tough on the radio and get Vic or Saizarbitoria down here later.” I crossed back down the hallway and looked out the window. “We’ve only got about an hour till it’s really dark.” The wind was blowing again, and my boot prints were almost gone. I turned back to Henry. “You better get out of here.”

  We had tucked Ellen into the passenger side of the Bullet and allowed Dog to share the front, since he seemed to make her more at ease. I looked through my one eye at the Cheyenne Nation. “When you get out of here, call ahead and get them to throw together some supplies and bring a little backup.”

  He pulled the heavy leather coat aside and climbed in, fastening his seatbelt and pulling the Special Forces tomahawk from behind him. The carbon steel surface absorbed light like a black hole. “Here.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want that thing; I wouldn’t know what to do with it.” I patted the chrome handle of the tiny automatic, which was sticking out from my belt, balanced the Remington on my shoulder, and felt the .45 in the holster. “I have every gun we’ve got.” He nodded and glanced toward the ridge. “Radio Double Tough and have him call in. I’ll be here.” He nodded and kept looking at me. “Aren’t you going to turn on the lights?” I reached in and hit the switch he was looking for as the blue and red reflectors bled ghosts of light across the late afternoon snow.

  He watched them for a moment. “This is the best part of your job.” He placed a hand against the driver’s side window as he passed, the large dark fingers unraveling against the glass like hemp rope.

  I watched as the truck struggled to stay alongside the canyon wall, disappearing in the snow as the darker gray of its outline grew lighter with the distance, and the sound of the big Detroit motor planed, muffled, and vanished. I stood there for a while longer, wondering, like I always did, if this was the right thing to do. It looked like it was going to be a long night, so I turned and started the trudge back to the trailer. I was interrupted by a weak call on the radio.

  Static. “Hey Sheriff, this is BR75115.The weather is comin’ in, just like . . .” I pulled the radio from my belt. “Absar
oka County Sheriff Unit One, come in?” After a moment, a very faint signal came through.

  Static. “Hey, Sheriff, how you . . .”

  I smiled. “I’m good, how about you?”

  Static. “I’m fired.”

  The signal faded out completely, and I readjusted the gain. “Hello? Jess?” Nothing. I dropped my head a little and then keyed the mic again. “Jess, if you can hear me?” At least Henry had gotten out. I tried the radio again. Static. I looked at the radio, thought about my luck, and keyed the mic one final time.

  Static. Damn.

  I walked around to the back of the trailer so that Leo wouldn’t notice any more of my tracks. I closed the door behind me and decided to check the other rooms. There was a back bedroom at the end of the hall with another mattress squatting in the corner, a particleboard dresser that had seen better days, and a vintage console television. There was nothing in the closet but old clothes and well-worn shoes, giving me an indication of the frugal life that Ellen Runs Horse must live. The next room was a lot more interesting; there was a card table with Sterno burners and all the products used to produce meth on a clandestine laboratory scale. The floorboards were lined with plastic gallon jugs containing the toxic castoff of the operation, and it was evident that Leo’s drug venture was still a going concern.

  I walked into the living room and looked at the beat-to-shit fake tree and wished it a Merry Christmas. The ornaments were made out of Mason jar lids with glue around the threaded edges to hold on the glitter, and there were bows of knitting yarn and ribbons to make the tiny ornaments brave; some of them used photographs that were old enough to be in Henry’s Mennonite collection. There was a sepia one that carried the bruised image of a young girl with braids playing marbles. She had on a cap and an old jacket and a face of utmost concentration. I turned the ornament in my hand and read on the back, printed in block letters, ELLEN WALKS OVER ICE. There was another of a young man in a Thermopolis varsity football uniform doing the old chuck and duck; I could see that it was Leo. I turned it over to confirm my guess; the block letters said simply LEO, with no surname.