The Bangtail Ghost

by Keith McCafferty

  On the walls hung cobwebbed skull and antler mounts of mule deer and elk that stared with empty eye sockets. Hanging behind the desk was a tinted photo of a younger Garrett and his hounds, and there were other photos on a corkboard, Garrett hefting up dead lions and bobcats with various clients. There was the smell of stale cigar and matted dog hair on all surfaces.

  The journals, a baker’s dozen, were sandwiched between spaniel-head bookends on a mantel over a fireplace that opened into both the office and the living room. Sean leafed through the journals—they were as mismatched as the furniture, some bound, others spiral-ring, entries in pencil and ink. They were the records of the makes and misses of a houndsman’s life, outings that never turned up a scent, others where the scent was lost or the trail led where dogs couldn’t follow, as well as those hunts that resulted in treed cats. Each entry included a date and location, the weather, a mileage log, paper-clipped gas and restaurant receipts, dog food receipts, snapshots, and a short account of the chase and outcome. The journals went back a full decade. The latest entry had been only two weeks before.

  Martha had stayed with Hazel in the living room and Sean heard steps as Hazel came into the study. “Would you trust me to borrow these?” Sean asked her.

  “I suppose it’s okay. I got to have them to do the income tax next year.”

  “I can get them back to you in a few days. Do you mind if I ask you a personal question? How did you and Buster end up together?” He made his interest sound casual, just passing the time, when what he was really doing, and not particularly liking himself for it, was ingratiating himself to peel back that last inner skin that might cover something untold, the outer skins of reticence already having dissolved with the shock of the death.

  “His real name is Jack. Was Jack. It was his dad called him Buster. He grew up on a cattle station in New South Wales. I was on holiday and the tour bus broke down, and he came by on a horse and fixed us up. I had a fella back home, but who can resist a man on a horse? Oh, he was a charmer. I got my bag and rode to the station with him on the back of the horse. He introduced me to his mom and dad and told them he was going to marry me. A month later we were married.”

  There was a flicker of a smile as she thought back. “That whole time,” she said, “he never tried to do anything more than kiss me. A gentleman, he was. We were going to take over the station, but he got into an argument with his brother, who wanted the place, too, and his wife was a witch about it, and finally Buster sold out his half to them and decided to try his luck here. He got a job in a loony bin in Virginia, but then my mom died and left me this place, so we come out here. Buster, he had a thing for the dogs far back as I knew him, liked to hunt those wild pig in the outback. I knew I’d always run second to the pack when it came to his heart. But I signed up for it. I don’t have any regrets. You get past him being Buster, he was just Jack. He was my person.”

  Sean was thoughtful. “Hazel, the thing that puzzles me is how he knew where the cat would be. He didn’t say anything that could be a clue? Maybe got a phone call from someone?”

  “No, but ever since that harlot come to her end, he was out there driving the roads. Always had a hound with him, always had his wand. Even after he killed the bad one. It was like he thought he’d got the wrong lion or there was another out there just as bad. It was an obsession. I told him, I said, ‘Buster, why are you taking this so personal. These people the cat’s got, it’s not like you know them.’ All he’d say was that as long as the county was reimbursing him for his gas, he was going to keep hunting. It haunted him. It was like he thought it was his fault for what happened.”

  “His wand?”

  “His radio receiver. Called it his magic wand. That’s how he thought he might find the cat. Keep driving the roads and tuning in for a signal. Got to get lucky sooner or later.”

  Sean asked the obvious next question. “How did Buster know that the cat was radio-collared?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it was him put it on it. He collared a lot of lion going back a stretch. Part of that study they had.”

  Sean tried to dig deeper into the subject of the collars, but she didn’t know and he wasn’t learning anything of note. He handed her one of his cards, the one with the fly on it. “If you think of anything that might help us know why he was up there, that particular place . . . ?”

  She nodded. “I will, but he played his cards close to his chest. His dogs knew him better than I did.”

  * * *

  • • •

  WHEN THEY WENT BACK to the living room, the hound rose from the couch where he had been lying and went up to Hazel, the question mark of his tail wagging. She bent down to stroke him.

  “They say you can’t make a house dog of a hound, but they haven’t met old Boon, no, they haven’t.” She sat down on the floor and tucked her legs underneath her, the dog resting his head on her lap. She was sitting that way when they left a few minutes later, her housecoat with the Shetland ponies making a puddle on the floor. She looked up at Martha, who had heard people in shock say all sorts of things, and added a new one to the list.

  “Look at me,” she said. “I’m melting.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The War Room

  You’re certain he said seven hundred seventy-seven days ago?”

  “Yes, he made a point of it being an angel number.”

  Martha grunted. “Then why aren’t we seeing anything worth changing your life over?”

  They were sitting at her home desk, the day just long enough in the tooth that Martha had turned on the track lighting. Buster Garrett’s journals were spread out on the polished surface of the stump. Sean had recalled to her Garrett’s confession that something had happened that changed his life. “I created a monster,” he’d told Sean, one that stood between him and heaven. When Sean had pressed him further, he’d declined to elaborate.

  Sean counted back to the date. He found the corresponding page in one of the journals, or rather where the arithmetic said it should have been. However, Garrett had made no entry for that date. Nor had he for the dates immediately before and after it.

  “Well, hell,” Sean said. “If something happened then, it didn’t make his book. And everything made his book.”

  Martha, leaning over his shoulder, kissed him on the top of his head. She muttered, “What would you do without me?”

  “What?”

  “You counted back from today’s date, not the date when he told you the number.”

  “Oh.”

  “When was it you two drank your Virgin Marys?”

  “Back in February, I think. It’s too long ago to remember.” He paused. “No, I do remember. I sold a painting that morning, the Kispiox River with the Telkwa Range on the horizon. It was titled River of Lesser Gods. We toasted the sale.”

  “You and Garrett?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you have a record of the sale in your phone? I know you never erase anything.”

  Sean found the date of the sale.

  “Count backwards from there.”

  Sean picked up a pencil.

  “It’s December tenth,” Martha said. “Two years ago, plus a few weeks.”

  Sean looked at her.

  She shrugged. “I’ve got a head for figures. You know that.”

  He nodded and found the journal entry.

  Client: Jeremy Walker, Macon, Georgia

  License: Mountain lion hound-training season, photos only.

  Location: Black Butte east slope, Gravelly Range. Lower Fox Meadow.

  Conditions: Crust snow cover, depth six inches in timber. Drifts in parks. Road passable to mile 7. 34°F, wind negligible.

  Hunt: Crossed track Lower Fox Meadow. Struck 10 a.m., Mary Jane, Boon, General Compson. Treed tomcat in forty minutes two drainages south. I told client photos only. Perfectly clear i
n contract. He took the rifle from my scabbard and shot at lion while I was engaged with dogs. Maintained it was going to jump out of the tree and was afraid it would attack him. Lion bailed out and ran, leaving intermittent blood trail. Blood pattern showed it had been shot in right paw or leg. I found one of the toes along the track. Pulled the dogs from further chase and read client the riot act.

  A note was written at the bottom of the page in pencil.

  I cut the track of this same lion later that winter (see entry Feb. 26). The right front paw print showed a space where the toe would have been. The track was near an elk kill that showed evidence the lion had broken canine on upper right side. I concluded wound to the toe and to the tooth occurred at same time from same bullet. Decided not to run the cat. Client upset as it was the only track we cut. But as I took responsibility for the wounds this animal suffered, I took satisfaction seeing that the cat was still alive after several months and had apparently recovered enough to catch prey. Bad luck cat, I wished him luck and good hunting.

  The entry included a snapshot of a lion track in snow, showing the space between the toes.

  Sean felt a temperature change in the room. He said, “Buster knew as soon as we killed the cat and looked at its paw that it was the same one his client had wounded. He probably already suspected from the tooth marks on Clarice Kincaid’s neck. Something happened between the time he cut its track and when it took her life that turned it from a lion suffering an old wound into a man-eater. That’s why it was so personal. He took responsibility for a human death.”

  “But you shot that cat and Buster was still hunting, going out every week or so, according to these journals. The cat that killed him, he was waving his magic wand trying to find it. The obsession was still there. There has to be a thread that connects the two, that connects all of it.”

  “I’m with you, Martha.” But what that thread was remained one of those problems he tried to solve with imaginary tobacco, and he was no closer to connecting the dots when they pulled into the muddy ruts of Harold’s drive the next morning.

  Martha turned to Sean after her knock. They could hear Harold’s stick tapping. “Five gets you ten,” Martha said, “that stick will be nowhere in sight when he opens the door. ‘Never show your weakness.’ The code he lives by.”

  Harold opened the door and Sean caught Martha’s half smile. No sign of the stick.

  “Martha, Sean. Janice is out of town, so you’ll excuse the mess.” Janice was Harold’s sister.

  “Meaning you can’t pick up after yourself?” Martha said. “You’ll have to do better if you want a woman to stick around for a month of Sundays.”

  “I suppose so.” He pointed to the geriatric golden retriever sleeping on a dog bed on the one couch. “I blame Imitaa.” Using the Blackfeet word for “dog.” Her remark had stung, Martha thought, and felt ashamed of herself. But if Harold took note, he didn’t let it show, any more than he’d shown the stick.

  Martha remembered the woman Harold had been cohabitating with since the winter. They had been living in the converted barn up the hill. She was a lanky blonde with a gap-toothed smile and a tinkling quality in her voice. “How’s Carol Anne?” she said, hoping she’d got the name right.

  “She’s back in Missouri. Got a daughter there.”

  Harold’s tone said there was no certainty she’d return.

  He smiled. “Either I’m too much Indian or not Indian enough. Just can’t figure.”

  “I’m guessing it’s because you’re just too much Harold,” Martha said. Her own relationship with him, which had simmered for years, had cooled to the degree that she had learned the true nature of a man who confronted the world with cheekbones, armband tattoos of animal tracks, and few words. At least too few words for most women.

  There were few of them now. A moment of silence stretched, elongating like a water drop at the tip of an icicle.

  “I see you put up a hoop on the barn,” Martha said, trying for small talk.

  “My physical therapist says shooting a basketball exercises the Achilles and promotes healing. Been ten months. Hasn’t seemed to make much difference.” Another drop of water elongated.

  Finally: “I heard you two are getting married. Congratulations. I should have said something yesterday. You get on a track, you know how it is. You don’t think about much else.”

  “How’s Marcus?” Martha asked. Marcus was the son that Harold had not known he’d had until the previous June, and who’d suffered the same injury as his father. It was a long story, one that was written in blood and bound them together, Sean and Martha included.

  “You wouldn’t know it ever happened,” Harold said. “Kids, they recover. He’s home this weekend. Took the truck into Ennis.”

  “It would be good to see him,” Martha said. She thought to preempt another water drop succumbing to its mortality. “Harold, you invited us over for this powwow. What do you got? Right now all I got is a ninety-year-old houndsman from Arizona who promises his dogs can track a lion over hard rock, if he doesn’t die before reaching Montana. That and a fifty-dollar bottle of perfume guaranteed to be catnip. So I’m hoping you got something.”

  Harold smiled. “Well, like I said, I’ve started looking at the lion study data.” He gestured, indicating a worm-holed desk that looked like maple. On it rested a desk computer, a printer, an elk antler lamp, and several stacks of photocopied maps pinned down by chunks of petrified wood.

  “Janice calls this my war room,” he said.

  Behind the desk, three identical topographic maps were taped to a metal plate that was bolted onto the wall. The maps had been pieced together from digital USGS downloads, and each was covered with a thin sheet of clear plastic. The Madison River ran south to north roughly through the middle of each map. The left-hand map was studded with circular magnets in several colors, each about the circumference of a shirt button. There was also a sprinkling of miniature magnets shaped like crosses. The other two maps had been drawn upon with dry-erase markers in patterns consisting of red dots linked by blue lines.

  Martha set her hands on her hips. She blew at an errant strand of hair. “This one looks like something you’d see in MoMA,” she said. And when Harold didn’t respond, “That’s—”

  “I know what MoMA is,” Harold said.

  “I didn’t say you didn’t. Most men have about as much interest in modern art as foreplay. It wasn’t a racist comment.”

  Harold stone-faced her. “Like your saying ‘powwow,’” he said. Then smiled as her face reddened. “I’m just fooling with you.”

  Martha muttered under her breath.

  “What’s that?”

  “Amusement,” she said. “That’s what I’ve become. People’s source of amusement.”

  “We love you anyway,” Sean said. “You, too, right, Harold?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Shut up, the both of you. What exactly am I looking at?”

  Harold tapped the left-hand map with a pencil eraser. “The red magnets mark mountain lion encounters of a threatening nature. Ear-flattening, hissing, following, crouching with paws pumping, so on, but short of physical contact. Take off the magnets”—he took one off—“and you’ll see I’ve marked each location with a date of occurrence and a number. Also, the GPS waypoint, which is not written out because it’s too long, but the coordinates are logged in my computer. The data goes back three years. You go back any further, there’s just too many encounters to keep track of. As it is, we have thirty-seven reds.

  “The encounters I’ve graded by threat, one-to-ten scale. For example, this here”—he tapped a magnet—“man was cutting firewood and a lion advanced on him even though he was revving up his chain saw to deter it. Broad daylight, the cat as close as ten feet, follows him all the way back to his truck. Solid ten. Whereas this guy”—he pointed to another magnet—“cat growls at him after nightfal
l and then follows him for a few hundred feet, but not all the way to the trailhead, where he’d left his vehicle.”

  “Like what happened to me,” Sean said.

  “Similar. Five points.”

  Martha nodded. “And the black magnets? I count seven.”

  “Actual physical contact. As in contact with hand or arm, ski pole, stick, whatever the victim tried to protect himself with. Four of the victims were hospitalized with lacerations. Only one, a mountain biker up Hyalite Canyon who was chased down, had life-threatening injuries.”

  “I remember that one,” Sean said. “Didn’t he lose an eye?”

  “It was an ear,” Harold said. “He was a wildlife artist. People started calling him van Gogh.” He pointed to another magnet. “This one’s my favorite. Guy fishing Elk Lake, lion attacks, only weapon at hand is his spinning rod. Called an Ugly Stik. He manages to beat the cat away. Company that makes the Ugly Stik catches wind, hires him to do television commercials hyping the durability of their product.”

  “And the silver sparkly ones?” Martha said. “What did you do, Harold, paint theses magnets with fingernail polish?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did. The red is CoverGirl Frosted Cherry. The dark is called To the Moon and Black. The sparkly polish is Starry Night. Carol Anne left some girl stuff behind. You look surprised.”

  “I just have a hard time envisioning you with a woman who paints her nails. Did she wear lipstick, too?”

  “Lip gloss. You ever wear lip gloss, Martha?”

  He turned back to the maps as Martha blushed. She’d put on flavored lip gloss on nights they’d made love. Raspberry Sorbet.

  “To answer your question,” Harold said, “the so-called sparkly magnets mark places where people went missing and proximate lion activity makes a cat a reasonable suspect.” He tapped one. “Cross-country runner, training run, Johnson Coulee, Tobacco Roots. This other”—he tapped another magnet—“boy hiking in the Spanish Peaks, part of an organized outing, lagged behind, never seen again. And this one, a young woman on a horse rides out from that Rocking R guest ranch in the Paradise Valley. Mare came back, she didn’t. Fresh cat sign found along the trail. One trait most of the missing shared was short stature—right in a lion’s wheelhouse.”