Buffalo Jump Blues (23 page)

T
rackless ground: sage, thornbushes, cheatgrass. In May you pick the ticks off and in June you watch out for snakes. In July, you look for snakes, too, but mostly you just sweat.

Sean had assumed that the glint was the Karlson brothers' Highlander, but that was before he'd talked to the rancher, who'd said that an Indian man had run into overheating problems two miles farther down the road. Sean had been tempted to drive down the road and see if Campbell's truck was there, but what if it wasn't, or what if it was and John Running Boy was gone? He'd have exposed himself to anyone looking down from the cliffs and lose the advantage of surprise. But then, what if the brothers were holding Ida captive and Sean sat on his hands and something happened to her? You could “what if” yourself into the ground over it.

Sean tied his bandana around his forehead to keep the salt out of his eyes and began to hike, four miles becoming three, becoming two. The land that had appeared flat from the vantage of the road was cut up by rain washes, and he kept to them as much as possible, trying to stay out of sight from anyone on top of the cliffs. When he judged that he was no more than a few hundred yards from the butte, he climbed on all fours to a pinnacle of rock and raised the binoculars. He could feel his stomach muscles crawling against the ground. It was all real now; the ten-power glasses brought the Highlander so close that he could practically make out the vanity plate. From this perspective it was clear that the SUV wasn't at the foot of the butte, but parked a quarter mile or so to the near side, where a two-track
ended at a coulee carved by flooding. The butte wasn't as it had first appeared, either. It wasn't actually a butte, isolated from the plain around it, but rather a broad beavertail plateau that dropped away on three sides in a series of striated cliffs. The bands of sandstone no longer danced in the heat haze but dripped with gold, gone molten in the gunsight of the dropping sun.

This must have been where the bison were driven to their deaths a millennium ago, Sean thought, but how the hell had the hunters gained the top of the cliffs? Sean hated heights and the smile he forced was grim. He began to pull himself backwards with his toes, then, hunched over, scrabbled back to the base of the hill, out of sight from anyone on the cliffs.

He sat down with a stunted piñon tree for back support and picked prickly pear spines out of his knees. He ate his sardines and tried to get some rest, knowing it would be at least a couple of hours before darkness became his friend and he could move without fear of being discovered. But he had no more than shut his eyes before an image of Martha Ettinger wormed to the front of his mind. He felt her ChapSticked lips sliding along his in the stairwell, her arms drawing him close.

Don't you dare die on me
.
Don't you dare do anything stupid up there and die on me.

“I'll do my best,” he said out loud.

A few feet away, a glittering thread of ants emerged from a crack in a rock outcropping to find refuge in another crack. Sean, watching the ants, heard a muffled cough and whirled round. John Running Boy held Melvin Campbell's shotgun at port arms, and for the second time in a week he felt his insides draw tight as the muzzle drew circles on his abdomen.

“What are you going to do,” he said, “shoot the one friend out here you have?” The sensible, conversational tone he tried for made it to the word “shoot.” His voice was thick and he had to clear his throat, but at least John lowered the muzzle of the shotgun.

“I was just trying to get your attention.”

“You got it.”

“What are you doing here? Did you follow me?”

“From where I'm standing, you're the one following me.”

“I saw you, I thought maybe you were one of them.”

“I found this place because Melvin Campbell told me where you'd gone.”

“That's a lie. He'd dead.”

“He's in bad shape. He isn't dead. A friend of mine's at the hospital in Browning with him right now. Joseph Brings the Sun. You know him. He's the one who told me how to find this place.”

Sean read the relief on John's face, replaced almost immediately by skepticism. “But they shot him,” he said. “I heard the shot.”

“He's alive, John. I need to know what we're up against. Are they up on the cliffs? Do they have Ida? You've got to tell me what happened.”

Finally, John set down the shotgun and drew his legs under him, sitting cross-legged. “Do you have any water? Some guy gave me water for the radiator, but he said it was from a stock tank. I haven't had a drink since the house.”

Sean handed him his water bottle.

—

It was the middle of the night and he hadn't heard them drive up. Later, the brothers would say that it was because they'd put the hybrid in EV mode, the battery operating as soundlessly as the wings of a moth. They called it the Death Star. But all John knew then was that the door to the room where Ida was sleeping had creaked open, and he'd heard her go down the stairs in her bare feet, presumably to the bathroom because the plumbing was broken on the second floor. Time had passed and he'd risen to find out why she hadn't returned.

She was sitting on the sofa beside Brady Karlson, who had a smile on his face that grew wider, like a dog welcoming home his master.

“Ssshh,” he said, bringing his finger to his lips. John noticed he was
wearing blue plastic gloves, like nurses do in a hospital. “I was just having a chat with this young woman. Please, won't you join us?”

It was when he beckoned to him that John had seen the pistol, Brady casually displaying it with a gloved forefinger inside the trigger guard. He said .380 ACP was a ‘pissant' caliber, but if you put the barrel in someone's ear, the bullet would find the brain, no trouble at all. He'd demonstrated, pulling back Ida's hair from her ear. Ida was sitting very still with her knees pressed together and her hands clasped like prayer against her chest. Brady told John they needed to have a conversation, directed him to sit in the chair, and again urged him to speak quietly. He said that Levi was with the old man in the bedroom, watching him sleep, and that if he woke up they were going to have to kill him. In fact John needn't speak at all beyond answering a few questions, starting with why he'd disappeared the night of the buffalo jump.

John had lied, telling him that he had fallen over the cliff and stumbled around before passing out, and that when he awoke he was alone, that he'd called out for help and nobody had answered, and then after a long time he'd left and got back into his car.

And he hadn't seen or heard anything?

He'd heard the moans of the bison. If there were any other sounds, it had drowned them out.

“You didn't hear us searching for you? We were so worried.”

No, he hadn't.

And what had he done after, for the next several days? John said he'd laid low because he'd heard that Gary Hixon was dead and that the police were looking for him. That's why he'd come up to the reservation, where they couldn't get to him.

“And who is your tasty treat?” Brady said. He'd rubbed the muzzle of the handgun in a caressing gesture, circling Ida's ear.

She was Melvin's niece, John said. She was visiting. He barely knew her.

“I'd like to get to know her,” Brady had said. And again the smile.
Here's what would happen. They were all going to take a drive together, back to where they had become blood brothers, and they were going to renew their vows. They were going to make another pact, this one of silence. And if John swore the oath, Brady in return would take his word, all hard feelings would be erased.

John had not been fooled into thinking that anything of the sort would happen. He thought that the brothers would push him off the cliff, or him and Ida both, maybe carving their hands first to make it look like a suicide pact. His only choice was to fight, to somehow overpower Brady and take the gun before his brother arrived, making it two against one. He was trying to formulate a plan when Brady jerked the barrel up and told John to walk outside onto the porch. John pushed the screen door open and stepped out, Brady following with the pistol at Ida's ear. As the door shut behind them, there was a crashing sound from inside the house and John heard voices raised, then a sickening thunk like an ax striking punky wood. Brady swiveled the upper part of his body toward the sound, and as the barrel of the gun veered away from Ida, John leapt forward and tackled him by the knees. They went careening off the porch into the yard, John feeling a white heat as his forehead cracked against stones. He remembered climbing Brady's back like he was a tree, trying to work his arm around the corded neck to choke him. Then he felt a jolt of pain as his head jerked violently backwards, lights pulsing behind his eyes. He must have passed out and when he came to he was spitting blood.

“You almost killed him,” he heard Brady say.

“I only hit him twice. He's just unconscious.”

“Not the old man. Him. John. He doesn't die here, you idiot. Now he's got blood all over him. That shit doesn't come out. What do I always tell you? Come on, what?”

“Blood never dies.”

“That's right. Blood never dies. And I got it on me, too. That's okay, though. I have other clothes. We can dump the ones I'm wearing.”

“What about the old man? You want me to—”

“Shut up. I need to think.” John, still curled into a ball on the ground, could see Ida's feet dangling as Brady bear-hugged her from behind, lifting her off the ground.

“If you don't stop kicking, I'll make it so you can't breathe,” Brady said. “Like this. You want this. Or maybe this.” The feet stabbed out ineffectually and then went rigid. Brady released his grip and she folded up on the porch a few feet away from John. Brady handed his brother the gun. “Put it on them,” he said. “Don't let him get any of his blood on her. I have to think about this.”

John shut his eyes to the pain in his head and heard Brady's footfalls moving away, then coming back. His voice was low, calm. “This is the deal. You're going to take the gun and finish the old man. A shot to the body, not the head. I don't want any blood spatter on you.”

“He's lying like he's on a cross.”

“Then step onto a chair so you can shoot down and get the angle. But from the doorway. No closer.”

“I don't want to. We studied that stuff, remember? If you don't get the spirits out of the body before it dies, they haunt you.”

“What do you want us to do, burn sweetgrass and chant? The old man heard us talking, he was only pretending to be asleep. That's what you told me, so end of discussion. After you do him, go upstairs and bring down some clothes and shoes for pretty what's-her-name. Much as I like to see a girl in her panties, she needs to be dressed. What did you say your name was, darling? Some kind of star, wasn't it?”

He didn't receive an answer and Levi spelled the silence.

“Do I get clothes for him, too?”

“No. He stays here. Change of plan.”

“You mean alive?”

“I mean alive.”

“But why would we do that?”

“What did you just tell me? Think.”

“Blood never dies?”

“That's right. He gets into the car, it's a fucking DNA-mobile. There's going to be nothing that ties him to this car, and there's going to be nothing that ties us to this house. That's why we wore the gloves. If we were never here, who do you think is going to go down for the old man's murder? John will, maybe her, too. They were living with him, maybe they wanted to rob him. Maybe it was some Indian voodoo shit. It went south and they split.”

John had seen the shoe coming and braced his stomach muscles against the impact. “Where's he keep his money, John? We have to make it look good.”

“He has a money clip under his mattress.” He was telling the truth, seeing that there was a window now, that he might still have a chance to save Ida.

“He'll just go to the police,” John heard Levi say.

“Levi, Levi, Levi.” Brady's voice was weary. “Even you ought to be able to see why he won't do that. If he goes to the police, he might as well have shot her himself. Because if anyone shows up besides him, she'll be dead. And he knows that. See, we're giving him a chance to be the man on the horse. He's going to follow us to the buffalo jump, try to be the hero. We're going to give him until nightfall to show up. No, let's make it at least an hour before nightfall, so we can see that he's alone. You'll be alone, won't you, John?”

“I'll be alone,” John said.

“See, Levi, he'll come alone.”

“But he hardly knows her. He said—”

“He's in love with her. I know that's outside the realm of your emotional landscape, but trust me, he is. He doesn't care about his own life, only hers. We've found his weakness. But how will he get there? Not in that Motor City eggbeater. You need clearance—”

“I can drive the truck,” John said.

“It will get there?”

“Melvin drives it into town. It's just slow.”

Brady nodded. “Thank you, John. I think you've solved the
problem. Slow is good. I don't want you trying to catch up, play road chicken. And it will look like you stole it. All right, then, that's settled. Just be sure you're there a couple hours before dark, say eight o'clock. You go about this on Indian time, you know what happens to Ida. Or maybe you don't. In fact, I don't think you'd want to know.”

John heard Brady clapping, as if congratulating his brilliance.

“I do believe we have a plan. Now we're just waiting on you, Levi. Go on, get on with it.”

“I've never done anything like this.”

“There's a first time for everything, isn't that what they say?”