Leaning Land (12 page)

It was Ray’s turn to nod but he waited until he was sure Luther was finished. “Whether I believe or not is unimportant. What’s important is that the Squaw Point Utes believe in the Many Coats’s magic.”

Wager said, “That’s federal money those people are misusing, isn’t it? Hasn’t the FBI been called in to investigate?”

Luther stared at the sand, and finally Ray answered for him. “Sure. FBI agent came in six or seven years ago, went through all the receipts. Found a lot of things wrong. Found Douglas Many Coats had charged the tribal account for three hundred ninety days’ per diem for one year.”

“For one year?”

Luther snorted. “And a year only has three hundred sixty-five days. You know it and I know it. But Douglas Many Coats forgot about that—he was so greedy he forgot how many days in a year.”

Ray laughed. “Douglas gave greed a bad name with that one.”

“So what’d the FBI do?”

“Nothing,” said Ray. “Submitted the report to the BIA. The Many Coats family has the BIA in its many pockets, so BIA turned it over to the tribal council to handle. Which, of course, is run by the Many Coats family. So the FBI went away and things stayed the same.”

Luther lit another cigarette, this time not going through the ritual of offering. “Around here, if you kiss the asses of the Many Coats, you can get things: extra money, credit at the trading post, interest-free loans from the banks down in Cortez and up in Grand Junction. If you don’t, you got to wade through shit just to get your annuity. About ten years ago the tribe even went broke for a while—the Many Coats family had spent the tribe’s whole annuity money and eighteen money. I heard Ramey Many Coats bought six cars that year.”

“That was the worst time,” Ray said. “I wasn’t here then, but we heard about it over on the Southern Ute reservation. Sounded like there was going to be shooting, people were so mad.”

“Would have been, except Douglas Many Coats can put a hex on anybody he doesn’t like. He’s done it—made one of Charley Buck’s sons shoot himself in the head.” He pinched some of the fine sand and tossed it away from him as if to cleanse the air of the dead man’s name. “They’re like that: they figure you might give them some trouble, they hex you and your family, and you don’t even know it until something bad comes along.” His voice dropped into gloom. “And now they’re talking ‘tribal sovereignty’—just another way to take away what little we got left.”

Wager wanted to ask if Rubin had troubles with the Many Coats, but this time he held his tongue; the question had to be in Ray’s mind, too, and he would know the best way to get around to it.

“The tribal council’s elected,” Ray told Wager. “But there’s no voter registry so it’s easy to stuff the ballot box. The Many Coats family have at least four of the seven members elected to the council every year. Have for as long as I can remember.”

“Me, too. First the older ones, then their sons. Now Douglas’s son Ramey and his brothers and cousins.” Luther shrugged. “It’s the way things are. The way they always will be unless things get worse.”

Ray didn’t want to hear resignation like that Wager saw, but the younger man didn’t say anything. They sat in silence for a while. Finally Luther started speaking again. “Anyway, since all the trouble a few years back when the tribe went broke, the Many Coats family hasn’t been stealing as much from the tribe, so people got enough to get by on for now. But now maybe something else is going on.”

After a polite wait, Ray asked, “You mean the sovereignty policy?”

Luther shook his head. “No. Something else, maybe. I’m not sure. This person told everybody that something was going on—some big deal, maybe.”

Wager forgot about his aching knees.

And Ray, though he still sat, dragging his fingertips through the sand, seemed more alert. “Something that Ramey Many Coats was mixed up in?”

Luther grunted. “I don’t know for sure, but I think so. This person talked about some deal. I guess he talked about it to everybody; I got asked about it from some other people who’d heard about it, anyway. He always did talk a lot.” He fell silent and Wager wondered if Luther expected them to agree.

Ray finally asked, “Have you talked to Ramey?”

“I don’t talk to no Many Coats. Got nothing to say to them.” Luther’s silence turned sullen. “That’s just what this person said. Said there were some white men in on it talking to Ramey about it, too. Told me and a lot of other Indians that there would be big news in a while.”

“How did this person find out?”

A shrug. “This person went to a lot of places in his work. He heard a lot of things—he talked to people and they talked to him. Maybe this person was getting paid to find out things, too.” Another shrug. “Ask whoever else he told this to. He liked to talk, so ask them.”

Again Wager made himself keep quiet; Ray finally got around to what Wager wanted to ask: “Maybe this big news had to do with some white men getting shot? Some federal government men?”

Luther thought that over and then shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe that was it. This person, he was always asking around about things like that for the FBI. Maybe that was it. You ask Ramey.”

Wager could keep quiet no longer. “Did this person belong to the Constitutional Posse?”

The man’s silence apologized for Wager’s rudeness. After a while he wagged his head. “I don’t think so. I don’t know, but this person didn’t go to no meetings—didn’t have time.”

“When was this? When did he tell you about this deal?”

Luther mumbled. “The last time I saw him. Maybe a week before he met the sheriff.”

“Met the sheriff?”

“Before the sheriff found him,” said Ray.

“This person,” Luther studied the sand in front of his folded legs, “you think somebody maybe killed him? Is that why you’re asking these questions?”

Wager answered, “It’s what I’m trying to find out. There’s not enough evidence to say for sure, only suspicion.”

“Any idea who?”

“He was an informant for the FBI. He was told to ask about the Constitutional Posse. And about who had shot those government people.”

Luther sat still, eyes half closed, as if forcing himself not to hear Wager’s voice.

“Did this person ever talk to you about his wife? Say they were having troubles?” Wager asked.

“No.”

Ray said, “That’s something only women talk to each other about. And white men. If he did talk about his marriage, it wasn’t to an Indian.”

Wager persisted. “Did you know his wife?”

“Met her.”

“Do you think she could have killed him?”

Luther absently fingered one of the leather thongs wrapped around the end of a braid. “Maybe it’s better to stop asking things about this person. Better to leave this person in peace.”

“The law says I can’t do that. It’s a suspicious death and it has to be investigated.” Wager added, “Did Ru—did this person know either of the white men who were shot?”

Luther stared at the sand. “I don’t know. I don’t know any more.”

Apparently that was all Luther was going to say about that. Even a question about Walter Lawrence—called “your old neighbor who maybe lived up the wash” by Ray—was answered with only a puff of cigarette smoke. Ray finally turned the talk back to quarter-horse racing and who had won what where. After another half hour of that he handed back the unsmoked cigarette he had held. “Thanks for your help, Luther. We better get going now.”

The man tapped the cigarette into the box. “You didn’t hear anything from me.”

“No. We talked about horses.”

“That’s right.”

Wager asked the man to call him through Ray or Sheriff Spurlock or at the Gypsum Motel if he remembered anything else that might be helpful. Then he limped back to Ray’s truck, his legs stiff and awkward. “What do you think?”

“I’m not sure. But if Rubin did find out something about the Posse that he wasn’t supposed to know, I don’t think it involved anybody on the reservation.”

“Why not?”

“Because they knew he was working for the FBI.”

“Everybody on the reservation knew that?”

“Aw, sure! Durkin asked maybe half a dozen people to work for him before he got around to asking Rubin. And Rubin told Luther what he was doing—he wasn’t the kind who could keep his mouth shut, from what I hear about him. If he told Luther, he probably told somebody else as well. Hell, Rubin was a magpie, always squawking. Everybody on the reservation knew better than to tell that man anything they wanted kept secret.’’

D
ESPITE THE ROUGH
road, Wager’s knees thought the trip back was bliss. He kneaded the flesh of his legs and stretched and bent the tenderness out of his joints. For a while, neither man talked much; Ray kept his mirrored glasses facing the dirt track ahead, and Wager was trying to build a system for determining Rubin’s last few days.

“I figure Rubin came out to visit Luther a day or two before he died,” Wager finally said.

“Yeah. Maybe even the same day. He was dead, what, a week before he was found?”

“That’s the coroner’s estimate.” For what that was worth. The coroner for La Sal and Montezuma counties was an undertaker down in Cortez. As was true in most rural counties of Colorado, he lacked both a medical degree and any forensics training. Which the coroner’s report clearly showed. That county office was just a way to earn extra cash from the taxpayers. But, in fairness, it would have been a tough case even for an MD. “From what little he had to work with.”

Ray grunted. He might not have been as superstitious as the Squaw Point Utes, but the details of an ugly death scene still seemed to verge on the obscene for him. “Looks like the people are getting some rain over there.” He nodded toward a billowing pile of mounting clouds that reached high enough to brush the jet stream and form an anvil head. Icy blue lightning flickered behind different spurs and boils of cloud, and from its flat, dark bottom, a gray beard of rain slanted toward the earth. “Hope it’s a two-inch rain and not a six-inch rain.”

“Flash-flood danger?”

“Too early in the year for that. Naw, out here, a two-inch rain means the drops land closer together than in a six-inch rain. By four inches.”

“Oh.” Maybe that was supposed to be a joke—the young Indian seemed to be smiling to himself. “Could Luther belong to the Constitutional Posse?”

“No. Nobody on the reservation does—that’s a white man’s organization and they don’t want Indians near it.”

“But he knew about it.”

“Sure. Everybody does.” Then, “Oh, you mean he might have known about the Posse because of Rubin? You still think Rubin might have been trying to infiltrate the Posse and they’re the ones who killed him?” When Wager nodded, Ray said, “Well, Luther said Rubin didn’t belong, and I believe him. You have to understand: the Posse’s as much social as it is political, and those ranchers wouldn’t mix socially with many Indians.”

“Even a quarter-blood?”

“Even one drop of blood. Some of those ranchers call us ‘red niggers.’ And some of us Southern Utes do have some Negro blood—from buffalo soldiers who married into the tribe, and I’m damn proud of it. No, I can’t see Rubin or any other Indian being even a fringe member of that bunch. And, by God, I wouldn’t want any of them in my tribe, either.” He shifted down to cross a gulch, working the gears with a bit more force than necessary. “But you better ask Spurlock about the Posse—he gets their vote every election! Rubin might have sympathized with them—or said he did. He’d have to, I reckon, since a lot of his customers are members. But they’d never invite him to join—hell, they might have to drink out of the same bottle.”

“He was an FBI informant. He was told to look into the deaths of those men, and Durkin believes that the Constitutional Posse might be involved in the shootings.”

Ray considered that. “I suppose that’s possible. And maybe Rubin did find out something that could incriminate somebody, and that’s why he was killed. Killing an Indian wouldn’t mean much to some of the ranchers around here. If so,” Ray’s mirrored sunglasses swung Wager’s way for a long moment, “you might not want to ask Spurlock about the Posse. He does owe his job to those people. And then there’s Rubin’s wife.”

“What’s that mean? Rubin’s wife?”

“She’s Spurlock’s niece. And from what I hear, he wasn’t very happy when she married an Indian.”

“That’s her uncle? The sheriff?”

Ray nodded. After a while, he added, “Maybe even Luther thinks the Posse killed Rubin—God knows he clammed up fast enough when you started asking questions about them.”

“Do you know the Posse leaders?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know too much about the Posse at all, just that they’re around. I don’t know if they have elected officers and such. Like I said, it’s more a social group than a military one; my guess is that they get together and talk out a consensus—maybe if somebody comes up with some kind of plan, he’s the leader for that and whoever wants to, joins him.” Another of those wry grins. “Sort of the way the Indians used to do it.”

The vehicle lurched across a spine of rock and then its tires churned through a wind drift of fine, pink sand.

“Have you heard of Bradley Nichols or Stan Litvak?”

Ray frowned slightly. “Nichols has a place up Narraguinnep Wash, I believe. I’m not sure where Litvak’s spread is.”

“Nichols is supposed to be the Posse’s organizer. Litvak takes care of the training, I hear.”

“You hear more than me, man—blows hell out of my theory of consensus, doesn’t it?”

It did. Wager watched a startled rabbit scurry into a thicket, its tail a bouncing white dot. “You think Luther is a pretty reliable witness?”

“Good question. He wants to get the Many Coats into trouble. Most of the people would be happy to see trouble come to that family. But I don’t think Luther would lie. He might forget to tell everything or not tell exactly the truth, but I doubt he’d outright lie like a white man. Even the Squaw Point Utes have a little pride left.”

Wager wondered if he was considered white or brown. Probably just blue—a cop, which was all right with him. “I’d like to talk to Ramey Many Coats.”

Ray nodded. “Figured you would. But Ramey might not want to talk with you.”