The Walt Longmire Mystery Series Boxed Set Volume 1-4 (80 page)

Static. “Seems like I’ve done you an awful lot of them lately.” Static. “What?”

“Can you run a check on any Gaskells who might be living over near the Wind River Reservation, Lander, or Riverton?”

Static. “I know what towns are near Wind River.” I nodded at the LED display on the radio, trying to get it to be nice to me. Static. “Have you signed the release papers on Mari Baroja? The Wicked Witches of the West are here.”

I wondered if they were in the same room and quickly figured yes they were. “I signed the papers and gave them to Bill McDermott who should still be over at the hospital.”

Static. “I’ll send them there.”

“Get a hold of Bill Wiltse and see if Fremont’s got anything on the Gaskells.”

Static. “Got it.” Static. “Just in case we need to get in touch with you while you are traipsing around the southern part of the county, how should we reach you?”

I thought about it. “Try the methane foreman.”

Static. “Double Tough?”

I smiled. “Is that what you’re calling him?”

Static. “Fuckin’ A. Over and out.”

Speak of the devil. As I headed down the ramp off the highway, I saw Jess Aliff with a couple of his roughnecks. They were on their way to Four Brothers, but he made the time to come over and answer a few questions. I asked him about the gunshot wound, to which he replied, “What gunshot wound?” I liked Double Tough more every time I saw him. I also asked him if he would direct us to the old homestead where Mari Baroja had lived with Charlie Nurburn and whether the road would support the Mack and a house trailer to which he had responded maybe.

We followed the ridge that he had told us about, moving diagonally southeast toward the north fork of Crazy Woman toward the Nurburn place. With the wind blowing, it was impossible to see if there were any tracks; our own would be invisible in a matter of moments. I stopped the truck after a mile and a quarter where the ridge divided and split off into two directions. “Now what?”

He looked at me. “If I were a creek, I would be where the ground slopes.”

“Right.” Sometimes it was good to have an Indian scout.

We topped the ridge cap and looked down the small valley. The road, or what we assumed to be the road, hung to the right side of the flat. The north fork of Crazy Woman turned right, around a curve, about a half a mile away. The blowing snow had filled in the small canyon, and it was difficult to see where the road might be.

“Would you drive a Mack truck down here with a mobile home attached to it?”

He took a deep breath and looked at the missing road. “No, but there are a number of things Leo Gaskell would do that I would not.”

I slipped the three-quarter ton into granny gear, it was already in 4-wheel, and committed. Most of the fill was powder, and the truck settled even as we idled the big V-10 down the canyon to the apex of the undersized ranch. At the far end of the stretch, I edged the truck against the coulee wall and glanced up at the meadow that opened to the flat at the bottom of the canyon. It was a beautiful spot but, if you spent the first part of the winter here, you spent the last part of the winter here, too.

The house was just as I had pictured it in my dream, weathered and leaning at an acute angle away from the predominant wind. Part of it had collapsed, and it looked like a cottonwood had leaned against it for a moment of support that had turned into forever.

I stopped the truck at the edge of the meadow, cut the engine, and decided to get out and check the ground before driving across. I had done enough swimming for one holiday season. I let the dog out and walked around to the front of the truck where Henry met me. The gusts had increased, channeling their force through the ravine, and hit us full in the face. It wasn’t actually snowing, but the wind was strong enough to take a percentage from the ground and make it airborne. The wind was the only sound. We squinted toward the little house as Dog arched out, dipping his head in the snow and rooting for who knew what. Henry flipped his collar up to protect part of his face; his hair trailed back and swirled above the hood.

I squinted and watched an underlying cloud cover approach from the mountains. You could vaguely see the snow-covered peaks. I thought about a damaged woman, bareback on a horse, racing through a rainy night, and three small children huddled in a back bedroom forbidden to move. It seemed sacrilegious to speak in the face of all the tragedy that had unfolded here.

“What are you thinking?”

I was startled by his voice and took a moment to allow the words to form in my head. “I am thinking about how complicated this case has become.”

He nodded. “It just got worse.” His hand came up and pointed past the dilapidated house where, just visible through the blowing ground snow, was the back corner of a mobile home attached to a black Mack truck.

15

We stood there at the apex of the meadow, with the Big Horn Mountains strung across the far horizon like some painted backdrop in the theatre of our lives. I always felt things that Henry could better describe. “I know it is the earth that is moving, but at this moment it is as if the clouds are in motion, and the world is still and waiting.”

His black leather duster was flapping in the wind, and I noticed the Special Forces tomahawk in his hand. “I’m getting the shotgun.”

I unlocked the Remington and a handheld radio from the cab. Henry spoke to Dog.
“Hinananjin.”
Dog went over and sat beside him. It had already been established that the furry brute was conversant in Cheyenne, Shoshone, Arapaho, Crow, and Lakota; English was the language he chose to sometimes ignore.

I flipped on the radio and listened to the static. I didn’t expect to get any reception in the canyon, but it never hurt to try. I punched the transceiver button. “Come in Base, this is Unit One?” I looked over at the mountains and felt a familiar sinking feeling.

“Nothing?”

I blinked my one eye at him, dialed the frequency up a few clicks, and tried again. “Base, this is Unit One. Anybody there, come in?”

More static. Then a faint reply. “BR75115, come again?”

I smiled at the radio, keyed the mic, and deferred to the foreman. “Hey Jess, this is Walt Longmire. We made it down here to the old Nurburn place on Crazy Woman. We found your truck.”

Static. “The Mack?”

“Roger that. How long are you guys going to be on it today?”

Static. “Weather’s supposed’ta get bad, but we’re gonna try’n’ stick. I got a meetin’ at 4:30.”

“What’s the meeting about?” It was quiet.

Static. “Firin’ me, I’d imagine.”

You had to love the guy. “I might need you to relay messages back up to my office. This canyon is causing too much interference, and I can’t get through.”

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.