Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
EPILOGUE
Also by Craig Johnson
The Cold Dish
Death Without Company
Kindness Goes Unpunished
VIKING
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First published in 2008 by Viking Penguin,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © Craig Johnson, 2008
All rights reserved
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business
establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Johnson, Craig,———
Another man’s moccasins : a Walt Longmire mystery / Craig Johnson.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-0-670-01861-1
1. Longmire, Walt (Fictitious character) --Fiction. 2. Sheriffs--Fiction. 3. Vietnamese--United
States--Fiction. 4. Wyoming--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3610.O325A56 2008
813’.6--dc22 2007029979
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For Bill Bower and all those crazy bastards who flew off
the USS Hornet and into those cold, gray skies on the
morning of April 18, 1942—and everybody who ever
threw a salute before and after.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A writer, like a sheriff, is the embodiment of a group of people and without their support both are in a tight spot. I have been blessed with a close order of family, friends, and associates who have made this book possible. This book is a work of fiction, and as such it’s important to point out that the guys at the 377th Security Police Squadron were top-notch law enforcement personnel.
I would like to thank Kara Newcomer, historian for the United States Marine Corps History Division, and the folks down at Willow Creek Ranch. Janet Hubbard-Brown and Astrid Latapie for helping out with handling the French at the Indo-Chinese fire drill, and the staff and doctors at the VA Medical Center over at Fort Mackenzie in Sheridan, including Hollis W. Hackman and Chuck Guilford.
Thanks to my chiefs of staff, Gail Hochman, Kathryn Court, Alexis Washam, and Ali Bothwell Mancini; to my officer in charge of logistics, Sonya Cheuse; and to Susan Fain, my military council. Thanks to Marcus Red Thunder for taking the muffler off the jeep to convince the enemy that we had tanks. Kudos to Eric Boss for requisitioning everything I needed, including the beer. A big thanks to James Crumley for the canteen and to Curt Wendelboe and Rob Kresge for leaning over and pointing out that it was quiet—too quiet.
And to the person I enjoy sharing my foxhole with most, my wife, Judy.
Great Spirit, grant that I may not criticize my neighbor until
I have walked a mile in his moccasins.
Old Indian Prayer
1
"Two more.”
Cady looked at me but didn’t say anything.
It had been like this for the last week. We’d reached a plateau, and she was satisfied with the progress she’d made. I wasn’t. The physical therapist at University of Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia had warned me that this might happen. It wasn’t that my daughter was weak or lazy; it was far worse than that—she was bored.
“Two more?”
"I heard you....” She plucked at her shorts and avoided my eyes. “Your voice; it carries.”
I placed an elbow on my knee, chin on fist, sat farther back on the sit-up bench, and glanced around. We weren’t alone. There was a kid in a Durant Quarterback Club T-shirt who was trying to bulk up his 145-pound frame at one of the Universal machines. I’m not sure why he was up here—there were no televisions, and it wasn’t as fancy as the main gym downstairs. I understood all the machines up here—you didn’t have to plug any of them in—but I wondered about him; it could be that he was here because of Cady.
“Two more.”
“Piss off.”
The kid snickered, and I looked at him. I glanced back at my daughter. This was good; anger sometimes got her to finish up, even if it cost me the luxury of conversation for the rest of the evening. It didn’t matter tonight; she had a dinner date and then had to be home for an important phone call. I had zip. I had all the time in the world.
She had cut her auburn hair short to match the spot where they had made the U-shaped incision that had allowed her swelling brain to survive. Only a small scar was visible at the hairline. She was beautiful, and the pain in the ass was that she knew it.
It got her pretty much whatever she wanted. Beauty was life’s E-ZPass. I was lucky I got to ride on the shoulder.
"Two more?”
She picked up her water bottle and squeezed out a gulp, leveling the cool eyes back on me. We sat there looking at each other, both of us dressed in gray. She stretched a finger out and pulled the band of my T-shirt down, grazing a fingernail on my exposed collarbone. “That one?”
Just because she was beautiful didn’t mean she wasn’t smart. Diversion was another of her tactics. I had enough scars to divert the entire First Division. She had known this scar and had seen it on numerous occasions. Her question was a symptom of the memory loss that Dr. Rissman had mentioned.