He turned, giving me his usual horse eye. “I’m voting that she fears him much more than she does us.”
The patrolman hung up the mic and glanced back at me through the rearview. “They’re setting up cars on 44, 16, and 385, so he can’t go south and he can’t get over to Rapid, so can I slow down?”
“No. There are other roads he can take, right?”
“Small ones.”
“Well, we’re going to keep after him while we can still see his trail or else we might lose him to those small ones.”
Tavis looked glum. “If I wreck this new cruiser, the chief is going to lose me.”
“Who’s your chief?”
“Emil Fredriksen.”
I laughed. “Fightin’ Freddie?”
“You know him?”
“Yep, I worked with him a couple of times back in the day, when I used to moonlight the Sturgis Bike Rally.”
The Bear spoke out of the side of his mouth. “Dare I ask how he got the name?”
I shook my head, thinking back to a time when I was a struggling deputy with a wife, a child, a mortgage, and a car that needed a transmission. “Oh, every time some tough guy would say that Emil was just a tub of guts and that if he took off his badge and gun they’d kick his ass, he’d take off his badge and gun and kick their ass. I think his badge and gun got more wear from being thrown onto his dash.”
In any other circumstance, it would have been a wonderful drive through one of the most beautiful and, according to the Indians, spiritual places in the world, but with the snow and fog, it was like driving underwater.
I had the kid shut off the lights on the light bar except for the warning ones at his rear, just so that if the SDHPs were out here moving around they wouldn’t back-end us.
“Why no lights?”
“Henry can’t see.” I watched the road for a few seconds then tried to make out the signs, but they were enameled with snow. “Any idea where we are?”
I was talking to Henry, but Tavis answered. “Just south of Hill City, I think.” He turned in the seat and looked at the Bear. “You Sioux?”
“Lakota. Some, but mostly Cheyenne.”
“I never met a Cheyenne before.”
The silence of the vehicle got to the kid, and before long he spoke again. “How ’bout telling us a story, I mean the sheriff and me have been talking the whole way . . .”
Henry nodded. “I know.”
“Well, tell us a story, an Indian story to help pass the time.”
The Cheyenne Nation glanced at him, then back at me, and then at the road. “You may not like my stories.”
The kid wouldn’t give it up. “What, do all the white people die in the end?”
“No, only white-people stories end with everybody dying . . .” He sighed and then smiled to himself. “There was an Indian and a Ve’ho’e traveling together—”
“What’s a Ve’ho’e?”
I joined the conversation. “White person.”
The Bear continued as if we hadn’t spoken. “These two were on a hunting trip, but they were not doing very well, when suddenly a duck flew out of some rushes and the Indian shot it with an arrow at the exact same time as the Ve’ho’e shot it with a gun.” Henry’s hands came up, gesturing as he warmed to the story. “They plucked the bird and made a fire, burying the duck in the ashes so that they could eat it the next morning. As they were going to sleep the Ve’ho’e made a wager, telling the Indian that they should sleep well tonight and dream, and whoever had the best dream in the morning would be the one to eat the duck.”
I had heard this story numerous times.
“The next morning the Ve’ho’e awoke very early, but when he looked at the Indian, he could see his eyes watching him and so the Ve’ho’e said, ‘I have had a marvelous dream!’
“The Indian, seeing his enthusiasm, allowed him to tell of his vision first.
“‘In my dream, there were winged white women who came down from the sky who promised me everything forever if I would only join them in Heaven, but I explained to them that I did not have wings. So they lowered a ladder down for me and I began climbing up.’
“The Indian jumped to his feet and pointed at the Ve’ho’e and agreed—‘I have had this same vision, a dream so powerful, so vivid that it must be shared by more than one person.’
“The Ve’ho’e nodded. ‘It was as if it actually happened!’
“‘Yes, I saw you climb up the ladder and disappear.’
“The Ve’ho’e, sensing he had won the bet, exclaimed, ‘Yes!’
“The Indian continued to nod. ‘So I ate the duck.’”
It was quiet in the cruiser as the Bear returned his hands to the dash and his attention back to the road.
The kid finally spoke up. “That’s the end?”
The Cheyenne Nation’s voice echoed off the windshield. “Yes.”
“Well, that sucked.”
“For the Ve’ho’e, yes.” Henry smiled. “I told you you would not like the story.”
For the sake of peace between the races, I tapped the kid’s shoulder and asked, “You from around here, troop?”
“Sioux Falls, but they weren’t hiring this time of year.”
“How long have you been on the job?”
“Four weeks—got my criminal justice degree from Black Hills State.”
“What made you want to be a police officer?”
“I just want to help people, right?”
The Bear looked at him again, and I slapped Henry’s shoulder to get him to knock it off, the back of my fist making a loud smacking noise against the black leather. “Right.”
Henry’s voice rose with his finger. “Left.”
The kid turned to look at him. “What?”
“Left, turn left.”
“Right.” He did as he was told, but after a moment, he spoke again. “What is it that this woman’s done?”
I rested my chin on my arm. “Disappear, but the problem is that a couple of other women have had the same thing happen to them, and I’m hoping that she might be able to connect some of the dots for me. That, and I’ve got a dead sheriff’s investigator to throw in the mix.”
“How did he die?”
“Suicide.”
The Bear raised a fist like a mace. “To serve and protect, right?”
I hit him in the shoulder again.
The kid looked at me. “How long have you been a sheriff?”
I shrugged. “About as long as you’ve been alive.”
Some quiet time went by, and then there was a little edge to the young man’s voice. “So, what about you?”
Henry shook his head. “What about me what?”
“Are you a cop?”
The Bear smiled. “No, I am freelance.”
The tone was still there when he asked the next question. “So, what do you think we are?”
The Cheyenne Nation didn’t look at either of us when he responded with a philosophy the young patrolman would develop sooner or later, if he lived that long. “Consequence.” You could hear all of us breathing in the cruiser as we tracked along in the deep snow. “Consequence is what we all are.”
9
“Stop.”
Tavis hit the brakes, and we began a slow and agonizing slide on the cushion of snow, finally coming to rest at a diagonal, blocking both lanes. We’d been driving for what seemed like an hour, following the only set of tracks on the road, and all I could think was how embarrassing it was going to be if we were trailing a garbage truck. The young patrolman and I sat still as Henry leaned forward, looking past the kid through the driver’s side window farther down the road.
“What?”
He gestured. “No more tracks.”
I leaned back, wiping the fog from the inside of the window, and even though I was unable to do much about the outside, I could see that the Bear was right and that the road ahead was pristine and undriven. “The road less traveled?”