Cady, my hi-tech urban daughter, hated the place.
In my rush to head north, I hadn’t gassed up in Wyoming and was just hoping that the Conoco had after-hours credit card pumps. They did, and it was as I was putting gas into my truck with the motor running that I noticed a person stand and trail out to where I stood, an old packing blanket billowing out from her shoulders.
Looking at the stars on the doors and then at me, she paused at the other side of the truck bed, her eyes ticktocking either from imbalance or self-medication. She studied my hat, snap-button shirt, the shiny brass name tag, and the other trappings of authority just visible under my sheepskin coat.
I buttoned it the rest of the way up and looked at her, expecting Crow, maybe Northern Cheyenne, but from the limited view afforded by the condensation of her breath and the cowl-like hood of the blanket, I could see that her skin was pale and her hair dark but not black, surrounding a wide face and full lips that snared and released between the nervous teeth.
“Hey.” She cleared her throat and shifted something in her hands, still keeping the majority of her body wrapped. “I thought you were supposed to shut the engine off before you do that.” She glanced at the writing on the side of my truck. “Where’s Absaroka County?”
I clicked the small keeper on the pump handle, pulled my glove back on, and rested my elbow on the top of the bed as the tank filled. “Wyoming.”
“Oh.” She nodded but didn’t say anything more.
About five-nine, she was tall, and her eyes moved rapidly, taking in the vehicle and then me; she had the look of someone whose only interaction with the police was being rousted: feigned indifference with just a touch of defiance and maybe just a little crazy. “Cold, huh?”
I was beginning to wonder how long it was going to take her, and thought about how much nerve she’d had to work up to approach my truck; I must’ve been the only vehicle that had stopped in hours. I waited. The two-way radio blared an indiscernible call inside the cab, the pump handle clicked off, and I pulled the nozzle, returning it to the plastic cradle. I hit the button to request a receipt, because I didn’t trust gas pumps any more than I trusted those robot amputees over in Deadwood.
Without volition, I found words in my mouth the way I always did in the presence of women. “I’ve got a heater in this truck.”
She snarled a quick laugh, strained and high. “I figured.”
I stood there for a moment more and then started for the cab—now she was going to have to ask. As I pulled the door handle, she started to reach out a hand from the folds of the blanket but then let it drop. I paused for a second more and then slid in and shut the door behind me, clicked on my seat belt, and pulled the three-quarter-ton down into gear.
She backed away and retreated to the bench as I wheeled around the pumps and stopped at the road. I sat there for a moment, where I looked at myself and my partner in the rearview mirror, then shook my head, turned around, and circled back in front of her. She looked up again as I rolled the window down on the passenger-side door and raised my voice to be heard above the engine. “Do you want a ride?”
Balancing her needs with her pride, she sat there huddled in the blanket. “Maybe.”
I sighed to let her know that my Good Samaritan deeds for the season weren’t endless and spoke through the exhaust the wind carried back past the truck window. “I was offering you a ride if you’re headed north.”
She looked up at the empty highway and was probably thinking about whether she could trust me or not.
“I have to be in Billings in a little over an hour to pick up my daughter.” It’s always a good idea to mention other women in your life when faced with a woman in need; it usually reassures them by letting them know that there are other women in your life—and that you might not be a complete psycho. “Are you coming?”
The glint of temper was there again, but she converted it into standing and yanked something up from her feet—a guitar case that I hadn’t noticed before. She indifferently tossed it into the bed of my truck, still carefully holding the blanket around her with the other hand, her posture slightly off.
“You want to put your guitar in here, there’s room.”
She swung the door open, gathered the folds up around her knees, and slid in. “Nah, it’s a piece of shit.” She closed the door with her left hand and looked at the metal clipboard, my thermos, and the shotgun locked to the transmission hump. She blinked, and her eyes half closed as the waft of heat from the vents surrounded her, and we sat there longer than normal people would have. After a while her voice rose from her throat: “So, are we going or what?”
“Seat belt.” She opened her eyes and rapidly looked out the passenger window, and I placed her age at early twenties.
“Don’t believe in ’em.” She wiped her nose on the blanket, again using her left hand.
We didn’t move, and the two-way crackled as a highway patrolman took a bathroom break. She looked at the radio below the dash and then back at me, then pulled the shoulder belt from the retractor and swiveled to put it in the retainer at the center—it was about then that my partner swung his furry head around from the backseat to get a closer look.
“Jesus!” She jumped back against the door, and something slid from her grip and fell to the rubber floor mat with a heavy thump.
I glanced down and could see it was a small wood-gripped revolver.
She slid one of her boots in front of it to block my view, and we stared at each other for a few seconds, both of us deciding how it was we were going to play it.
“What the hell, man. . . .” She adjusted the blanket, careful to completely cover the pistol on the floorboard.
Thinking about what I was going to do as I spoke, I sat there without moving for a moment, then pulled onto the frontage road, and headed north toward the on-ramp of I-90. “That’s my partner—don’t worry, he’s friendly.”
She stared at the hundred-and-fifty-plus pounds of German shepherd, Saint Bernard, and who knew what. She didn’t look particularly convinced. “I don’t like dogs.”
“That’s too bad—it’s his truck.”
I eased the V10 up to sixty on the snow-covered road and motioned toward the battered thermos leaning against the console. “There’s coffee in there.”
She looked, first checking to make sure the gun was hidden, and then reached down, and paused long enough so that I noticed her bare hands, strong and deft even with the remains of the cold. There was something else, though—a plastic medical bracelet, the kind that hospitals put on you to help remember who you are. She saw me watching her and quickly stuffed the municipal jewelry under the sleeve of a stained sweatshirt; then she lifted the thermos by the copper-piping handle, connected to the Stanley with two massive hose clamps, and read the sticker on the side: DRINKING FUEL. She twisted off the top and filled the chrome cap. “You got anything to put in this?”
“Nope.”
She rolled her eyes and settled back against the door, careful not to move enough to re-produce the revolver. She pulled the blanket further up on her shoulders and crouched against the door like a cornered animal as she drank. “Good coffee.”
“Thanks.” I threw her a tenuous, conversational line and caught a glimpse of a nose stud and what might’ve been a tattoo at the side of her neck. “My daughter sends it to me.”
The two-way squawked again as the highway patrolman came back on duty, and she glared at it. “Do we have to listen to that shit?”
I smiled and flipped the radio off. “Sorry, force of habit.”
She glanced back at Dog, who regarded her indifferently as she nudged one foot toward the other in an attempt to push the revolver up and onto her other shoe. “So, you’re the sheriff down there?”