His shell had a rounded line at the butt end that ended with two small stars and writing on the other side of the primer that read. 45–70 GOVT.; on the mystery shells, there was nothing. The edges at the butt plate weren’t as sharp either, as if the machining had been done in a hurry with devices under pressure to produce in difficult times. I scooped up one of the spent shells at the open end with the tip of the pen and held it up to my nose and sniffed. There was no quartzite, but traces of black powder were evident.
“They are originals.” I wasn’t surprised when the baritone rumble of his voice interrupted our conversation. I had seen Henry walk up and lean against the doorway, but Vic hadn’t, and it was just a tiny bit amusing when her back stiffened.
“What’re you doing out of the hospital?”
He crossed over and eased himself into the chair opposite my desk. “I see you still have your ear.”
I laid the cartridge down on the blotter and tossed the pen back in the mug. “Yep, I’ve removed all the scissors from the office, and I’m just not going to take any naps when Lucian’s around.” I nodded toward the scattered shells on my desk. “What do you know about these?”
Vic refolded her arms and looked at him, and her glance seemed to carry a little more professional interest than I would have found comforting. Henry simply smiled at her. “Hi.”
She smiled back. “Hi.”
I looked at the two of them for a moment. “Okay, before the two of you get into a pissing contest, how about you tell me what you know about these?”
His eyes continued smiling at Vic for longer than they should have, then he turned to me. “Where did you get them?”
“They were on the seat of my locked truck this morning, alongside the rifle.”
“Interesting.” He waited a moment. “They are originals.”
“How do you know that?”
“I am the one who polished and reloaded them, but I did not reload them for myself.” He took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly as he turned his head toward the window. “Lonnie.” After looking up at Vic, I turned back to him and waited. “Lonnie said that he wanted to shoot the rifle, and I was concerned that he might run some of those hot, modern cowboy loads through it. I took forty of the original cartridges he had and hand loaded them so they wouldn’t damage the rifle.”
I sighed and raised my eyes up to Vic. “Get a preliminary on these shells, then ship samples down to DCI.” She nodded, and I stood. “How far do you think you can get, within our obvious technical limitations?”
“Pretty damn far.” She looked at me as I scooped up the rifle. “Where are you going?”
I glanced over at Henry who was studying me. “I’m going out to talk with Lonnie Little Bird and get some fingerprints.”
“You sure you don’t want somebody to go with you?”
I looked back at him. “I got somebody.”
The heat of the day had begun to melt away what remained of the snow, and the clouds were just beginning to break up in the face of a mild, Wyoming autumn afternoon. As we drove out of town, I looked in the rearview mirror at the Bighorns. The fresh coat of snow had done them some good, even if it hadn’t done either of us any. We rode along in silence. My sheepskin jacket was draped over Henry’s shoulders; Dena Many Camps had forgotten to bring him a coat along with his fresh clothes. He didn’t particularly look irritated, just preoccupied, so I left him alone with his thoughts. I had picked up a fingerprint kit from our minilab and informed Ruby where we were going, asking her to relay any information gotten from Dave at the Sportshop, from the Espers, or Jim Keller. Lucian was still in the back asleep, and I told her to wake him up if anything happened. She had looked at me and withheld comment.
There was one question on my mind, and it concerned a box of aged. 45–70 shells that had been left on my truck seat. I broke the silence by asking, “Why did he leave them?”
“I do not know.” He didn’t turn but slouched a little against the door, the Cheyenne Rifle of the Dead leaning gently against the inside of one of his knees. “Unless it was good fortune.”
“For whom?”
“You.” He still looked out the windshield at the sunny afternoon. “Lonnie has grown very fond of you over the last few years. The last time we were there? He asked me if it would be all right if he gave this rifle to you.”
“The Cheyenne Rifle of the Dead? Thanks a lot, but no thanks.” He rode along quietly, and I was pretty sure I had hurt his feelings. “If it’s all the same with you and Lonnie, I think I’ll just hang around here in the camp of the living for a while.”
“That is not why he wanted to give it to you.” He turned and looked at me for the first time. “He wanted to give it to you to shield you.”
“From what?”
He shrugged and looked back out the windshield. “He said that you need protection from something very powerful and very bad.” The rest he spoke in a monotone. “He said that you are a good man and that there are those who would assist you if they could. That they had spoken with him, and that if you would allow them, they would help you.”
“Help me what?”
He sat there for a while, and I was getting worried that he might have left the hospital a little prematurely when he spoke. “Live.”
As we passed the cutoff to the Powder River Road, I thought about what Vonnie had said, that she had assembled herself so that she didn’t have to deal with all the things I had suddenly reintroduced into her life. I thought about caring about somebody more than life itself. As I looked back, I was pretty sure that Martha hadn’t loved me that much. She had been fond of me but had settled for me and had made the best of her situation. She had stayed because of Cady, and I had stayed because I loved Cady that much. I simply couldn’t conceive of doing anything else. I figured what I’d do was go over to Vonnie’s tonight and have a long talk with her. Maybe we could put things off until this case was over. The time when I had held her long toes, fitting the high arches of her feet in the palms of my hands, and had driven her home in the dark of the night seemed very far away and receding.
Henry dozed as I drove away from the sun, and the ruffling of his breath became steadier as we took the cutoff to the reservation. I saw Brandon White Buffalo looking after us as we went through the intersection. He stood behind his counter. It was hard to miss him as he looked through the clinging soda, chips, and candy advertisements. I extended a hand across the cab toward him, and he watched as we passed without slowing. He raised his hand also and pressed it against the heavy double glass of the convenience store window. Brandon White Buffalo stood there in the maelstrom of modern consumerism like a sentinel, like a warning in a mystical undertow. I looked back through the rear window of the truck to catch a last glance; he still stood there palm out and fingers spread like an orchard basket against the glass. He looked after us until we were gone, and I thought of Melissa at the Little Big Horn.
I reset my shoulders, concentrated on the road, and considered my dwindling staff. Turk would be out by January, Vic could possibly be gone before that, and the chances of me getting Ferg to return to full duty were slim. He would probably just retire. I was thinking about it myself. I picked the mic off the dash. “Base, this is Unit One, come in?”
After a moment there was static, then Ruby’s voice. “Leave me alone, I’m busy.”
“Any word from Dave at the Sportshop?”
Static. “His wife called. She’s about halfway through and will fax the stuff over when she gets done. Stop bothering me.”
I hung the mic back up and watched the trees pass by along the irrigation ditch. I expected to see the Old Cheyenne again, standing among the cottonwoods. But there was nothing there and that worried me a little more; maybe even they had abandoned me. I thought about where we were going, about Lonnie. Yes, it is so… I didn’t think that Lonnie had killed Cody and Jacob, but I wanted to talk to him directly and find out if there was anything more to his story than Henry had been able to tell me. I looked over at my friend. It seemed that his breathing had gotten a little rougher, but he still slept, his body attempting to repair itself while he wasn’t looking.