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.
I ducked down a little and pulled the door open about a foot and looked down a hallway that seemed to run the length of the thing. Cheap paneling and some sort of indoor-outdoor threadbare carpeting with a few window screens leaning against the interior wall was all that was visible. No Leo Gaskell. I looked down the hallway in the other direction, but all I could make out was the textured ceiling and a cheap light fixture; at least I could be sure that Leo wasn’t going to jump on me from above. I stood back up, took another deep breath, and casually opened the door the rest of the way.
Nothing.
I stood still for a moment, then leaned in about two inches and checked both sides, did it again, and then again. Still nothing, so I shot the works and stuck my head all the way in along with the. 45. There was a closed door to my right and another at the end of the hallway that was partially open and led to a living room in which, sitting on an imitation leather sofa and swathed in about four Hudson Bay and buffalo blankets, was, who I assumed to be, Ellen Runs Horse.
I cleared my throat. “Hello.” The condensation from my breath stayed in front of my face; it was probably colder in the trailer than it was outside.
She didn’t move, just kept looking at me from beneath the blankets; after a bit she finally said, “Eeh.” Crow. She said yes as a statement that held neither question nor interest. The small cloud from her breath collected there in the gloom.
“I’m Sheriff Walt Longmire, Absaroka County.” I felt foolish saying it, but it was procedure. “Ellen Runs Horse?”
“Eeh.”
Same inflection. “Are you alone?”
A moment passed. “Eeh.”
I was feeling a little more secure but decided to test the theory using Vic’s litmus test for sanity. “Ellen, did you know that I was a Chinese fighter pilot?”
“Eeh.”
It was a fleeting security.
I stretched up, got the majority of my girth in the doorstep, and wriggled inside. I was relatively sure that Leo wasn’t in the mobile home; if he had been, he would have most certainly bludgeoned me to death as I wallowed on the floor. I pushed off the questionable carpet and slumped against the wall. I looked back down the hallway where Ellen Runs Horse was fumbling with something in the blankets; she was probably trying to get up. I waved a hand at her. “That’s okay, Ellen.”
It was then that I saw the barrel of a chrome-plated, pearl-handled. 32 rise up from the blankets like a howitzer and tremble as she endeavored to pull the trigger.
“Ellen…?” That was about all I got out before the. 32 belched fire and the ceiling above me blew apart with a smart sound. The crack of the automatic in the confined space was tremendous and my ears rang so loudly that I could barely hear myself yelling. I staggered against the interior wall and could feel my hand tightening around the grip of the. 45 in spite of myself. I coughed it out in a yell. “Jesus, Ellen!”
The automatic wavered but rose again as I dodged into the room to my right. The next bullet went through the first wall into a mattress that was leaning against it. I’m not sure how much protection I thought the thin walls of the mobile home were going to be, but the structure was falling below my expectations. I looked at the hole in the wall; she was getting closer. “Ellen?” Silence.
I waited, but the next shot didn’t come. There was another shuffling noise, so I ventured toward the door and slowly peeked around the jamb. Henry was there, kneeling before her, with the tiny automatic cradled in his hands. “I think it is safe now.”
“Jesus!” I turned the corner and looked at the two of them.
“Are you all right?”
“Jesus!”
He was doing his best not to laugh. “You take a little walk down the hallway and come back when your vocabulary increases.”
I stood there and took a few deep breaths as they continued a very low conversation in Crow, a language that, like Cheyenne, seemed to catch in the throat of the speaker. I could feel my heart rate beginning to slow to normal.
I picked up a few words, but they didn’t make much sense to me. Her face was broad, and she had thick brows that seemed to gather at the center and curve up, giving her a sad and questioning look. The outside corners of her eyes folded within themselves, hiding the edges of the baking chocolate pupils. Strong creases at the corners of her mouth, cascading from the cheekbones, made it difficult to tell if she had ever smiled. The movement of her lips was slight, and her voice barely carried.