The cowhands, not assured, asked them to exhibit the funds. The gentlemen from Chicago displayed over two thousand dollars in small bills.
Thus assured, the locals agreed to let them participate, but after a few hours of losing and drinking too many whiskeys, the Chicagoans grew irritable, and one of them, whose name was John Boertlein, began abusing an Indian rancher who was seated at the bar. He poked the Indian with a pool cue and asked the “chief ” what the locals did for fun around these parts.
The middle-aged Cheyenne ignored him and continued drinking, slowly bringing the pungent liquid to his lips with his elbows seemingly attached to the bar.
The man from Chicago told the “chief ” that he had plenty of wampum and jabbed the Indian with the pool cue again, leaving a small, blue chalk dot on the Cheyenne’s white shirtsleeve.
The bartender took a step away, bracing his hands on the bar.
Boertlein prodded the Indian again and asked if he knew where he and his friend, whose name was Bud Ardary, could find a few squaws for the night. He left another blue mark.
The Cheyenne remained silent and took the final sip from his shot glass.
Bud Ardary, the other gentleman from Chicago, broke from the pool table to join in on the fun. Boertlein poked the Indian on his other arm but still didn’t get any response. Instead, the Cheyenne put his empty glass back on the bar surface, tipped his hat to the bartender with his right hand, and rose. Boertlein, sensing that he was about to be totally ignored, grabbed the Indian by the shoulder as the Cheyenne turned toward him, but the Indian stepped by him and headed for the door.
John Boertlein had a puzzled look on his face as he stood there.
Ardary pulled his friend toward him in time to see a thin line of red blooming across his buddy’s dress shirt where the blade of a knife with an edge like a scalpel had sliced the Chicagoan’s abdomen.
Ardary pulled a pistol as the Indian opened the door, and Hershel Vanskike, realizing that the last man to draw his gun in these situations was likely the first to end up dead, snatched a natty little. 32 from his own waistband. Ardary fired at the Cheyenne as he stepped through the door. He missed. Sensing some movement to his right, he then extended his. 38 toward the pool players, and Vanskike pulled the trigger on the. 32.
I looked up at the big Indian seated next to me. “Damned Indians, they always get you into trouble.”
He nodded. “I think that was my Uncle Art, the one who moved up to Rocky Boy.”
I looked back at the report. “I can see why he moved.”
It was viewed as a clear-cut case of self-defense, and the autopsy revealed three more bullets from previous altercations, but Vanskike still received nine months in the county jail. There were also the usual amount of D amp;Ds on his record and public intoxications with a smattering of aggravated assaults, but most of Hershel’s criminal activities had tailed off a good thirty years ago when the old outlaw had grown accustomed to painting the town beige. Other than the incident at the Jimtown Bar, the only really troubling item was the one involving a rented house in Clearmont.
As for our involvement in the present altercation, no one questioned why Henry and I were arrested by the Absaroka County deputy and not the Campbell County one.
Just north of town across the condemned bridge, Victoria Moretti pulled the Bullet off to the other end of the dirt lot that WYDOT and Range Telephone were using, along a fenced pasture and to the side of what appeared to be an abandoned, yet familiar, green pickup.
The Cheyenne Nation and I sat on the tailgate of his truck as Vic doctored his and then my broken face from the first-aid kit from my truck. My undersheriff squinted at my swollen eye and pulled at my cheekbone, her investigation inflicting a considerable amount of pain. “Does it hurt?”
I leaned back a little, trying to get away from her probing fingers. “It didn’t till you started fussing with it.”
She stood her ground with her arms folded and looked at me. She wore a light fleece jacket, and she had the collar turned up against a repeated tide of cool air floating down from across the Bighorns. You could almost see the slight trails of breath leaving her mouth-almost. “He needs to get that hand X-rayed, and you need stitches.”
“Just pack it full of that antibiotic stuff and bandage me up.”
“You need stitches.” I didn’t say anything else, just continued to look at her through one and a half eyes. “Walt, you’re being an asshole.”
I took a deep breath, sighed, and I think I might’ve even smiled. “I do it rarely, but you’ve gotta admit that when I make an effort, I’m pretty good at it.”
She shook her head as she delved through the kit for the requisite supplies. “What in the hell came over you?”
“I was feeling manly.” I listened as the breezes played the dry, burnished grass like a mandolin and thought that maybe it was the oncoming winter, or maybe it was what Henry was reading in the file, or the fact that my left eye was almost completely swollen, but even though I felt tired, I was still willing to rise to the occasion. I sighed deeply and looked up at the Cheyenne Nation. “He supposedly burned a house down in 1992?”
“He was charged, but then it was dropped.”
Henry read further in the glow of Vic’s Maglite, which he held in his good hand as she continued to assess my injury. “He was supposedly out of town, but according to the Sheridan County sheriff there was reason to believe that he was the arsonist.”
Vic knocked my knees apart to get better access, and I listened to the creaking of her gun belt as she pushed against my legs.
The Bear read aloud. “ ‘Large, high-relief alligatoring of charred wood, crazing patterns of irregular glass, and depth of charring indicate the use of an accelerant… Line of demarcation and spalling of the masonry indicates suspicious point of origin.’ ”
Vic looked up. “What? They had Sparky the fuckin’ arson expert working over in Sheridan?”
He snorted. “It gets better. Guess who the investigating officer was?”
He held up the manila envelope with the arson report on top. Vic snatched it off his lap and read the scribbled signature at the bottom of the faxed sheet. “It says Frymire. Fuck me.”
I looked back up at her and remembered that Chuck had been employed by Sheridan County before us. “Our Frymire?”
Henry nodded. “In the personal notes, he says that it was such a clear case of deliberate fire that he tried to run it down, but as soon as the owner got a check from the insurance company, he dropped the charges.”
The Cheyenne Nation sat forward to hold the flashlight for Vic as she squeezed a worm of topical antibiotic onto her index finger.
Vic leaned my head back and removed the gauze pad she’d been using to sop up the blood, careful to keep the medication on her finger from getting smeared off. I spoke to the sky. “Who’s watching the store?”
“Ruby, and she says to tell you that the next time you’re working undercover, would you please leave a note or something?”
“I’ll leave a sock on my office doorknob.”
“You don’t have a doorknob.”
I looked at Henry’s hand as he held the flashlight, and Vic smeared the goop under my eye and into the cut. “Oww.”
She smirked. “Good. I hope it fucking hurts.” She peeled the wrapper from a large gauze-backed Band-Aid. “I’ll ask again: what in the hell possessed you?”
I continued to look at the Bear’s hand. “The Indian started it.”
She dismissed him with a glancing blow from the Mediterranean eyes and pasted the bandage onto my cheek. “From him I expect it.”
“Why?”
She smiled, the canine tooth sparking in the beam of the flashlight. “He’s a savage.”
Henry’s voice rumbled in his chest. “Look who is talking.”
After Vic finished, I stood and walked away from the bridge toward five horses. They stood just over the crest of a hill alongside the river and watched us, probably wondering if there was any chance of getting fed. I made a kissing sound and watched as the lead bay raised his head. He came toward us, and the others followed. They expected something to eat but settled for nosing my hands.