“Did you touch him or anything in the room?”
He was adamant. “No, I just backed out of that room; I mean, Jesus, the barn was on fire, she was sittin’ out in the yard like it’s all a dream-”
“You had your gun with you, didn’t you say?”
He gestured toward the repeater lying across his saddle. “I had that Henry. When I got woke up by the fire, I brought it along ’cause I didn’t know what the situation was, and I learned a long time ago that unknown situations with a gun are better than unknown situations without one.”
Boy howdy. “What’d you do with the Yellow Boy?”
“Left it in the scabbard on my horse, tied out at the fence; that horse wasn’t goin’ anywhere near that fire.”
I crossed my arms and looked into the flames licking up and around the broken and splintered wood, which reminded me that Benjamin and Dog were due back soon. “So after you left him in there, and her on the lawn, what’d you do?”
“I ran over to Bill Nolan’s and got him.”
“You didn’t think to use the phone at the Barsads?”
He looked genuinely discomforted. “I didn’t-”
I interrupted, saving him the embarrassment. It wasn’t unusual in just such a situation for any of us of a certain age to forget about modern conveniences, or mistrust them, and simply run for help. “You wake Bill up?”
“No. He was in his kitchen.”
I looked up on the ridge at the horses milling about. “Had he been drinking?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yep, why?”
I leveled with him. “I’ve known Bill for an awfully long time, and in this current reincarnation I think it’d take three men and a boy to get a bottle away from him.”
Hershel nodded. “He drinks, there’s no two ways about that.”
“Do you have any idea who might be leaving fifths of whiskey for him on his porch?”
He looked honestly surprised. “Nope, but if you find out, sign me up.”
I looked past our camp and beyond the horses on the picket line, back over the rocky hillside, and spoke mostly to myself. “Why would he be sober that one night?”
October 26: four days earlier, afternoon.
I had watched as the words stuck in her bandaged throat, finally tumbling from her half-opened mouth.
“It was as if I wasn’t alone, like somebody was there, leading me to where I needed to be, helping me to do it.”
I got up from the windowsill and approached the hospital bed with my hat in my hands. “Do you remember getting the rifle from the cab of Wade’s truck?”
Her head remained still for a moment and then shook in a hesitant manner. I didn’t think it was her lacerated throat that caused her to be careful. “I remember walking to the truck, but then it was as if the gun just appeared in my hands.”
I looked down at her profile and pondered the stark difference between the uncertainty of her story and the clarity of the sunshine that made a perfect trapezoid on the tile of the hospital floor on the other side of the bed. “Then what happened?”
“There was a storm, and the wind was blowing.” She paused and cleared her throat with the words that spilled out again. “The door was open, banging against the side panels, and I thought about how it was probably going to break, but that I didn’t care.” She shook her head, a piece of her blond hair getting in her mouth. She tried to wipe it away but the leather restraints at her wrists would only allow her hand to go so far. I leaned over and helped her, my hand looking large next to her fragility. “The fire was reflecting off the glass, and I was tired. I wanted to just drop the rifle, but he kept telling me to keep it in my hands; that I was going to need it.”
“He?”
She lifted her head a bit too quickly, and I could tell the effort was hurting her throat. “It was like somebody was there, keeping me moving.”
“Who?”
“I don’t remember-I mean, they weren’t there, not really.”
“You said he.”
She dropped her head and had spoken softly, looking at the sunshine that was still pounding through the window. “A voice, from my dreams…”
October 30, 7:52 P.M.
Hershel glanced over his shoulder. “What’s the matter?”
I continued to allow my eyes to play over the star-sprayed horizon. There weren’t as many as usual and the Milky Way didn’t show its whole stripe, but I felt like I always did when I looked at the night sky, as though I were falling backward. “That boy’s been gone too long.”
Hershel stood and joined me on my side of the fire. “Probably just dawdlin’.”
I raised my fingers to my mouth and whistled long and clear. “Dog!”
Nothing.
I walked over to my saddlebags and pulled out my. 45 and a handheld radio. I handed him the radio, and he stared at the walkie-talkie. “You stay here in case he comes wandering in, and if I don’t get back in twenty minutes, dial that thing up and call the Sheriff ’s Department.”
“Which one?”
I called over my shoulder. “Mine!”
I scrambled my sore legs and rear end up the pale, moon-glowed surface of the rocks, thankful I’d worn my rubber-soled boots but wishing I had a flashlight of my own. At the top of the ridgeline, the horses stepped back, reading my mood, but then nosed toward me, eager to be a part of whatever was going on and hoping for treats.
I walked past them, reaching a hand out and steadying the nearest, who was my bay. I stood there for a moment, listening to the soft caress of the high-altitude breeze and then, in the distance, to the unwelcome sound of a great horned owl.
As I made my way to the left, over the first ridge, I thought about the messengers of the dead and the owl feathers on the rifle that Henry Standing Bear had entrusted to me. I remembered how Dena Many Camps had unbraided her hair in the presence of the old Sharps, and another who, for a different reason, didn’t want the old rifle in her home. Owls were supposedly not a sign that death was imminent, but were envoys from beyond, and I sometimes felt as though I was on their regular delivery route.
In the faint moonlight, I could see the boy’s boot prints along with the tracks from Dog, whose paws could’ve easily been mistaken for a wolf’s. Benjamin had followed the draw where a few scraggly stands of sage had valiantly attempted to grow, but where the odds and annual rainfall were against them.
The trail curved further to the left and played out into an open area with a two-track path leading east and, eventually, south and west to join the only road off the mesa. There was an old wellhead on the flat with the usual refuse left from a wildcat operation. There were loose stacks of rusted pipe, lathe, and wire snow fence that gave an indication of the era in which the drilling must have taken place, and a sealed slab where the actual rig must have been.
The truck skids that Hershel had earmarked for firewood were piled against one of the rock walls, a few of them scattered across the chalky ground and broken apart from the boy’s efforts.
No Benjamin.
No Dog.
I slipped a little on the scrabble of the downslope and started toward the broken woodpile where it looked like the boy had been. What if he’d lost his way and fallen over the steep cliffs of the mesa? What if he’d slipped into one of the deep crags or fissures in the surrounding rock? What if he was hurt? Wouldn’t Dog have returned? Shouldn’t I be yelling his name? Why was I holding my sidearm?
I knew the answer to all of these things before I saw the dull glow of the Maglite buried in the pile of splintered wood. I crouched down and pulled the flashlight from the debris. I shook it once, and the beam grew brighter as I shined it around the surrounding area. There were prints, a lot of them. The boy’s boot trail led to the woodpile along with Dog’s, but there were others from a pair of running shoes, about a size 11, and a pair of boots, maybe a size smaller. I stood and shined the beam forward and could see that there had been some kind of altercation where someone had fallen, and there had been a struggle and more of a fight leading away.