“I love you, John,” she said.
And in the dark there, I told her the truth, the whole scary truth. I said, “I love you, too.”
Finding our clothes in the dark was considerably more difficult than removing them had been. It wasn’t until we were back in the light that we could see what we had done. Both our shirts were incorrectly buttoned and I found myself squirming, then realized that my underwear was on backwards. Morgan watched while I stripped down to get things straight. I began to feel self-conscious, which was fairly dumb, given what we’d just done.
“Are you feeling shy?” she asked.
“No, why?”
“You’re covering up.”
“I am not.”
“You most certainly are,” she said.
I faced her. “I am not.”
“Mr. Hunt,” she sighed.
Then I covered up. “Okay, okay,” I said, pulling on my clothes. “So, I’m shy. What do you want from me?”
“Exactly this,” she said and kissed me while I buckled my belt.
The ride back was easier than I had imagined all those days before. We were relaxed, talking, laughing, and so Felony rode better than ever. We cantered across a meadow and then walked, letting the horses catch their breath.
“You’re good for me, young lady,” I said.
“Why do you say that, you old fart?”
“You’re good for this nutty horse, too.”
“So, you think we’ll ever do that again?” Morgan asked.
I looked at her and realized she was joking. “I suppose. Once or twice more, the events being judiciously spaced so we don’t become bored.”
“So, when were you thinking the next time might be?”
“Couple hours from now.”
We loosened the girths and walked the horses the last quarter-mile home. We didn’t speak, but it felt right. Morgan had to go home and see to Emily, and so I took the horses and got them squared away. When I walked into the house, Gus smiled at me, stared, and smiled some more.
“What’s with you?” I asked.
“Me?”
“Yeah, you?” I said.
“You had sex, didn’t you?”
“What?” I was embarrassed.
“It’s all over you.” Then I made the mistake of looking all over me.
“What are you talking about?”
“You had sex.”
“You’re a dirty old man,” I said.
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he said. “I was beginning to think there was something wrong with you. Prostate-wise or something.”
“No, apparently I’m okay.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“You’re not going to say anything to Emily, are you?”
“You think I’m a damn fool?” he asked.
“Now that you mention it.”
“We’re having what you call locker-room talk,” he said.
“That’s what you’re having. I’ll be in the other room.”
“I’m happy for you,” Gus said and turned toward the kitchen.
SEVEN
I WAS DEEPER into the cave than I had ever been. I had taken a bag of chalk with me and was marking my trail as I went. My light found it easily and I felt more secure than ever. Without traffic from animals, I also felt confident that my powder markers would remain undisturbed. I made my way across the big room to another opening and pushed myself about three hundred yards deeper. The darkness was heavy, sweet, and thick, and it scared me more than a little. I squeezed through a tight spot, two walls of rock formed a twenty-foot-high, nine-inch-wide chimney. I promised myself to shed a few pounds once I had popped through and was looking at it from the other side. Looking at the “fat man’s misery,” I wondered if, in fact, I would be able to squeeze my fat behind back through. I recalled when a child got his head stuck between banister spindles and everyone was wondering how he got it through in the first place. My heart began to race and I reminded myself that I was panicking before I had reason to. I pushed my arm into the crack, then my shoulder. Then, turning to face my direction of travel, I pushed my head into the crevice. The space felt even tighter now. I was convinced that I was swelling with uncertainty. I inhaled my gut in and my hips. I inch-wormed my way through and popped out like a cork. I couldn’t help laughing. The feeling was exquisite, not only the feeling of freedom from the cramped place, but from the fear itself. I looked back at the crack, my headlamp illuminating it, dark all around and dark in its core.
After the squeeze, the rest of the cave felt a bit more comfortable, familiar. Then, about a hundred yards from the cave’s mouth, my hand-held light flashed over something. I came back with the beam and after a few sweeps found it. It was a bit of paper and some dried brown shreds. I put the shreds of dried leaves to my nose and, though I could not detect an odor, I realized it was tobacco. It had been the butt of a cigarette and it had been field stripped, the paper opened up and the tobacco shaken free, an act meant to avoid detection, for some a mere habit. Fear washed over me, but a different kind a of fear this time. This time it was real fear, the kind that no place, no storm, no animal can make, only humans. It could have been there for years, I told myself. In the dark here, I certainly had not seen everything. In fact, I marveled every visit at how much was new to me. It could have been there for forty years, a Shoshone veteran of the Korean War looking for a quiet place, or a soldier from a hundred years ago. And as I looked at the tiny bit of paper, I realized it could have been left there hours ago.
It was midday and I was driving through town on my way to the reservation. Daniel White Buffalo had called and left a message with Gus that he really wanted me to come over to his place. His ranch was on the edge of the reservation. He had good water and this rankled a lot of the white ranchers around him; they were even less pleased when he increased his place by buying adjacent, nontribal land. Gus hadn’t picked up any details on the phone, but he thought White Buffalo had said something about somebody or something being shot. I turned off the highway and down the road toward the ranch. I looked across the big pasture and saw a sheriff’s rig parked near the house. I gave the Jeep a little more gas and kicked up some dust getting there. Bucky, Hanks, and Daniel White Buffalo turned and watched me get out and walk toward them. The stocky Arapaho man shook my hand and said he was glad I came. He ran a nervous hand over his hair and stopped at the knot of his braid.
“Who called you?” Bucky asked.
“Daniel did,” I said.
“Yeah, I called him,” Daniel said. “John’s got good sense. So do you, Bucky, but John, he’s like family.”
I thought this was odd since I seldom saw the man. I’d trained a couple horses for him and it was his mule that was haunting my barns.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Somebody shot a cow,” Hanks said with a slightly dismissive tone.
“Shooting a cow is a big deal,” Daniel said. “That’s two thousand dollars lying in that gulley.”
“Let’s go have a look,” Bucky said.
We piled into Daniel’s open-topped late-sixties Bronco and bounced across the pasture and toward the creek. He’d called Bucky because the cow was shot off the reservation, in the county, Bucky’s jurisdiction. I didn’t know why he’d called me. He came to an abrupt halt that we were all expecting, but still sent us lurching forward.
The cow was lying about ten yards up the opposite creek bank. I sloshed through the water to the animal. He’d been shot through the head. Just beneath the ear. I looked back to see Bucky and Hanks picking their way over the rocks.