Montana Summer Ch. 11

ds."

'Fuck,' thought Milt.

"Right now we don't have much to go on. We have a couple things we are looking at. Also, I plan on going out and talking to the McFayden kid this afternoon, he got home yesterday from the hospital."

"I just don't understand. You were out there. Some guy gets five arrows in his chest and you have no leads?" The level of frustration was increasing in the district attorney's voice.

"We've been over the area with a fine toothed comb, Cliff. There was nothing. There were no tire tracks. All of the hoof prints from horses were accounted for. All foot prints by people were accounted for. Five arrows, that's it. That's all we found—five arrows in the deceased's chest and those have been sent out to be identified. Everything else at the scene belonged to the deceased." Milt felt like he was on board a sinking ship and that he was the captain doomed to go down with his vessel.

"Well, when I start getting phone calls from voters demanding to know why there is no one being prosecuted for a murder..."

That was the straw that broke the camel's back for Milt. "Now you just wait one fucking minute, Cliff! First off, it's my job to be the sheriff, and yours to be the DA. I have never walked into your office and bitched at you when someone we've arrested has walked free. Secondly, this son-of-a-bitch tried to kill the McFayden kid, so I don't think you're going to get any fucking phone calls from any broken-hearted voters."

After the phone call was over, Milt stared at his desk. Mentally, he went over everything that he and his staff had done. He had been wearing a badge in this county for twenty-four years. He had spent the last eight years as the sheriff of the county sheriff's department. There had been no sloppy police work by his department, of that he was confident.

There was one piece of evidence that Milt had intentionally held back from Cliff Thomas, and for that matter, everyone else. He reached into his top drawer and pulled out a leather pouch and emptied the contents onto his desk. The gold sparkled seductively from the quartz and the four small nuggets gleamed on his desk.

He had a feeling that what he was looking at had a lot to do with what had happened on Baxter's. Milt was afraid that if the word got out that there was gold on Baxter's that the area would be inundated with would-be prospectors. The deputy that had found the pouch while conducting an intensive search of Sal's SUV had personally delivered the pouch and the news to Milt. He locked the pouch in the bottom drawer of his desk before reaching for the phone.

---

Jessi and Suzanne had headed into town to do some shopping. There were only a few days before Jessi and Becky would be headed back to Missoula to start the fall semester. Bill was holed up in his small office taking care of the paperwork that had piled up while they were out of town. Ryan was puttering about in the barn, cleaning it out and putting fresh straw down.

He had made three calls this morning. The first to the university to officially withdraw. The second call had been to the local community college to set up an appointment with a counselor. The third had been to his father and he had left a voice mail.

He felt that he and his parents were beginning to drift apart. Maybe if he had gotten a chance to actually speak with his father, he wouldn't be feeling the way he did. It wasn't a sad feeling, just more of a hollow empty one. He knew his mother would be the one that one would upset the most. Ryan let a long sigh escape and then went back to cleaning the barn.

Ryan walked out of the barn and leaned up against the corral fence, staring at the mountains. He thought about what <BMato had shown him in his visions. He had stopped thinking of them as dreams. Ryan had accepted that they were on a different plane than his nightly dreams.

The sight of Spotted Owl and the other Wanagi riding to his rescue flashed through is mind. Their faces had been painted for battle and each had a grim and determined look. The sound of their war whoop was the last sound he remembered before waking up in the hospital.

"Ryan." Bill interrupted his day dream. "Milt Walker called. He wants to come out and ask you a few questions about what happened. I hope you don't mind. I told him it would be fine to come out."

"Yeah, that's fine." Ryan nodded. He wondered what he could tell the sheriff. He certainly couldn't tell him about ghost riders.

It was warm, a little warmer than normal for late August, and there was a heavy feeling to the air. White, puffy clouds were beginning to boil up over the mountains. Ryan thought the clouds looked like pieces of popcorn.

Bill studied the sky when he saw Ryan looking at the clouds. "We might get a thunderstorm later on. Sure feels like it."

"Yeah, feels like it." Ryan responded it. "Are Aunt Suzanne and Jessi going to be back before lunch, or are we cooking for ourselves?"

"Oh hell, son! What are you thinking?" Uncle Bill roared with laughter. "We won't see those two until o-dark thirty. They haven't been shopping since before you got hurt. They have to make up for lost time."

The funk he had felt when working in the barn had completely disappeared. He laughed along with his uncle at the thought of Aunt Suzanne and Jessi hitting all the stores in town.

"I'm surprised Suzanne didn't hitch up the horse trailer to the truck when she headed into town. I sometimes think that woman believes that it is her place in life to ensure each store in town turns a profit." Bill slapped Ryan on the back. "C'mon, I'll rustle us up some grub for lunch."

---

Janice Evans sighed as she watched her daughter eating breakfast. A few more days and she and Jessi would be headed off too school. She was having a small anxiety attack—Stan would be leaving for Denver, and then Becky. The house was certainly going to seem quiet.

Last night, she and Becky had curled up on her bed while her husband was still down at the store. Becky had told her about Bill and Suzanne talking to Ryan and Jessi. She had felt the blood drain from her face. She and Rob had been at the same party. The videos they had at the store for rent paled in comparison to some of the things she had done that night.

The phone rang and Becky sprang up to answer it. She mouthed the name Jessi. Janice smiled, seeing herself twenty years ago in her daughter, the excitement of a whole new life ahead of her.

Janice felt a pang of disappointment. Her new and exciting life came to a crashing halt just months after graduating high school when she had become pregnant. She sighed remembering that there was so much that she had wanted to do. After Stan was born, there was never the time or money, and then when Becky was born, all thoughts of those dreams were lost in raising a son and a daughter.

A smile crept over he face as she watched the animation in Becky's face while she talked to Jessi. On second thought, she decided she had led a pretty good life. She had a husband who still loved her the same way as when she was eighteen, she had two great children, and there would still be time to accomplish some of those dreams.

"Hey, Mom! Jessi and her mom want us to go to lunch and do some shopping. Let's go!" Becky was almost bouncing up and down.

Janice laughed at the little girl act her daughter was giving her. "Yes, let's do it. Tell Jessi we'll be there as soon as you get some clothes on."

Becky blew her mom a kiss. "You're the best!"

---

Charlie arrived at the building that held the tribal offices and meeting hall. He had gotten a call earlier from the council of elders that they wanted to talk to him. He had asked what the meeting was about, but had only been told to be there.

He sat in his customary seat and looked at the five men that comprised the council. He tried to read their faces but came up empty. These were men, like himself, that kept their feelings masked behind stoic faces. Charlie cleared his throat. "It's good to be back."

Bobby Two Bears gave Charlie a quick smile. "Good to have you back, Charlie."

Peter Little Deer looked right and left at his fellow council members and then at Charlie. "This has to do with the request you made to us a couple of weeks ago. We've changed our minds about your request."

Charlie stood up, the blood in his veins beginning to boil with rage. He started to say something but Peter Little Deer waved him down. "Hear me out, Charlie."

With the rage still seething inside of him, Charlie sat down. He was already planning on the words he would use.

"We've heard what happened to the boy. It is common knowledge around here that the man who tried to kill the boy was one of those who wanted to desecrate the burial place of our ancestors." Peter paused and looked at Charlie, studying him to see if his temper was subsiding.

Once he was sure that it was, Peter continued. "It's also known around here that the man was killed with five arrows, five Lakota arrows with no signs of tracks. Rumors have abounded around these parts for many years about five ghost riders. Some even claim to have seen these Wanagi. It's pretty obvious to us that the boy was saved by an intervention by the spirits. It is our desire to have a Hunka ceremony, and to make the boy Hunka. This is our wish."

Charlie was stunned. To make Ryan Hunka was akin to making him a Lakota in every way. "I don't know what to say, other than you have made me very proud and very happy."

The five men seated across from Charlie broke into broad smiles. They knew what this would mean to Charlie. Peter Little Deer stood up and walked over to Charlie and clapped him on the shoulder. "I hope you are pleased with our decision."

"I am." Charlie replied. "You have made a good decision. The boy is a wakan wašicun.

Peter nodded his head in agreement. "I will be the walowan and the rest of the council will assist me. I want you to be the one who presents the boy to the other hunka.

As Charlie walked home, he was on top of the world. He noticed his son's pickup parked in front of his house.

He walked inside and greeted his son. "Good to see you again."

Walter studied his father carefully, suspecting that the old man had a plot hatching under that grey hair. "Yeah, Dad, good to see you, too. Been a long time—six-thirty last night if my memory serves me correct."

Charlie ignored the good-natured barb that Walter had tossed his way. "Would you mind much driving me down to see, Ryan?"

Walter pulled the keys to his pickup out of his pocket. "How about if I just give you the keys to the truck and you can drive yourself?"

Shaking his head in mock depression, Charlie responded. "How would it look to people to see a wise and powerful chief driving himself around?"

Walter couldn't resist. "Well, if we had a wise and powerful chief, it would be one thing, but we have you."

"You wound me in my soul." Charlie clasped his hand to his chest. "If I had a good son, things would be different around here."

Esther shook her head at her husband and son. "Both of you, get out of here. You will drive me mad before my time."

Walter stood up and hugged his mother and nodded his head towards his father. "How did you manage to live with him all this time?"

Esther swatted her son on the butt and watched them walk out the door and out to Walter's truck. A small tear formed in her eye, she wondered how she got so lucky. She had a good man for a husband and a good man for a son. She thought fortune must have shone on her the day she met Charlie.

As Walt drove down the gravel road he looked over at his father. "You are a wise chief. I can only hope to be like you some day."

Charlie looked at his son. "And you are a good son. I don't think a man could have had a better son than you. You will be better than me. It hasn't taken you as long to learn some of the things about life as it took me."

"I had a good teacher." Walter's voice cracked with emotion.

---

The black clouds roiled over the mountaintops. The distant rumble of thunder sounded like a far off kettledrum being beaten. Flashes of blue-white lightning could be seen leaping between the clouds and the ground.

"I damn well hope there's some rain in those clouds," remarked Bill as he watched the storm build. "It's damned dry up in the high country. It wouldn't take much to get a fire goin' up there right now."

Ryan shuddered for a moment as he envisioned a wall of fire sweeping down through the pristine forest on the mountains. He sniffed the air, catching the faint sweet smell of rain on the breeze.

"Well, it smells like rain." Ryan tried to sound hopeful.

They both watched as the thick black clouds moved over the tops of the mountain. The sound of the thunder was growing louder with each passing minute. The breeze began to freshen a bit.

Ryan thought the way the clouds churned and boiled made the clouds look angry. The thunderhead was magnificent, climbing tens of thousands of feet from the cloud bottoms. The sun was soon hidden by the storm clouds and the look of midday was replaced by the diminished light of the early evening. Even now, Ryan could see some of the clouds light up with internal flashes of lightning as bolts jumped from cloud to cloud.

"I love watching a good storm," remarked Bill.

"Yeah," Ryan replied. "When I was young I was afraid of them."

Bill looked over at Ryan and chuckled. "Well, when your dad and I were young, we were afraid of them too. Our grandfather told us a story about storms when we were about six or seven."

Ryan's interest was immediately piqued. "What was the story?"

"Well," Bill pointed to the approaching clouds. "He told us of a story that supposedly took place down in Texas. Seems that there was a cattleman rounding up his cattle and getting them ready to take them to market. There was this nester living on what was open range at the time, and had fenced him off some land. A quarter section I would imagine." Bill paused for moment and watched the flashes of lightning.

"But anyway, it seems that a bunch of the nester's cattle got mixed in with the other fella's. Whether this was by accident, or on purpose is pretty much left open to interpretation. Well, I guess the nester got a little hot under the collar and went charging after the cattleman to retrieve his cattle. A showdown ensued, and seeing as the cattle were pretty thin as it was the cattleman didn't want to get the cattle upset and risk a stampede and have them run any more weight off. I guess they probably would have been longhorns. They were a pretty damned skittish breed of cattle and would stampede at the drop of a hat. Nothing like these pampered pets we wrangle around here." Ryan watched as his uncle pulled a can of Copenhagen from his shirt pocket and got himself a chew.

"Nasty habit." Bill commented as he put the can back in his pocket. "Take my advice and don't start."

Ryan nodded as his uncle went on with the story.

"Well, the cattleman ended the conversation by pullin' a gun on the nester. The cattleman was a little short handed and as the story goes he only had two hands riding night herd. The nester had snuck back after if had gotten dark and once he felt that everyone in the camp was asleep he started firing a gun and let a blanket on fire and got the herd a running."

Ryan and Bill jumped as a clap of thunder startled the both of them. "That was close," Bill remarked.

" I guess this was on a mesa, and about two to three hundred head of cattle plunged to their death off of the side of the mesa. The cattleman caught up with him a day or too later and they say that they tied him to a horse, then blindfolded the horse and ran the horse off of the mesa. The legend goes that around that whenever there is a storm around that area that cattle and horses begin to stampede for no reason at all. They say it's the ghost of the nester running the herd off of the edge of the mesa."

Bill paused for a moment and watched the skies, noticing that only a few seconds now separated the bright flashes of lightning and the sound of the thunder. At times, it sounded like the sky was being torn apart.

"Well, they say that if watch the storm, you can see the cattle being chased by ghostly riders. Grandpa used to say it was the devil's herd being chased by lost cowboys. A young kid heard the story on a ranch in Arizona back in the twenties. Later on he wrote a song, Ghost Riders In The Sky."

Ryan watched the storm and immediately understood the symbolism. The wind seemed to come out of nowhere. The smell of rain was heaving on the wind. Not too far in the distance, the rain was coming down hard and moving towards the ranch.

Bill looked at Ryan and pointed to the coming rain. "We'd better get to the veranda, else folks might say that we don't have the good sense to get out of the rain."

Ryan grinned at his uncle. "Oh, hell, no! We don't want people to think that about us, even if it may be true."

The wind began swirling and whipping, dust and debris in the farmyard went flying every which way. The flashes of lighting grew stronger and more frequent. The booming thunder seemed relentless. It was impossible to tell which clap of thunder accompanied which bolt of lightning.

Bill had a worried look on his face as he studied the clouds. "I hope there's no hail in those clouds. We still got that two hundred acres of oats to get off."

The first raindrops splatted on the ground in big, heavy drops. The sound of the drops hitting the roof over the veranda sounded like the steady rat-a-tat-tat of a drum. The speed of the rain increased until the sound of the raindrops on the roof was a roar. Within minutes, the ground was soaked and large puddles quickly formed in the driveway. The rain fell in sheets.

Ryan was trying to remember if he closed his bedroom window. There was a flash of lightning and an instant clap of thunder as the bolt struck a pine tree across the barn yard. The smell of ozone was heavy on the air. Ryan looked at his uncle and couldn't believe what he saw. His uncle was laughing and cheering the storm on.

"It's a wonderful sight to see. It makes a man feel alive." Bill pointed at the still smoking tree. "It shows a man who really is in charge."

Ryan understood what his uncle was saying. The power of the storm did make him feel small. As fast as the deluge had started it was over, the storm quickly slowing to a steady rain, the kind of rain that farmers and ranchers look forward to.

"Well, looks like we are out of work for the rest of the afternoon." There was no disappointment in Bill's voice. "Sit down and take a load off your feet. I'll be right back." Bill went into the house and returned with his guitar.

Ryan sat and listened to his uncle play the guitar while they both watched the rain. "You're pretty good," Ryan remarked. "I think you could have made a living at it."

"Thanks," Bill replied. "And don't think that I never had dreams. I saw Marty Robbins once. I wanted to sing like him." The music that Bill was playing changed. "I even wrote a song that I thought was something like what he sang back in those days. Would you like to hear it?"

Ryan nodded. "Yeah, I'd love to hear it."

"It's called the Cowpoke's Lament." Bill cleared his throat and then began to sing.

I sat across from an old cowpoke, He looked at me, and I at he, And then I said, old son, where have you been, And what did you see.

His old grey eyes looked me over, and came his reply Down from the Brazos, the Pecos, and the Red, Up to the Snake and down 'long the Rio Grande, With all my pards, most now long dead.

From the mountains and deserts, All across Texas, and all the flat land, I jingled some horses, an' punched cattle, For most near every brand.